Reisz, Karel

Sweet Dreams

She was the first female solo artist to be elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame. Thirty-two years after her untimely death in a plane crash in Tennessee Patsy Cline's "Greatest Hits" album sold over six million copies. Loved by her fans today as much - if not more-than she was at the height of her fame the life the loves and most of all the voice of Patsy Cline is legendary. SWEET DREAMS tells her story. Marrying the unique singing voice of Patsy Cline with a powerhouse performance by Jessica Lange director Karel Reisz creates an extraordinary portrait of the passionate fun-loving soft-spoken loud-living life and times of one of country's - and one of popular music's greatest singing stars. Covering the years 1956through 1963 from her rise to fame and the top of the charts through TV talent shows and country bars; through her turbulent marriage to Charlie Dick and the demands of touring which would lead to the fatal plane crash this remarkable story is one that will be treasured by fans old and new. A celebration of the talent we love and the story of Patsy Cline.Running Time: 115 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 026359366628 Manufacturer No: 93666DVD

She wasn't a beauty queen, but country-music star Patsy Cline's voice was a thing of wonder: full-bodied, aching and dreamy at the same time. She came by the torchy emotions in her songs honestly, as shown in this biopic directed by Karel Reisz, rising from poor surroundings, literally forcing her talent on the Nashville establishment, all the while trying to survive an abusive marriage to a drinker. Though the script by Robert Getchell is standard Hollywood biography, the movie is more than watchable, thanks to a bone-deep performance by the always astonishing Jessica Lange and the counterpoint by Ed Harris as her loving but unreliable husband. The soundtrack features a basketful of Cline's hits, which Lange convincingly lip-synchs. --Marshall Fine

The French Lieutenant's Woman

Oscar® winners* Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons star as two separate pairs of lovers in this "jarring engaging [and] beautifully visualized" film (Leonard Maltin). Embraced by audiences and critics alike and garnering five 1981 Academy Award® nominations** including Best Actress (Streep) The French Lieutenant's Woman will forever remain one of the most literate imaginative and stunning love stories ever to grace the screen.As Mike and Anna two film actors involved in a tumultuous affair and Charles and Sarah the star-crossed Victorian lovers whom the actors portray Streep and Irons are at their compelling best. Just as his character Charles' reputation is ruined by the enigmatic Sarah Mike finds he cannot accept the intangible affections of the wiley Anna. The skillful interweaving of these two love stories one period one contemporary yields a fascinating insight into the passion and mystery that can pull two people together...and just as easily tear them apart.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: NR UPC: 027616866653 Manufacturer No: M110353

Writer Harold Pinter (Betrayal) and director Karel Reisz (Isadora) take an experimental spin with John Fowles's magnificent novel set in Victorian England, and come up with something puzzling. Jeremy Irons and Meryl Streep play the forbidden lovers in Fowles's story, but in a parallel story line they also play contemporary actors performing those characters in a movie production and having an affair of their own during off-hours. Got that? Considering that Fowles himself presents alternative endings in his novel, something equally eccentric is called for here. But little is accomplished by this intertwining of a fictional past and present, and the opportunity to do justice to a great story is lost. On the plus side, Irons and Streep are instantly striking as a natural couple on screen, and their presence makes watching this film easy enough despite the larger problems. --Tom Keogh

Beckett on Film DVD Set

The hugely ambitious Beckett on Film project gathered together 19 different directors to turn the 19 stage works written by Samuel Beckett into films. The range is vast--from the 45-second Breath to the two hours of his most famous play, Waiting for Godot--but all the works reflect Beckett's penetrating obsessions with memory, regret, and the simple, excruciating experience of being. Not every film succeeds--like all great theater, Beckett's plays demand interaction with a live audience to express their full intent--and though scholars tout Beckett's every word as genius, several works are slight (Catastrophe, Ohio Impromptu, or What Where will leave many viewers unimpressed). But all the plays feature Beckett's uniquely distilled language; the greatest of them--including Waiting for Godot (in which two tramps pass the time while they wait for someone who may never come), Endgame (in which a blind man and his lame servant bicker and joke as the world declines), and Play (in which a love triangle is bitterly recalled by two women and a man in urns)--are astonishing in both their potent humor and piercing grief.

