Edelman, Herb

The Way We Were (Special Edition)

Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand star as sociopolitical opposites--he's a WASP novelist, she's an activist--who nevertheless strike up a romance in the 1930s, and have a rocky relationship through the next two decades that reflects much of America's history. An essential part of the movie--the Hollywood blacklist and the McCarthy witch- hunt years--comes across as a botch, due to some excessive cutting before the film was released. But except for that hole in the heart of the story, director Sydney Pollack (Out of Africa) has crafted a strong and moving drama about two interesting characters. Redford (always good with Pollack) is at the height of his powers, and Streisand is persuasive. --Tom Keogh

The Odd Couple

Neil Simon's terribly funny play about roommates Oscar the slob and Felix the neurotic was first committed to film in this 1968 production, directed by Gene Saks (Barefoot in the Park). Perfectly timed, ingeniously rendered, not a hair out of place in the history-making performances of Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon (or the great support cast), The Odd Couple is a movie that one just has to see every two or three years to stay happy. The poker-game sequence in which Oscar's cronies seem to be falling under the sway of fussy Felix's talent for making sandwiches is priceless. --Tom Keogh

Neil Simon's beloved story about two divorced men who decide to share a New York apartment. Felix is fussy and fastidious to a fault. He proves that cleanliness is next to insanity. Oscar wreaks havoc on a tidy room with the speed and thoroughness of a tornado. An enduring and endearing picture with the intelligence one usually misses in comedies.

Barefoot in the Park

Devotees of Neil Simon's repartee, such as in his Goodbye Girl and Brighton Beach Memoirs, will enjoy this earlier tale of domestic dispute between newlyweds. Corie (Jane Fonda) is the young housewife trying to keep life exciting while making a home for her and her husband, Paul (Robert Redford), on the fifth floor of a Greenwich Village walkup apartment. He's working hard at starting his career as lawyer; she's eager to be romantic and spontaneous; and the two have plenty to squabble about. The film suffers a bit from Corie's excessive perkiness and the odd lack of chemistry between the two actors. But those who find the dramatic conventions a bit stiff (some of the dialogue and action seems more suited for stage than screen) may still smile at the dated look (circa 1967) at home life. Mildred Natwick is superb as Corie's mother, and Charles Boyer milks his role as the elderly bohemian neighbor upstairs. --Jenny Brown

Ultimate Flint Collection (Our Man Flint / In Like Flint)

Disc 1: **Our Man Flint- Widescreen Feature

*Commentary by Film Historians Eddie Friedfeld & Lee Pfeiffer *Theatrical Trailer *Fox Flix: In Like Flint Fathom Modesty Blaise

Disc 2: **In Like Flint-Widescreen Feature

*Commentary by Eddie Friedfeld & Lee Pfeiffer *Theatrical Trailer *Fox Flix: In Like Flint Fathom Modesty Blaise

Disc 3: **Special Features Disc includes: *Dead On Target-TV Movie *The Musician's Magician *Future Perfect *Spy School *Spy Vogue *Feminine Wiles *In Like Flint - Puerto Rico Premiere *Spy-er-rama *A Gentleman's Game *Spy Style (6:46) *The Making of Bouillabaisse

*Screen Tests: Gila Golan for Our Man Flint James Coburn & Gila Golan for Our Man Flint Deanna Lund for In Like Flint

*Trailers: The Chairman The Quiller Memorandum Deadfall Peeper The Magus Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls

The Front Page

Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht's classic newspaper comedy--about a conniving editor who talks his star reporter out of getting married long enough to cover a big story--has survived lesser adaptations than this one. (Ever see Switching Channels?) But few have been more disappointing. Billy Wilder teamed Walter Matthau (as the unscrupulous editor) and Jack Lemmon (as the fast-talking reporter), who try to get the scoop on everyone else in the story of a convicted killer who escapes on his way to the electric chair. But Matthau and Lemmon, as good as they are, succumb to the temptation to do shtick--and Carol Burnett shows up in a florid, unfunny performance as a hooker. An attempt to bottle the same lightning that struck with The Sting--but Wilder, Lemmon, and Matthau just can't do it. --Marshall Fine

Neil Simon's California Suite

The West Coast answer to Neil Simon's Plaza Suite, this film (written by Simon and directed by Herbert Ross) has a high Hollywood gloss. Instead of the omnibus form of the film of the New York version, this film (set at the Beverly Hills Hotel) intertwines the stories (à la Grand Hotel) of several different sets of guests, including Alan Alda and Jane Fonda and Walter Matthau and Elaine May, on one particularly eventful weekend. The story that works best involves Maggie Smith and Michael Caine as an Oscar-nominated actress and her straying, gay husband who come to an understanding (Smith won the Oscar for this film). The least effective is a slapsticky battle between well-to-do but competitive doctors played by Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor. --Marshall Fine

The Yakuza

From Academy Award-winning director Sidney Pollack ("The Firm" "Absence of Malice") comes this suspenseful adventure about a Harry Kilmer (Oscar-nominee Robert Mitchum "Cape Fear") an American man determined to rescue his employer's kidnapped daughter from the Japanese mafia in Kyoto. Written by Paul Schrader ("Taxi Driver" "Raging Bull") and Acadamy Award-winner Robert Towne ("Chinatown " "Tequila Sunrise"). "Dazzling displays of swordplay" praises Newsweek while Rex Reed proclaims this "an exciting riveting totally original motion picture."Running Time: 112 min.System Requirements:Run Time: 112 minsFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE UPC: 012569753150 Manufacturer No: 75315

