Customer Reviews:
The best Bond films.......2007-08-20
At last! A Roger Moore boxset! They are my favourite Bond films and this will sure save a bit of time and money collecting them individually. Before this collection, I considered buying the complete Bond collection but in all honesty, I don't think other Bonds have been as good. In my opinion, Sean Connery's have dated a lot since they were made in the 60s, Timothy Dalton was dull, and Pierce Brosnan's became too scientific and OTT. Roger Moore Bond films were everything that the Bond films should be - fast cars, beautiful women, good stunts, action and effects (even by today's standards), and good humour thrown in for light relief. Who can forget the deadly yet comical henchman Jaws! I also think Rog had the best music and the best musical scores, especially from John Barry in Moonraker. I really don't understand why Roger Moore Bond is often overlooked and criticised for being too humourous. As well as all the action and drama that these films certainly deliver, Bond films need a bit of humour to lighten things up. I think Daniel Craig's tough and brutal Bond should've taken note of this. Highly recommended boxset. I hope this review has been helpful.
About time too!.......2007-05-24
For years I have complained about VHS and DVD box sets professing to be 'complete' James Bond. As they are continuing to make 007 films, these expensive boxed sets are only going to be 'complete' until the next one comes out. I have been praying for Sean Connery and Roger Moore 007 DVD boxed sets for some time, not being a fan of Dalton or Brosnan, so this latest release suits me down to the ground - my favourite Bonds in boxed sets that won't be obselete in twelve months' time. One thing though - even when you have all the boxed sets, you still won't have all the films, you'd still have to buy George Lazenby's On Her Majesty's Secret Service and Sean Connery's 'unofficial' Never Say Never Again separately. Here's hoping they release a Daniel Craig boxed set to match the collection when he eventually retires from the role.
5 Stars - No Question.......2007-05-16
I am a big James Bond fan, in particular the movies starring Roger Moore. I was slightly miffed after shelling out on the original DVDs to find these 'new, improved' versions arrive last year. That said, the remastering has been done meticulously on both the image and audio fronts (although the commentaries from Rog all seem to be very self depracating and charming, but after 10 minutes or so become tiresome).
I would also like to point out that all the criticism Rog receives for the so-called over the top humour etc. is very much misplaced. Real fans of the series will realise that the overt humour actually began in Connery's last outing as Bond, the disappointing Diamonds Are Forever. In fact, Moore's charisma managed to sustain the series for two decades.
Buy with assuredness.
Fun escapism!.......2007-02-27
After the seriousness of the Sean Connery BONDS, along came Roger Moore. Still the oldest actor to have portrayed BOND, Moore was a rather mature 46 when he appeared in his first Bond film LIVE AND LET DIE in 1973 and 58 in his last outing, A VIEW TO A KILL in 1985. Age was never a factor however. While Moores BONDS are these days considered to be the worst of all, this had more to do with the scripts and the belief that Moore was simply not right for the part, too "suave". MOONRAKER was fun but silly, FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, boring and OCTOPUSSY, weak scripted. That said his first 3 efforts and last 1, despite not being classics were huge fun. I would say, buy these individually.
JB.......2006-12-04
"The names James Bond... James, Bond." Rog laaad 5 tym. this dudes got nuf stuf goin down and this is propa boshty. Get it if uve got a brian cos itll b the besst JB things cos of Danny Creg. SO buy it if u wish to do so.
Customer Reviews:
Refreshingly intelligent entertainment.......2005-12-28
Perhaps two of the most intelligent television miniseries ever made are the BBC adaptations of John le Carre's spy novels TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY and SMILEY'S PEOPLE, the latter being the sequel to the former. The late Sir Alec Guinness, who brilliantly starred as George Smiley in both, became identified with that character for all time.
