CINEMA PARADISO (1989)

Directed by Giuseppe Tornatore

A famous film director returns home to a Sicilian village for the first time after almost 30 years. He reminisces about his childhood at the Cinema Paradiso where Alfredo, the projectionist, first brought about his love of films. He is also reminded of his lost teenage love, Elena, who he had to leave before he left for Rome.

Nominated/Winner of 1 Academy Award, Best Foreign Language Film

DVD Special Features:

None

DONNIE BRASCO (1997)

Directed by Mike Newell

This true story follows FBI agent Joe Pistone (Johnny Depp) as he infiltrates the mafia of New York. Befriending Lefty Ruggiero (Al Pacino), Pistone (under the name Donnie Brasco) is able to embed himself in a mafia faction lead by Sonny Black (Michael Madsen).
Ruggiero and Pistone become tight as the group goes about collecting money for 'the bosses'. Eventually, the group become big time when Black himself becomes a boss, all the while Pistone collects evidence.
However, the trials and tribulations of the undercover work become more than Pistone can bear. His marriage falls apart and to top it off, the mafia suspect a mole in the organization. The real dilemma is afforded to Pistone, who knows if he walks away from the mafia, Ruggiero will be the one punished.

Nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay

DVD Special feature:

The making of Donnie Brasco

OUT OF THE PAST (1947)

Directed by Jacques Tourneur

Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum), small-town gas pumper, has his mysterious past catch up with him one day when he's ordered to meet with gambler Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas). En route to the meeting, he tells girlfriend, Ann his story in flashback
Jeff was a private eye hired by Sterling to find his mistress Kathie (Jane Greer) who shot Whit and absconded with $40,000. He traces her to Acapulco where the delectable Kathie makes Jeff forget all about Sterling.
Back in the present, Whit's new job for Jeff is clearly a trap, but Jeff's precautions only leave him more tightly enmeshed

No Academy Awards or Nominations

DVD Special Features:

None

FARGO (1996)

Directed by Joel Coen

Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy)'s inept crime falls apart due to his and his henchmen's bungling and the persistent police work of pregnant Police Chief, Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand)

Nominated for 7 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography and Best Film Editing

Won 2, Best Actress and Best Original Screenplay

DVD Special Features:

Documentary - "Minnesota Nice"

Charlie Rose Interview with Ethan and Joel Coen + Frances McDormand

Audio Commentary by Cinematographer, Roger Deakins

THELMA AND LOUISE (1991)

Directed by Ridley Scott

Thelma (Geena Davis) and Louise (Susan Sarandon) are best friends on a desperate flight across the American Southwest after a tragic incident at a roadside bar. With determined detective Hal (Harvey Keitel) on their trail, a sweet-talking hitchhiker called 'J.D.'(Brad Pitt) in their path and a string of crimes in their wake, their journey alternates between a hilarious, high-octane joy ride and an empowering personal odyssey... even as the law closes in.

One of the best written original screenplays of 1990s Hollywood

Nominated for 6 Academy Awards including Best Director, Best Actress x 2, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography and Best Film Editing

Won 1, Best Original Screenplay

DVD Special Features:

Audio Commentary by Director, Ridley Scott

Audio Commentary by Susan Sarandon, Geena Davis and Screenwriter, Callie Khouri

The Last Journey Documentary

Deleted Scenes

Alternate Ending with Director's Commentary

Original Promotional EPK

HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY (1941)

WINNER OF THE ACADEMY AWARD FOR BEST PICTURE

Directed by John Ford

The story of a Welsh valley's turn-of-the-century descent from pristine paradise to despoiled coal mining region, is told in flashback form by Huw Morgan, an old man who has decided to leave the valley forever. Huw (Roddy Mcdowall) is the youngest in a family of six brothers and one sister and the film centers on his struggle toward manhood amid conflicting demands of faith, economics, education and family loyalty in a Wales caught in an irreversible shift from a pastoral to an industrialized society.

