Action & Adventure

The Scarlet Pimpernel

It's tough trying to beat the 1934 version of the popular adventure-romance story, starring Leslie Howard as the 18th-century British hero who poses as a fop in London society but runs a secret mission to rescue the doomed in Robespierre's Paris. But this 1982 television version, starring Anthony Andrews (Under the Volcano) as the Pimpernel and Jane Seymour as his beloved but estranged wife, is quite a treat. Andrews and Seymour expertly capture the essence of a relationship suffering from misunderstandings and elusive passion, and there is plenty of crackle to the action sequences. Clive Donner (What's New, Pussycat?) brings some strong cinematic qualities to this television presentation. --Tom Keogh

The swashbuckling classic comes to rip-roaring life in this lavish production, filled with breathless romance and derring-do! In the eyes of high society, Sir Percy Blakeney (Brideshead Revisited's Anthony Andrews) is a typical fop, surrounded by adoring ladies and clueless gentry. However, he is also a master of disguise and bears an infamous secret identity: the Scarlet Pimpernel, dashing and fearless rescuer of victims of the French Revolution! Sir Percy also falls head over heels for the beautiful Marguerite (Somewhere in Time's Jane Seymour), who is also wooed by the villainous Paul Chauvelin (The Lord of the Rings' Sir Ian McKellan), Robespierre's Chief Agent for the Committee of National Security. Suave, stylish, and utterly irresistible, this dazzling adventure is sure to capture your heart!

Treasure Island

Strap on your pantaloons and prepare to travel with Jim Hawkins and Blind Pew to one of the most famous fictional islands in history. Walt Disney's 1950 adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's swashbuckling masterpiece has held up extremely well, with action and characterizations that feel freshly minted (although it's unlikely that the Mouse of today would sanction the high level of booze flowing throughout the picture). Great fun, with nary a wasted frame and, in the character of Robert Newton's much-imitated Long John, one of cinema's most boisterously crowd-pleasing villains ever. (Proving that you can't keep a good--er, bad man down, Newton would return with director Byron Haskins for the enjoyable sequel, Long John Silver.) Watching this classic is like having a flashback to some perfect Technicolor childhood. --Andrew Wright

Ahoy, mateys! Come aboard the good ship Hispaniola and set sail in search of buried treasure in one of Disney's most critically acclaimed adventure classics -- presented in its original, uncut theatrical version! In his first all-live-action feature, Walt Disney has vividly brought to life Robert Louis Stevenson's timeless tale of buccaneers and buried gold. Authentic locales, rich color photography, and musket-roaring action set the stage for the stouthearted heroics of young Jim Hawkins (Bobby Driscoll) -- and the skullduggery of that wily, one-legged pirate of all pirates, Long John Silver. Aye, for the kind of excitement that only treasure and treachery can bring, there's no better destination than TREASURE ISLAND!

The Moon-Spinners

Hayley Mills was well on her way to adulthood when she found intrigue and chaste romance on the island of Crete in this 1964 Disney attempt at Hitchcock in one of his lighter moods. That means the principals do wind up in a hearse trapped on a narrow street by celebratory but ominous masked paraders. And that seemingly good guys can and do turn out to be bad guys and vice versa. But it's Disney and Mills, so there are no deaths in this mystery, although gunplay and some scariness do earn it a PG rating. Based on the Mary Stewart novel of the same name, this 118-minute film finds Mills and her aunt visiting a Cretan village on holiday. In the face of hostility from their innkeeper's brother (Eli Wallach), the pair befriend a fellow Brit. The young man's escapades with jewel thief Wallach draw a beguiled Mills into a sometimes perilous adventure involving a harrowing ride upon the sails of a windmill, hiding out in an underground crypt, and a showdown with a cheetah-loving millionairess (the scene-stealing Pola Negri) aboard her yacht. Probably a little too sophisticated for those under 8. --Kimberly Heinrichs

Start with a fortune in stolen jewels. Add a dash of danger. A pinch of romance. Season with Hitchcock-like intrigue and comic flair. What do you have? A mystery thriller for the whole family ... with the Disney touch. Set against the sun-bleached beauty of the Isle of Crete, the story pits a young English tourist (Hayley Mills) against a wily Greek jewel thief (Eli Wallach). Mistaken identities and perilous escapes -- including a nail-biting battle with a windmill -- lead the junior-miss detective to a final confrontation aboard the yacht of an eccentric millionairess (Pola Negri) with a passion for priceless gems and pet cheetahs!

One Million Years B.C.

