Wymark, Patrick

Journey to the Far Side of the Sun

There's a sense of awe to the special effects work of animation specialists Gerry and Sylvia Anderson (Thunderbirds Are Go)--the slow, lovingly detailed introduction of a massive spaceship creeping out of dock and struggling against its bulk while trapped on the ground, and the almost balletic spectacle of the ship elegantly floating against an impressive star field or dramatically flying against the rugged landscape. These moments are the highlights of this sober science fiction thriller about the discovery of a planet on the far side of the sun in Earth's orbit. A mission is hastily put together, with British astrophysicist Ian Hendry teamed with hotshot American astronaut Roy Thinnes for the three-week trip, but when they suddenly crash-land the strange creatures that surround them are revealed to be human. Against all rational explanations they're back on Earth, but Thinnes suddenly discovers that everything is a mirror image of his existence: Through the Looking Glass by way of The Twilight Zone. Though it begins as a paranoid spy thriller set in the near future (the opening details an ingenious espionage caper featuring a very special eyepiece), it quickly turns into a serious and oddly unsettling space-race drama with a heady twist. Robert Parrish's direction is unusually aloof, but the film is always intriguing and well acted with gorgeous special effects that may rank second only to Stanley Kubrick's 2001 as the most elegant vision of outer space flight on film. --Sean Axmaker

Sci-fi adventure and suspense has never been more exciting or intense as when you Journey to the Far Side of the Sun! One hundred years in the future two astronauts are sent to uncover the secrets of a "duplicate" Earth on the other side of the Sun. When they crash land three weeks earlier than they had planned they must embark on a life-or-death mission to determine whether they have arrived back home or on the strange mirror world. This imaginative space adventure offers a journey few will ever forget!

The Skull

The Skull teams up horror legends Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in a chilling supernatural tale of murder from beyond the grave. Based on a short story by Robert Bloch (Psycho) The Skull introduces us to Dr. Christopher Maitland (Cushing) a collector of the ccult. When he is given the opportunity to purchase one of the infamous Marquis de Sade he leaps at the chance. What he doesn't know is that his friend Matthew Phillips (Lee) is the former owner of the skull - and quite happy to be rid of it. Possession of The Skull leads to a terrifying series of nightmarish events for Dr. Maitland as he tries to keep control of his life the forces of unspeakable evil bear down upon him.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: HORROR/EVIL UPC: 844503000187 Manufacturer No: LF00180

Clint Eastwood Collection: Where Eagles Dare

Scorned by reviewers when it came out, this concentrated dose of commando death-dealing to legions of Nazi machine-gun fodder has acquired a cult over the years. In 1968 Clint Eastwood was just getting used to the notion that he might be a world-class movie star; Richard Burton, whose image had been shaped equally by classical theater training and his headline-making romance with Elizabeth Taylor, was eager to try on the action ethos Eastwood was already nudging toward caricature. Alistair MacLean's novel The Guns of Navarone had inspired the film that started the '60s vogue for World War II military capers, so he was prevailed on to write the screenplay (his first). The central location, an impregnable Alpine stronghold locked in ice and snow, is surpassing cool, but the plot and action are ultra-mechanical, and the switcheroo gamesmanship of just who is the undercover double (triple?) agent on the mission becomes aggressively silly. --Richard T. Jameson

Commandos, posing as German soldiers, parachute into a city to rescue a supposed allied general from a Nazi hideaway fortress that can only be reached by cable car.

Cromwell

Richard Harris and Sir Alec Guinness star in this sweeping handsomely-mounted epic drama recounting the battle which raged between the monarchy and a commoner over the very soul of Great Britain. In17th-century England ambitious country gentleman Oliver Cromwell (Harris) dared to challenge the political oppression and corruption which besieged his nation. Watching his power being usurped by a commoner King Charles I (Two-time Oscar(r)-winner Guinness 1957 Best Actor The Bridge on the River Kwai; 1980 Honorary Award) springs to challenge his adversary. One man will become absolute ruler; the other will be executed. Rousing battle sequences excellent lead and supporting performances fromRobert Morley Dorothy Tutin and Timothy Dalton Academy(r) Award-winning costume design and spectacular photography by renowned cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth (Cabaret Tess) make CROMWELL an outstanding historical drama in the tradition of Braveheart.System Requirements:Running Time: 140 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA/CLASSICS Rating: G UPC: 043396008595 Manufacturer No: 859

Battle of Britain

There's something about this film that's so irresistible, despite its grandiose manipulation. Maybe because it recounts the greatest air battle in history, achieving the greatest aerial battle in film history. Maybe because it has such a terrific cast (Harry Andrews, Michael Caine, Trevor Howard, Curt Jurgens, Laurence Olivier, Nigel Patrick, Christopher Plummer, Michael Redgrave, Ralph Richardson, Robert Shaw, Patrick Wymark, and Edward Fox). Maybe because it's so technically well-made, thanks to the Bond team of producer Harry Saltzman and director Guy Hamilton and the great cinematographer Freddie Young. Or maybe because there is something truly riveting about watching the British kick the Nazis back to Germany. --Bill Desowitz

Featuring a "big stellar cast" (Variety) including Michael Caine Trevor Howard Laurence Olivier Christopher Plummer Michael Redgrave Robert Shaw Susannah York and Edward Fox Battle of Britain is a spectacular retelling of a true story that shows courage at its inspiring best. Few defining moments can change the outcome of war. But when the outnumbered Royal Air Force defied insurmountable odds in engaging the German Luftwaffe it may well have altered the course of history!System Requirements:Running Time: 132 Min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE Rating: G UPC: 027616885760 Manufacturer No: 1004525