Though Beckett's stature drew in an impressive array of directors (including Anthony Minghella, Patricia Rozema, and Neil Jordan) and actors (including Jeremy Irons, Julianne Moore, Alan Rickman, Kristin Scott-Thomas, Michael Gambon, and John Gielgud), some of the finest work comes from relative unknowns. But the gem of the collection is Krapp's Last Tape, about an old man revisiting his life through recordings he has made throughout his years. It's the perfect marriage of text, actor (the incomparable John Hurt), and director (Atom Egoyan, The Sweet Hereafter); in their hands, the play spins from deeply funny to deeply sad, all with only the slightest dim of the light in Hurt's eyes. --Bret Fetzer

Saturday Night And Sunday Morning

In his first starring role, Albert Finney gained international acclaim for his impressive (TheNew Yorker) portrayal of Arthur Seaton, a rebellious factory worker who lives only for his wild, carefree nights at the pub. A remarkable and influential drama that captures the despair of working class life, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is 'superbly enacted [and] one of the best ofBritain's 'angry young men dramas of the 60s. (Leonard Maltin). The sights and sounds of industrial Nottingham resonate with a grimy thud as Arthur Seaton works his tedious factory job. Through ale, women and practical jokes, he vents his frustrations against the establishments of work and marriage until his reckless ways lead him to a night that changes his life. Forced to reevaluate his convictions, Arthur must decide exactly what he stands for

Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment

Who'll Stop The Rain

Following the success of The Deep, in which he costarred with Jacqueline Bisset's wet T-shirt, Nick Nolte gummed up the star-maker machinery by recasting himself from sex symbol to commanding character actor with this unrelentingly bleak, fatalistic post-Vietnam thriller based on Robert Stone's book Dog Soldiers. Nolte gives a ferocious performance as Ray Hicks, a Nietzche-reading merchant marine who reluctantly agrees to carry into the United States two keys of heroin for his friend, John Converse (a superb Michael Moriarty), a disillusioned journalist. Ray and John are "way out of their league," as a corrupt narcotics agent (Anthony Zerbe) sends two goons (the late, great Ray Sharkey, and Richard Masur, cast against type as a scuzzy psychopath) to hijack the heroin. Ray is forced to go on the run with John's anguished, pill-popping wife (Tuesday Weld in one of her best performances). A buried treasure, this is the kind of intense and uncompromising film that Nolte appeared in later in his notoriously roller-coaster career. --Donald Liebenson

Two-time Oscar(r) nominee* Nick Nolte is like a champion achieving cinematic immortality [in this] knockout adventure destined to become a classic (Washington Post). Co-staring Tuesday Weld (Falling Down) and Michael Moriarty (TV's Law & Order ), this 'savage, paranoid thriller (Newsweek) is acted brilliantly and cast perfectly [and] one of the year's best (The New York Times)! Fresh from the bloody battlefields of Vietnam, Ray Hicks (Nolte) does hisfriend Converse a favor, smuggling a stash of heroin back to the States. But when Ray goes to deliver the drugs, he and Converse's wife, Marge (Weld), are ambushed and barely escape with their lives!Suddenly on the run from two ruthless thugs and a murderous cop, the unlikely pair must find a way to get along and survive a perilous double-cross in this gripping nightmare adventure (New West) that quickly becomes a harrowing journey into hell (Newsweek). *1997: Actor, Affliction; 1991: Actor, The Prince of Tides

The Gambler

The Gambler is one of the edgier and more interesting, if forgotten, films of the mid-1970s, the kind of studio film that rarely gets made anymore. Based on a screenplay by James Toback (Two Girls and a Guy) and directed by Karel Reisz, the film stars James Caan as a brilliant college literature professor with the same weakness as one of Dostoevsky's characters: He can't resist a wager. Indeed, he's in so deep that even his seemingly good-hearted bookie (Paul Sorvino) is trying to kill him. So he lams out of New York and heads for Las Vegas--where he wins back everything he's lost so he can pay off his massive debts. But is he smart enough to take his winnings and walk away? Caan captures the aggressive compulsiveness of the gambling addict, the strange split between a seemingly intelligent man and an uncontrollably stupid impulse. The film includes early film performances by James Woods and Lauren Hutton. --Marshall Fine

Everybody Wins

If there's one thing private eye Tom O'Toole (Nick Nolte, Mulholland Falls) knows, he's falling for Angela Crispini (Debra Winger, Black Widow), his seductive young client. But what he doesn't know could get him killed. Angela has hired O'Toole to prove a local teenager was wrongly convicted of murder. Following her leads, O'Toole soon suspects the town may be involved in some kind of cover-up. But what bothers him most of all is Angela herself. The more time he spends with her, the more O'Toole begins to realize she's either lying, insane or both.

Everybody Wins [Region 2]

Isadora