Nominated for 10 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Writing/Screenplay, Best Cinematography (Black and White), Best Art Direction- Interior Decoration (Black and White), Best Film Editing, Best Scoring of a Dramatic Picture and Best Sound Recording

Won 5, Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Cinematography (Black and White) and Best Art Direction - Interior Decoration (Black and White)

DVD Special Features:

None

WEST SIDE STORY (1961)

WINNER OF THE ACADEMY AWARD FOR BEST PICTURE

Directed by Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise

Musical adaptation of Shakespeare's famous love story, Romeo and Juliet. The musical set in the late 1950s New York city where rival street gangs (the Jets and the Sharks) battle for territory and respect. Love blossoms between former Jets leader Tony (Richard Beymer), and Maria (Natalie Wood), sister to Sharks' leader Bernardo (George Chakiris), supported by Anita (Rita Moreno)

Nominated for 12 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director x 2, Best Supprting Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Art/Set Decoration(Color), Best Fim Editing, Best Score and Best Sound

Won 11, Best Picture, Best Director x 2, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Cinematography, Best Art/Set Decoration(Color), Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Score and Best Sound

Academy history was made with two awards presented in the Best Director category

DVD Special Features:

None

IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934)

WINNER OF THE ACADEMY AWARD FOR BEST PICTURE

Directed by Frank Capra

A spoiled heiress, Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) running away from her family, is helped by a man (Clark Gable) who's actually a reporter looking for a story. But then he falls in love with her

Nominated for 5 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay

Made Academy History by winning a clean sweep of the main categories for which it was nominated

Was also the first film to win the five major categories, later joined by ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST (1975) and THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991)

...And the two leads winning their Academy Awards in the same picture. Later joined by

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
Network (1976)
Coming Home (1978)
On Golden Pond (1981)
The Silence Of The Lambs (1991)
As Good As It Gets (1997)

DVD Special Features:

Frank Capra Jr. remembers....It Happened One Night

Radio broadcast featuring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert

LA REGLE DU JEU (1939)

Directed by Jean Renoir

Renoir's look at bourgeois life in France at the onset of World War II. An assorted cast of characters - the rich and their poor servants - meet up at a French chateau for various reasons and the result is murder

No Academy Award Nominations

DVD Special Features:

Image par image - French television documentary

ELMER GANTRY (1960)

Directed by Richard Brooks

Elmer Gantry (Burt Lancaster) salesman, teams up with Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons) evangelist, to sell religion to America in the 1920's. Both are seduced by fame and blind faith over common sense, and fate deals them a crushing blow

Nominated for 6 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Score

Won 3, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay

DVD Special Features:

None

THE AFRICAN QUEEN (1951)

Directed by John Huston

In Africa during WW1, a gin-swilling riverboat owner/captain,Charlie Allnut (Humphrey Bogart) is persuaded by a strait-laced missionary, Rose Sayer (Katherine Hepburn) to use his boat to attack an enemy warship whilst ferrying supplies to villages in East Africa.

Nominated for 4 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Writing - Screenplay

Won 1, Best Actor

Humphrey Bogart's deserved win prevented an acting sweep by the acclaimed drama, A Streetcar Named Desire(1951)

DVD Special Features:

Feature length audio commentary by Cinematographer, Jack Cardiff

THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE (1961)

Directed by Val Guest

After the super-powers accidentally set off H-bombs simultaneously, the staff at Fleet Street's Daily Express report dramatic changes to the world's climate.
As London swelters and the Thames starts to run dry the paper's staff finally get the Government to admit that the earth's axis has shifted. Eventually they discover that the full truth is far worse.

No Academy Award Nominations

DVD Special features:

An Interview with the late Leo Mckern

Director's feature length audio commentary

KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS (1949)

Directed by Robert Hamer

Louis Manzzini's mother belongs to the aristocratic family, D'Ascoyne.
She ran away with an opera singer and she and Louis were rejected by the D'Ascoynes. Once adult, Louis decides to avenges his mother and his birthright by becoming the next Duke in the family. Murdering every potential successor is clearly the safest way to achieving his goal.

The title refers to the following lines from Tennyson's 1842 poem "Lady Clara Vere de Vere": "Kind hearts are more than coronets, and simple faith than Norman blood."

