Lampert, Zohra

Splendor in the Grass

Elia Kazan's pedal-to-the-metal approach to psychosexual melodrama paid off handsomely when he had layered material by Tennessee Williams or John Steinbeck to work with. The very raw material here is an original by hot-blooded playwright William Inge, about a pair of teenagers in the American Midwest in the 1920s whose lives are ruined by the repressive sexual climate of the period. The girl, played by Natalie Wood, is literally driven batty by her pent-up adolescent lust and ends up in the bin---which admittedly plays better than sounds, because the hunk she yearns for is the young and almost impossibly handsome Warren Beatty. This is a very lush and beautiful movie, but also a deeply silly one. It's grade-A American cheese, with a pinch of dime-store Freud on top.--David Chute

Let's Scare Jessica to Death

Jessica goes to the Connecticut countryside for some rest following her release from an institution where she has just recovered from a nervous breakdown. She arrives with her husband and friend but the three find little relaxation. Instead they become entangled in a creepy tale of the supernatural which involves murder an attempted drowning a seance disappearing bodies vampires and constant torment for Jessica. Her marriage is strained she hears voices and she can t escape the mental turbulence which haunts her for there really is something after Jessica.System Requirements:Running Time: 88 MinutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: HORROR Rating: PG-13 UPC: 097360809343 Manufacturer No: 080934

Teachers

The Exorcist 3

The evil is back. The Exorcist novelist and Academy Award-winning screenwriter William Peter Blatty triumphs again with this spellbinding sequel starring George C. Scott.Year: 1990

Odds Against Tomorrow

Odds Against Tomorrow a crackling crime caper with an undercurrent of racial tension combines the desperation of three men--two of whom hate each other--and the culmination of that desperation in the form of a robbery. The film which includes a fantastic jazz score by pianist John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet is a film noir gem. David Burke (Ed Begley) a former policeman who once served a prison sentence has asked bigoted southerner Earl Slater (Robert Ryan) to rob an upstate bank with him promising him $50000 in small bills if the robbery is successful. Burke also recruits Johnny Ingram (Harry Belafonte who also helped produced the film) a nightclub entertainer who doesn t want the job but who is hopelessly addicted to gambling and is in debt. At first Slater who is supported by his girlfriend Lorry (Shelley Winters) finds out Ingram is black and refuses the job but realizing he needs the money decides after all to join Ingram and Burke in the venture. When they embark on the robbery however all hell breaks loose as danger--and the tension between Ingram and Slater--mount.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 027616899583 Manufacturer No: 1005697

After seeing Odds Against Tomorrow, it's hard to understand why Harry Belafonte made so few movies. He's superb as Johnny Ingram, a nightclub singer with a bad gambling debt. To pay it off, he agrees to take part in a bank heist with an ex-cop (the great character actor Ed Begley) and a racist ex-con named Earl Slater, played with consummate bitterness by Robert Ryan. But this isn't a standard crime caper--the movie carefully explores the pressures each man is under. Ingram's debts have begun to threaten his ex-wife and child, while Slater's pride has been eaten away by age and failure; Slater finally has a relationship that matters to him (with Shelley Winters, in one of her wonderful, desperate performances), but not as much as proving himself. As the plan slowly falls into place, the tensions between the men get more extreme until everything falls apart. Gloria Grahame, one of the great B movie femme fatales, has a small but memorable role. Director Robert Wise's long and wildly varied career includes The Haunting, The Sound of Music, and Star Trek: The Motion Picture, but Odds Against Tomorrow is one of his best. This bleak, powerful movie is considered by many critics and film historians to be the last true film noir, and it's a fitting close to the genre. --Bret Fetzer

Stanley & Iris

Man and woman. Student and teacher. Stanley and Iris. Two great stars (Leonard Maltin) Oscar® winners* Jane Fonda and Robert De Niro light up the screen in this bold tender and quietly noble love story (The Hollywood Reporter) from the creators of Norma Rae.He s a shy illiterate short-order cook who s never taken a chance at love. She s a newly widowed factory worker who s vowed to never love again. But as their friendship slowly blossoms and Iris helps Stanley learn to read his strong yet gentle kindness helps mend her broken heart. And where once two lonely strangers stood trapped within the past Stanley and Iris can now begin a new chapter of their lives together.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: NR UPC: 027616901378 Manufacturer No: 1005907

