Rule, Janice

Bell, Book and Candle

Staid, secure publisher James Stewart leads a quiet life until he meets his bewitching downstairs neighbor, Kim Novak. John Van Druten's lighthearted Broadway comedy becomes a lush if lightweight romantic vehicle for Stewart and Novak, who would reunite for Hitchcock's Vertigo the next year. Novak is at her best as a Greenwich witch halfway between the worlds of magic and mortals, looking after her dotty aunt (Elsa Lanchester) and mischievous warlock brother (Jack Lemmon) as they keep their skills in practice. Novak's specialty is making men fall for her, but it's a one-way street: when a witch falls in love, she loses her powers. Director Richard Quine gives the witches an almost beatnik sensibility, a real Greenwich Village subculture hanging out in underground clubs and smart curio shops. Elegantly photographed in rich, glowing colors by James Wong Howe, Bell, Book and Candle is a fantasy world in New York set to a funky bongo-laced jazz score by George Duning. Quine's gliding camera is somewhat marred by abrupt editing, but his handling of actors is superb, in particular Novak, whose mysterious beauty masks inner turmoil and romantic yearnings. Ernie Kovacs appears as a wry author whose specialty is the supernatural, and Hermione Gingold is suitably florid as a witch elder with a penchant for theatricality. For once in his life Stewart is actually upstaged by the slyly comic performances around him. --Sean Axmaker

American Flyers

American Flyers takes you on the road for exciting world-class cycling competition as two brothers struggle to win a race and to regain the respect and affection they once shared. Achievement-oriented Marcus (Kevin Costner) is a nationally-ranked cyclist. Younger brother David (David Grant) is a drifter content to cruise through life on a 10-speed. Time-and the painful events surrounding their father's death-have turned the siblings' differences into an open rift. So they try to bridge the gap by competing together in the Hell of the West a grueling race through the Rocky Mountains. For the first time ever the brothers train and race side-by-side...while each privately confronts a nagging fear: the congenital ailment that struck down their father could just suddenly strike one of them. Writer Steve Tesich and Academy Award winner for his bike-racing opus Breaking Away now captures the sport's excitement on an even larger scale. Against the backdrop of the Coors International Classic the U.S.'s largest most prestigious race Tesich and director John Badham craft a dazzling spirit-soaring spectacle. Says Rex Reed: "You'll go away feeling good! American Flyers is a fine mixture of romance humor and tears with action sequences among the most exciting ever captured on film."Running Time: 113 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: PG-13 UPC: 085391152026

American Flyers could roughly be referred to as a cross between Breaking Away (also written by Steve Tesich) and Brian's Song. Sports physician Marcus (Kevin Costner, sporting a ludicrously big mustache) coaxes his flaky brother David (David Marshall Grant) into doing something with his life and training for a grueling bike race in the Colorado Rockies. The scenario is complicated, though, by family frictions and the fact that the brothers' dad died of a cerebral aneurysm that has been handed down to one of the brothers. The two train rigorously for the big event (part of their routine involves outrunning an angry pit bull every day), then pack the van and head West. Marcus's girlfriend is also the ex-wife of his main rival in the race circuit, providing a bit more intrigue. Veteran action director John Badham (Saturday Night Fever, War Games) excels during the bike-race segments, capturing the breathtaking scenery and the demanding nature of the event nicely. The film is somewhat hobbled, though, by the screenplay and character development; the film plays a bit too much to the sports-movie cliché and the dysfunctional-family story seems like a lengthy prologue to the race. Also, try not to be too bothered by the annoyingly dated soundtrack, and this should be a fairly entertaining, unpretentious little film. --Jerry Renshaw