Complex to the point of being pleasingly convoluted, this Sydney Pollack film (from a terrific script by Robert Towne and Leonard and Paul Schrader) is an intriguing blend of Western and Asian sensibilities. Mitchum, in one of his best roles of the 1970s, is drawn to the Orient by an army buddy (Brian Keith), whose daughter has been kidnapped. But when he gets to Japan, Mitchum finds that her kidnappers are the shadowy Yakuza, the Japanese Mafia--an organization that is as vicious as it is tradition-bound. He must call on friends he made after World War II for favors and finds himself unintentionally trampling on issues of honor, even as he battles for his life and that of the girl he is seeking. Surprisingly heartfelt and deliciously exciting, the film features a sorrowful performance by Mitchum and a stoically touching one by Ken Takakura. And what great samurai swordplay! --Marshall Fine

Steambath (Broadway Theatre Archive)

This unique play presents the afterlife as a steam bath, in which dead souls continue to obsess about the same petty concerns that obsessed them in their lives, until they are cast into a dark void by God, the Puerto Rican attendant (José Pérez). But new arrival Tandy (Bill Bixby) at first refuses to accept what's happened, and when he finally does, he pleads to be allowed to return to his life. Steambath was controversial in its day for its obscene language (which was softened for this filmed version, originally presented on PBS), its satirical take on religion, and some brief nudity by bombshell Valerie Perrine. Today it's still very entertaining, but mostly as a core sampling of the surprisingly uncensored male attitudes from the dawn of the 1970s. Everyone gives a solid performance and Bixby's easy charm makes his self-centered character sympathetic. --Bret Fetzer

Marathon

Robert Mitchum - The Signature Collection (Angel Face / Macao / The Sundowners / Home from the Hill / The Good Guys and the Bad Guys / The Yakuza)

This collection of Robert Mitchum movies includes the following titles: ANGEL FACE THE GOOD GUYS & THE BAD GUYS HOME FROM THE HILL MACAO THE SUNDOWNERS and THE YAKUZA. Please see individual titles for synopsis information.Featuring:ANGEL FACEMACAOTHE GOOD GUYS AND THE BAD GUYSHOME FROM THE HILLTHE SUNDOWNERSTHE YAKUZAFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: NR UPC: 085391113492 Manufacturer No: 111349

Big bad Bob Mitchum: Seriously, is there anybody you'd rather watch in a movie? Mitchum had the cool looks, a dancer's sense of balance, and a thoroughly modern amusement about his own stardom. Somehow he made you invest in a movie, while simultaneously communicating his own smirky suspicions that the whole thing was a joke. Mitchum gets boxed in Robert Mitchum: The Signature Collection, a six-disc batch of random but rewarding Mitchum vehicles. Highlights are two noirish outings, and two prestigious auteur pictures that allowed Mitchum to play outside his usual job description. The one authentic noir is Otto Preminger's Angel Face (1952), with Mitchum as an incredibly passive hero bewitched by Jean Simmons' spoiled rich girl. True to its title, the film is utterly deadpan in tracking the downfall of Mitchum's easily-seduced male.

The quasi-noir is Macao (1952), a compulsively enjoyable piece of nonsense produced by the ever-meddling Howard Hughes. It's credited to director Josef von Sternberg, but it was largely reshot by Nicholas Ray (according to a Mitchum-Russell interview included on the disc, Mitchum wrote some of the new scenes). Doesn't matter; the combo of Mitchum and Jane Russell (re-teamed from the even kookier His Kind of Woman) is enough to carry this slice of backlot exotica. Both actors look skeptical about the material and amused by each other, and Russell gets to sing "One for My Baby."

Home from the Hill (1959) is an underappreciated change of pace for both Mitchum and director Vincente Minnelli. Mitchum, all authority as the super-manly patriarch of an East Texas family, supplies the brawn; Minnelli brings the same sensitivity to the emotional effects of color and movement that he brought to his musicals. Biggest surprise here is that two young-cub Georges, Peppard and Hamilton, are both very good in the male-ingénue roles. Another long film, Fred Zinnemann's The Sundowners (1960), is a gentle and wise account of a nomadic family of sheep-herders in Australia. Mitchum and Deborah Kerr bring a beautiful sense of mature romance to their relationship, and Zinnemann catches the beauty of the country. Plus, you learn how to shear a sheep.

The clinker in the set is Burt Kennedy's The Good Guys and the Bad Guys, a 1969 Western that can't decide whether it's sending up High Noon or playing it straight. Mitchum's the aging Marshall eased out of his job, George Kennedy is the equally aging varmint whose gang (led by whippersnapper David Carradine) plans a train robbery. One can imagine John Wayne as the Marshall and Mitchum as the rogue, but the movie would still fall flat. Finally, The Yakuza (1975) finds Mitchum in his weathered seventies form, and easily the best thing about Sydney Pollack's stately film. The Paul Schrader-Robert Towne script heads to Japan for some cultural lessons and much finger-severing. All in all, the set shows the range of a perpetually underestimated actor who never stopped being cool. --Robert Horton