Claire Bloom
Description
The scene is post-war Berlin. Susanne Mallison (Claire Bloom) arrives in the city to stay with her brother and his German wife, Bettina. Reluctantly, Bettina takes Susanne into the Eastern Sector where they meet Ivo Kern (James Mason), a former lawyer who is being blackmailed into luring a man called Kastner to East Berlin, who is helping refugees to escape to the West. Sensing Susanne's attraction to the rogue ex-lawyer, Bettina confesses that she...
Description
Forget James Bond for a moment and step into the real, dour and chilling world of spies and counterspies. Richard Burton was nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award for his role as the burned-out British agent who refuses to "come in from the cold" to take a desk job. Instead, he launches into the most dangerous assignment of his career, stalking East German agent (and Golden Globe winner) Oskar Werner. John Le Carre's best-selling novel provides...
3) Limelight
Description
Calvero, once a famous Music Hall star, now a washedup old man, saves a neighbor from suicide. He nurtures the young ballerina with paralyzed legs back to health, and helps her regain her self-esteem, so that she may return to the stage.In this film Chaplin intimately and poignantly explores the twilight years of glory: what it means to be forgotten, to despair, and how to gather the strength to overcome. Chaplin also offers Buster Keaton a highly...
4) Cymbeline
Description
This production is part of a famous series produced by BBC of all of William Shakespeare's plays. The resulting films, renowned for their loyalty to the text, utilized the best theatrical and television directors and brought highly praised performances from leading contemporary actors. Cymbeline, the King of Britain is angry that his daughter Imogen has chosen the low-born Posthumus as her husband. As the Queen tries to force Imogen to marry her own...
Description
This production is part of a famous series produced by BBC of all of William Shakespeare's plays. The resulting films, renowned for their loyalty to the text, utilized the best theatrical and television directors and brought highly praised performances from leading contemporary actors. The reign of England's King John is threatened by Philip of France who demands that John's nephew Arthur be placed on the throne. Pragmatic and decisive, King John...
6) Henry VIII
Description
This production is part of a famous series produced by BBC of all of William Shakespeare's plays. The resulting films, renowned for their loyalty to the text, utilized the best theatrical and television directors and brought highly praised performances from leading contemporary actors. Two great friends leave Verona for Milan, Valentine with great enthusiasm and Proteus unwillingly, as he will have to leave his recently-betrothed Julia. Valentine...
Description
New Orleans is the target for the final thrust of the British in the War of 1812. General Andrew Jackson's (Charlton Heston) dependence on the help of pirate king Jean Lafitte (Yul Brynner) to repel the British is complicated by the Governor's daughter. This spectacular production supervised by Cecil B. DeMille, tells in sweeping action the little-known story of how a pirate turned the tide in America's favor in the War of 1812. Nominated for Best...
Description
Based on the obscenity trial of D.H. Lawrence's book "Lady Chatterley's lover." The book was banned in England for 30 years for its graphic language and depictions of illicit sex. The case finally came before a jury of ordinary citizens in October 1960. Two jurors have their passion inflamed by Lawrence's prose. After weighing in the evidence in court each day, they explore new erotic frontiers by night. In the end, they must decide whether the novel...
Series
Criterion collection volume 452
Description
The acclaimed, best-selling novel by John le Carre, about a Cold War spy on one final dangerous mission in East Germany, is transmuted by director Martin Ritt into a film every bit as precise and ruthless as the book. Alec Leamas, whose relationship with a beautiful librarian, puts his assignment in jeopardy.
Series
Description
A Danish prince avenges the murder of his father, the king, by killing his uncle Claudius who murdered the king, usurped the throne, and married Hamlet's mother, Gertrude. Hamlet, considered the most complex of all Shakespeare's characters, examines the fundamental issues of justice, guilt, and death.
13) Charly
Description
A mentally retarded man becomes intelligent after brain surgery, and romances a caseworker before slipping back into retardation. Based on Daniel Keyes' novel Flowers for Algernon.
Author
Formats
Description
The Red Fairy Book (1890) is a collection of fairy tales by Scottish folklorist Andrew Lang. Published in time for Christmas, The Red Fairy Book was the second volume out of 25 in the Lang's Fairy Books series, compiled, written, and edited by Lang and his wife, Leonora Blanche Alleyne. Using such sources as the Brothers Grimm and Madame d'Aulnoy, they selected culturally significant stories from all over Europe, crafting carefully organized and beautifully...
15) The haunting
Description
Adapted from Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, this psychological thiller tells the story of four people who come to the house to study its supernatural phenomena.
Author
Description
A New York Times bestseller, Norman Ohler's Blitzed is a "fascinating, engrossing, often dark history of drug use in the Third Reich" (Washington Post).
The Nazi regime preached an ideology of physical, mental, and moral purity. Yet as Norman Ohler reveals in this gripping history, the Third Reich was saturated with drugs: cocaine, opiates, and, most of all, methamphetamines, which were consumed by everyone from factory workers...
The Nazi regime preached an ideology of physical, mental, and moral purity. Yet as Norman Ohler reveals in this gripping history, the Third Reich was saturated with drugs: cocaine, opiates, and, most of all, methamphetamines, which were consumed by everyone from factory workers...
18) Richard III
Series
Criterion collection volume 213
Formats
Description
In Richard III, director, producer, and star Laurence Olivier brings Shakespeare's masterpiece of Machiavellian villainy to ravishing cinematic life. Olivier is diabolically captivating as Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who, through a series of murderous machinations, steals the crown from his brother Edward. And he surrounds himself with a royal supporting cast, which includes Ralph Richardson, John Gielgud, and Claire Bloom. Filmed in VistaVision...
19) Lost and found
Author
Series
MicroPowers novels volume 1
Formats
Description
"Are you really a thief? That's the question that has haunted fourteen-year-old Ezekiel Blast all his life. But he's not a thief, he just has a talent for finding things. Not a superpower--a micropower. Because what good is finding lost bicycles and hair scrunchies, especially when you return them to their owners and everyone thinks you must have stolen them in the first place? If only there were some way to use Ezekiel's micropower for good,...
Description
Charles is from a family with little money. Sebastian's family is wealthy. The two become friends at Oxford. When Sebastian invites his friend to dinner, Charles becomes involved with Sebastian's family. After Charles becomes an officer in the British Army, he and his company are moved to an English country house that he realizes is Sebastian's family home. Here he discovers memories of his youth and young manhood: his loves, life, and a journey of...