Reel Movies Catalogue

(Victor Heerman, USA 1930)

The second Marx Brothers film is a riotous version of their stage hit. Mrs. Rittenhouse (Margaret Dumont), a wealthy Long Island matron, throws a lavish party at her mansion, at which the noted African explorer Captain Spaulding (Groucho Marx) is the guest of honor. Mrs. Whitehead, a society rival of Mrs. Rittenhouse's, decides to sabotage the party by substituting a copy of a noted painting that will be unveiled that evening. Meanwhile, Mrs. Rittenhouse's daughter Arabella (Lillian Roth) plans to switch the painting with a copy done by her artist boyfriend John (Hal Thompson), in order to impress art impresario Roscoe W. Chandler (Louis Sorin), whom musicans Ravelli and The Professor (Chico and Harpo Marx) recognize as actually being a former fish peddler named Abie. Animal Crackers is exceedingly stagy and theatrical, even by 1930's standards, but is nevertheless very funny and highly enjoyable. Some of its classic bits include the "Hooray for Captain Spaulding" production number, featuring the melody that Groucho would later adopt as the theme song for his radio and television hit "You Bet Your Life"; the hilarious parody of Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude, with Spaulding stepping forward and vocalizing his internal thoughts in the middle of a scene; and the usual quota of bad puns. Animal Crackers was also the hardest Marx Brothers film to see for many years, having been withheld from circulation from 1958 to 1974 due to a copyright dispute. When it was re-released to theaters in 1974, a whole new generation of Marx Brothers fans were born, and happily, Groucho was still alive to bask in the triumph. Print = 4:3 fair condition (B&W, 97 minutes, G cert)

(Iain Softley, UK 1993)

Set amid the neon tawdriness of Hamburg and the working-class grime of Liverpool, Backbeat is about two friends, their band, and the woman who comes between them. The story is a cliche, but the band is the Beatles, and the friends are John Lennon and Stuart Sutcliffe ‚ the real "fifth Beatle" who left the group before they became famous and then died of a brain hemorrhage in 1962. We first meet Lennon (Ian Hart) and his longtime friend and bandmate Sutcliffe (Stephen Dorff) in a tough Liverpool nightclub, then follow them to Hamburg, where ‚ with Paul (Gary Bakewell), George (Chris O'Neill), and drummer Pete Best (Scot Williams) ‚ they play sleazy clubs and live the low life. Stu falls for Astrid Kirchherr (Sheryl Lee), a German art student and world-class bohemian, and the stage is set for a clash between love and friendship, high continental bohemianism and raucous pop culture. Those expecting an "early days of the Beatles" saga may be disappointed by Backbeat , but those willing to entertain the story of Stu Sutcliffe and his famous friends should enjoy it ‚ though it evokes a time and place better than it establishes characters. Noted producer Don Was (of Was Not Was) assembled a group of indie/grunge music stars, including Thurston Moore, Mike Mills, and Dave Pirner (of Sonic Youth, R.E.M., and Soul Asylum, respectively) as the off-camera band (doing contemporary rock and roll covers, not Beatles songs), and first-time director Iain Softley makes the film more visually distinctive than most music bios. Print = 4:3 good condition (100 minutes, M cert)

(Roger Vadim, France/Italy 1967)

This comic strip tease is a true blast from the sixties, even though it is set in the 41st Century, and a total put-on, even though at moments it seems someone forgot to tell Jane Fonda. Never one to take anything lightly, Fonda lends her sobriety to the role of the sex/space queen Barbarella and the result is something of a cross between Batman and Alice Does Wonderland. In an age that has outgrown aggression ("the product of a primitive state of irresponsibility") and sex as we know it ("a substitute for ego gratification"), Barbarella must be secretly keeping in shape for she takes to both like a duck to water when duty calls. Alice's anti-Wonderland is the planet Sogo (presumably the intersection of Sodom and Gomorrah), controlled by the Matmus, an underground energy source which thrives on evil, negativity, and spoofs of every latter-day horror film from Village of the Damned to The Birds . ("What's that screaming?" Barbie wonders aloud, "A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.") With lots of glass bubbles (the better to view our Jane, in and out of her silver lamé swimsuits and white go-go boots); a music track that is pure shopping mall torture; and support from John Philip Law as a winged being who "is love" and David Hemmings as an absent-minded revolutionary, "Barbarella psychedelia" reminds us that today's kitsch is tomorrow's classic. Print = 4:3 fair condition (Technicolor, 98 minutes, R16 cert)

(Leo McCarey, USA 1934)

Belle of the Nineties is not one of Mae West's best but it's still better than most other comedies of the period. West was heavily censored by the powers-that-were and the result is a somewhat choppy musical comedy that misses on a few counts but hits the mark everywhere else. West is a nightclub performer and Roger Pryor is a boxer. They fall into each other's arms without falling into each other's hands and West exhibits early feminist tendencies by making her own way in a man's world. The funny lines come one after another. (West says, "It's better to be looked over than overlooked," and, when asked [by John Miljan], "You were born in Saint Louis. What part?" West replies, "Why, all of me." Miljan tells her, "I must have your golden hair, fascinating eyes, alluring smile, lovely arms and your form divine," to which West answers, "Wait a minute! Is this a proposal, or are you taking an inventory?") The bluenoses cut most of West's sexual innuendoes, but enough remain for us to get the idea, and there's lots of music, too, with Duke Ellington and His Orchestra and West singing several tunes (including "My Old Flame" and a few spirituals). West wasn't used to Leo McCarey's style of directing and there was some tension between them; one can see the seams that resulted from the differences in the way these two comedic talents looked at things. It was shortly after this that Johnny Mack Brown became a star. Print = 4:3 good condition (B&W, 73 minutes, cert TBC)

(Errol Morris, USA 1991)

Director Errol Morris has taken a daunting subject ‚ one man's lifelong obsession with the creation of the universe ‚ and fashioned a uniquely thought-provoking entertainment highlighted by an unexpected dose of wit. While not as riveting as some of his earlier work, Morris's A Brief History of Time is nonetheless an outstanding documentary. The film's magnificent opening shot, a stellar landscape, is something you'd expect to see in a planetarium, not a movie theater. It's followed by the eerily disembodied voice of the film's subject, Stephen Hawking, who is arguably the world's foremost astronomer. "What came first, the chicken or the egg?" queries Hawking. A chicken's head promptly pops into view, setting the atmosphere for the next ninety minutes ‚ education through wry humor. Preferring to call himself a cosmologist, Hawking has, over the past three decades, taken the field and turned it upside down and inside out. Indeed, having rebutted Einstein's theory of general relativity well in advance of his scientific peers, Hawking has become a legend in his own time. A Brief History of Time is informative but accessible. When the numbers get too difficult for the layman to follow, Morris has a formidable solution ‚ graphics that come alive on the screen. For instance, in one monologue, Hawking begins describing what happens to time and space at the entrance to a black hole ‚ pretty deep stuff. By floating a giant Rolex watch into the picture as his prop, and showing the effects of time on the watch's face, the situation becomes utterly clear. He does this again later with a broken cup and saucer which put themselves back together again. The only real flaw in the film is that the findings of so many previous astronomers are alluded to so briefly ‚ a better sense of the prevailing theories would have helped here. Throughout, the one constant is the clicking of Hawking's computer keyboard as he searches for the next word to put into a sentence. Immobile in his wheelchair, yet with his mind racing through another dimension, this stationary protagonist is fascinating to watch and impossible not to admire. Ultimately, A Brief History of Time is as much about one person's triumph over adversity as it is about the mysteries of astronomy. Print = 4:3 fair condition (80 minutes, R13 cert)

(Paul Thomas Anderson, USA 1997)

Tongues back in mouths, please. This sprawling melodrama, set against the backdrop of the porno film industry during the pivotal period from 1977 to 1984, bares lots of flesh but isn't exactly what you'd call a turn-on. The story's center is the, um, rise and fall of aimless but amiable Eddie Adams (Mark Wahlberg), who parlays his prodigious endowment into an adult-movie career under the nom de smut Dirk Diggler. But the supporting characters just about steal the show: Porn director Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds), whose pretensions to art almost ruin his dirty movie career; adult-movie stars Amber Waves (Julianne Moore) and Rollergirl (Heather Graham), always juggling the sense of liberation and family they get from the porn industry with the personal price they pay; screen stud and amateur magician Reed Rothchild (John C. Reilly), who's always up to go where the day takes him; Buck Swope (John Cheadle), an African-American porn star in search of an image, nursing a secret dream to own his own stereo store; sad-sack assistant director Little Bill (William H. Macy), constantly cuckolded by his relentlessly promiscuous wife (real-life porn star Nina Hartley); financier The Colonel (Robert Ridgely); hangers-on Scotty J. (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who nurses a secret crush on Dirk and Maurice TT Rodriguez (Luis Guzman); businessman Floyd Gondolli (Philip Baker Hall), who sees that the future of porn is video, not film; vengeful ex-husband Thomas (John Doe), who uses Amber's involvement in porn to keep her from her child. You have to give writer-director Paul Anderson (of Hard Eight , not the Paul Anderson of Mortal Kombat and Event Horizon ) credit for both ambition and accomplishment: Sure, the movie's a little long and the relentless bombardment by hideous '70s fashions and music becomes a bit tough to take, but on the whole he manages to guide his cast of characters through an epic story of self-delusion with a skill and grace that many more experienced filmmakers would be hard put to match. ‚Äî Maitland McDonagh Print = 4:3 very good condition ‚ contains splotches (156 minutes, R18 cert)

(Peter Hewitt, UK 1997)

Before there was Mouse Hunt , before the Szalinski kids got shrunk, there were the Borrowers. Mary Norton's 1953 children's book about a family of little red-headed people who live beneath the floorboards of an old house and "borrow" the necessities of life from their unsuspecting human hosts won a slew of prizes and still has the power to enchant young readers. The question is whether this sweetly old-fashioned movie can do the same. The teeny-tiny Clocks ‚ mother Homily (Celia Imrie), father Pod (Jim Broadbent), restless teen Arietty (Flora Newbigin) and bothersome little brother Peagreen (Tom Felton) ‚ live in fear of being squished by the big people on whose unwitting largesse they depend. The full-size Lenders ‚ parents Joe and Victoria (Aden Gillett and Doon Mackichan) and son Pete (Bradley Pierce) ‚ have no idea they're there, though young Pete has his suspicions. He eventually catches naughty Arietty creeping about his toy shelf, setting the stage for the Borrowers to do the unthinkable and team up with Pete to save their mutual home from unscrupulous lawyer Ocious P. Potter (John Goodman), who wants to tear their house down and erect pricey apartments. Painstaking attention has been lavished on the film's Incredible Shrinking Man details: a meal consisting of a raisin and a couple of Cheerios, the weapons fashioned out of sewing pins, the birthday candle used as a torch. It's a shame, though, that the characters are a bit sketchy; Goodman's larger than life sleazeball lawyer is probably the most vivid of the lot. Younger children should get a kick out of the fanciful action ‚ Peagreen's adventures in a milk-bottling factory are especially imaginative ‚ but older kids will most likely rebel against the gentle tone and absence of flashy effects. ‚Äî Maitland McDonagh Print = 4:3 good condition (83 minutes, G cert)

(Kimberley Pierce, USA 1999)

A harrowing dramatization of the final days of 21-year-old Nebraskan Brandon Teena, whose short life ended in brutal rape and multiple murder. Shortly before his 21st birthday, Brandon Teena (Hilary Swank) blows into nowhere town Falls City, NE, bearing little more than a rap sheet and a way with the ladies. Brandon falls in with a rough crowd: volatile ex-con John (Peter Sarsgaard), Jim's buddy Tom (Brendan Sexton III) and Jim's troubled childhood friend Lana (Chloe Sevigny). Kicks in Grand Falls are scarce ‚Äî getting high, "bumper-skiing" (clinging by a rope to the bumper of a reeling pick-up truck) and hanging out ‚Äî but Brandon is smitten with Lana and sticks around. Lana falls hard for the tender, considerate Brandon, but there's something she doesn't realize, even after they have sex; Brandon Teena, born Teena Brandon, is really a woman. Once the truth is known, Brandon's dream world, a place where gender is open to interpretation, comes to a sudden, savage end. Since his 1993 death, Brandon Teena has become a flash point for academics and the subject of a perceptive 1997 documentary, The Brandon Teena Story , which offers keen insight into the culture in which Brandon died. Director Kimberly Peirce is more interested in emotional drama, the rush of an audacious, often reckless life lived on the edge and on the run. Swank's nuanced performance is remarkable and it's a powerful film. But Peirce's quest for some truth underlying this bewildering tale of lies, dissociation and deception leads her to fabricate a version of events that distorts what's known about the case; she even elides completely the death of a second witness to Brandon's demise. The result is a flawed but compelling cinematic corollary to Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song or Truman Capote's In Cold Blood , non-fiction fiction but with an emphasis on the latter. ‚Äî Ken Fox Print = Widescreen good condition (114 minutes, R18 cert)

