robert-bucknor's - FAVOURITES List

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Ralph Richardson and John Mills star as two elderly brothers who are the last surviving members of a Tontine - a bizarre lottery in which the last man still alive scoops a fortune.

While the two old buffers steadfastly refuse to die, some of their relatives decide to sort things out once and for all. While ineffectual Cousin Michael (Michael Caine) and ever-so-slightly demented Cousin Julia (Nanette Newman) fumble their way into romance, venal Cousin Morris (Peter Cook) and lothario Cousin John (Dudley Moore) plot to get their sweaty hands on the fortune. Unfortunately, when they accidentally mistake the corpse of the infamous Bournemouth Strangler for dear Uncle Joseph and ship him in a barrel back to London, they set off a farcical chain of misunderstandings with hilarious consequences. Further confusion is provided by Peter Sellers as the cat-obsessed Dr. Pratt and Tony Hancock as a detective as everyone tries to work out who's really alive and entitled to the money. With an all-star cast featuring some of Britain's best-loved comedy talents, 'The Wrong Box' is a truly black comedy farce in the best traditions of British cinema.

Life's been hard for Billy and his ragtag troupe. But their luck might change -- in the unlikely person of a highfalutin society dame (Sondra Locke). You may already have a favorite Eastwood role. Watch Bronco Billy and chances are you'll have another.

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At a remote desert truck stop, the fate of mankind will be decided. The armies of evil are massing and the only thing standing in their way is the Archangel Michael (Paul Bettany).

Fully armed and ready for battle, he is joined by a group of strangers who are about to become unwitting soldiers on the frontline of the Apocalypse. Their mission: protect a waitress and her sacred unborn child from the relentless, bloody siege of the demonic legion.

Norman's greatest wish is to be a popular singer but his comic attempts to take centre stage hit all the wrong notes. At last, however, encouraged by his music teacher, Miss Dobson, and by a crippled girl named Judy, Norman wins through.

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Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once stated that philosophy ought to be written as if it were poetry, and a poetic intensity typified his life and his work.

No wonder, then, that a creative talent such as Derek Jarman should respond with such characteristic energy to a commission from Channel 4 for a film about the philosopher, written by radical literary theorist Terry Eagleton. Wittgenstein is a bold offbeat biography, personalised in Jarman's unique style to address the politics and sexuality of the great but troubled man. The result is no dry treatise, but a treat for eyes and mind alike. Exceeding the limitations of its miniscule budget, Wittgenstein is full of arresting visuals and bold performances from Tilda Swinton, Michael Gough, and Karl Johnson, who brilliantly captures Wittgenstein in all his torment and drama. It was to be Jarman's penultimate film, and is infused with the sense of artistic adventure, intelligence and playfulness that characterised his life and work.

Jefferies (James Stewart), a photographer with a broken leg, takes up the fine art of spying on his Greenwich Village neighbours during a summer heat wave. But things really hot up when he suspects one neighbour (Raymond Burr) of murdering his invalid wife and burying the body in a flower garden.

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Nicolas Cage, Holly Hunter and John Goodman star in Ethan and Joel Coen's acclaimed screwball love story filled with mad chases, unexpected plot twists and wild pyrotechnics. Vowing to go straight, a convenience store bandit (Cage) proposes marriage to the police department's photographer (Hunter).

All is wedded bliss until they discover she's unable to get pregnant and are turned down by every adoption agency in town. It doesn't take long before they realize the only solution is to kidnap one of the town's celebrated quintuplets and hit the road!

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This Powell and Pressburger classic is widely considered to be one of the greatest films ever made.

Vicky Page (Moira Shearer), a young ballerina, becomes torn between her love for composer Julian Craster (Marius Goring) and artistic devotion to her profession, which is dominated by impresario Lermontov.

On release from prison, John Kline finds the Birmingham underworld in turmoil - its leader is dead. Lawlessness spirals out of control as the White, Asian and West Indian gangs search for a new force to lead their criminality.

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During a drunken spree in the small Wild West town of Bannock, one of a half-dozen workers from a nearby ranch accidentally shoots an innocent man.

Bannock's marshal, a righteous man named Jared Maddox (Burt Lancaster), comes to the larger town of Sabbath bearing the dead body of one of the revellers and demands the surrender of the remaining five from sheriff Cotton Ryan (Robert Ryan) and ranch owner Vincent Bronson (Lee J. Cobb), starting a confrontation that threatens to engulf them all.

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For over a decade Joey Gazelle (Paul Walker) has successfully juggled his conflicting roles as loveing family man and low-ranking mobster.

However, when Joey ignores the mob’s explicit instructions to dispose of the gun used in the fatal shooting of a corrupt cop during a bungled drugs operation, he unwittingly puts his loved ones in danger. Joey decides to stash the weapon in his own basement, just in case he should need some future collateral against his employers. Unfortunately, Joeys 10 year old son, Nicky (Alex Neuberger) and his best friend, Oleg (Cameron Bright), stumble across the hidden gun. Worse still, Oleg decides to use it to shoot his physically abusive stepfather who also happens to be connected to the Russian mafia. Thus Joey is forced to embark on a nightmarish 18-hour journey to find Oleg and the gun before his own gang, the Russians or the bent cop (Chazz Palminteri) hell-bent in profiting from the missing weapon, get there first.

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Based on the best-selling novel by Irving Wallace, 'The Seven Minutes' is also the title of a notorious 1930s book whose belated publication in the US triggers an obscenity lawsuit, prompted by a hitherto clean-living young man raping a fellow student and leaving her for dead.

But is the resulting trial a sincere exploration of links between (alleged) pornography and real-life violence or an attempted Kafkaesque stitch-up involving a shady businessman, ambitious politicians in search of a populist bandwagon, and even the Vatican?

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Detective Frank Bullit's new assignment seems routine: protecting a star witness for an important trial. But before the night is out, the witness lies dying and the cool, no-nonsense Bullitt (Steve McQueen) won't rest until the shooters - and the kingpin pulling their string - are nailed.

From the opening shot to closing shootout, Bullitt crackles with authenticity: on-location San Francisco filming, crisp dialogue and to-the-letter police, hospital and morgue procedures. An Oscar winner for Best Film Editing (1968), this razor-edged thriller features on of cinema history's most memorable car chases.

New York City detectives "Popeye" Doyle (Gene Hackman) and Buddy Russo (Roy Scheider) hope to break a narcotics smuggling ring and ultimately uncover 'The French Connection'. But when one of the criminals tries to kill Doyle, he begins a deadly pursuit that takes him far outside the city limits.

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Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) and his wife, Etheline (Angelica Huston), had three children - Chas, Margot, and Richie - and then they separated. Chas (Ben Stiller) started buying real estate in his early teens and seemed to have an almost preternatural understanding of international finance.

Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) was a playwright and received a Braverman Grant of $50,000 in the ninth grade. Richie (Luke Wilson) was a junior champion tennis player and won the U.S. Nationals three years in a row. Virtually all memory of the brilliance of the young Tenenbaums was subsequently erased by two decades of betrayal., failure, and disaster.