Missing

The peril facing a lone American amid Third World political turmoil is elegantly communicated in this important film from Costa-Gavras (Z), adapted by the director and Donald Stewart from Thomas Hauser's nonfiction book. The key to its power onscreen stems from the decision not to center the action merely on the disappearance of Charles Horman (John Shea), but also on the search for him by his father Ed (Jack Lemmon)--and on Ed's discovery of a son he never knew. The Oscar-winning script flows freely between that search and Charles's earlier experiences in the unnamed country (in the true account, Chile). Providing a link between those two stories is Charles's wife Beth (Sissy Spacek), who follows her father-in-law around a country in chaos, teeming with reckless authority and disinterested American diplomats (epitomized by ace character actor David Clennon). The film, which was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar and won the Cannes Film Festival's top prize, is certainly manipulative, but it works because of its finely detailed human elements. Usually emotionally extroverted, Lemmon gives one of his finest performances playing against that type--here, he's a controlled, intellectual man who learns more about his son, and his country, than he ever dreamed he would. --Doug Thomas

The Chase

A small town sheriff tries to recapture an escaped prisoner.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: UN
Release Date: 4-APR-2006
Media Type: DVD

An almost absurdly star-studded cast brings to life Horton Foote's story of prejudice, violence, and frustrated love in The Chase. When Bubber Reeves (Robert Redford) escapes from prison, a drunken party in his hometown turns into a vigilante mob. The news disrupts the birthday celebration of a local oil tycoon (E.G. Marshall), whose son (James Fox) is having an affair with Reeves's wife Anna (Jane Fonda). Meanwhile, a bank vice-president (Robert Duvall) knows his wife (Janice Rule) is cheating on him but can't do anything about it except spread a little misery. The sheriff (Marlon Brando) struggles to hold things together until he can persuade Reeves to give himself up. The accents are thick and the emotions seem overwrought at first, but director Arthur Penn (Bonnie & Clyde, Little Big Man) weaves the multiple storylines together into an unsettling finale. Also featuring Angie Dickinson and Miriam Hopkins. --Bret Fetzer

Invitation to a Gunfighter

Oscar® winner* Yul Brynner turns in a "great performance" (Los Angeles Herald Times) as a smooth master gunfighter who must do battle with his most formidable adversary his own conscience in this gripping double-barreled western full of blistering shootouts surprise twists and colorful villainy.In a New Mexico frontier town Jules Gaspard d'Estaing (Brynner) is hired by the town's boss (Pat Hingle) to kill Matt Weaver (George Segal) a Civil War veteran who returns to reclaim his farm and his woman. But when d'Estaing realizes that Weaver may be the only honest man left the conflicted hired gun must either kill an innocent man or destroy his own reputation in a heart-stopping final showdown.System Requirements: Running Time 93 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: WESTERN/MISC. Rating: NR UPC: 027616923561 Manufacturer No: 1008325

3 Women - Criterion Collection

"The cinema," Orson Welles famously noted, "is a ribbon of dream." 3 Women is one of few feature films on record as having taken form in a dream. The dreamer was Robert Altman, and although all his best work has an oneiric quality--the floaty zooms, the eerie pastels bleeding into one another, the slip and slide of characters' trajectories overlapping in the fluid accumulation of what passes for narrative--this last masterpiece in his amazing seven-year run of 1970s masterpieces is only more so. Shelly Duvall, that most unorthodox of Altman creatures, locks in the tone with her eerie portrayal of Millie Lammoreaux, a Texan hoyden whose nonstop prattle turns life into a stream-of-consciousness reverie even as most of the people in her vicinity studiously ignore her. Her primacy is worshiped, then emulated by a strange, certifiably dysfunctional childwoman named Pinky Rose (Sissy Spacek) who comes to work in the same old-age home as Millie, moves in with her, and progressively usurps her lifestyle and finally her identity. The third woman, Willie (the late Janice Rule), is a pregnant artist who paints reptilian humanoid figures on the floors of swimming pools. Willie's husband (Robert Fortier), a strutting gun nut who once had a bit part on TV's Wyatt Earp ("He knows Hugh O'Brian"), is just about the only male character of consequence in the film. This macho man gets his--but what "his" may be is only one of the movie's beguiling mysteries. It's only appropriate that the cameraman, Chuck Rosher, should be the son of the man who photographed F.W. Murnau's Sunrise. --Richard T. Jameson

In a dusty, under-populated California resort town, Pinky Rose (Sissy Spacek), a naive and impressionable Southern waif begins her life as a nursing home attendant. There, Pinky finds her role model in fellow nurse "Thoroughly Modern" Millie Lammoreaux (Shelley Duvall), a misguided would-be sophisticate and hopeless devotee of Cosmopolitan and Woman's Day magazines. When Millie accepts Pinky into her home at the Purple Sage singles' complex, Pinky's hero-worship evolves into something far stranger and more sinister than either could have anticipated. Featuring brilliant performances from Spacek and Duvall, Robert Altman's dreamlike masterpiece, 3 Women, careens from the humorous to the chilling to the surreal, resulting in one of the most unusual and compelling films of the 1970s.