(Warren Beatty, USA 1998)

Sixties idealist turned telegenic sound-bite spitter Jay Billington Bulworth (Warren Beatty) is the ghost of American politics present, an incumbent senator whose values and principles have long since been spun into ideological cotton candy. Bulworth has just enough integrity left to know he's sold out, and that shred of self-knowledge has driven him to a full-blown breakdown. He hasn't eaten or slept or left his office in three days. He's made a corrupt deal with an insurance lobbyist (Paul Sorvino) for a lucrative personal policy, and hired a hit man to assassinate him. Nature abhors a vacuum, like the one left by Bulworth's departing career savvy and sense of self-preservation. But what flows in to fill it is sheer political lunacy: Bulworth adopts the street style and attitude of a ghetto gangbanger and starts saying ‚ no, make that rapping ‚ what he really thinks, no matter how offensive. The rhyming is more Dr. Seuss than Dr. Dre, but Bulworth's scathing, vitriol-laced riffs on race relations, incestuous media/corporate monopolies, the distribution of wealth and ‚ of course ‚ Hollywood are as incendiary as they are profane. Beatty's contribution to the ranks of recent political satire is bold, merciless and frequently very funny, and his performance is just plain fearless. How many stars of his age and caliber would risk ridicule by prancing around like a brother? Beatty's politics seem clear ‚ through Bulworth, he espouses a liberal, anti-big business line ‚ but he stages a preemptive strike against accusations of propaganda by seeding the film with nagging questions about Bulworth's conversion on the road to Washington. How valid is an agenda appropriated from disenfranchised African Americans by a privileged white man? Has he seen the light or simply succumbed to middle-age jungle fever, embodied in the beautiful, whip-smart Nina (Halle Berry), whom he spots at a campaign stop? Liberation via nervous breakdown is an unpredictable thing, but there's something to the notion that there's nothing like a little disaster to sort things out. ‚Äî Maitland McDonagh Print = 4:3 good condition (108 minutes, M cert)

(Paul Schrader, USA 1982)

Director Paul Schrader's dreamlike, stylishly atmospheric remake of Val Lewton's 1942 horror classic needs to be taken on its own terms: viewers who assent to its Freudian logic and creepy sexuality will likely be entranced, but just a little critical distance renders the whole thing irretrievably ludicrous. The Cat People, latterday descendants of Africans shamans who mated with leopards, look like ordinary humans, but they have the disconcerting trait of turning into ravening beasts during moments of stress ‚ or, crucially, orgasm. Two of their kind ‚ Irena (Nastassja Kinski) and her long-lost brother Paul (Malcolm McDowell) ‚ find each other in New Orleans. Irena, terrified of her own potential, shuns sex, but Paul is given to picking up streetwalkers and ripping them to shreds. While Paul struggles to repress an incestuous longing for his sister, Irena falls in love with an unsuspecting zookeeper (John Heard). Inevitably, the triangle collapses in spectacular fashion. Ludicrous or not, Cat People is gorgeous to behold, due mostly to cinematographer John Bailey's marvelous detailed rendering of New Orleans in autumn. Giorgio Moroder's moody score, with an assist from David Bowie, is prized among soundtrack cultists. Print = Widescreen good condition ( 118 minutes, R18 cert)

(Pat O'Connor, Ireland/USA 1995)

In 1957, three close girlfriends are entering university in Dublin. Benny (Minnie Driver) is slightly overweight, jolly, and romantic. Nan (Saffron Burrows) is the beauty of the bunch, supremely self-confident and used to getting her way. Eve (Geraldine O'Rawe), an orphan, is a quiet shadow in the background. On the first day of classes, Benny meets Jack (Chris O'Donnell), a handsome rugby player, and is instantly smitten. Jack's no egotistical jock, and he is drawn to Benny's earthy charm. But the relationship is stymied by Benny's having to commute home each night to her small village of Knockglen. Nan becomes involved with Simon Westward (Colin Firth), an older landed aristocrat, who gets her pregnant and then blithely tosses her aside. She connives to get Jack drunk, seduces him and claims him as the father of her child. Benny, meanwhile, is at wit's end, contending with the lecherous advances of Sean (Alan Cummings), her father's sleazy shop assistant. She is forced to put on a brave face when she encounters Nan and Jack at a party, but watchful Eve catches Nan out and reveals her treachery. More evil doings are revealed when Benny discovers that slimy Sean has been bilking money out of the business. She and Jack are reunited to share their young love. This unashamedly old-fashioned coming-of-age story is nothing new, but remains highly watchable nevertheless. Based on a novel by the popular Irish writer Maeve Binchy, it has a good feel for character and the guilt-ridden atmosphere of Catholic sexual repression which conventionally stifles youthful passion. The direction is sensible and straightforward, if not daringly cinematic, and gives full due to welling emotions. Period and place are lovingly recreated and handsomely photographed by Ken MacMillan's lens. Driver, who delivers a piercingly subjective performance, is the linchpin of the film's quiet appeal. When told by Jack that he likes "solid girls," she quickly replies: "That's me: beef to the heels, like an Iyangar heifer." Her honesty can be almost painful: you tremble for her when she dons a too-revealing party frock (at bitchy Nan's behest) and die with her when an insensitive Jack seems to ignore her. In all, it's a wish-fulfillment triumph for every plain Jane who's ever desired a prince (a role in which the manly O'Donnell is perfectly cast). Print = 4:3 good condition (96 minutes, M cert)

(Joseph Santley, Robert Florey, USA 1929)

The greatest of zanies, the Marx Brothers, perform with dizzying speed in this farcical and nearly plotless romp through a Florida hotel, ostensibly dealing with the arrival and departure of would-be millionaires getting richer or poorer during the Florida land boom of the late 1920s. The mayhem is often side-splitting in this "pure" Marx vehicle, where the love story is strictly incidental. While they basically kept to the routines audiences had enjoyed in the original play by George S. Kaufman and Irving Berlin, the boys were given their usual freedom to ad lib; these bits were constantly changing, even during the shooting of the film. Berlin himself cut many tunes that were never sung since the brothers cavalierly changed the material. This is a crude, shapeless talkie, a technically unsophisticated film in which the sound is static and the camera immobile, with the comedians leaping into the set scenes. Yet the boys are there in all their frenetic glory. Harpo honks his horn for the first time, chasing but never catching a scantily clad cutie; he would pursue her in vain for decades to come, while his brothers chewed up the sets and spat out laughter. Cocoanuts was officially the debut of the madcap brothers, although they had appeared in an obscure silent production, Humor Risk , which is now an apparently lost film. Print = 4:3 fair condition (B&W, 90 minutes, G cert)

(Mark Joffe, Australia 1995)

Crazy people feel things more deeply than normal ones, you know we could all learn from them. Australian slacker Lewis (Ben Mendelsohn) takes a job staging amateur theatricals at a local mental institution. Against his better judgment, he allows twitchy inmate Roy (Barry Otto) to persuade him that they can put on a production of Cosi fan Tutti, which Roy casts with the obligatory eccentrics. Cherry (Jacki Weaver) is a middle-aged nymphomaniac, Ruth (Pamela Rabe) an introverted neat-freak, Julie (Toni Collette) a beautiful, moody young drug addict whose parents had her committed. Among the men: stuttering ex-lawyer Henry (Paul Chubb), belligerent arsonist Doug (Colin Hay) and Roy himself. A variety of little morality lessons play themselves out: Inspired by Mozart's story line and the insinuations of his duplicitous pal, pompous thespian Nick (Aden Young), Lewis begins to suspect his ambitious girlfriend Lucy (Rachel Griffiths) of infidelity and starts his own flirtation with Julie. Roy faces his fear of failure, Ruth opens up, Henry learns to stand up for himself, Julia confronts her dependence on the structure of institutional life and Lewis realizes that Lucy really loves him and he can't keep drifting through life. All's well that ends all, you might say. Adapted from a stage play, this slight, comic fable is too familiar by half, but it's amiable, breezy and occasionally quite charming. ‚Äî Maitland McDonagh Print = 4:3 good condition (100 minutes, M cert)

(Nicholas Hytner, USA 1996)

It's hard to believe this is the first English language feature version of Arthur Miller's play about the paranoia, prejudice and hysteria that produced the Salem witch trials. But it is, and British director Nicholas Hytner appears to have resisted all impulses to mess it up. If the result is occasionally a bit stagy, it hardly matters: The story's sickening spiral into madness is preserved, and watching the noose of lies woven by a vindictive teenager (Winona Ryder) strangle a whole community is as morbidly fascinating as ever ‚ like watching a clutch of mice swallowed up by a snake, one by one. Hytner's cast is uneven: Ryder tries hard, but never seems at home in the skin of Abigail Williams, and Daniel Day-Lewis never misses an opportunity to bare his manly chest. Joan Allen ‚ playing goody-two-shoes Elizabeth Proctor ‚ is the standout: She gives Proctor both spine and a desperate, late-blooming awareness that her own unyielding righteousness has helped bring about her family's destruction. Her performance is so true it's almost painful. It used to be you could hardly see Arthur Miller's play for the allegory: Puritan witch-hunting equaled the McCarthy-era obsession with Commies polluting our precious essences. Now you can hardly see it for its prescience: Who could have foreseen that right-wing religious mania would have 1990s America in a lather over satanic child abuse, or that the cult of victimization would sanctify the Abigail Williamses of today? Print = 4:3 good condition (123 minutes, M cert)

(John Waters, USA 1990)

Revel without a cause. Trashy cult director Waters, now in the mainstream, returns to his Baltimore home turf in this rock 'n' roll take on star-crossed lovers, caught in the cultural tug-of-war between hipsters and squares. The film is high on energy, color and camera movement and, as usual in Waters's world, everything is styled within an inch of its life, capturing all the fun and fever of the 1950s. But underneath the numerous entertaining cameos, not much is going on, and it shows. The film's terrific first half-hour can't sustain itself. Depp is nice to look at, but too diminutive to bring much force to his sexy biker. Locane is well, okay, but she's eclipsed at every turn by the marvelously vulgar Lords, who embraces the genre with the energy and anarchy of the much-missed Divine. Print = good condition (85 minutes, PG cert)

(Stephen Frears, UK 1988)

Choderlos de Laclos reportedly said of his epistolary 1782 novel, Les Liaisons Dangereuses , that he created it with the intent to shock. That novel, on which British director Stephen Frears's first American feature film is based, did much of what Laclos hoped, the first edition becoming the succes de scandale of Paris. Frears's version, a costume drama set in pre-Revolutionary France, isn't precisely shocking, but its classic story of sexual power, depravity, cruelty, and deceit is rendered with force and without compromise. The Marquise de Merteuil (Glenn Close) and the Vicomte de Valmont (John Malkovich) are monsters of the aristocracy, former lovers who spend their days planning sexual seductions and vengeance. Merteuil makes Valmont a proposition: if he deflowers Cecile (Uma Thurman), the 16-year-old future wife of another of Merteuil's former lovers, she will gratefully reward Valmont with her favors. Valmont instead devotes his attention to the greater challenge of seducing Madame de Tourvel (Michelle Pfeiffer)--a highly moral, married, and convent-bred young woman. Plying his suit with the greatest skill and subtlety, Valmont eventually breaks down Tourvel's reserve. In the meantime, to please Merteuil, he also deflowers Cecile ‚ who, after yielding to Valmont, becomes insatiably sensual. Dangerous Liaisons is less about debauchery and amorality than it is about the sexual and psychological domination of one person by another. Malkovich and Close take a while before they shift into expert gear, the former lacking the physical grace of a Don Juan, the latter vapid in a Connecticut housewife kind of way. Nor does it help that Close, despite her talent, is utterly devoid of sex appeal. But Pfeiffer is a revelation in her part, almost stealing the film. Her relative stillness, masking internal unrest, makes her character seem more authentically "period" than her co-stars, who have adopted no formal period mannerisms. But its vernacular style allows the film to connect easily with present-day morals, sexual politics, and thirst for power. While not perfect, Dangerous Liaisons is miles above Forman's bland Valmont . Print = 4:3 good condition (120 minutes, PG cert)

(Sam Wood, USA 1937)