Where Eagles Dare

Allied agents work to free a captured American general from his Nazi kidnappers in a castle in the Bavarian Alps.
Genre: Feature Film-Action/Adventure
Rating: UN
Release Date: 3-MAY-2005
Media Type: DVD

Scorned by reviewers when it came out, this concentrated dose of commando death-dealing to legions of Nazi machine-gun fodder has acquired a cult over the years. In 1968 Clint Eastwood was just getting used to the notion that he might be a world-class movie star; Richard Burton, whose image had been shaped equally by classical theater training and his headline-making romance with Elizabeth Taylor, was eager to try on the action ethos Eastwood was already nudging toward caricature. Alistair MacLean's novel The Guns of Navarone had inspired the film that started the '60s vogue for World War II military capers, so he was prevailed on to write the screenplay (his first). The central location, an impregnable Alpine stronghold locked in ice and snow, is surpassing cool, but the plot and action are ultra-mechanical, and the switcheroo gamesmanship of just who is the undercover double (triple?) agent on the mission becomes aggressively silly. --Richard T. Jameson

Repulsion

Roman Polanski was still a newcomer to the world of cinema when he unleashed this unforgettable exercise in skin-crawling terror. Repulsion was the Polish director's first film in English, but that hardly mattered: much of the movie is as wordless (and as weird) as the silent Nosferatu. The young Catherine Deneuve plays a Belgian girl stranded in '60s London, a shy beauty with no social skills. When her sister leaves their shared flat, Deneuve goes gradually, quietly, completely mad. Her world becomes Polanski's paintbox, as the devilish director distorts reality via a series of surrealistic touches (grasping hands that protrude from elastic walls) and out-and-out murderous horror. Very few films cast the kind of eerie spell that this 1965 classic achieves, and it clearly points the way toward Polanski's Rosemary's Baby. As with most of the director's work, what is unsettling is not the overt violence, but the terrifying sense of emptiness and isolation, and the boiling unease inside one's own mind. --Robert Horton

Operation Crossbow

Operation Crossbow was one among many '60s films aiming, in the wake of The Guns of Navarone, to cash in on nostalgia for "the Good War" of 20 years earlier, plus snag a share of the spy-movie market stoked by James Bond. A decent-enough stiff-upper-lip thriller in its day, it's yet more enjoyable now. The nostalgia has deepened to include affectionate enjoyment of a fine, big cast now mostly departed, dependably hitting their marks in a jolly good yarn.

The tale begins around the midpoint of the war, with Hitler aspiring to hurl a second Blitz against London using "flying bombs" and rockets. The British War Office starts recruiting officers fluent in the necessary technical fields, as well as German, Dutch, and/or French--the languages of the Nazi-occupied countries from which the Germans are recruiting technical personnel. The screenplay follows two tracks: the Germans' progress with their new aerial weaponry, and the progress of the Allied infiltrators--chiefly Yank George Peppard, chirpy Englishman Jeremy Kemp, and Dutchman Tom Courtenay--sent to penetrate the V2 project.

Despite the resemblance between the Navarone caves and the underground V2 launch center, Crossbow is something of an anti-Navarone. Its heroes are resolutely small-scale, and the mission is fraught with more opportunities for horrible miscues and moral-ethical murkiness than commando derring-do. The most memorable, indeed disturbing, part of the film involves Sophia Loren as the apolitical wife of a collaborator she doesn't know has been killed (and his identity assumed by Peppard). John Mills and Trevor Howard are deliciously deadpan trading war-council flapdoodle at the highest echelon, and Anthony Quayle (the spiritual leader of the Navarone mission) does yeoman service in a tricky role. Time--or rather, the transfer to video--has also been kind to the film's thin, overlit Metrocolor and last-reel special effects, which looked feebler on theater screens. The writers include Michael Powell's longtime partner Emeric Pressburger (under the pseudonym Richard Imrie). --Richard T. Jameson

No Description Available.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: PG13
Release Date: 19-DEC-2006
Media Type: DVD

Woman Times Seven

Widow, seductress, model wife or passionate lover, Shirley MacLaine stars in the seven roles of a woman's life in seven sketches- a tour de force performance that earned her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture Actress in a Musical/Comedy.

Battle of Britain (Collector's Edition)

There's something about this film that's so irresistible, despite its grandiose manipulation. Maybe because it recounts the greatest air battle in history, achieving the greatest aerial battle in film history. Maybe because it has such a terrific cast (Harry Andrews, Michael Caine, Trevor Howard, Curt Jurgens, Laurence Olivier, Nigel Patrick, Christopher Plummer, Michael Redgrave, Ralph Richardson, Robert Shaw, Patrick Wymark, and Edward Fox). Maybe because it's so technically well-made, thanks to the Bond team of producer Harry Saltzman and director Guy Hamilton and the great cinematographer Freddie Young. Or maybe because there is something truly riveting about watching the British kick the Nazis back to Germany. --Bill Desowitz

Featuring a "big stellar cast" (Variety), including Michael Caine, Trevor Howard, Laurence Olivier, Christopher Plummer, Michael Redgrave, Robert Shaw, Susannah York and Edward Fox, Battle of Britain is a spectacular retelling of a true story that shows courage at its inspiring best. Few defining moments can change the outcome of war. But when the outnumbered Royal Air Force defied insurmountable odds in engaging the German Luftwaffe, it may well have altered the course of history!