Raquel Welch in a two-piece fur bikini. That and the title is pretty much all anyone needs to know. If that indeed isn't enough, there are the dinosaurs of technician-artist Ray Harryhausen (along with some superimposed iguanas), and a prologue that tells you all you want to know about this "brutal world." Want more? There are volcanoes, barehanded wrestling with warthogs, and rival, subhuman, cannibalistic tribes--Lord, the list goes on and on! The portrait of humankind isn't the most flattering: we're petty, greedy, we grunt a lot, and we don't play well with others. Welch portrays a cavewoman from the tribe of the Blondes trying to make a life for herself with an outcast from the tribe of the Brunettes, which doesn't sit well with anybody. --Keith Simanton

In this vivid view of prehistoric life, a man from the mean-spirited Rock People (John Richardson) is banished from his home. He soon finds himself among the kind, gentle Shell People and falls in love with one of their loving tribeswomen (Raquel Welch). The twosome decide to face the world together, cut off from all tribal support, alone in a deadly world of hideous beast and earthshattering volcanic eruptions. The film's pioneering special effects have made it a true science-fiction classic.

The Man Who Would Be King

A grandly entertaining, old-fashioned adventure based on the Rudyard Kipling short story, The Man Who Would Be King is the kind of rousing epic about which people said, even in 1975, "Wow! They don't make 'em like that anymore!" When director John Huston (The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The African Queen) first started trying to make the film, with Gable and Bogart, the project was derailed by the latter's death. It was a few decades before Huston was able to finally realize his dream movie--and with an unimprovable cast. Sean Connery and Michael Caine are, respectively, Daniel Dravot and Peachy Carnahan, a pair of lovably roguish British soldiers who set out to make their fortunes by conning the priests of remote Kafiristan into making them kings. It's a rollicking tale, an epic satire of imperialism, and the good-natured repartee shared by Caine and Connery is pure gold. In today's screen adventures, humor is usually imposed on the material by a writer or director trying to make some kind of cleverly self-aware comment ("Hey, we know it's a movie!"), but that sort of jokiness can create so much ironic distance that it pushes the audience right out of the picture. Huston lets the humor emerge naturally from the characters, for whom we wind up caring more deeply than we ever expected. The digital video disc includes a wonderful documentary on the making of the film. --Jim Emerson

One of the all-time greats! Sean Connery and Michael Caine star in Rudyard Kipling's tale of British sergeants out to bluff and bully their way to wealth in remote Kafiristan. Directed by the legendary John Huston. Year: 1975Running Time: 129 min.System Requirements:Starring: Sean Connery Michael Caine Christopher Plummer; Director: John Huston; Special Features:Production Notes Theatrical Trailer Featurette Interactive Menus; Video Format: Widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio Enhanced for 16x9 TVs; Subtitles: French Spanish English; Audio Tracks: English: Dolby Digital Mono; # Discs: 1; Produced by John Foreman; written by John Huston Gladys Hill Rudy; running time of 129 minutes; Closed Captioned.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: PG UPC: 012569085824

Zulu Dawn

Cy Endfield co-wrote the epic prequel Zulu Dawn 15 years after his enormously popular Zulu. Set in 1879, this film depicts the catastrophic Battle of Isandhlwana, which remains the worst defeat of the British army by natives, with the British contingent outnumbered 16-to-1 by the Zulu tribesmen. The film's opinion of events is made immediately clear in its title sequence: ebullient African village life presided over by King Cetshwayo is contrasted with aristocratic artifice under the arrogant eye of General Lord Chelmsford (Peter O'Toole). Chelmsford is at the heart of all that goes wrong, initiating the catastrophic battle with an ultimatum made seemingly for the sake of giving his troops something to do. His detached manner leads to one mistake after another, and this is wryly illustrated in a moment when neither he nor his officers can be bothered to pronounce the name of the land they're in. That it's a beautiful land nonetheless is made clear by the superb cinematography, which drinks in the massive open spaces that shrink the British army to a line of red ants. Splendidly stiff-upper-lipped support comes from a heroic Burt Lancaster and a fluffy, yet gruff, Bob Hoskins. Although the story is less focused and inevitably more diffuse than the concentrated events of Rorke's Drift which followed soon after, Zulu Dawn is an unflinchingly honest depiction of British Imperial diplomacy. --Paul Tonks

A prequel to the war epic "Zulu", this dramatic story recounts the breathtaking defeat of British forces at the hands of a 25,000 strong and relentlessly determined Zulu army in 1870. The all-star cast, and extravagant production quality make Zulu Dawn a spectacular film with a guaranteed place in the list of Hollywood Greats.

Enemy at the Gates

Russian sniper, Vassili Zaitsev becomes a hero fighting the Nazis during the battle of Stalingrad, and comes face to face with Major Konig, a Nazi sniper bent on stopping him.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 29-DEC-2004
Media Type: DVD

Like Saving Private Ryan, Enemy at the Gates opens with a pivotal event of World War II--the German invasion of Stalingrad--re-created in epic scale, as ill-trained Russian soldiers face German attack or punitive execution if they flee from the enemy's advance. Director Jean-Jacques Annaud captures this madness with urgent authenticity, creating a massive context for a more intimate battle waged amid the city's ruins. Embellished from its basis in fact, the story shifts to an intense cat-and-mouse game between a Russian shepherd raised to iconic fame and a German marksman whose skill is unmatched in its lethal precision. Vassily Zaitzev (Jude Law) has been sniping Nazis one bullet at a time, while the German Major Konig (Ed Harris) has been assigned to kill Vassily and spare Hitler from further embarrassment.