Hugo Z. Hackenbush (Groucho Marx) is a horse doctor who takes over a large sanitarium at the behest of hypochondriac socialite Mrs. Upjohn (Margaret Dumont). The sanitarium is owned by Judy (Maureen O'Sullivan), but she's having trouble paying off the mortgage. With the help of Stuffy (Harpo Marx), Tony (Chico Marx), and a racehorse named Hi-Hat, she is able to save the hospital. Of course, the plot isn't important here; what really counts is the steady stream of wild comedy routines provided by the Marx Brothers who poke fun at everything from the medical profession to high society. Striving for a worthy follow-up to the magnificent A Night at the Opera , the comedians took their act on the road and performed these routines before live audiences throughout the country. The opulent, though somewhat dull, musical production numbers prevent this from being as mesmerizing as its predecessor, but while dated, A Day at the Races is, nonetheless, a very entertaining comedy. Producer Irving Thalberg, to whom the Marxes were devoted, died during production. Print = 4:3 fair condition (B&W, 109 minutes, G cert)

(Carl Reiner, 1981)

The detective-film spoof is a time-honored sub-genre about as old as the detective film itself; this high-concept gag film takes on all comers, integrating actual clips from the oldies into the storyline. Alan Ladd, Humphrey Bogart, Barbara Stanwyck, Veronica Lake and the others make their appearances on cue; the fun for movie buffs is in picking up those cues. Oddly, though, after this conceit-and a parody of detective-film style down to the details of camera angles (the better to integrate the clips)-wears thin, there remains only Steve Martin to hold up the whole show on his heavily padded shoulders. And that he does. Buster Keaton may always be king of the ne'er-do-well Philip Marlowes, but few contemporary actors are as cut out for the role as Martin. His Rigby Reardon ("You need a cup of my java") has all the outer trappings of a suave detective, plus a good deal of the intellectual canniness; but he's been saddled with an unconscious that just won't quit. The fear and loathing of the female sex that motivates the great detectives only trips him up (worse, they can hear his voice-over thoughts meant only for us). When you leave the theater, you may never be able to look your C-l-e-a-n-i-n-g W-o-m-a-n in the eye again. Incidentally, the title, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid , takes on a new resonance in the film's dedication to costume designer Edith Head, who ought to know. Print = Widescreen good condition (B&W, 95 minutes, PG cert)

(Robert Wise, USA 1951)

One of the most enduring and influential science fiction films ever made, and among the first produced by a major studio, The Day the Earth Stood Still is arguably the first sci-fi film that eschewed juvenile whiz-bang shenanigans (even though every kid in the country could proclaim, with appropriate urgency, "Klaatu barada nikto!") in favor of a message directed toward a post-atomic adult audience. Klaatu, an emissary from a "neighboring" planet, travels to earth (Washington, D.C., naturally) to alert its citizens to the threat nuclear weapons pose to the safety of the universe. Acted with ascetic aplomb by Michael Rennie, the Christ-like Klaatu, variously supported by Gort, his golem/robot enforcer; astro-physicist Dr. Barnhardt (Sam Jaffe as a delightfully wide-eyed ersatz Einstein); and a sympathetic human (Patricia Neal), manages to defy Cold War animosities to deliver The Word. A classic. Print = 4:3 good condition (B&W, 92 minutes, G cert)

(Richard Linklater, USA 1993)

Director Richard Linklater's follow-up to the 1991 surprise independent hit Slacker , this is an affectionate but unsentimental recreation of suburban teen culture in the rock- and pot-drenched 70s. The film follows an ensemble of more than 20 characters through their last day and night of high school in 1976. The kids separate into cliques of familiar character types--jocks and nerds, senior bullies and freshmen weaklings, potheads and eggheads, the cool and the uncool. As quarterback of the high school football team, Randy "Pink" Floyd (Jason London) must decide whether to sign the coach's pledge to remain drug-free or to continue to indulge with his friends; meanwhile, freshman Mitch (Wiley Wiggins) spends the day fleeing from paddle-wielding, abusive hazers while trying to hang with the older gang of cool kids and the girls who find him cute. All parties convene at a huge beer bust in the woods, where fights erupt, romances are consummated, and dazed visions of "what comes next" are hashed out. A much-praised portrait of 70s youth, Dazed and Confused expertly captures the details and textures of the time without condescending or lapsing into cheap-shot parody. A classic rock score (Aerosmith, Black Oak Arkansas, Foghat, and other quintessential AOR sounds) combines with smooth camerawork and editing to help create a seamless succession of typical incidents and conversations. The youths so frankly portrayed here lead lives of aimlessness, sloth, and apathy ‚ understandably, given the banality of the choices available to them. Truly dazed and confused, Linklater's characters inhabit a moral universe so murky and enervated that Floyd's willingness to make a stand ‚ any stand ‚ emerges finally as something of a triumph. Print = Widescreen good condition (97 minutes, M cert)

(Mike Newell, USA 1997)

Perhaps the freshest gangster movie since The Godfather, Part II , as well as the glummest. FBI agent Joe Pistone (Johnny Depp) infiltrates the mob via a disgruntled, middle-aged, low-level Mafioso named Lefty (Al Pacino), who sees in Pistone's undercover persona ‚ orphaned Donnie Brasco, a shrewd but honest operator with heart ‚ the son he wishes he had. Pistone learns the organization inside out, eventually burrowing in so deep that the danger of being unmasked takes a back seat to the danger of being killed by rival mobsters for his organized crime alliances. With acceptance comes the inevitable crisis of conscience, as Pistone drifts further and further away from his so-called real life: His wife and kids become strangers, and the uptight FBI higher-ups don't understand the toll that living a day-in, day-out lie takes on a man's sense of self. The most striking thing about English director Mike Newell's film is how clear it is that the whole mythology of the Mafia leaves him cold. There's no sense of exhilaration in putting one over on the law, no warmth in the famiglia, no real honor among hoods and no hopped-up intensity in violence: It's all dangerous and arbitrary and ugly, even before it all goes wrong. Depp's tight, guarded performance is almost painful to watch, and Newell seems to have reined in the flamboyant Pacino, whose portrait of the mobster as a grumpy old woman may be his best work in years. ‚Äî Maitland McDonagh Print = Widescreen good condition (127 minutes, R16 cert)

(Tim Burton, USA 1990)

Edward (Johnny Depp) is the creation of an inventor (Vincent Price) who dies before his work is completed, leaving his otherwise perfect progeny with pointed metal shards for hands. When Avon Lady Peg (Dianne Wiest) comes calling at Edward's Gothic castle one day, she takes a shine to the creature and persuades him to go back with her to the picture-perfect, pastel-colored suburb where she lives. The initially terrified Edward becomes an object of great curiosity among Peg's neighbors, and soon gains minor celebrity status with his unique talents for hedge trimming and hair styling. But Edward's newfound happiness is threatened when the suburban residents come to believe he is guilty of a crime. Drawing upon influences that range from Frankenstien to Being There , Burton creates a satire/allegory that is both funny and moving. The theme ‚ that just beyond the edge of the perfectly normal lies the truly bizarre ‚ is realized with intelligence and visual flair. In one particularly charming sequence, Edward creates a beautiful sculpture from a slab of ice, as Kim dances in the frozen flakes which rain down from his flying metallic fingers. Fine performances all around, particularly from Depp and the immensely sympathetic Wiest. Print = 4:3 fair/good condition (100 minutes, PG cert)

(Tim Burton, USA 1994)

It's ironic that one of the best films of 1994 told the story of one of the worst filmmakers of all time. Tim Burton's Ed Wood is a delightful, off-the-wall, and ultimately moving portrait of a young man trying to claw his way up into Hollywood from the bottom. Ed Wood (Johnny Depp) produces awful plays in LA with various friends and hangers-on, including his girlfriend, Dolores Fuller (Sarah Jessica Parker), and transsexual wannabe Bunny Breckinridge (Bill Murray). Ed himself is a secret cross-dresser, and when he learns that schlock producer George Weiss (Mike Starr) intends to make a film based on notorious transsexual Christine Jorgensen, he pitches himself as the best man for the job. A chance encounter with his idol, Bela Lugosi (Martin Landau), leads Ed to cast the now drug-addicted actor in his picture, and a deep friendship begins to develop between the two. Typically, Burton's storytelling is sometimes erratic, but his emphasis on humanizing marginal characters ‚ a project that seems central to his artistic agenda ‚ is as strong as ever. Wood and his entourage may be bizarre, but they're sympathetic and likable; one roots for Wood to succeed despite his evidently complete lack of talent. Indeed, Burton, a true devotee of bargain-basement pop culture, probably intends to question whether "talent" is not just a cultural shibboleth, as misleading and overdetermined as "taste," or even "art." Print = 4:3 good condition (B&W, 127 minutes, M cert)

(Fred Schepisi, Australia 1988)

Evil Angels tells the true story of Australians Michael and Lindy Chamberlain (Sam Neill and Meryl Streep), the Seventh-Day Adventist minister and his wife whose infant disappeared from their tent during a family outing in 1980. In the film the parents contend their baby was dragged off by a dingo, but authorities don't buy that story. Lindy is indicted for the murder of her daughter, and Michael is charged as an accessory to the crime, beginning a tortuous legal process in which Lindy eventually becomes the center of a storm of controversy that dominates Australian news. Although sometimes slow-moving, Evil Angels is a poignant family-in-crisis drama aided by spectacular performances from Streep and Neill. It's based on a nonfiction thriller, written in Lindy's support by a Melbourne barrister who was critical of the prosecution's handling of the case. Print = 4:3 good condition (121 minutes, R13 cert)

(Alfred Hitchcock, USA 1976)

With a kick on a cemetery headstone that has no body below ('Fake! Fake!' shouts the kicker), and a gentle, lethal plopping of brake fluid, the sound track of Alfred Hitchcock's Family Plot firmly plants us in a world in which the hallowed is a hoax and the mechanically sophisticated is dangerous to treat as a plaything. Hitchcock has never made a strategically wittier film, or a fonder" Penelope Gilliatt, The New Yorker. A teasingly complex plot juggles two separate story lines involving two couples: for-the-money spiritualist Barbara Harris and her cabbie boyfriend Bruce Dern, and jewel salesman and thief William Devane and his enigmatic lady friend, Karen Black. The couples collide in search for the long-lost heir to a family fortune, and Hitchcock makes use of narrative coincidence to further the collision on a psychological level. Barbara Harris is as bright a comic as Karen Black is a macabre one, and Hitchcock, in inspired collaboration with his cast, creates some deceptively rich characters in this, his 53rd film. Print = Widescreen fair condition (120 minutes, PG cert)

(Charles Crichton, UK 1988)

Combining the talents of Monty Python stalwart John Cleese and Ealing Studios veteran Charles Crichton ( The Lavender Hill Mob, The Titfield Thunderbolt ), this hilariously offbeat post-caper comedy benefits from two of British film comedy's most accomplished traditions. Cleese, who wrote the screenplay, stars as Archie Leach, an emotionally and sexually repressed English barrister whose life is thrown into upheaval by the appearance of Wanda ‚ not the fish of the title, but a sexy American thief played by Jamie Lee Curtis. She and her gang ‚ Cockney tough guy George (Tom Georgeson), stuttering animal rights advocate, Ken (Michael Palin), and ex-CIA assassin, Otto (Kevin Kline) ‚ pull off a well-executed jewel heist but in the thieves' subsequent rush to double-cross one another and grab all the loot, George ends up in jail and the booty hidden in a safety deposit box, the location of which is known only to him. Deciding that the best way to learn the whereabouts of the jewels is through George's barrister (Cleese), Wanda sets out to seduce the information out of him. With British-American culture clash as its dominant theme, A Fish Called Wanda bristles with wit, enlivened by delightfully over-the-top ensemble acting. Cleese's screenplay uses a farcical framework to send up both British inhibition and formality and American intuitiveness and lack of sophistication. Although filled with clever twists and double-crosses, the film's storyline is less important than the opportunities it gives the actors to exploit their goofy characterizations, especially in the case of Kline who won a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his outlandish performance. Print = 4:3 fair condition (108 minutes, PG cert)

(Rene Clair, USA 1941)

