The English Patient (Special Edition) [1996]

Customer Reviews:

You don't need to be English, but you do need to be patient with this film.......2008-02-02

This is an outstanding film. Comparisons with David Lean films such as Dr Zhivago are fully justified. The book, in addition, is supernal and took me by surprise - being so transcendent and yet written in the wake of the soulless 1980s.

The stunning soundtrack by Gabriel Yared is every much a part of the film, as in the case of Maurice Jarre's efforts in Zhivago. Yared's marriage of Bach with folk themes represents superb balance that serves its purpose without being pretentious.

Many complain of the prolix lengthiness of the English Patient. I'm afraid I can't sit through five minutes of Coronation Street without entering a state of despair and narcosis, so I guess that patience is a subjective thing.

OVER THE DESERT, IN AN ENGLISH PLANE FLYING ON GERMAN GASOLINE..........2007-11-10

There is a scene in the movie, where Ralph Fiennes carries the wounded Kristin Scott Thomas into a desert cave. Over the threshold, draped in white he promises to always protect her. There were no priests, no family, no friends, no guests - yet, to me this is one of the most beautiful wedding scenes ever captured on film.

Love and Betrayal. God and Country. Courage and Frailty. The whole range of Human Condition is captured on a canvas of infinite sands and beige dreams.

This is a breathtaking film that got the Oscar acclaim it deserved. A Modern Classic - people of coming generations will talk of this film the same way we talk about CASABLANKA.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

YAWN FROM START TO FINISH.......2007-09-19

I haven't been this bored before. If i had an offer to stand in a bucket of jellied eels or watch this film twice, i would have to opt for the eels.

The story was so depressing it should never be shown near Beachy Head.

The film is set during the war and is difficult to follow from the beginning. DON'T BOTHER WITH THIS ONE.

So beautiful.......2007-09-08

OK I am not the sentimental type but my god I love this film. When I first saw it 10 years ago it was the first film I'd ever seen that ever really touched me. Fifteen minutes in and the biplane is flying over the desert and the music "Rupert Bear" is playing. Oh my! I never realised the desert could be so beautiful - and yet later in the film so dangerous. The story is lovely, Kristen Scott Thomas is BEAUTIFUL beyond belief and Fiennes is more believable than in Schindler's List. It's so hard to summerise the merits of this film but wouldn't anyone want a romance like the one in this film? x I love it every time I watch it.

Great but not endearing........2007-01-24

Often cited as one of the 100 best films of all time, this film will provoke varying responses. Direction, sound, music, photography, dressing, and script have been justly praised and lavishly awarded. The cast looks good and they speak beautifully. Throughout its 160 minutes, I felt I was in the presence of greatness, but the film did not endear itself to me.

Average customer rating:

Highly recommended - but unfortunately incomplete.

Cannot Recommend the BFI's presentation of the Quays enough!!

The Quay Brothers - The Short Films 1979-2003 (Two Discs)

Manufacturer: Bfi Video
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

All Drama | Drama | Categories | DVD | Video
DVD | Format (binding_browse-bin) | Refinements | DVD | Video
Box Set | Format (binding_browse-bin) | Refinements | DVD | Video
Similar Items:

Jan Svankmajer - The Complete Short Films [1964]

The Piano Tuner Of Earthquakes [2004]

Jan Svankmajer's Alice/Shorts [1988]

The Secret Adventures Of Tom Thumb

Little Otik [2000]

ASIN: B000I0QSPS
Release Date: 2006-11-20

Customer Reviews:

Highly recommended - but unfortunately incomplete........2007-03-27

About twenty years ago, I was captivated by a season of Quay Brothers films broadcast on Channel 4. My favourite of all was called "Intimate Excursions", where the Quays created extraordinary visuals to accompany excerpts from pretty much all of Leos Janacek's major works. I still have it on VHS, taped from the telly, and as a marriage of animation and classical music, it sure beats the hell out of "Fantasia"! Anyway, when this BFI release was announced I was particularly keen to see a pristine digital transfer of this film, but....it isn't included! I contacted the BFI, and their quick response was as follows:

"Unfortunately some titles have been impossible to put onto the DVD for a number of reasons. The reason for Intimate Excursions is that although the music is out of copyright, the recordings aren't. They were originally sourced from the Czech Supraphon label, which was state-owned until the Velvet Revolution (so relatively easy to clear for broadcast in the 1980s), but since then the catalogue has passed into private hands."

A great shame, but clearly the BFI are powerless. It's not a reason to not buy this excellent set, but I am only going to give it four stars because it isn't quite as comprehensive as its publicity would have you believe. Maybe one day we'll have a full retrospective of these great animators on DVD.

Cannot Recommend the BFI's presentation of the Quays enough!!.......2007-01-11

I heard it said that when the Alaska Earthquake occurred the earth actually moved ever so slightly on its axis. Sounds a little over-dramatic but my viewing of the short films of the Quay Brothers was somewhat analogous in its effect on my perception of the visual arts.