There's love in war as Vassily connects with a woman soldier (Rachel Weisz), but she is also loved by Danilov (Joseph Fiennes), the Soviet officer who promotes his friend Vassily as Russia's much-needed hero. This romantic rivalry lends marginal interest to the central plot, but it's not enough to make this a classic war film. Instead it's a taut, well-made suspense thriller isolated within an epic battle, and although Annaud and cowriter Alain Godard (drawing from William Craig's book and David L. Robbins's novel The War of the Rats) fail to connect the parallel plots with any lasting impact, the production is never less than impressive. Highly conventional but handled with intelligence and superior craftsmanship, this is warfare as strategic entertainment, without compromising warfare as a manmade hell on Earth. --Jeff Shannon

Around the World in 80 Days (Two-Disc Special Edition)

This Mike Todd production was a star-studded, multi-million dollar extravaganza when first released in 1956. It remains enjoyable family fare, but time has somewhat dulled its shine. Still, it compares favorably to the overly long, TV mini-series starring Pierce Brosnan and Eric Idle.

Elegant David Niven plays the neurotically punctual Phileas Fogg, a British gent who is spurned on by a wager to prove he can travel around the world in 80 days. He is accompanied by his valet, played with persnickety humor by Cantinflas.

Nominated for several Academy Awards, this was written by John Farrow (Mia's dad) and S.J. Perelman, based on Jules Verne's 1873 classic. The fun part is the razzle-dazzle. Todd knew what he was doing with all those exotic locales and over 40 cameo appearances, including Charles Boyer, Ronald Colman, Marlene Dietrich, José Greco, Peter Lorre, Buster Keaton, Frank Sinatra, and Red Skelton. A very young Shirley MacLaine was painted and dyed to play a lively Indian Princess. --Rochelle O'Gorman

A Victorian gentleman and his valet wager that they can go around the world in only 80 days.
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: NR
Release Date: 18-MAY-2004
Media Type: DVD

Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines

An air race from London to Paris provides the premise for this marvelous comedy, which features thrilling aerial photography and some stupefying stunt flying. It's set in 1910, when the (lovingly re-created) airplanes of the period were likelier to sputter and crash than they were to go in a straight line. The international contest requires an international cast, including Stuart Whitman as a cowboy American interested in the ladylove (Sarah Miles) of an English ace (James Fox). Alberto Sordi and Gert Frobe represent the Italian and German nations; Terry-Thomas plans frightful sabotage for race day. From the jaunty opening song and the great opening-credits drawings by Gerald Searle onward, the movie has a pleasingly breezy tone that sits well with the meticulous flying sequences. This is a delightful example of a certain kind of internationally flavored film of the period, somewhat similar to The Great Race, released the same year (1965). --Robert Horton

This extraordinary comic version of the historic 1910 London-to-Paris air race features the greatest aviators from around the world. They all come together when a stuffy, but very rich, newspaper publisher decides to sponsor an airplane race across the English Channel. Convinced it will give his newspaper worldwide publicity, the publisher offers 10,000 pounds to the winner. The escapades between the American, British, French, German, Italian and Japanese teams result in the most darling and hilarious in-flight acrobatic stunts ever caught on film. But the film's greatest triumph is the amazing re-creation of the vintage airplanes which did the actual flying.

Chicken Run

There were a lot of disappointments in the 2000 summer movie season, but Chicken Run wasn't one of them. Made by Aardman Animations, which produced the Oscar-winning Wallace & Gromit shorts, this is a dazzling stop-motion animation film that is both deftly funny and surprisingly touching. The concept is simple: The Great Escape--with chickens. But directors Peter Lord and Nick Park take it much further than that (and remember: there's a whole generation out there that has no idea who Steve McQueen is). Julia Sawalha voices Ginger, a plucky English hen who has been trying to escape from Tweedy's chicken farm, where the vicious Mrs. Tweedy (Miranda Richardson) fries up any chicken who doesn't produce enough eggs. When egg profits slump, Mrs. Tweedy decides to turn her farm into a chicken-pie factory, giving new urgency to Ginger's plan. Enter Rocky the Flying Rooster (Mel Gibson), a brash American who has escaped from a circus and promises to teach the chickens to fly to safety. The film is filled with innumerable visual touches and the animation has a tactile quality that makes you want to reach out and touch these funny fowl. Above all, it's played with intelligence, wit, and heart--a rare combination in any film. While Chicken Run is being marketed to a youth audience, it truly is a family film that operates on both a child and an adult level. It would be a shame if grownups skipped it because they thought it was strictly for kids. --Marshall Fine

Chickens try to escape an egg farm but they can't fly. A circus chicken comes along and the ladies have great hopes he can help them fly the coop.
Genre: Feature Film Family
Rating: G
Release Date: 2-AUG-2007
Media Type: DVD