French director Rene Clair's first US film stars Dietrich as Claire Ledeaux, a golddigger in the Crescent City, circa 1841. She's come from Europe to marry the richest man in New Orleans and assumes the role of a wealthy noblewoman in order to worm her way into society. The picture begins as we see a gorgeous wedding gown floating down the Mississippi, and we flash back to learn what's happened to Claire, who was to wear that dress on her wedding day. She sets her sights on the wealthy Charles Giraud (Roland Young) but is herself pursued by tough but lovable sea captain Robert Latour (Bruce Cabot). Complications arise when Zolotov (Mischa Auer), a man she had known in Europe, shows up and reveals some of the details of her checkered past. Claire claims he's talking about her cousin, and she poses as her wanton cousin to pull off the deception. Eventually, Giraud learns the truth, and Claire winds up with Latour. Dietrich has some very funny moments, though the part may have been better suited to Mae West, but there was enough subtlety to make it worthwhile. The costumes are resplendent, the production is lush, and just to hear Dietrich sing "Sweet As the Blush of May" is worth watching the rest of the film. Good comedy from Devine, Quillan, and Jenks as rough sailors. The film earned an Oscar nomination for Best Interior Decoration. Print = 4:3 good condition (B&W, 78 minutes, cert TBC)

(Lloyd Bacon, USA 1933)

Musicals are out-and it's all the talking picture's fault. On that premise is built this superior example of the let's-put-on-a-show genre, arguably Busby Berkeley's best effort. Director Bacon should be given credit for a backstage story more complex and briskly paced than usual, combining industrial espionage, creative burnout, and occasional satire with the standard lovesick secretary, golddiggers (of both sexes), and overnight star climax. The real delight is James Cagney, who is at his most appealing, his toughness tempered by anxieties. The verbal choreography between him and the blazing, moonfaced Joan Blondell is as radiant as any of the musical spectacles. The Production Code, one of the film's satiric targets, was only months away from smoothing the edges off Hollywood films. While Berkeley's fetishistic productions flouted the Code throughout the thirties, the snap of the dialogue and frankness of the relationships shown in Footlight Parade were soon to go. Print = 4:3 good condition (B&W, 102 minutes, G cert)

(Busby Berkeley, USA 1942)

For Me and My Gal , reputedly Busby Berkeley's favorite among his own films, marked an exciting film debut for Gene Kelly, and a new pinnacle of stardom for Judy Garland. Made during the early days of WWII, it's a nostalgic foray into the pre-WWI, golden days of vaudeville, with a wonderful period flavor (and patriotic undertones). The story is simple enough ‚ Gene Kelly is a heel, Judy Garland is in love with him, and George Murphy is waiting like a patient pet in the wings ‚ but the talents of Garland and Kelly combine to make it persuasive. And as a song and dance team, these two were more than persuasive, they were positively historic. The numbers include "For Me and My Gal," "When You Wore a Tulip," "After You've Gone," and "The contagious little tune, 'Ballin' the Jack'...helped by Miss Garland's race horse legs and by a superbly realistic vaudeville audience...." (Time). Photography by William Daniels and set direction by Cedric Gibbons, plus appearances by Keenan Wynn and Ben Blue, add to the appeal of this Busby Berkeley classic. 2xPrint = 4:3 fair condition (B&W, 100 minutes, cert TBC)

(Stanley Kubrick, USA 1987)

An uncompromisingly bleak film, as cold and distant as they come, Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket is a perversely fascinating movie ‚ one that answers no questions, offers no hope and has little meaning. In a way this is perfect for what the film has to say about war, but you find yourself numbed and apathetic as the film progresses. What one is left with is a remarkable display of the resources of cinema and a bludgeoning use of extreme violence which ironically undermines Kubrick's good intentions. Highly structured, the film is presented in two parts: the first details the training of a group of Marines at the hands of the sadistic, foul-mouthed DI, Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (Ermey); and the second follows one of the recruits, "Joker" (Modine), a reporter for Stars and Stripes who finds himself in combat at the height of the Tet Offensive. There are no characterization and no heroics in Full Metal Jacket ; instead, Kubrick coolly shows the systematic dehumanization required to turn men into killing machines, then sits back and watches as they perform their assigned task. From the shaving of the recruits' heads, the assignment of generic nicknames, and the profane bellowing that replaces conversation, to the orderly, ritualized existence of camp training is designed to drain all traces of individuality and humanity from soldiers and replace them with a cold hatred that can be directed at the enemy without hesitation. With his sarcastic humor and contradictory nature, Joker is the only character who retains a modicum of personality. Kubrick, however, dangles him before the viewer and then pulls him away slowly until Joker, too, is drained of his humanity. Technically, Full Metal Jacket is as flawless as any other meticulously designed Kubrick work and boasts superb cinematography by Milsome. Filming entirely in England, Kubrick found a military barracks outside London that doubles for Parris Island in the film. He also used a vast, deserted gasworks in London's East End, a plant area that had been bombed to ruination during WWII, and further destroyed the area to great effect. Print = 4:3 good condition (116 minutes, R16 cert)

(George Cukor, USA 1944)

Lusher, ornate version of Angel Street , without the telling chill of the 1940 Diana Wynward Gasligh t, but satisfactorily directed all the same. Paula Alquist (Ingrid Bergman) is deeply sympathetic as the wealthy socialite married to Gregory Anton (Charles Boyer), who turns into an insidious monster in his attempt to drive his ravishing wife mad. But the lengthy Italian honeymoon starts the picture on too sunny a disposition, and Bergman's victim does look as healthy as a horse. Boyer nearly steals the picture, aided and abetted by the stunning debut of Angela Lansbury as a hardbitten servant ‚ only 18, she grabbed the role and chewed it to bits. The climax is a workmanlike rise of psychological terror, but the whole exercise looks self-consciously careful. 2x Print = fair condition (B&W, 114 minutes, PG cert)

(Edward Buzzell, USA 1940)

The opening of Go West finds slick-talking Groucho being outwitted by Chico and Harpo in a very funny sequence, but much of the rest of the film simply doesn't live up to its promise. The plot has something to do with a land deed, but it's really an excuse for the Marxes to clown around. At the studio's insistence, a thoroughly boring romantic sub-plot was grafted onto the story. Chico gets a piano solo, and Harpo turns an Indian loom into his namesake instrument. Groucho sings, looking completely bored with the whole process. The brothers best work was clearly behind them by 1940, though they continued making films. Studio indifference and poor writing that clearly misunderstood the Marx brand of humor is evident. An interesting sidenote: Groucho's character was named after a crude inside Hollywood joke about the young girls at an actor's disposal: San Quentin Quail. This film was originally to have been scored by Harry Ruby and Bert Kalamar, who scripted the more successful Duck Soup (1933) and Horse Feathers (1932), and it seems a shame that it wasn't. Songs include "Ridin' the Range" (Gus Kahn, Roger Edens), "As If I Didn't Know," "You Can't Argue with Love" (Kahn, Bronislau Kaper), "Land of the Sky Blue Water" (Charles Wakefield Cadman), "Beautiful Dreamer," and "Oh, Susanna" (Stephen Foster). Print = 4:3 fair condition (B&W, 79 minutes, G cert)

(Peter Jackson, New Zealand 1994)

A disturbing, boldly conceived story of two teenaged New Zealand girls whose obsessive friendship leads to murder, Heavenly Creatures is equal parts psychodrama and dark fairy tale. Its flamboyant style evokes the fantasy world in which the girls lose themselves, and its breathless, childishly hyperbolic voice-over narration perfectly captures the dangerous passions of insular youth. Pauline Parker (Melanie Lynskey) is plump, smart, plain, and painfully insecure; Juliet Hulme (Kate Winslet) is a dream walking, sleekly blonde and sophisticated beyond her years. To everyone's surprise, the two girls become friends, united by their feverish imaginations. Together, Juliet and Pauline spin a candy-colored imaginary universe of tremendous depth and complexity, pieced together from movies, novels, fairy tales, and their own lurid and strangely naive imaginings. When their parents sense that the relationship is unnaturally close, they attempt to separate the girls, with results that prove deadly. Based on an actual murder committed in 1954, Heavenly Creatures is the story of a folie a deux , a relationship born in innocuous mutual interests (movies, celebrities, popular music) that blossoms into a lethally insular us-against-them (adults, society, the world) alliance. But Heavenly Creatures breaks the pattern of films as diverse as Alfred Hitchcock's Rope , Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde , and even Tom Kalin's Swoon , by taking rebellious, hormonally raging boys out of the equation. Pauline and Juliet are quintessential adolescent girls; their longings are precise, if wildly fanciful ‚ not inchoate yearnings to be free and seek excitement. Their fantasies are rooted less in restlessness and the desire to make a mark on the world, than the need to find all-enveloping romance and a place to hide. Heavenly Creatures excited extensive press coverage when it was revealed that in real life, Juliet Hulme had changed her name to Anne Perry and made a successful career as a mystery writer. Perry refused to see the film, but insisted that it distorted her relationship with Pauline, and was particularly disturbed that the filmmakers strongly suggested a lesbian relationship between the girls. Print = 4:3 excellent condition (98 minutes, PG cert)

(Henry Hathaway, USA 1945)

This thriller has the distinction of being the first in the postwar cycle of crime dramas made with a documentary flavor ‚ location shooting, voice-over narration, and a meticulous eye for detail ‚ inspired by the March of Time newsreels of Louis de Rochemont, who also produced this film. Moreover, The House on 92nd Street is a fascinating noir treatment of explosive political issues in the story, set in New York City and derived from F.B.I. files, of Nazi spies among us delivering information on the A-Bomb project to the Germans as the U.S. enters World War II. Hathaway intriguingly intertwines larger issues of sexuality and personal identity into the search for the chief spy, who remains a mystery to both Nazi agents and the F.B.I. Print = 4:3 good condition (B&W, 89 minutes, cert TBA)

(Andrew Solt, USA 1988)

Commissioned by Yoko Ono, who gave the filmmakers access to hundreds of hours of film and audio recordings made by the artist in his lifetime, IMAGINE: JOHN LENNON is as thorough a documentation of Lennon's life as could be expected to fit into a 100-minute running time. It provides no great depth and generally steers away from Lennon's dark side. But it treats him with the respect he deserves without being mawkish or too fan-oriented. The film's structure crosscuts a chronological recounting of Lennon's life with footage taken at his Tittenhurst Estate in 1971, as he was recording the album "Imagine." It's a sensible choice, given that this was Lennon's most popular solo work and that little of the film had ever been seen. In this footage, he is seen rehearsing and recording songs with producer Phil Spector and George Harrison. He also meets with a fan who has been sleeping in his garden, convinced that Lennon's songs comprise a personal message to him. (While viewers will make the comparison between this overly avid fan and Mark David Chapman, Lennon's assassin, the film never does, perhaps out of a wish to avoid encouraging other would-be celebrity killers, it never even mentions Chapman's name, let alone discussing his motivations and psychology.) The other sections of the film depict the standard history of Lennon's life, from parental abandonment to teen days honing his chops with the Beatles in seedy German clubs; overwhelming worldwide fame and the crush of celebrity, leading him and Yoko to a series of tongue-in-cheek stunts designed to use that celebrity to promote the simple ideas of love and peace; his retirement from public life after the birth of his second son and death shortly after recording his first album in five years. What most sets IMAGINE apart from other such documentaries is that it is narrated by Lennon himself, using commentary taken from 100 hours of audio tapes. The film also features interviews with those who knew Lennon, including his Aunt Mimi (Mary Elizabeth Smith) who raised him, his wives and sons. Conspicuously absent are his former Beatle bandmates; whether they were invited to appear or refused is not known. While the filmmakers may have wanted to separate Lennon the man from Lennon the Beatle, that simply isn't possible, and some important elements are omitted -- the influence of Bob Dylan, the giddy but ruinous Apple enterprise. On the other hand, the Lennon fan will find much fresh footage to cherish, including an extended confrontation at the Montreal Bed-In between Lennon and right-wing cartoonist Al Capp, and the startling sequence of Lennon and Ono undressing and making love, shot near the end of his life. By no means comprehensive, IMAGINE is nevertheless an impressive and informative introduction to one of the most influential figures of the 20th century. Print = 4:3 excellent condition (103 minutes, PG cert)

(Michael Mann, USA 1998)