I came into this a virgin. I'd heard much about them, was aware that they had a hand in the Sledgehammer video, but had never seen any of their films. But when I received my set yesterday and popped it in with the intent of watching one or two, I was so blown away that I had to go back and view it by way of Play All.

What caught me off guard was the total world that they created, as if the camera's POV was capturing only a small sliver of a grander enterprise. But where Tim Burton's work (and he's a clever creator by all means) comes off as somewhat concocted for purposes of entertainment and servile to narrative, the Quays seem to be documenting an actual nether region--and here Bruno Schulz's thirteenth month is appropriate--that already exists. The camera lurks about, always moving, cutting away quickly and at the very moment when a transformation or metamorphosis is occurring. The horizontal axis is no more favored than the vertical. And the speed of movement varies frighteningly; motion frequently ramped up to blur and obscure. The set designs are lavish and meticulous, yet they don't seem to be overly concerned with impressing us with their labors--and here I'm reminded of Dreyer's set for The Passion of Joan of Arc, meticulous and to scale though the camera captured so little of it.

Viewing these films one runs the risk of losing a little of their individual character and element, of blurring their margins; but the reward is seeing their steady development. My favorite aspects of one film were deftly carried forward into the next. And when I thought I hit what would be the high point, The Street of Crocodiles, of which I had heard so much, I was blown away by The Comb, where the otherwise banal presence of a girl sleeping reaches an almost dramatic poignancy when introduced into a world ruled by Old World puppets. She stands (or I should say `lies') between `their' world and `ours', a metamorphosis rendered in black and white, grainy. And after more than an hour of being bombarded with images from an Old World Eastern European dreamscape it was the shot of her thumb running along the tines of a comb that made me gasp. For a moment I was watching a puppet's movement; she had become a member of that world, as in one of those nightmares of being pulled in through the screen into a TV-horrorland.

Average customer rating:

Dont f*ck with the baldies.....

one of the best

Wanderers forever!

The wanderers

Wanderers Forever

The Wanderers [1979] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Starring: Ken Wahl , John Friedrich , Karen Allen , Toni Kalem , and Alan Rosenberg
Director: Philip Kaufman
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

All Drama | Drama | Categories | DVD | Video
Region 1 | Special Features | DVD | Video
DVD | Format (binding_browse-bin) | Refinements | DVD | Video
Similar Items:

Wanderers

The Warriors [1979]

The Warriors: Ultimate Director's Cut [1979]

Quadrophenia [1979]

McVicar [1980]

ASIN: B0000696IC
Release Date: 2002-09-03

Customer Reviews:

Dont f*ck with the baldies............2007-11-16

Yeh too many quotables from this movie...' I said leave the kid alone...' haha..very good movie ..would love to watch it again

one of the best.......2005-03-23

THE WANDERERS one of the best films ever made.
this film shows the hatred between new york gangs. the film is good from start to finish: turkey on the bridge and the wanderers and the blacks vs the ducky boys.
if you hav'nt seen this film i really sugest you do because you can't live a full life without seeing it. and lets face it the moden films can't compare to this.
BY THIS FILM ITS GREAT!!

Wanderers forever!.......2004-09-12

A real taste of the sixties...well the end of the fifties...the beginning of a new age. There is so much life in this film, and Bronx characters that stay with you for a long time. Teenage gangs, Italian businessmen calling the shots...and who's gonna forget the Forham Baldies? Great clothes...superb dialogue and a superb soundtrack...who could ask for more...I've always loved this film...and it doesn't lose it over time...this came out about the same time as the Warriors...but there's much more to it...Great great great film!

The wanderers.......2004-08-24

i was expecting something such as the warriors sort of film an i was sadly greated with a gang straight out of grease
there are a few fights but nothing special
overall this film just wasnst what i expected so if you want a gang film watch the warriors or if you want violence take a look at scum
Andy

Wanderers Forever.......2003-12-24

Based on the Richard Price book of self contained vignettes of his own youth in the Bronx, the film is a series of set pieces of killer dialogue, (just too many quotable lines), ensemble acting and truly disturbing violence. Although the plot doesn't hang together perfectly and we are asked to suspend belief in a couple of the fight scenes (especially Perry's introduction and the amazing materialising Ducky Boys at the football game), you just have to forgive this film for its faults.
There is so much to enjoy from the bravado of youth that is Turkey, to the pantomime that is Terror. The soundtrack that kicks in with "Walk Like a Man" is so apt, and gets better and funnier.
It is a feel good movie in that although there are bad people out there, and this film doesn't shirk from showing them, the overwhelming message is that if you stick with your friends you won't go far wrong.
Absolutely essential post pub viewing , cos, hey, I ain't no hard guy.

UK DVD:

UK DVD List

UK DVD