Avery, Val

Hud

Based on a Larry McMurtry novel, this Martin Ritt film was a testament to the sex appeal of the young Paul Newman. Playing the title character--a total rotter who, by the end of the film, has double-crossed or screwed over everyone he knows, including his hard-working father and brother--Newman turns him into an intriguing antihero. Things are tough on the ranch and Hud's dad (Melvyn Douglas) needs help, but Hud is too busy looking out for number one, even as things fall apart. And guess who's going to land on his feet? Beautiful black-and-white cinematography by James Wong Howe won an Oscar, as did performances by Douglas and Patricia Neal. --Marshall Fine

Newman plays a man at odds with his father, tradition and himself. His father is an old-line cattle rancher and Newman is the son whose only interests are fighting, drinking, hot-rodding and womanizing.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: NR
Release Date: 2-DEC-2003
Media Type: DVD

Nevada Smith

The Max Sand backstory in Harold Robbins's trashy The Carpetbaggers (an enjoyable wallow onscreen in 1964) made for a solid Western vehicle for Steve McQueen at his peak. Nevada Smith is a revenge movie, but closer in spirit to The Bravados than a Death Wish-style exercise in nihilism. Young Max, offspring of a white father and Indian mother, sets out to avenge their slaughter by three villains. His odyssey includes spiritual re-parenting at several stages, most notably by canny gun dealer Jonas Cord (a swell character part for Brian Keith). The supporting cast will have you saying, "He's in it, too!" at regular intervals (from costars Karl Malden and Arthur Kennedy down to such incidental interlopers as L.Q. Jones and Strother Martin). Since director Henry Hathaway and cameraman Lucien Ballard couldn't frame a bad shot if their lives depended on it, it's a relief that this movie is finally available in a widescreen format. --Richard T. Jameson

The Magnificent Seven (Special Edition)

Akira Kurosawa's rousing Seven Samurai was a natural for an American remake--after all, the codes and conventions of ancient Japan and the Wild West (at least the mythical movie West) are not so very far apart. Thus The Magnificent Seven effortlessly turns samurai into cowboys (the same trick worked more than once: Kurosawa's Yojimbo became Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars). The beleaguered denizens of a Mexican village, weary of attacks by banditos, hire seven gunslingers to repel the invaders once and for all. The gunmen are cool and capable, with most of the actors playing them just on the cusp of '60s stardom: Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn. The man who brings these warriors together is Yul Brynner, the baddest bald man in the West. There's nothing especially stylish about the approach of veteran director John Sturges (The Great Escape), but the storytelling is clear and strong, and the charisma of the young guns fairly flies off the screen. If that isn't enough to awaken the 12-year-old kid inside anyone, the unforgettable Elmer Bernstein music will do it: bum-bum-ba-bum, bum-ba-bum-ba-bum.... Followed by three inferior sequels, Return of the Seven, Guns of the Magnificent Seven, and The Magnificent Seven Ride! --Robert Horton

Spectacular gun battles epic-sized heroes and an all-star cast that includes Academy Award winners Yul Brynner and James Coburn together with Steve McQueen Eli Wallach and Charles Bronson make The Magnificent Seven a legend among westerns. Spawning three sequels and a successful television series and featuring Elmer Bernstein's Oscar-nomiated score this stunning remake of The Seven Samurai is a "hard-pounding adventure" (Newsweek) and "an endruingly popular" (Leonard Maltin) cinematic classic.Merciless Calvera (Wallach) and his band of ruthless outlaws are terrorizing a poor Mexican village and even the bravest lawmen can't stop them. Desperate the locals hire Chris Adams (Brynner) and six other gun fighters to defend them. With time running out before Calvera's next raid the heroic seven must prepare the villagers for battle and help them find the courage to take back their town... or die trying!System Requirements:Starring: Yul Brynner Eli Wallach Steve McQueen Charles Bronson Robert Vaughn Brad Dexter James Coburn and Horst Buchholz. Directed By: John Sturges. Running Time: 128 Min. Color. This film is presented in "Widescreen" format. Copyright 2000 MGM Studios.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: WESTERN/MISC. Rating: NR UPC: 027616861078 Manufacturer No: M108736

The Hallelujah Trail

Acclaimed director John Sturges (The Magnificent Seven, Bad Day at Black Rock, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral) turns the legends of the West upside down in this rip-roaring western comedy about the year Denver was nearly devastated by a droughtof whiskeyand had to have fortywagonloads imported through very harshand very thirstyterritory! Academy AwardÂ(r) winners* Burt Lancaster and Martin Landau team with OscarÂ(r) nominee** Lee Remick inthis beautifully filmed epic adventure that "wins both laughs and thrills" (The Hollywood Reporter)! Also starring Jim Hutton, Brian Keith and Donald Pleasence, this irreverent and literally dry look at frontier life is "possibly the funniest western ever made" (Los Angeles Times)!