An exciting dramatization of the strange events that marked the turning of the legal tide against Big Tobacco, and a particularly dark moment in the annals of CBS News. In 1992, Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe) was making $300,000 a year as a head researcher at Brown & Williamson, the third-largest tobacco company in the country. A year later, he was living out of a hotel under an assumed name and generally fearing for his life. What happened? Fired not long after he began raising uncomfortable questions about how much B&W execs did in fact know about nicotine addiction and carcinogenic additives, Wigand went to 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino) who urged the scientist to be interviewed by Mike Wallace (Christopher Plummer). Wigand then further violated his confidentiality agreement with B&W by giving a deposition as part of Mississippi State Attorney General Michael Moore's attempt to sue major tobacco companies for billions of dollars in Medicaid payments. The fall-out ‚Äî restraining orders, a nasty personal smear campaign, even death threats ‚Äî nearly destroyed Wigand's life. But the cruel irony of it all was that CBS, nervous about any potential lawsuits that might interfere with the network's impending sale to Westinghouse, pressured 60 Minutes into pulling the segment. As a piece of corporate muckraking, director Michael Mann's film is about as factually accurate as it needs to be; as entertainment, it's gripping stuff. Mann's expressionistic style gets an additional jolt of breaking-news excitement from Dante Spinotti's hand-held cinematography, and what could have been dull, expository scenes are dynamically staged (whatever did directors do before cell phones?) and suffused with a sense of creeping paranoia. Crowe's white-knuckled performance raises interesting questions about Wigand himself before he's dropped in favor of Bergman's much less problematic heroics, and Pacino is brimming with righteous brio. But Bergman's Capra-esque heroism is qualified by a version of events that's surprisingly soft on CBS News: Charges that 60 Minutes might have exploited Wigand are stifled in a blast of rhetoric the moment they're raised, Wallace is generously given an opportunity to explain himself and the whole fiasco is conveniently blamed on greedy corporate counsel. ‚Äî Ken Fox Print = CinemaScope good condition (155 minutes, M cert)

(H. Bruce Humberstone, USA 1942)

Frankie Christopher (Victor Mature) is a promoter accused of the murder of an actress he represents. He hides out with Jill Lynn (Betty Grable), the actress' sister, but is finally tracked down by police detective Cornell (Laird Cregar). The detective tells Christopher that he doesn't think he's guilty although there is enough evidence to put him in "the chair." Christopher escapes from jail so he can clear his name and discovers that Cornell has covered his walls with pictures of the dead girl. Williams (Elisha Cook Jr) confesses to her murder and explains how he went to Cornell who told him to keep his mouth shut because he wanted Christopher to be executed. Seems Cornell had his eye on the actress and was jealous of her agent. Christopher turns Cornell and Williams in and returns to Jill. Remade as Vicki . Print = 4:3 good condition some sprocket strain (B&W, 82 minutes, PG cert)

(Steven Soderbergh, USA 1993)

Aaron Kurlander (Jesse Bradford), a bright, introspective boy of about 12, excels at marbles and school but habitually lies to conceal his family's neediness. His father (Jeroen Krabbe), a struggling salesman, has moved his wife and kids to a cheap hotel while waiting to land a steady job with the WPA (it is 1933). For Aaron, bad goes quickly to worse: his younger brother Sullivan (Cameron Boyd) is sent off to a home for poor boys; his tubercular mother (Lisa Eichhorn) is admitted to a sanitarium. The boy tries a variety of schemes, including breeding canaries and caddying with his teenaged buddy Lester (Adrien Brody), in a vain attempt to win Sullivan back. Business takes his father on the road, and Aaron is left alone with little food and no money. He finds some solace in a motley bunch of hotel residents, dancing with a sweet-tempered epileptic girl (Amber Benson), conniving with Lester to steal a suit of clothing, and smuggling a bottle of whiskey to Mr. Mungo (Spalding Gray), an eccentric bachelor who gets his kicks discussing Greek mythology with a jaded prostitute (Elizabeth McGovern). At the same time, the boy weathers the threats of a redneck bellboy who takes pleasure in padlocking the doors of evicted tenants. When Aaron, too, receives an eviction notice, he has nowhere to turn: his father remains unreachable, Lester is arrested for theft, and Mr. Mungo, who has offered to help, runs out of credit and slashes his wrists. Starving and desperate, the boy barricades himself in his room and forges a letter summoning his brother back home. Mr. Kurlander returns in the nick of time. Having secured the WPA job and retrieved his recovering wife, he is ready to reassemble the family in a fancy new apartment. Before embracing a more promising future, Aaron allows himself a final gesture toward the past: he steals the keys to the hotel's padlocks. Print = Widescreen excellent condition (102 minutes, PG cert)

(John Brahm, USA 1944)

Laird Cregar is absolutely chilling in this Jack the Ripper tale, perhaps the best film made about Bloody Jack. The Lodger 's re-creation of Victorian London is soaked with fog, with cobblestones sweating and gaslights flickering as blood-chilling screams pierce the night air and a dark figure goes running. Kitty (Merle Oberon) is a beautiful singer whose parents (Sara Allgood and Cedric Hardwicke), rent a room to a mysterious lodger (Cregar). The lodger tells them he won't be joining them for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, because he works at night. During the night, the lodger slips out into the fog carrying a little black bag; in the early hours, he can be heard pacing back and forth in his rooms ‚ which are always kept locked, and where he performs what he terms "experiments." The lodger eyes Kitty and fences with her friend Garrick (George Sanders), a Scotland Yard inspector developing new criminology techniques, but, in the end, he cannot resist killing the lovely Kitty, as he has killed so many others. Before he can murder her, however, the police and Garrick interrupt the attack and chase the lodger wildly through a theater. Trapped like a bear, salivating and maniacal, the lodger hurls himself through a huge window and into the Thames to drown rather than surrender. This ending is not in keeping with that of the film's source material, the superlative novel written by Marie Belloc Lowndes. In addition, The Lodger , unlike the novel, leaves no doubt that Cregar's character is Jack the Ripper. The huge actor is superb in this grand film noir ; he and Sanders would almost repeat their parts in the similar Hangover Square , also directed by John Brahm. (Only 28 at the time, Cregar longed to be a matinee idol and, shortly after the release of this film, went on a crash water diet and literally starved himself to death.) The Lodger remakes the Alfred Hitchcock silent film starring Ivor Novello, and is probably better. Brahm's directs with a taut rein, the script is brilliant, the photography by Lucien Ballard (Oberon's husband-to-be) is a marvel of fluid action, and the whole is mightily enhanced by Hugo Friedhofer's strange and unnerving score. Print = 4:3 very good condition (B&W, 84 minutes, cert TBC)

(Alfred Hitchcock, USA 1956)

The original version of this film so appealed to Hitchcock that he felt it could take a remake and survive. He also believed that he could improve upon it ‚ an opinion open to debate. Though the director altered some locales (Switzerland became Morocco), he kept the original story fairly much intact, enhanced the production values, and added 45 minutes to its running time. Dr. Ben and Jo McKenna (James Stewart and Doris Day) are sweetly innocent and unsuspecting tourists whose vacation in French Morocco turns into a nightmare. Traveling with their son Hank (Christopher Olsen) they are enjoying their holiday when they meet Mr. and Mrs. Drayton (Bernard Miles and Brenda de Banzie), a friendly British couple, and Louis Bernard (Daniel Gelin), a suspicious but friendly Frenchman. Later, while Ben and Jo are shopping in the bazaar, an Arab runs frantically up to them, having been stabbed in the back. Ben grabs the man as he falls and finds, to his horror, that it is Louis Bernard in disguise. Before he dies, Louis Bernard whispers something to Ben, thereby tossing him into a tangle of international intrigue that only he can unravel. Though there is obviously more polish and a lavish budget in this remake, the 1956 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much has no more or less impact than the first version. Again, Hitchcock's scenes are beautifully framed and tautly directed ‚ especially the double climax of the assassination attempt at the Albert Hall and the Embassy search for the kidnapped Hank. Day delivers a song, "Que Sera, Sera," which became a smash hit. Hitchcock makes his customary cameo, as does his composer Bernard Herrmann. Print = Widescreen good condition mostly (120 minutes, PG cert)

(George Fitzmaurice, USA 1932)

The Dutch-born Javanese dancer and courtesan Margaret Zelle MacLeod - better known as Mata Hari - was executed by the French in 1917 as a Russian spy. This flamboyant seductress had dazzled and outraged Parisian high society with her callous independence, in which sex and espionage were indecently wed. In embellishing her story, MGM offered Greta Garbo her most glamorous role: dressed by the designer Adrian in tight metallic pants and an array of jeweled skullcaps, but equally impressive in black cape and boots, Garbo captivated the imagination of an era. A fascinating meeting of fashion and film design, incandescently lit by cinematographer William Daniels and skillfully directed by George Fitzmaurice. Print = 4:3 good condition some splices (B&W, 88 minutes, cert TBC)

(P.J. Hogan, Australia 1994)

P.J. Hogan's Muriel's Wedding , one of the surprise hits of early 1995, harks back to the recent US success of other Australian films with its satirical, delightfully campy style. Toni Collette stars as Muriel Heslop, a young ABBA fan who sets out to make a life for herself by leaving her hometown, family and friends. Like the Australian hits Strictly Ballroom (1993) and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), Muriel's Wedding projects a cheeky, benevolent satirical spirit, celebrating the dreams of losers and outcasts. The film relies heavily on Toni Collette, who supplies the necessary screen charisma. Her Muriel is emotionally flamboyant, by turns mopish and highly excitable. Ultimately, the comedy here is grounded in self-hatred, hostility, and despair. Nearly everyone who wanders through this brash and deliberately tasteless film is stupid, ungainly, or grotesquely tragic. But this only heightens the pleasure during moments of delirious merriment, as when Muriel lip-synchs an ABBA song at a karaoke contest, resplendent and unashamed in a tight-fitting white satin jumpsuit. Print = Widescreen fair condition (105 minutes, M cert)

(Steven Soderbergh, USA 1998)

Faintly melancholy and alluringly fatalistic, this mercurial romance passing as a crime thriller is slyly entertaining and darkly sexy. Jack Foley (George Clooney) is a lifelong crook who specializes in talking bank clerks out of large sums of money. Karen Sisco (Jennifer Lopez) is a cocksure, Florida-based federal marshal who adores her dad (Dennis Farina), guns and unsuitable men; her current squeeze is grandstanding FBI agent Ray Nicolette (Michael Keaton, doing an uncredited reprise of his Jackie Brown role), who's both married and a dope. Jack and Karen meet when she accidentally interrupts his jailbreak, and she winds up sharing a couple of hours with Jack in the trunk of his partner Buddy's (Ving Rhames) car. During the cramped, sexually fraught trip in the trunk, Jack and Karen reluctantly fall for one another: Perhaps it really is all about propinquity, as poor, neglected Zelda Gilroy used to tell Dobie Gillis. Even after she escapes, Karen fantasizes dreamily about Jack; he's doing the same, while he and Buddy plan to rob a smug Detroit financial whiz (Albert Brooks) who keeps millions in uncut diamonds in his house and wasn't smart enough not to talk about it when he was doing time for insider trading. Elmore Leonard's huge collection of sharply drawn unsavory characters is perfectly cast, from the leads to a bevy of supporting (but emphatically not lesser) lights, including Steve Zahn as a chatty jail house hanger-on; Don Cheadle as psycho boxing buff Snoopy Miller and Nancy Allen as a beleaguered victim of his gang; Luis Guzman as a prison hard-case; Catherine Keener as Foley's flaky ex-wife; and an uncredited Samuel L. Jackson as a prison-bound con whose interests dovetail serendipitously with Foley's. Steven Soderbergh's direction conjures an understated '70s vibe, striking an apparently effortless balance between grit and glamour. ‚Äî Maitland McDonagh Print = 4:3 excellent condition (125 minutes, M cert)

(Clint Eastwood, USA 1993)

While this lacks the class and assured blend of genre traditions and subversion that marks Eastwood's best work, it is very entertaining. In some respects, the film looks formulaic: an escaped con (Kevin Costner) flees with a child hostage (TJ Lowther), pursued by Texas ranger Eastwood, criminologist Laura Dern, a trigger-happy FBI sniper and assorted redneck assistants. To an extent, all goes predictably, Costner gets to like to kid, his essential goodness underlined by contrast with the psycho sadist who is briefly his fugitive partner, while Clint's conservative but well-meaning law enforcer discovers a measure of empathy with both the pragmatic Dern and his prey. Among the familiar stuff, however, there are very fine moments. It's just a pity that Costner never really comes alive. That said, the director manages mostly to avoid the enormous maudlin pitfalls of his material, at least until the over-extended final scene. As usual with Eastwood, little is overstated ‚ and the accent is on humour. ‚Äî  Geoff Andrew Print = 4:3 good condition (130 minutes, M cert)

(Brian De Palma, USA 1974)

By Hollywood standards, Phantom of the Paradise was considered a commercial disaster, never gaining the cult stature of another Rocky Horror Picture Show . Its neglect is unfortunate since Brian de Palma's rock musical is one of the most interesting examples of this 70s glitter genre. Drawing from Phantom of the Opera, Faust , and The Picture of Dorian Gray , this comic horror film relentlessly and cynically parodies that epicenter of youth culture ‚ the music industry. A young composer named Winslow Leach (William Finley) is first swindled and then framed by a ruthless rock music impresario, Swan (Paul Williams). When the enraged musician tries to avenge the mogul's cruelty by sabotaging his record plant, he becomes hideously disfigured by a record press. Presumed dead, Leach assumes adisguise and sets to haunting and unleashing havoc in the Paradise, the villainous Swan's dream rock palace. Print = 4:3 fair condition (91 minutes, M cert)