As you may recall, TTSS and SP were the first and last books, respectively, of the Karla series. (The second, THE HONORABLE SCHOOLBOY, was never adapted to the small screen. The plot was considered too complex.) In TTSS, Smiley, formerly right-hand man to the Director of the British Secret Intelligence Service (the "Circus" or MI-6), is brought out of retirement to dig out a highly placed Soviet mole embedded in the Circus. In SP, it's several years later, and Smiley is brought out of retirement a second time by the politicians to "tidy up" after a Russian emigre, a former general, is brutally murdered on Hampstead Heath. Because the old soldier was an occasional source of information for the Service, the "Minister" wants George to make sure there's no embarrassment to the government in the affair. Smiley soon discovers that the killing has a link to Karla, his old nemesis in the KGB's Moscow Center. Karla has been a thorn in the side of MI-6 for years, and was the one who controlled the mole that was Smiley's quarry in TTSS. In SP, George finally brings Karla down.
Several of the characters appearing in TTSS appear also in SMILEY'S PEOPLE, providing a nice touch of continuity: Smiley, Oliver Lacon (the Minister's lackey), Anne (Smiley's wife), Connie (MI-6's Head of Research, retired), Toby Esterhasy (one of the high Circus executives under suspicion in TTSS), Karla, and Peter Guillam (Smiley's right hand in TTSS). And, except for the Guillam character, where Michael Byrne takes over the role from Michael Jayston, all actors from TTSS return in SP.
Some will think that the miniseries version of SP and the original book are boring: no special FX, no shoot-outs, no wild chases, and no babes. If that's what you want, then le Carre's stories are not for you. It's all about plot and character development, and the slow, methodical process of putting together the intricate espionage puzzle at hand. If the viewer hasn't read the original book, then he/she is advised to take notes as the storyline unfolds.
Had SMILEY'S PEOPLE been made for the Big Screen, then Guinness should surely have won an Oscar. George is the essence of inscrutable as he peers at his world through owlish, heavy-rimmed spectacles. Despite his name, he smiles only once - perhaps twice - during the entire six hour run time. Mild irritation is his only occasional manifestation of anger. Outside of his work, as Anne puts it rhetorically in TTSS, "Life's a great puzzle to you, isn't it George?" One senses a great deal of hurt in Smiley, much of it heaped on him by the same Anne, a serial adulteress. When someone says to Smiley, "My love to Anne", he may mean it, literally. Even Karla's mole in the Circus shared Anne's bed. But in his element, George has no equal in puzzle-solving, and Karla's days are numbered.
My other favorite performance in SMILEY'S PEOPLE is that of Bernard Hepton as Toby Esterhasy. As he stage manages in episode six the sting that will result in Karla's downfall, his enthusiasm is positively infectious. It brought a grin to my face, if not Smiley's.
The DVD also has an interview with le Carre. At one point, he describes the evolution of Smiley, his greatest fictional character. Interestingly, the author said he'd wanted to develop his hero's persona in future books -perhaps to show George's darker side - but was prevented from doing so by the public's merger of Alec Guinness and Smiley via the TTSS and SP screen productions. After all, Guinness is a British icon, and no liberties could be taken. Ironically, this resulted in Smiley's early demise and subsequent absence from later novels.
I cannot recommend SMILEY'S PEOPLE, or TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY, too highly. Obtain them both, and settle down for twelve hours of magnificent Cold War drama.
Customer Reviews:
Fathom - Just The Best Raquel Welch Movie.......2004-01-09
I dont understand why this movie isn't available in a PAL DVD format, because its simply the best Raquel Welch Movie ever and also features several familiar faces including Richard Briers, long before his 'Good Life' days and even longer before 'Monarch of the Glenn'!
Raquel plays Fathom, a professional skydiver, unwittingly used by competing criminal gangs to recover a rare Chinese dragon.
Raquel is gorgeous throughout (right from the begining credits).