The Pope of Greenwich Village

Picture if you will two cousins, Charlie (Mickey Rourke) and Paulie (Eric Roberts), prowling the mean streets of New York's Little Italy. Charlie is reasonably put-together, a maitre d' at a chic café who aspires to running his own restaurant someday. Paulie is an incurable flake who can't resist a temptation or a goofball scheme, couldn't tell the truth to save his soul, and keeps splashing Charlie with the street slop of his slewing trajectory through life. This includes drawing him into the circles of Mob crime, most especially Paulie's boss, that supreme sleazebag "Bedbug Eddie" (Burt Young).

Michael Cimino is said to have had a hand in this movie, though the credited director is Stuart Rosenberg--an impersonal craftsman often hired in midshoot after the star and a more volatile director had parted company. This helps account for the picture's overall lack of rhythm and its wavering between overemphatic, Ethnic-with-a-capital-E idiosyncrasy, and low-key befuddlement. Still, it has its charms, most of them deriving from a terrific cast. At the time it came out, in the summer of 1984, Rourke and Roberts were both exciting, unpredictable talents; Roberts in particular had an amazing talent for being somebody brand new--psychologically, even physically--in every film he made. But even though they're hitting on all cylinders, the boys are quietly upstaged by some redoubtable old pros: the great Kenneth McMillan, the ineffable M. Emmet Walsh, and--scoring her umpteenth Oscar® nomination as the mother of an ill-fated cop--Miss Geraldine Page. --Richard T. Jameson

Turn up the Sinatra, put on a leather jacket, and slip into a rollicking, high-voltage movie that produces tears of laughter (New York Daily News). Mickey Rourke (The Rainmaker), EricRoberts (National Security, Runaway Train) and Daryl Hannah (Kill Bill: Vol. 1, Splash) create emotion-charged characters who tingle with energy and play with conviction (The Hollywood Reporter) in this modern-day classic that's as robust and powerful as Italianespresso! In New York's Little Italy, smooth-talking hustler Charlie (Rourke) works in a restaurant and dreams of one day buying his own with his girlfriend Diane (Hannah). His wiry wheeler-dealer cousin Paulie (Roberts) waits tables, skims money off checks and is always scheming to score big. Butthey're all about to pull a scam on the wrong guyBed Bug Eddie (Burt Young, Rocky), the Mafia king of Greenwich Village! Now these small-time con men are in big-time troubletrouble so big that even their mobster uncle might not be able to save them!

Papillon

They called him Papillon meaning "butterfly." If only he had wings to go with the name. Unable to fly Henri Charriere virtually willed himself free. He persisted until he did the impossible: escape Devil's Island. Based on Charriere's bestseller and shot in Spain and Jamaica Franklin J. Schaffner's film of Papillon united two stars at key career junctures. After a decade of fine work in The Great Escape The Sand Pebbles and Bullitt Steve McQueen found in Charriere another ideal tough-guy role. Coming off The Graduate Midnight Cowboy and Little Big Man Dustin Hoffman again distinguished himself as Dega Charriere's scruffy friend.Running Time: 150 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 012569700970

Franklin J. Schaffner (Patton) directs this true story of Henri Charriere (better known as "Papillon" or "the butterfly"), a prisoner so determined to escape the notorious Devil's Island, he attempted it multiple times until he reached old age. Steve McQueen plays Charriere, and Dustin Hoffman is very good as the hero's anxious, defenseless friend. Based on Charriere's own memoir and uncompromisingly adapted by screenwriters Dalton Trumbo (Johnny Got His Gun) and Lorenzo Semple Jr. (Three Days of the Condor), the film is tough going (it is set, after all, on Devil's Island) but not gratuitously violent. There are sequences that stay with one for a long time, such as Papillon's brief stay at a leper colony and the long periods of starvation and solitary confinement he endures after each attempted flight. --Tom Keogh

Last Train From Gun Hill

Recognizing that wealthy cattle rancher Craig Belden's son, Rick, is one of his wife's killers, Morgan travels to Gun Hill to arrest him. Belden refuses to hand his son over, and Morgan is determined to capture Rick and take him away by the 9:00 train but he is trapped in the town alone, with Belden and all his men now looking to kill him.