(Alfred Hitchcock, USA 1960)

Happiness, for Hitchcock, is a traumatized audience. In an interview he tells Robin Wood, "You have to remember that Psycho is a film made with quite a sense of amusement on my part. To me it's a fun picture." If so, it remains one of the most disturbing fun pictures ever made. The famous 45-second shower sequence, which took seven days to shoot and seventy camera set-ups, retains its place in film history as the most traumatic sudden eruption of violence since the eye-slashing sequence in Un Chien Andalou . Hitchcock's prying camera movements and point-of-view shots in Psycho continually remind the viewer of the voyeuristic pleasure at the core of cinematic spectatorship, only to then shock us with the horror of what we wanted so much to see. Psycho encourages meditation not just on Hitchcock's perverse pleasure in terror, but also on our own. Print = 4:3 good condition (B&W, 109 minutes, R16 cert)

(William A. Wellman, USA 1931)

In the film that made Cagney a star, William Wellman's genre classic chronicles "Public Enemy" Tom Powers's rise from slum kid to adolescent hood and finally to big-time bootlegger. The prologue deplored society's glorification of the gangster, but Powers's cocky arrogance and callous violence fascinated audiences. His ruthless pursuit of eminence, unrestrained by law and order, was after all another version (albeit corrupt) of the American success story. Socially irredeemable, Powers earned his title, just as viciously shooting a man as a horse, brutally smashing a grapefruit in a woman's face, strong-arming beer hall owners, and even disappointing his mother. Public Enemy was unusual among gangster films in its detailing of immigrant family life and urban environment, and its depiction of a life of crime as a reaction to Depression society with few opportunities for (lawful) success. Print = 4:3 fair condition (B&W, 84 minutes, G cert)

(Edmund Goulding, USA 1946)

If Somerset Maugham's novel was very much a book for men, the film version was very much a Kitsch picture for women. Maugham's idealistic hero, Larry Darrell‚Ķ is glamorized out of recognition in the starry-eyed person of Tyrone Power‚Ķ Despite [this and] improbable decors, the film succeeds. Edmund Goulding's work is immaculate. Each performance reflects the suave intelligence of a director whose sophistication matches Maugham's own‚Ķ Gene Tierney was again admirable as Isabel Maturin, rich and heartless prototype of the American woman of the Twenties‚Ķ Elliott Templeton ‚ the brittle Twenties snob whose greatest boast is that he has lured two ex-kings to lunch ‚ is brought faultlessly to life by Clifton Webb, Herbert Marshall plays with beautiful discretion as Maugham, and Anne Baxter, though not quite sympathetic enough for the part, captures the agony and confusion of the pathetic Sophie. In a film full of carefully balanced and tailored scenes, one stands out: the death of Elliot Templeton, directed to perfection from the opening shot of a nurse reading a phrase of Vigny to the demise of the arch-snob, his mouth falling open after declining an invitation to the biggest party of the season. Print = 4:3 good condition (B&W, 146 minutes, PG cert)

(Robert Florey, USA 1944)

Roger Touhy's (Preston Foster) story begins in the Prohibition era with a highly profitable bootlegging enterprise that rivals that of the city's toughest mobster (an unnamed Al Capone). To put a lid on the competition, Foster is framed for kidnaping and sent to Stateville with a 199-year sentence. With cohort Victor McLaglen (cast as Basil "The Owl" Banghart, the only other named personality in the film), Foster engineers a prison break only to be captured by the FBI soon afterward. The film's grand finale has Stateville's warden sternly warning the audience that crime doesn't pay. Grossly straying from the facts, Roger Touhy, Gangster! makes the mistake of not paying more attention to Touhy's real-life and vastly more interesting career. Touhy, who started as a wheeler-dealer in the Chicago suburb of Des Plaines, made his fortune by supplying tavern owners (and city officials) with top quality beer. He quickly drew the attention of Capone, a virtual stranger to the suburbs, who had no idea of Touhy's power ‚ or lack thereof. As it turns out, Touhy wasn't nearly as "terrible" as his moniker threatened ‚ or as Roger Touhy, Gangster! claims. Instead of being the hardened criminal Foster portrayed, Touhy was more of a profitable bootlegger with a keen business sense. Framed by Capone (who wanted his territory) on a phony kidnaping charge, Touhy was put behind bars. Upon his escape, amidst a flurry of news headlines, Fox decided to film his story, originally casting Lloyd Nolan in the lead and Foster as the chief detective. Before shooting began, however, Nolan dropped out and Taylor was chosen to play Touhy. A last-minute decision switched Taylor and Foster. Meanwhile, Touhy and his lawyers tried to prevent the film from being released because it wrongly portrayed him as "a vicious law violator and gangster." The first version of the film, shown to an audience at Stateville (where some scenes were shot), drew loud and angry protests from the FBI which insisted that the investigative work was wrongly credited to local police. After reshooting and additional cutting, a final version was released. What Roger Touhy, Gangster! doesn't tell is what occurred after the film's release. Touhy was recaptured and given another stiff sentence for "aiding and abetting" in the prison escape. He was finally released in 1959. Three weeks later he was gunned down by a vengeful unknown who literally blew away Touhy's legs with several shotgun blasts. Print = 4:3 excellent condition (B&W, 65 minutes, cert TBC)

(Alfred Hitchcock, USA 1944)

Rope was the first film Hitchcock produced himself and over which he had complete creative control. The result is a disturbing and distasteful story (two young men strangle a friend and stuff his body into a chest, on which they serve dinner to his family and fiancée) as well as Hitchcock's famous experiment in film form. Rope appears to be shot in one continuous take with no cuts-like an unbroken rope. Poulenc's "Mouvement Perpetuel" is the fitting musical accompaniment. Except for avant-garde filmmakers like Andy Warhol, no one has attempted to make a film like Rope again, for good reason, according to many of the film's critics. William Rothman's assessment is more positive: "[T]he deliberateness of every move the camera makes creates a state of perpetual tension....At the center of Rope there is a secret-there will be no cuts, only camera movements-that is no secret at all. This...defines the film's conception [and] makes its execution a virtuoso performance." Print = 4:3 good condition (80 minutes, PG cert)

(Wes Anderson, USA 1998)

Another quirky, hard-to-put-your-finger-on delight from the boys who brought us Bottle Rocket . Geeky 15-year-old Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman) has cornered the market on extracurricular activities at snooty Rushmore Academy, though he's flunking out academically. And he's got a crush on first-grade teacher Miss Cross (Olivia Williams), whom he pursues with predictable relentlessness. The consummate multi-tasker, Max embraces, ingests, condescends, comprehends and fails to comprehend with incredible ardor. Yet despite the scattered, frantic quality to Max's pursuit of everything ‚ courting Miss Cross; writing plays based on seminal '70s films like Serpico, The Deerhunter and Apocalypse Now ; engaging in endless activities, from kite-flying to chess club ‚ he's irresistible. He hasn't lived through his first heartbreak, hasn't suffered adult disappointment and doesn't know the meaning of passivity: He's bursting with a deep enthusiasm for life. Max schemes to impress Miss Cross by building her an elaborate aquarium, but he needs steel tycoon/school patron Mr. Blume (Bill Murray) to pay for it. Blume, tired of his family, his job and life itself, needs someone like Max around and lets the youngster go to town. And Max happily plans activities that bring together his two favorite people, never dreaming that Cross and Blume will begin a relationship. Without being slavish, Owen Wilson and director Wes Anderson's subtle and witty script echoes the themes (and sometimes the look) of Hal Ashby's best films, including Harold and Maude and Being There . And Anderson's mise en scene ‚ heavy on the '70s influences and bolstered by the combination of Mark Mothersbaugh's excellent score and the British Invasion soundtrack ‚ captures the wistful nature of Max's teenage tumult and outsider's ebullience. A rare comedy that keeps you thinking long after its plot machinations have played themselves out, this film is the product of artists working at the peak of their powers: Let's hope they keep it up. ‚Äî Sandra Contreras Print = CinemaScope good condition (95 minutes, M cert)

(Brian De Palma, USA 1983)

A beautiful, at times poetic exercise in excess from Brian De Palma. Based on the classic 1932 gangster film of the same name, the screenplay (written by Oliver Stone) follows the plot of its source almost to the letter. Two-bit Cuban hood Tony Montana (Pacino) lies his way into the US, where he and his friend Manny (Stephen Bauer) soon enter the world of crime. They murder a political figure for drug dealer Frank Lopez (Robert Loggia) to get their green cards and are soon on his payroll. Tony's elimination of rival Colombian drug dealers gives him a more prominent role in the organization. His duties include serving as chauffeur to Lopez's beautiful but cocaine-addicted wife, Elvira (Michelle Pfeiffer). Tony's other female obsession is his sister Gina (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio). Tony's feelings for his sister are a bit on the incestuous side, and he dominates the girl, refusing to let her date. After a bad business deal and an argument over Elvira, Lopez attempts to have Tony killed. After killing the assassins, Tony murders Lopez, marries Elvira, and becomes the most powerful drug lord in Florida. The problems really begin to multiply then: Manny secretly dates Gina (though warned not to), Elvira has become increasingly zombie-like, and Tony's money is not earning the interest it should be. Moreover, he also has become a selfish, paranoid drug addict. Jammed with action sequences and unbearably tense moments, the film depicts the seediest aspects of the American underworld. Stone's screenplay twists gangster movie conventions, and De Palma demonstrates an unusual understanding of the genre. The latter's skill with the camera is certainly his strongest talent. Although not as flashy as some of his work (such as Dressed To Kill or Carrie ), it is a showboat of cinematic style (the most memorable composition is an overhead shot of Pacino soaking in an obscenely large bath tub). In addition to the high-octane action sequences, Scarface offers some excellent acting (especially from Loggia). An undeniably effective, visceral experience. Print = CinemaScope fair condition (170 minutes, R18 cert)

(Agnieszka Holland, UK 1993)

Polish director Agnieszka Holland, who scored an art-house hit in the US with Europa, Europa , deserved to find her way into the hearts of a larger audience with this reworking of Frances Hodgson Burnett's classic childrens' tale. Though it can get laborious, and produces the odd unintended chuckle, The Secret Garden is charming and sometimes chillingly authentic. At the center of the film is young Mary Lennox, winningly played by English actress Kate Maberly in her feature debut. Orphaned by an earthquake in India, Mary is sent to a forbidding Gothic house in the north of England to be looked after by her widower uncle, Lord Craven (John Lynch). Since he wants nothing to do with her, she is effectively left in the charge of the dour, mean-spirited housekeeper, Mrs. Medlock (Maggie Smith). Things look rather grim until Mary discovers a garden that her aunt had tended and that Craven declared off-limits after her death, as well as a companion on each side of the great English class divide: Colin (Heydon Prowse), Craven's invalid son; and Dickon (Andrew Knott), a young, Yorkshire Dr. Dolittle who walks and talks with the anmals. While there's nothing subtle about the story's metaphors of growth and rebirth, Holland avoids cliches as deftly as she does the hero/villain syndrome. The dark, oppressive characters have reasons for being that way, and Mary and Colin can be just as obnoxious as they are sympathetic. Print = 4:3 good condition (101 minutes, G cert)

(Josef Von Sternberg, USA 1932)

The highly atmospheric sets, coupled with photographer Lee Garmes' famed soft-focus shots, give Shanghai Express a dream-like quality that is highly appropriate for a film about China that was filmed largely in the San Fernando Valley. Sternberg himself said, "I thought the canvas of China as evoked by my imagination quite effective. The actual Shanghai Express, when I took it out of Peking, was thoroughly unlike the train I invented." On this train, Dietrich tells Clive Brook, "It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lilly," throwing his five year torch for her into an ambivalence that doesn't stop rocking until the train stops rolling. Sternberg's most colorful and langorous film, Shanghai Express is a kind of Grand Hotel and Stagecoach combined, in which the hierarchy of characters (including Anna May Wong at her sultriest) develops against the bombardment from without by revolutionary troops. But being singlemindedly Sternberg, it is above all a paean to unconditional love, the importance of which is only underscored by its improbability. Print = 4:3 fair condition (B&W, 82 minutes, PG cert)

(James Whale, USA 1936)