Customer Reviews:
Donald Sutherland does it again..........2007-12-12
For some strange reason, Donald Sutherland has presided over the end of several of cinema's previously sure things - the Alistair Maclean thriller (Bear Island), Neil Simon comedies (Max Dugan Returns), Agatha Christie adaptations (Ordeal by Innocence) and, with Eye of the Needle, the WW2 romantic thriller. After frequent demonstrations of his adeptness with a switchblade, his top nazi spy `The Needle' and his bad English accent are shipwrecked on Storm Island, where Kate Nelligan lives with her crippled husband Christopher Cazenove and their badly dubbed child. While Ian Bannen fritters away on the mainland in lukewarm pursuit before his prey can get away with D-Day secrets, the two leads start an affair before things turn nasty. You'd have thought that after the last time Nelligan played a girl called Lucy who rescued a near-drowned stranger turned out (in 1979's Dracula) she'd have learned her lesson...
Miklos Rozsa delivers a vividly romantic score that is both full of overpowering dramatic drive and in completely the wrong picture (it works better on disc) while Richard Marquand's merely functional direction, wildly overrated at the time because the news had just leaked out that he'd been signed to direct Return of the Jedi (`so he must be good' as one critic profoundly put it before finding out what a botched job he made of that assignment), fails to elevate the picture. The result is one of those films you really want to like much more than it'll let you, entertaining enough but still somewhat disappointingly average. The unimpressive non-anamorphic widescreen transfer that's particularly poor on flesh tones and has a few wobbles and a horribly botched end title that has the score laid on twice out of synchronisation (so you can hear the middle of the cue playing at the same time as the beginning, making for a confused cacophony) on the English soundtrack doesn't help.
The laserdisc release included an alternate ending (barely different from the one used) that's missing from the DVD, although the UK disc does restore the original censor trims to avoid an X certificate - but be warned, it's a mere six seconds of footage! The only extra here is the US trailer which goes to great lengths to hide the fact that the Needle is a spy and the film is set in WW2, instead pitching it as a slasher movie!
Fantastic!!! I really enjoyed this DVD........2007-08-29
I bought this not really sure what to expect as I prefer the older war films but I really enjoyed this DVD. It ticks all the boxes for me, its exciting, gripping, realistic and dirt cheap!!! I reckon most people will enjoy this and therefore I fully reccomend this release.
A first-rate espionage film with a complex love story.......2007-08-12
Eye of the Needle is part-espionage, part psychological thriller, part repressed love story. It's as gloomy as a rainy day. The film also is exciting, well acted and engrossing. Please note: elements of the plot are discussed below. Henry Faber (Donald Sutherland) is a ruthless, extremely competent German spy in England during WWII masquerading as an Englishman. When threatened, he's as quick to kill his landlady who discovers him at a clandestine radio as he is a fellow spy who might be captured. His preferred method is a quick, deep stiletto thrust to the heart.
Faber discovers that Patton's Third Army is a sham and that the invasion of Europe will take place at Normandy, not the Pas de Calais. Before he can transmit the information, he's shipwrecked on isolated Storm Island off the coast of Scotland. The only inhabitants are David (Christopher Cazenove), a former fighter pilot who lost the use of his legs on the day of his marriage four years ago, his wife, Lucy (Kate Nelligan), their four-year-old son, Joe, and Tom, an elderly man, often drunk, who looks after the lighthouse and takes care of the couple's sheep. David is deeply embittered, full of self-pity and suspicious. He's either unable or unwilling to be intimate with his wife. Lucy is loyal, but so lonely for affection she is drawn to the ship-wrecked, charming man in her midst. In some strange way, Faber also is drawn to Lucy...perhaps not by love, exactly, but toward a kind of closeness he has never permitted himself before.
One night, when David has taken a sleeping pill and gone to bed, Faber and Lucy are talking in front of the fire. Faber tells Lucy that her little boy is lucky to be so obviously loved. "I'm his mother," Lucy says with a smile, "and parents love their children." "No, no, not all," Faber says. "Some parents use their children...set goals for them...goals they weren't able to attain in their lives. Hardly love, do you think?" They make love that night. Later, in his need to contact a German submarine which will take him back to Germany with the invasion information, Faber will kill her husband, kill Tom, threaten Lucy...and when it would have been easy to kill Lucy, choose not to. "The war has come down to the two of us," he tells her. "I did what I had to do. It can't be undone. I'm sorry." The ending is, I suppose, inevitable.