Cheech and Chong's Up In Smoke (High-Larious Edition)

Cheech & Chong's first cannabis comedy is also their best, a souvenir from the more carefree days before "Just Say No," when people did not feel so defensive about inhaling. In 1978, the prevailing spirit was more like "Just Say Blow." Even New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael liked it (the movie, that is), adding that it was "an exploitation slapstick comedy, rather than a family picture, such as Blazing Saddles or High Anxiety--which means that it's dirtier, wilder, and sillier." The story has to do with bumbling potheads Cheech & Chong searching for primo bud, while being tailed by a team of inept law-enforcement officers, led by Sgt. Stedenko (Stacy Keach). Sample dialogue: When a cop pulls them over to ask if they are any illegal substances in his vehicle, Cheech replies: "Not any more, man." Up in Smoke is an irresistibly silly and charming movie that--despite, or perhaps because of, the national furor over drug use--plays today like a relic from a bygone era, a sweeter, more open, more innocent period in our history. --Jim Emerson

There's nothing straight about this movie. But here's the dope anyway: Cheech and Chong make their film debut in this riotous rock'n'roll comedy bringing with them the same madness lifestyles and sketches that sold over 10 million records in the early '70s. Cheech and Chong's marijuana-laced humor keeps their spirits high and leads them to an outrageous finale in L.A.'s Roxy Theatre where Cheech performs in a pink tutu and Chong dresses as a large red quaalude. It will make you feel very funny.System Requirements:Running Time: 85 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: R UPC: 097361223247 Manufacturer No: 122324

Let's Do It Again

Back in the day, when Richard Roundtree, Fred Williamson, Issac Hayes, and Pam Grier were stickin' it to the Man, Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby collaborated on three buddy comedies that offered urban audiences an alternative to private dicks, sex machines, and bad muthas. The Uptown Saturday Nightstars re-team for an "outtasite" scam involving hypnosis, a hopeless beanpole boxer (Jimmie Good Times Walker), and two rival kingpins. Though in fashion and patois Let's Do It Again is a candidate for the '70s time capsule, it does hold up better than most of its more militant blaxploitation brethren. Poitier, the straight man, and Cosby, working his improvisational mojo, are a great comedy team. Worth the price of purchase alone is the sight of these icons decked out in flamboyant Mack Daddy duds to impress their marks, Kansas City Mack (John Amos) and Biggie Smalls (Calvin Lockhart). Curtis Mayfield's score, with vocals by the Staples Singers, is also good for the soul. --Donald Liebenson

Comedy about a pair of blue collar cons who raise funds for their fraternal order by hypnotizing a scrawny boxer into believing he's a mighty fighter then betting heavily on him. Trouble ensues when gangsters figure out their plot and seek payback.Running Time: 113 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY UPC: 085392888429

Cobra

In the opening scene of this thoroughly mindless action flick, a psycho holds a group of terrified hostages in a grocery store, and yells to renegade cop Marion Cobretti (Sylvester Stallone) that he's going to blow the place to kingdom come. "Go ahead," says the cop nicknamed "Cobra," presumably because he's tightly coiled and strikes with deadly force. "I don't shop here." And so it goes with this brutal and for the most part disgusting Stallone showcase, in which Sly's then wife, Brigitte Nielsen, provides bad acting and ample cleavage as a fashion model (what else?) who's the only witness against a crazed cult of serial killers. Cobra likes to kill first and leave the questions to his disgruntled superiors, who call on the maverick lawman when all other options have failed. This movie does have a modest following, and for what it's worth, a few of the action sequences are disjointedly exciting. --Jeff Shannon

Sylvester Stallone creates another electrifying American hero in the Rocky/Rambo mold: Cobretti the cop a fearless dispenser of justice out to stop a gang of serial killers. Year: 1986Running Time: 87 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE Rating: R UPC: 085391159421