Alec Guiness famously played eight different members of the family

No Academy Awards or Nominations

DVD Special Features: None

THE STRANGE LOVE OF MARTHA IVERS (1946)

Directed by Lewis Milestone

In 1928, young heiress Martha Ivers (Barbara Stanwyck) fails to run off with friend Sam Masterson, and is involved in the fatal death of her Aunt. Years later, Sam returns to find Martha the power behind Iverstown and married to "good boy" Walter O'Neil (Kirk Douglas), now district attorney.
At first, Sam is more interested in displaced blonde Toni Marachek than in his boyhood friends but they draw him into a convoluted web of plotting and cross-purposes

Nominated for 1 Academy Award, Best Writing - Original Story

DVD Special Features:

None

DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (1965)

Directed by David Lean

The film based on the Nobel prize winning, bestseller by Boris Pasternak, about the life of surgeon-poet Yuri Zhivago before, during and after the Russian Revolution.
Zhivago is torn between fidelity and passion. He is married to a upper-class girl,Tonya (Geraldine Chaplin) who is devoted to him, yet in love with an unfortunate woman, Lara (Julie Christie)
The story is narrated by Zhivago's half brother Yevgraf(Alec Guiness) to a young woman he believes may be the long lost daughter of Lara and Zhivago

Nominated for 10 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Cinematography(Color), Best Film Editing, Best Art/Set Decoration(Color), Best Costume Design(Color) and Best Sound

Won 5, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Cinematography(Color), Best Art/Set Decoration(Color) and Best Costume Design

The first film in the Academy's history to win the highest number of Awards in one year, without winning Best Picture.

DVD Special Features:

Doctor Zhivago: The Making of the Russian Epic

Zhivago: Behind the Camera with David Lean

David Lean's Film of Doctor Zhivago

Moscow in Madrid

Pasternak

New York Press interviews with Julie Christie

New York Press interviews Omar Sharif

LES BARBARES INVASIONS (THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS) - 2004

Directed by Denys Arcand

The sequel to LE DECLIN DE L'EMPIRE AMERICAIN (THE DECLINE OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE)

Having a difficult time accepting the reality of death and feeling regretful of his past, a man dying of cancer tries to find peace in his last moments. His estranged son, ex-wife, ex-lovers and old friends all come to him to share his last days

Nominated for 2 Academy Awards including Best Foreign Language film(Canada) and Best Original Screenplay

Won 1, Best Foreign Language Film

The first sequel to win the foreign language Academy Award

DVD Special Features:

Denys Arcand (Writer/Director) Audio Interviews -

With Francine Stock for Front Row, BBC Radio 4

Interview recorded at the Times BFI London Film Festival

LE DECLIN DE L'EMPIRE AMERICAIN (THE DECLINE OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE) - 1986

Directed by Denys Arcand

Four university teachers gather to prepare dinner while discussing sex, the female body and their affairs with them. Their female guests are at a gym also discussing sex, the female body and men. They later meet and carry on the same discussion revealing themselves and their society as the evening goes by

Nominated for 1 Academy Award - Best Foreign Language Film (Canada)

DVD Special Features:

None

L' HISTOIRE D'ADELE H.(THE STORY OF ADELE H.) (1975)

Directed by Francois Truffaut

Halifax,1863 Adele Hugo,(Isabelle Adjani) the second daughter of the great French Writer comes to Halifax in search of Lt Pinson, with whom she is madly in love. The Lt does not recipocate her love, saying it is hopeless.
Adele becomes obsessed and stays in Halifax, chasing and harassing him.
A tale of obsessive love and self destruction told from the real Adele Hugo's diary.

Nominated for 1 Academy Award, Best Actress

At 20, Isabelle Adjani was the youngest nominee in the Lead Actress category until 2004's nomination of Keisha Castle - Hughes's for WHALE RIDER at 13

DVD Special features:

None

SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER (1959)

Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Based on the Tennesee Williams play and set in the 1930s New Orleans.
A rich widow, Mrs. Venable (Katharine Hepburn), plans to fund a hospital building for a state asylum, if Dr. Cukrowicz (Montgomery Clift) will perform a lobotomy on her niece Catherine (Elizabeth Taylor). Mrs. Venable is distraught over the death of her son Sebastian last summer and is convinced Catherine went mad the day he died under mysterious circumstances.

Nominated 3 Academy Awards including Best Actress for the two leading ladies and Best Art/Set Decoration(Black and White)

DVD Special Features:

Video Photo Montage

THE CONVERSATION (1974)

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

An expert on surveillance (Gene Hackman) is hired to record the conversations of two employees in a large company. Some years previous, the same expert's work directly led to the murder of three people and he now has reason to fear it will happen again.

Nominated for 3 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay and Best Sound

DVD Special Features:

Close-up on 'The Conversation'

Audio Commentaries by Director, Francis Ford Coppola and Editor, Walter Murch