The first half of Eye of the Needle is an exciting espionage story. We learn who the Needle is, how he works, how resourceful and how deadly he can be. The second half of the movie takes place on Storm Island. Slowly we see this strange relationship between two needy people evolve, one of whom, the Needle, has shown himself to be coldly ruthless. At the same time, we're drawn to Lucy as she realizes that the man she has given herself to has killed her husband and may be a threat to her son and herself. The climax of the movie, a bloody showdown in the decrepit lighthouse and then on the wet, stoney beach where Faber has discovered a small row boat he can use to get to the waiting sub, is harrowing. It's melodramatic and it packs a punch.
Donald Sutherland and Kate Nelligan are both, in my opinion, superb actors, and they were never better than in this movie. The DVD picture is excellent. There are no extras.
Externals Operative Fails.......2006-03-23
A highly-trained and well-motivated Canaris Operative works in enemy territory with text-book efficiency, until he permits weakness to interfere with his function.
Our "hero" and idiot- both, deftly portrayed by Canuck Donald Sutherland, performs his mission flawlessly until he lets sentimentality and bloody hormones get in the way of the objective.
(This film is reputedly used by a few Nations' Externals Sections, in order to clearly demonstrate what can happen when such frailties are allowed to manifest themselves.)
Superb training film. Get it!
Genuine suspense.......2006-03-19
I'm just adding my voice to recommend this film as a really great classic, albeit's age. It's got war (WW2), romance, drama, suspense and is genuinely scary/shocking at times which is an achievement to be recognised. If you like spy/war thrillers then you'll probably like this. From the novel by Ken Follett.
Customer Reviews:
Captain Drummond to the rescue.......2006-02-25
Under heavy fog Drummond (Ray Milland) comes in for a landing against everyone’s better judgment. It is important as his friend is Algy Longworth is in the hospital (I rather not say what for).
While confronting Algy (Reginald Denny) on this delicate matter he gets a call form Inspector Col. Sir Reginald Nielson (Sir Guy Standing) who warns him to go home or leave the country immediately. “But Inspector!”, “Don’t call me inspector!”
Sir Reginald explains that he is on vacation and every time Bulldog shows up there is a mystery with a beautiful woman in distress and a murder near by.
Naturally Bulldog shrugs him off, and sure enough runs into a beautiful woman (Phyllis Clavering) in distress and a near by body being bogged down. A friend of the inspector (Walter Kingsfordis) is staying and running her house. Try as he may Bulldog can not convince the inspector that his so called friend is up to no good. So now he must enlist Algy to help prove it.
Does he succeed or is it really all a mistake?