Izzy and Moe

Izzy and Moe re-unites two of the most beloved television performers, Jackie Gleason and Art Carney (The Honeymooners) in this made for television movie. Jackie and Art play the parts of Izzy Einstein and Moe Smith, two vaudeville performers-turned-prohibition agents in the 1920s. Mixing comedy with drama, they become two of the most effective agents in the battle against the bottle and when their success attracts the attention of the mob, the two vaudevillians must use all their wits to stay alive. In their last performance together on the small screen, Gleason and Carney are at the top of their form. Director Jackie Cooper plays it straight, letting the boys get the laughs.

A Fine Madness

A Fine Madness would never pass muster by today's politically correct standards. The "hero" of this 1966 comedy, a pompous poet named Samson Shillitoe (Sean Connery, doing a Saturday Night Live version of himself), is a classic bad boy--"an exact cross between Dylan Thomas and Mike Tyson," as one reviewer put it, a sexist philanderer who reneges on alimony to his first wife and punches out his second (Joanne Woodward, shrill and tiresome), can't keep a job, and insults, alienates, and abuses anyone who comes within two feet of him. (All of which makes him a total chick magnet, because he's an artist who has no time for quotidian vicissitudes, and also because he's Sean Connery.) Even taking the cultural time warp into account, it's hard to say what Irvin Kershner, who directed Elliott Baker's script from Baker's own novel, had in mind here, other than showing that Connery could do something besides play James Bond (in fact, the film was both preceded and followed by Bond adventures). Samson is an unredeemable jerk, the other characters are mostly unlikable as well, and the story, which involves psychiatrist Patrick O'Neal ordering him to undergo a lobotomy after he seduces the good doc's wife (Jean Seberg), is unconvincingly resolved. The film does a decent job of skewering the psychiatric profession and its pretensions, and Samson is probably meant to embody the whole screw-the-establishment ethos of the '60s, but overall, A Fine Madness is dated and simply not funny enough. One footnote: Kershner went on to bigger and better things with Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back. Ironically, he also directed Never Say Never Again, a 1983 Bond film with none other than Sean Connery as 007. --Sam Graham

Genius poet and carpet cleaner Samson Shillitoe (Sean Connery) has writer's block - and he can't bluster clobber or curse it away. But just watch him take Manhattan by storm trying in this whirlwind comedy! It's a certifiable case of A Fine Madness as nonconformist Samson and his beleaguered wife (Joanne Woodward) plunge into a series of daffy disasters from which he still comes up smiling. That is until he dallies with the lovely wife (Jean Seberg) of a scheming psychiatrist (Patrick O'Neal) who seeks revenge by prescribing "brain surgery." Shillitoe will need the might of Samson to face down his foes but with Connery's full-tilt charisma and Irvin Kershner's buoyant direction it's flinty funny entertainment. Director: Irvin Kershner Starring: Sean Connery Joanne Woodward Jean SebergRunning Time: 104 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY UPC: 012569750166 Manufacturer No: 75016

Alphabet City

Vincent Spano (The Tie that Binds, Alive) packs "personality and punch" (Los Angeles Times) and Jamie Gertz (Twister, The Lost Boys) is "precociously sexy" (Variety) in this nerve-rattling thriller "drenched with atmosphere [and] episodic action" (The Hollywood Reporter) that will have your heart pounding at every turn! At 19, Johnny (Spano) is already a charismatic but ruthless gangster, running the mob's drug trade in Alphabet City, New York's toughest neighborhood. But when his bosses order him to torch a buildingone which happens to be the home of both his mother and sister (Gertz)Johnny defies them. Now a marked man, he must find a way to protect his family and get out of Alphabet City before they take him out for good!

Izzy and Moe