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A Room With a View
: essential video:The prestigious filmmaking trio of producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory, and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala had made other critically acclaimed films before A Room with a View was released in 1985, but it was this popular film that made them art-house superstars. Splendidly adapted from the novel by E.M. Forster, it's a comedy of the heart, a passionate romance and a study of repression within the British class system of manners and mores. It's that system of rigid behavior that prevents young Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter) from accepting the ...
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Theory of Flight
: :Richard (Kenneth Branagh) is a frustrated artist plunging into a midlife crisis. He dumps his rather stuffy, professional girlfriend and tears apart his paintings to make a hang glider out of the canvases and stretchers. His maiden flight with the device lands him in court, where he is assigned community service. His first assignment is to serve as assistant to Jane (Helena Bonham Carter), a young woman with Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS). The disease is in its final stages, but she handles it with a bushel of attitude, her brain as sharp as ...
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Lady Jane
: essential video:'I foresee a glittering future for your daughter,' the conspiratorial Duke of Northumberland insidiously whispers to the mother of Lady Jane Grey, the woman who would be England's queen, albeit for only nine days. The same could be said for Helena Bonham Carter, who, in her screen debut, carries this historical drama with aplomb. Jane, a principled and precocious 15-year-old (she reads Plato in Greek) was a pawn in a plot to maintain Protestant rule in the wake of young King Edward's death. A dashing Cary Elwes, anticipating his swashbuckling role ...
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Fight Club
: essential video:All films take a certain suspension of disbelief. Fight Club takes perhaps more than others, but if you're willing to let yourself get caught up in the anarchy, this film, based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk, is a modern-day morality play warning of the decay of society. Edward Norton is the unnamed protagonist, a man going through life on cruise control, feeling nothing. To fill his hours, he begins attending support groups and 12-step meetings. True, he isn't actually afflicted with the problems, but he finds solace in the groups. ...
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Howard's End
: essential video:Howards End is E.M. Forster's beautifully subtle story of the crisscrossing paths of the privileged and those they disdain--and of a remarkable pair of women who can see beyond class distinctions. Dramatic and tragic, but also surprisingly funny, this James Ivory film focuses on a pair of unmarried sisters (Emma Thompson, who won an Oscar, and Helena Bonham Carter) who befriend a poor young clerk (Sam West) and, without meaning to, ruin his life. Meanwhile, Thompson also makes the acquaintance of a dying neighbor (Vanessa Redgrave), who leaves her a family ...
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Hamlet (1990)
: essential video:Franco Zeffirelli's stripped-down, two-hour version of Shakespeare's play stars Mel Gibson as a rather robust version of the ambivalent Danish prince. Gibson is much better in the part than many critics have admitted, his powers of clarity doing much to make this particular Hamlet more accessible than several other filmed versions. The supporting cast is outstanding, including Glenn Close as Gertrude, Alan Bates as Claudius, Ian Holm as Polonius, and Helena Bonham Carter as Ophelia. Zeffirelli's vigorous direction employs a lively camera style that nicely alters the viewer's preconceptions about the ...
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Margaret's Museum
: essential video:Franco Zeffirelli's stripped-down, two-hour version of Shakespeare's play stars Mel Gibson as a rather robust version of the ambivalent Danish prince. Gibson is much better in the part than many critics have admitted, his powers of clarity doing much to make this particular Hamlet more accessible than several other filmed versions. The supporting cast is outstanding, including Glenn Close as Gertrude, Alan Bates as Claudius, Ian Holm as Polonius, and Helena Bonham Carter as Ophelia. Zeffirelli's vigorous direction employs a lively camera style that nicely alters the viewer's preconceptions about the ...
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The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century
:Description:As this landmark series demonstrates, the cataclysmic effects of World War I last to this day. 'The war to end all wars' has influenced the Atomic Age and the Cold War, and is now shaping the conflicts in Bosnia and the Middle East. Period film footage and eyewitness accounts powerfully dramatize the horrors of trench warfare and the chaos of political revolution. History comes alive as The Great War reveals how World War I influenced the rise of communism, witnessed the first use of weapons of mass destruction, and provided a fertile aftermath ...
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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
:Description:Fantasy Adventure. Acclaimed director Tim Burton brings his vividly imaginative style to the beloved Roald Dahl classic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, about eccentric chocolatier Willy Wonka (Depp) and Charlie, a good-hearted boy from a poor family who lives in the shadow of Wonka's extraordinary factory. Long isolated from his own family, Wonka launches a worldwide contest to select an heir to his candy empire. Five lucky children, including Charlie, draw golden tickets from Wonka chocolate bars and win a guided tour of the legendary candy-making facility that no outsider has seen in ...
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Wallace & Gromit-Curse of the Were-Rabbit
: :A decade after their last hilarious short, the Oscar-winning A Close Shave, Claymation wonders Wallace and Gromit return for a full-length adventure. Daffy scientist Wallace (voiced by Peter Sallis) and his heroic dog Gromit are doing well with their business, Anti-Pesto, a varmint-hunting outfit designed to keep their English town safe from rabbits chomping on prized vegetables. Wallace meets Lady Tottington (Helena Bonham Carter), who appreciates Wallace's humane way of dealing with rabbits (courtesy of the Bun-Vac 6000), and sets up a rivalry with the gun-toting Victor Quartermaine (Ralph Fiennes, enjoying himself more ...
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