----------------------------------------
Different prints of the film are available. Naturally the “Alpha Video” is the same old scratchy transfer. There are transfers others that are very clear. Look for “Janus Films”
Amazon.co.uk Review
After the lavish, effects-heavy splash of Moonraker, the twelfth Bond film and the seventh with Roger Moore concentrates more on core car-chase-and-crumpet values, evoking an almost retro feel that harks back to the first pressings of the Bond vintage in the 1960s. Starting to look a little wrinkly around the edges by this point, Roger Moore toughens his usually smarmy act up here with a gratuitous bit of killing, casually kicking a baddie and his car over a precipice, reviving memories of the ruthless streak with which Sean Connery made his name. Good old-fashioned Cold War politics lie at the heart of the plot, concerning a weapons system hijacked in the Mediterranean Bond must rescue. He's assisted by the exquisite Carole Bouquet, the only actress in history who can claim to have been both a 'Bond girl' and the star of a Luis Buñuel movie (That Obscure Object of Desire). Sadly, this is the first film to lack Bernard Lee's spymaster M, the actor having died beforehand, although British comedienne Janet Brown is on hand for an amusing Margaret Thatcher impersonation. --Leslie Felperin
On the DVD: The first audio commentary here is another one of those edited selections of interviews with sundry cast and crew members, tied together by an over-earnest host. Producer Michael G Wilson and others provide a somewhat more illuminating second commentary track. Once again the best extra feature is the "making of" documentary, which gives an almost scene-by-scene breakdown of the movie. The animated storyboard sequences will appeal to filmmaking aficionados. Avoid, if at all possible, the Sheena Easton video of arguably the most forgettable Bond song of all time (both song and score were perpetrated by series newcomer Bill Conti, not the estimable John Barry). --Mark Walker
DVD:
- Jumanji [UMD Mini for PSP] [1996]
- Last of the Red Hot Lovers [1972] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
- Love Therapist / Lust On The Riviera / Randy Trio
- Loving Sex: More of What Men Want [2002]
- Luke's Freakshow, Vol. 5: On the Road with Luke [2001] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
- Lupin The Third - Secret Of Twilight Gemini [2002]
- Madam [1993]
- Map of the Human Heart [1993] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
- McCavity's Housewives - Vol. 2 / The Horny Handyman / Mistress Pleasure
- Ministry Of Sex 3
DVD List
DVD
All Action & Adventure
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Action & Adventure
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Categories
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DVD
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Video
James Bond Ultimate Sean Connery - Dr.No/From Russia With Love/Goldfinger/Thunderball/You Only Live Twice/Diamonds Are Forever
James Bond Ultimate Pierce Brosnan - Goldeneye/Tomorrow Never Dies/The World Is Not Enough/Die Another Day
![James Bond - On Her Majesty's Secret Service (Ultimate Edition 2 Disc Set) [1969]](http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B000FIKX0Y.01.THUMBZZZ.jpg)
James Bond - On Her Majesty's Secret Service (Ultimate Edition 2 Disc Set) [1969]
![James Bond - Licence to Kill (Ultimate Edition 2 Disc Set) [1989]](http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B000FIKUGQ.01.THUMBZZZ.jpg)
James Bond - Licence to Kill (Ultimate Edition 2 Disc Set) [1989]
![James Bond - The Living Daylights (Ultimate Edition 2 Disc Set) [1987]](http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B000FIF6W4.01.THUMBZZZ.jpg)
James Bond - The Living Daylights (Ultimate Edition 2 Disc Set) [1987]
![Bond Remastered - On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1-disc) [1969]](http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B000MR9F2U.01.THUMBZZZ.jpg)
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![Bulldog Drummond's Peril [1938] (NTSC)](http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B00008W2TT.01.THUMBZZZ.jpg)
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![The Odessa File [1974]](http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B00005Q8UO.01.THUMBZZZ.jpg)
![The Deadly Affair [1966]](http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B000HWXQDE.01.THUMBZZZ.jpg)
![When Eight Bells Toll [1971]](http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B0001P1B3O.01.THUMBZZZ.jpg)
![The Disappearance [1977]](http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B00009PBYE.01.THUMBZZZ.jpg)
![The First Great Train Robbery [1978]](http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B000059L8L.01.THUMBZZZ.jpg)
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![For Your Eyes Only [1981] (REGION 1) (NTSC)](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31lhFAqr2CL.jpg)
![Octopussy [1983]](http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B00004SH4X.01.THUMBZZZ.jpg)
![The Spy Who Loved Me [1977]](http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B00004SH4U.01.THUMBZZZ.jpg)
![Moonraker [1979]](http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B00004SH4V.01.THUMBZZZ.jpg)
![The Living Daylights [1987]](http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B000056IFF.01.THUMBZZZ.jpg)
![The Man with the Golden Gun [1974]](http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B00004SH4T.01.THUMBZZZ.jpg)