Alvarez Kelly

This is the story of a renegade adventurer ALVAREZ KELLY (William Holden) who gets caught in the middle of the Civil War. With no loyalties to either North or South Kelly is hired to drive a herd of cattle from Mexico to the Union Army in Virginia. However along the way he is captured by Confederate Colonel Tom Rossiter (Richard Widmark) who persuades him...by shooting off a finger to deliver the cattle to starving Confederates in Richmond. At a bridge leading to Richmond the Union Army attacks and a bloody battle ensues in which Kelly risks his own life to save a Confederate officer. In the end Kelly's fate once again lies in the hands of Colonel Rossiter.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: WESTERN/MISC. Rating: NR UPC: 043396011991 Manufacturer No: 01199

Alvarez Kelly (1966) isn't really a classic, but it's a pleasant enough Western, directed by Edward Dmytryk. The rather convoluted plot (adventurer plays one side off against the other on a cattle drive from Mexico during the Civil War) relies heavily on the charm of the two stars, William Holden and Richard Widmark, but the two prove as reliable as ever. There are some so-so action scenes, but it's the battle of wits between the two principals that supplies all the fireworks. By contrast Janice Rule is just adequate as the love interest. --Ed Buscombe

The Swimmer

Burt Lancaster gives one of his most daringly complex performances in The Swimmer, a fascinating adaptation of John Cheever's celebrated short story. At first it seems that middle-aged businessman Ned Merrill (Lancaster) is merely enjoying a spontaneous adventure, swimming from pool to pool among the well-tended estates of his affluent Connecticut neighborhood. But as Ned encounters a variety of neighbors, we see from their reactions that Ned's on an entirely different kind of journey--that he is balanced on the edge of some mysterious psychosis that we can't fully understand until the film's final, devastating image. A compelling portrait of loss, refracted memories, and deep-rooted emotional denial, The Swimmer sprung from the same late-'60s soil that yielded similarly ground-breaking literary films like The Graduate and Goodbye, Columbus. It's an egotistical showcase for the physical prowess of its 55-year-old star, but Lancaster turns it into something deeper, more disturbing, and completely unforgettable. --Jeff Shannon

The Swimmer [Region 2]

Burt Lancaster gives one of his most daringly complex performances in The Swimmer, a fascinating adaptation of John Cheever's celebrated short story. At first it seems that middle-aged businessman Ned Merrill (Lancaster) is merely enjoying a spontaneous adventure, swimming from pool to pool among the well-tended estates of his affluent Connecticut neighborhood. But as Ned encounters a variety of neighbors, we see from their reactions that Ned's on an entirely different kind of journey--that he is balanced on the edge of some mysterious psychosis that we can't fully understand until the film's final, devastating image. A compelling portrait of loss, refracted memories, and deep-rooted emotional denial, The Swimmer sprung from the same late-'60s soil that yielded similarly ground-breaking literary films like The Graduate and Goodbye, Columbus. It's an egotistical showcase for the physical prowess of its 55-year-old star, but Lancaster turns it into something deeper, more disturbing, and completely unforgettable. --Jeff Shannon

Alvarez Kelly [Region 2]

Alvarez Kelly (1966) isn't really a classic, but it's a pleasant enough Western, directed by Edward Dmytryk. The rather convoluted plot (adventurer plays one side off against the other on a cattle drive from Mexico during the Civil War) relies heavily on the charm of the two stars, William Holden and Richard Widmark, but the two prove as reliable as ever. There are some so-so action scenes, but it's the battle of wits between the two principals that supplies all the fireworks. By contrast Janice Rule is just adequate as the love interest. --Ed Buscombe