Although it was long overlooked after MGM's 1951 remake, the 1936 Show Boat was Universal's major production of that year, and it remains the definitive film version of the Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein musical, based on Edna Ferber's Mississippi River classic. Paul Robeson, as Joe, immortalizes the song that was written for him, "Old Man River," while Helen Morgan as the star-crossed Julie gives unforgettable renditions of "Can't Help Lovin' that Man" and "Bill." Irene Dunne stars in the role that brought her to Hollywood from the stage. Director James Whale brings elegance and sophistication to the musical, emphasizing character and period atmosphere over spectacle. Print = 4:3 good condition (B&W, 110 minutes, cert TBC)

(Jack Haley Jr, USA 1985)

This is the way to see Hollywood dance sequences: no flimsy plot or vacuous dialogue just the dancers doing their stuff. The only problem is that the pleasure of seeing the clips themselves is compromised by the sycophantic narration (Liza Minnelli's contribution in particular) and the random chronology of the arbitrary selection. So, while we may be mesmerised by the extraordinary silent Charleston sequence from So This Is Paris or the kaleidoscopic patterns of Busby Berkeley's 42 ^nd Street , the compilation itself is a formless mess. An extraneous ballet sequence featuring Mikhail Baryshnikov sticks out like a sore toe amid the furious tap dancing of the Nicholas Brothers, the sinuous sexiness of Cyd Charisse, and a charming ad-lib routine featuring Shirely Temple and ‚"Mr Bojangles‚". And when the suave smoothness of Fred and Ginger in Swing Time gives way to the tight-trousered posturing of John Travolta and the gymnastic gracelessness of flashdancer Marine Jahan, the nostalgia bubble has burst. ‚Äî  Nigel Floyd Print = Widescreen good condition (B&W & Colour, 104 minutes, G cert)

(Terrence Malick, USA 1998)

Call it the anti- Saving Private Ryan : Terrence Malick's graceful, chaotic adaptation of James Jones' 1962 novel about the bloody, attenuated campaign to take Guadalcanal Island in 1942-43 (he also wrote From Here to Eternity ), is an intensely internalized portrait of external pandemonium, a slippery, insidiously haunting work of poetry rather than brilliantly realized pulp. It most closely resembles Apocalypse Now , both in its vaguely hallucinatory ambiance and because it's set on the Pacific front: Malick's soldiers are as out of place in the jungle as Coppola's, and the scenery's riotous beauty makes the sudden bursts of bloody violence just that little bit more grotesque. The protagonists are the officers and enlisted men of Charlie Company, whose orders are to take the island, starting with a nameless hill topped by enemy machine gunners entrenched in a fortified bunker. With the exception of a deceptively lyrical opening involving two AWOL GIs hiding out in a Melanesian village, the movie is as chaotic as the campaign. Individuals emerge from the ensemble and then disappear into the crowd, their stories woven together in blood and mud. The ranking officer in the fray is Lt. Colonel Tall (Nick Nolte), an aspiring Patton who's finally found his war. Under him are Captains Staros (Elias Koteas) and Gaff (John Cusack), Sgts. Keck (Woody Harrelson) and Welsh (Sean Penn) ‚ each determined in his own way to protect the men he commands ‚ and hundreds of grunts with little more on their minds than trying not to lose them in the muck and gore. Conflicts arise and get lost in the fray, soldiers have their moments in the spotlight, then vanish into the sea of green uniforms. By aiming for the head rather than the gut, Malick has pretty much guaranteed that his film won't capture the audiences Spielberg's has. But it's a powerful, memorable vision of war well worth experiencing. ‚Äî Maitland McDonagh Print = CinemaScope good condition (166 minutes, M cert)

(Henry Hathaway, USA 1947)

This tense WW II thriller was Henry Hathaway's follow-up to his successful semi-documentary spy thriller House on 92nd Street . Sharkey (James Cagney) is the training officer for a group of American agents preparing to serve in occupied Europe for Operations-77 (a thinly veiled copy of the OSS, which withdrew its endorsement for the film after the producers argued with legendary spymaster "Wild Bill" Donovan). He knows that one of his students is a German agent and must determine which one it is before the spy can do too much damage to the organization. Training is rigorous, and includes radio-telegraphy, psychological training, and exhausting physical exercise. During the training, two agent trainees, O'Connell (Richard Conte) and Lassiter (Frank Latimore), become close friends. For a final test of their skills, they are ordered to infiltrate an American submarine factory and steal the plans for a new torpedo detonator. They are almost caught by factory security, but O'Connell pulls a forged card from his pocket that identifies him as a security agent himself and he walks off with Lassiter supposedly under arrest. Back at the training school Sharkey is now convinced that O'Connell is the German agent, but he has plans to use him. He tells O'Connell that he will be parachuted into France to prepare the way for the Allied invasion of Holland. He hopes that as soon as O'Connell reaches the ground he will immediately return to his superiors at the Gestapo and give them this misleading information. In case he doesn't, Sharkey tells Lassiter what he suspects and that he must kill O'Connell if he doesn't do as planned. On the plane bound for occupied territory, O'Connell senses the change in Lassiter's attitude, and as his friend is about to jump out of the plane, he quickly and surreptitiously slices his ripcord with a razor. When Sharkey finds out what happened, he goes to France himself, planning to kill O'Connell. He is captured and taken to the Paris Gestapo headquarters at the title address, where he is tortured to make him reveal the truth about the invasion plans. Allied command knows Sharkey will crack eventually, as any man will, so they order a bombing mission to destroy the entire building and Sharkey with it. As the bombs begin to fall and O'Connell looks around him at the crumbling room, Sharkey starts to laugh maniacally and triumphantly before they go to their deaths together. The first half of the film, detailing the training procedures, was the most documentary-oriented and the best. The second half, in which a Cagney starting to show his age competes with young men like Conte, doesn't work nearly so well. Cagney didn't have much interest in making this film. He preferred to develop projects for his own production company, but he was having trouble getting The Time of Your Life off the ground, and the $300,000 he received for this film was too good to pass up. Conte is excellent as the cold and efficient double agent, killing Latimore without hesitation and even blocking a bullet meant for him by pulling another German officer in front of him. The film proved quite successful and gave Cagney the freedom he wanted. Unfortunately, The Time of Your Life was not successful, and Cagney was quickly forced back to the studios for work. Print = 4:3 good condition (B&W, 95 minutes, PG cert)

(David O. Russell, USA 1998)

An astonishing movie that keeps you off-balance from the first scene. It starts out a wisecracking, cynical action lark about four Gulf War GIs who see a way to steal a fortune. It ends up a sadly resigned indictment of market-driven American foreign policy, wrapped in a sneakily moving story of personal sacrifice and small, compromised victories snatched from cruel anarchy. That actually counts for a happy ending without feeling like a commercial cop out, and the whole thing is often mordantly funny to boot ‚ what a balancing act! Sgt. Troy Barlow (Mark Wahlberg) and enlisted men Chief (Ice Cube) and Vig (Spike Jonze) come into possession of a map that shows the location of a bunker full of gold. With the help of thoroughly disaffected special-forces operative Major Archie Gates (George Clooney), they decide to make it their going-away present. "Saddam stole it from the sheiks. I have no problem stealing it from him," says Gates by way of clearing up the heist's ethical dimension, pointing out that amid the post-cease-fire pandemonium, no-one will notice or care what they're doing. Naturally, it doesn't go as easily as they anticipate. Surprisingly, they get sucked into helping a group of anti-Hussein Iraqi refugees who know their only hope of post-war survival lies in fleeing the country before the American military pulls out. The GIs are fairly decent guys, in a lazy kind of way, capable of pretending that wrong is right until somehow utter bloody chaos marches them, one baby step at a time, into doing the right thing at the moment when it stands to cost them the most. This is an amazing leap for writer-director David O. Russell, who graduates from sharply observed, small-scale stories about screwed-up families to a thought-provoking dispatch from a profoundly screwed-up world. ‚Äî  Maitland McDonagh Print = Widescreen excellent condition (115 minutes, R16 cert)

(Francis Martin, USA 1933)

Watching W.C. Fields is like eating Chinese food. Even when the food is just so-so, it's still pretty good. This movie was just so-so, but Fields' and Skipworth's performances made up for the shortcomings. Mary (Jacqueline Wells) and Tom Sheridan (Clifford Jones) are a young married couple being bilked by attorney Phineas Pratt (Clarence Wilson). Mary's father died and left her an inheritance, but Pratt's legal shenanigans have dissipated the money until all they now own is a riverboat. Pratt also owns a riverboat and would like to get his hands on the couple's vessel so he can control a ferry concession. He tells them that he will erase all their debts (they really have none) if they will sign over their boat. Mary and Tom would like to keep the boat because they have nothing else to their name. Augustus Q. (W.C. Fields) and Tillie Winterbottom (Alison Skipworth) are married but not living together. Ostensibly missionaries, they parted company long ago and have since found other fish to fry. She has been running a bar and house of ill repute in the Far East while he's been cheating at cards in Alaska. She is in financial trouble, having lost her holdings in a crap game, and he is about to be ridden out of the Alaskan territory on a rail for having too many aces up his sleeve. They are both notified about the will and make their respective ways to the small town, thinking they might be able to grab some of the inheritance. When they meet at a train station, their first response is to draw guns on each other. Old arguments are soon settled and the two decide that they'd better keep up their missionary pretense. After a card game on the train with some yokels, they get to town and soon size up Pratt's chicanery. Gus and Tillie feel for the young couple and arrange a winner-take-all race between the old scow and Pratt's newer and faster riverboat. Gus pulls some tricks of his own by tying Pratt's boat to the dock. The race begins and the old boat gets a lead, then Pratt's boat pulls away part of the dock and steams after it. Several tricks from both sides occur, including fireworks and various bits of sabotage. The boat with Gus as captain wins, and this captures a valuable ferry franchise which Pratt wanted. Pratt eventually confesses that he used duplicity to ravage the inheritance and he will return the money. (This is done only after Gus has dunked the man in the water and has him hooked by the neck.) Mary and Tom are thrilled at regaining some of their lost money and cede part of their booty to Gus and Tillie. The final scene has Gus and Tillie happily strolling to the home of the young couple as they sing the traditional "Bringing in the Sheaves." Although supposedly set partly in Singapore and Alaska, the film was an obvious studio job. The location work was done at Malibu Lake. The director, Martin, was helming his first and only feature film. Baby LeRoy appears in his premiere picture with Fields, and they actually got along fairly well, a situation which would alter as they worked together. Fields was always a tight man with a buck and deliberately created havoc on a few nights so the shooting went past midnight. Many of the cast and crew couldn't figure out why Fields seemed to be lousing up his lines. They didn't know that his contract called for an additional payment of $800 every time the shooting went past midnight. Fields was 54 when he made this and Skipworth was 70, although Fields had led such a dissolute life that the difference in their ages hardly showed. She and Fields had already appeared together in a segment of the episodic If I Had A Million and would reunite on Six of a Kind the following year. Print = 4:3 fair condition (B&W, 58 minutes, cert TBC)

(Howard Hawks, USA 1945)

The dialogue is sharp, the direction first-rate, and the acting superb, but To Have and Have Not is undoubtedly best remembered for the on- and offscreen romance between Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Warner Bros. wanted another Casablanca , and in many ways Bogart's character here resembles his classic portrait of Rick Blaine. It is WWII and France has just fallen to the Nazi occupation. Harry Murgan (Bogart), living on the island of Martinique, is the owner of a cabin cruiser, the Queen Conch , on which he takes wealthy customers on fishing trips. Working with him is Brennan, a not-too-bright alcoholic with an amiable demeanor. Morgan is approached by Gerard (Marcel Dalio), a member of the French resistance, who asks Morgan to help smuggle one of the underground movement's top leaders (Walter Molnar) into Martinique. Morgan, who cares little for politics, turns him down. Marie Browning (Bacall) appears, asking Bogart for help in getting off the island. Now Morgan agrees to make the dangerous run for Gerard. Stylish and loaded with humor, this immensely entertaining film was the result of a argument between director Hawks and novelist Ernest Hemingway. On a fishing trip in Florida with the author, Hawks tried to convince Hemingway that he should come to Hollywood to work on a screenplay. When Hemingway indicated no interest in Hawks's proposal, the filmmaker reportedly responded by boasting that he could make a film out of Hemingway's worst book, which Hawks felt was To Have and Have Not . Hemingway's novel is set in Cuba and the Florida Keys in the 1930s. In it, the character Bogart plays is less heroic, a married man with children, who is forced to run booze and men on his boat when his financial situation becomes desperate. Hawks kept the title and the character, then threw out the Hemingway story. The next task for Hawks was casting. Bogart seemed perfect for the part of Harry Morgan, but who was fiery enough to play opposite him? Hawks took a chance on an unknown talent named Betty Bacall, a beautiful 18-year-old New York model who was virtually unknown in Hollywood. Hawks had become interested in Bacall after his wife spotted her on the cover of Harper's Bazaar . The electricity between the two stars was always intended to be the heart of the film, but Bogart and Bacall's onscreen romance had a steamy verisimilitude that went way beyond anybody's expectations. As it became obvious the two were becoming involved, Hawks reportedly warned Bacall that the 45-year-old Bogart was just using his young costar to escape from a bad marriage and that when the filming was over, Bogart would forget about her. Worried that Bacall's infatuation with Bogart would cause the young actress to blow her big chance, Hawks is said to have threatened to sell her contract to Monogram. Of course, this was an empty threat, and some have even suggested that Hawks used the offscreen affair to heighten the on-screen romance. (Tellingly, in the film Bogart and Bacall refer to each other as "Steve" and "Slim," the pet names Hawks and his wife had for each another.) Print = 4:3 fair condition (B&W, 100 minutes, G cert)

(Alfred Hitchcock, USA 1969)

An espionage story that takes the cameras to Copenhagen, Paris, New York City, Harlem, Virginia, and a California hacienda that doubles as Cuba. Loosely based on the true-life exploits of French spy Philippe de Vosjoli and the 1962 "Sapphire" scandals in which top French officials were uncovered as Soviet agents, the film has a sense of authenticity but fails to fire up as much suspense as most of Hitchcock's intrigues. With an international cast of semirecognizable names (Michel Piccoli, Philippe Noiret, and just one American, John Forsythe), Topaz gleaned most of its attention from the star status of its director. Hitchcock considered the film a disaster because it went into production without a finished script (in complete antithesis to his normal working methods of full preparedness), without full casting, and without an ending. Print = 4:3 fair condition (126 minutes, PG cert)

(Orson Welles, USA 1958)

Orson Welles' reworking of a script written by Paul Manash for "King of the Bs" Albert Zugsmith (adapted from Whit Masterson's novel Badge of Evil, which Welles never bothered to read) is widely considered one of his greatest achievements, a dark, perverse thriller about moral compromise and the price of corruption. This nightmarish descent into dark entertainment has so much weirdness going on it's amazing. Marlene Dietrich, reprising her Golden Earrings drag, smoking cigars and scraping pots, almost steals it. Complete with German accent and huge, light eyes at half mast, she's the most surreal excuse for a Mexican gypsy you've ever seen. When she sees Welles, big as a house with a false nose, it's the film's best line and a prophecy of Wellesian doom: "You're a mess, honey. You've been eating too much candy." Like Dietrich, Heston skips the Mexican accent as well. He looks like a muscular, surly version of an El Greco. Janet Leigh is at her most peversely innocent, and besides lots of grisly scenes (a murder by Welles the worst), there are a slew of outrageous cameos, including appearances by Welles crony Joseph Cotten, Zsa Zsa Gabor (totally unaware what kind of film she's making), Dennis Weaver (unbelievably loopy), Ray Collins and, wildest of all, Mercedes McCambridge as a butch biker. The blonde in the exploding car is Joi Lansing, the poor man's Mamie Van Doren. EVIL was filmed at Universal, with some locations at Venice Beach. It's greatly enhanced by Mancini's dangerous, Latin Rock score. Baroque, maddening, and totally inspired. Print = 4:3 good condition (B&W, 108 minutes, M cert)

(Terry Gilliam, USA 1995)

A glorious dystopian downer, ready-made for years of fan-boy dissection. For once, the packagers didn't outsmart themselves: a creative match made in movie heaven ‚ director Terry Gilliam ( Brazil ) plus screenwriter David Webb Peoples ( Blade Runner ) ‚ yielded an instant cult classic that's everything you wanted it to be. Perhaps more important, 12 Monkeys is none of the things you hoped it wouldn't be: it's a time-travel movie that doesn't get bogged down in time-travel technicalities, a killer-virus movie without Dustin Hoffman or that adorable monkey (title notwithstanding, there are no monkeys at all), a Brad Pitt movie in which Hollywood's leading pretty boy looks even worse than he did in Seven , a Bruce Willis movie without a single smart-ass one-liner. It's Brazil crossed with The Terminator , and just when you think the production design is in danger of overwhelming the story, Gilliam goes for a note of pure, inevitable tragedy and hits it solidly. It may not mean anything to anyone except die-hard movie buffs, but we're compelled to mention that the screenplay is loosely based on Chris Marker's 1962 experimental classic, La Jetee . It was an act of sheer hubris to remake Marker's futuristic meditation on temps perdu ‚ told almost entirely in still images ‚ as a big-budget, mainstream picture starring Bruce Willis. That Terry Gilliam managed to make 12 Monkeys into a clever, complex, and poignant success is as astonishing as it is satisfying. Print = 4:3 good condition (130 minutes, M cert)

(Clint Eastwood, USA 1992)

One of Eastwood's finest outings to date, an elegiac western that ironically undermines the conventions of the genre, only to deliver a finale as legendary as the shootout at the O.K. Corral. Wyoming, the 1880s. William Munny (Clint Eastwood) is a former murderer who, transformed by the love of a good woman, gave up a life of indiscriminate killing to raise a family and try his hand at pig farming. With his wife now dead and his farm a failure, Munny is lured back into his old ways by the "Schofield Kid" (Jaimz Woolvett), an aspiring young gunfighter who brings the older man word of a bounty being offered in the frontier town of Big Whiskey. (After a cowboy slashed the face of a prostitute there, the woman's co-workers have offered a reward for the death of the attacker and his accomplice.) Munny refuses the young man's offer of partnership but later reconsiders, teaming up with his old sidekick Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman) and setting off to join Schofield. The journey will bring him up against "Little Bill" Daggett (Gene Hackman), the autocratic sheriff of Big Whiskey, as well as forcing him to acknowledge that killing is, in fact, what he does best. It's easy to see why Eastwood was drawn by this script, written by David Webb Peoples ( Blade Runner ) in the 1970s. Munny is descended in a direct line from Eastwood's two most famous characters: the Man with No Name, from his 60s Westerns with Sergio Leone; and Dirty Harry, the anti-hero of Don Siegel's cop thrillers. Leone's presence is most strongly felt in the revisionist content of Unforgiven , while Siegel's influence is manifest in the film's lean, moody, no-nonsense style. Both of Eastwood's directorial mentors are acknowledged in the film's on-screen dedication, "to Sergio and Don." The cast is universally strong. Hackman, Freeman and Harris don't do anything they haven't done before, but the roles suit their personae to a degree where they approach archetypal status. The same applies to Eastwood, who casts himself as part of an ensemble rather than as the conscious star. And that's as it should be. With Unforgiven , Eastwood achieves a new level of authority as a filmmaker and actor who has nothing to prove. Print = 4:3 good condition (130 minutes, M cert)

(Alfred Hitchcock, USA 1958)

The most-discussed work of the master; despairingly sardonic and demanding of multiple viewings. Hitchcock's intensely personal and frighteningly self-revealing picture, Vertigo is the story of a man (Stewart as Hitch) who is possessed by the image of a former love (Novak as Vera Miles) and becomes increasingly compulsive in his attempts to make another woman (Novak as Novak) over in that image. We'll explain. Stewart is a former San Francisco policeman who suffers from vertigo ‚ a dizzying sensation brought on by his acrophobia. When he gets a call from a former classmate, shipping magnate Gavin Elster (Helmore), he agrees to play detective and shadow the millionaire's wife Madeleine (Novak) whom Elster fears is going to wind up dead. Elster ominously asks him "Do you believe that someone dead, someone out of the past, can take possession of a living being?" After following Madeleine for a short while Stewart becomes obsessed with her ‚ lost deep in a labyrinthine plot from which he cannot escape. Based on a novel by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac (who previously supplied the source material for Diabolique ), Vertigo appealed to Hitchcock for reasons which become clearer the more one knows about the director's personality. Vertigo is, in fact, nothing less than Hitchcock revealing himself to his audience ‚ his obsessions and desire to make over women are embodied in Stewart's character and the perfect Hitchcock woman is embodied in Madeleine. Vertigo is also a masterpiece of filmmaking which includes one of the most important technical discoveries since the dawn of cinema ‚ the dolly-out, zoom-in shot, which visually represents the dizzying sensation of vertigo. The result is a shot unique to Hitchcock, unlike any other before in film, one which will always bear his stamp. Print = Widescreen good condition (127 minutes, PG cert)

(Raoul Walsh, USA 1931)

Marya Kalish (Elissa Landi), a Jewish girl, attempts to travel through her native Russia in 1913 to see her father who is dying in a St. Petersburg prison. The only way she can get permission to travel is with a "yellow ticket," which identifies her as a prostitute. In St. Petersburg she learns that her father has died, but while in the city, she falls in love with Julian Rolfe (Laurence Olivier), a British journalist. After hearing her story, he writes a number of articles for British and American newspapers that expose the oppressed condition of the Russian people under the Czar's rule. When Baron Igor Andrey (Lionel Barrymore), the chief of the Czar's secret police, becomes aware of Rolfe's articles, he tries to imprison the scribe. Andrey's primary objective, however, is to get Marya in bed, and when he tries, she kills him. As Austria invades the country, the lovers escape to England. The Lionel Barrymore role had been performed by his brother John in the stage play that provided the basis for this film and the 1918 Pathe silent of the same name, which starred Milton Sills and Fanny Ward. Though Giacomo Puccini doesn't figure in the writing credits, the plot owes more than a little to his opera La Tosca . Print = 4:3 very good condition (B&W, 78 minutes, cert TBC)

(Mel Brooks, USA 1974)

Mel Brooks's follow-up to his enormously successful western spoof, Blazing Saddles , tackles the horror genre ‚ specifically, Frankenstien and The Bride of Frankenstien . This time Brooks tones down his broad humor a bit to create a work that is both an affectionate parody and a knowlegeable homage to its cinematic forebears. Gene Wilder plays Dr. Frederick Frankenstein (now defiantly pronounced "FRONK-en-steen"), a med school lecturer who thinks his infamous grandfather's work is "doo-doo." The younger Frankenstein must finally face his destiny when he inherits his grandfather's Transylvanian estate. Once there, he meets Igor (pronounced "eye-gore" and played by the eye-popping Marty Feldman), whose hunchback inexplicably changes from the left side to the right throughout the movie; Inga (Teri Garr), a young woman who will assist the doctor; and Frau Blucher (Cloris Leachman), a hideous old woman who causes horses to whinny in fright at the mere mention of her name. Eventually, Frederick finds his grandfather's private library and a copy of his book, How I Did It . Of course, Frederick cannot keep himself from righting his grandfather's wrongs and creating a new monster (Peter Boyle), a big, dumb corpse with a zipper round his neck and an abnormal brain in his head. The laughs come along at a fast and furious rate. One of the film's highlights is the "Puttin' on the Ritz" duet performed by Frederick and the Monster. Young Frankenstien is Brooks's most accomplished work, combining his well-known brand of comedy with stylish direction and a uniformly excellent cast. The handsome black-and-white cinematography really captures the look of an early 1930s film. The direction achieves a seemingly impossible task, balancing Brooks's off-the-wall humor within the framework of the style of a classic Universal Frankenstein film. The Frankenstein castle, with its cobwebs, dust, skulls, original lab equipment, and strange goings-on, could easily have been inhabited by Boris Karloff or Bela Lugosi. Wilder, wildly funny here, later attempted his own genre spoof, Haunted Honeymoon , which came nowhere near Young Frankenstien . Print = 4:3 Fair condition (B&W, 108 minutes, PG cert)

(Sam Peckipah, USA 1970, 121 minutes, R16 cert)
Print = 4:3 fair condition colour fading

(Sidney Lumet, USA 1975, 120 minutes, R18 cert)
Print = fair condition colour fading

(Victor Saville, USA 1947, B&W, 140 minutes, G cert)
Print = fair condition, some split sprockets

(Norman Z. MacLeod, USA 1932, B&W, 64 minutes, G cert)
Print = fair condition, splices, edge tears

(John Sturges, USA 1972, 84 minutes, M cert)
Print = fair condition?

(Josef Von Sternberg, USA 1930, B&W, 92 minutes, cert TBC)
Print = fair condition, splices, edge tears

(Edward Cline, USA 1940, B&W, 83 minutes, M cert)
Print = fair condition, splices, missing titles

(Robert Aldrich, USA 1972, 99 minutes, PG cert)
Print = fair condition, colour fading

(Sam Peckinpah, USA 1969, 140 minutes, R16 cert)
Print = good condition, colour fading