Latest video: Rich pickings

By Ewan McDonald

Been some darn good movies over the past century when you start looking back at them. Another batch is available on video this week in Warner Bros' Century Collection, spanning the decades from the Marx Brothers' vintage comedy, A Night at the Opera (1935), to the space-age drama, The Right Stuff (1983).

Some highlights:

DOG DAY AFTERNOON (1975): Director Sidney Lumet's jolting drama/black comedy earned six Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture) and won an Oscar for Frank Pierson's screenplay. It's based on a true incident on a blistering Brooklyn afternoon when two losers set out to rob a bank. Sonny (Al Pacino) is the mastermind, slow-witted Sal (John Cazale) his follower. When the cops arrive, the crowds arrive and the TV cameras arrive. Even the pizza man arrives. The heist turns into a circus as Sonny and Sal's chance of survival shrinks.

FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980): First of the modern era of horror movies. Camp Crystal Lake has a grisly history: it has been closed for 20 years after several vicious, unsolved murders. Now the ill-fated teenagers return ...

REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955): In one of film's most influential roles, James Dean plays Jim Stark, another good kid gone bad with no one knowing why. Dean is outstanding as the new kid in town whose loneliness, frustration and anger mirrored the postwar teens who flocked to see him, and reverberate 45 years later.

THE RIGHT STUFF (1983): Gung-ho story about America's dreams of mastering the sky and journeying into space that won four Oscars. Philip Kaufman's spectacular film of Tom Wolfe's book tells of Chuck Yeager, the test pilot who broke the sound barrier, and the pioneering Mercury astronauts, the first Americans in space.

A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (1951): Marlon Brando, Vivien Leigh and Kim Hunter in the landmark movie. This is the director's cut of the Elia Kazan/Tennessee Williams film about the brutish Stanley Kowalski (Brando), his pregnant wife Stella (Hunter) and the triangle formed when her neurotic sister Blanche DuBois (Leigh) moves into their apartment in sleazy New Orleans.

A NIGHT AT THE OPERA (1935): Classic Marx Brothers moments, including five minutes in Groucho's stateroom aboard an ocean liner considered one of the funniest scenes ever filmed.

THE PHILADELPHlA STORY (1940): Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn and James Stewart in a stylish adaptation of a Broadway comedy about a society girl who yearns for down-to-earth romance; Grant is her ex-husband; Stewart, a fast-talking reporter.

THE TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRE (1948): John Huston won Academy Awards as director and writer; his father, Walter, won best supporting actor for this film revealing the effects of greed and the lure of sudden wealth on three penniless prospectors. As Fred C. Dobbs, Humphrey Bogart changes from a likable drifter into a man capable of killing his best friend in cold blood.

WOMAN OF THE YEAR (1942): The first of eight films featuring the screen pairing of Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn is a combination of wit, style and romance, set in a New York newspaper office.

Others in this series include 10 (Dudley Moore in a comedy role that suits his off-screen persona); The Fiendish Plot of Fu Manchu (Peter Sellers in six roles, a very young Helen Mirren in one); and Yankee Doodle Dandy (American wartime propaganda in song and dance).

* It's a low-profile week for the rental stores. Action fans will go for Knock Off, the latest from the testosterone-tanked team of Jean-Claude Van Damme (Double Team, Maximum Risk, Universal Soldier, Timecop, Streetfighter and other sensitive new-age works), Rob Schneider (Home Alone 2), Paul Sorvino (The Firm, GoodFellas) and Lela Rochon (Waiting To Exhale, The Big Hit, the hormonal imbalance).

If you think some of the plots for these things are a bit thin, check this one out: Marcus Ray, the "King of the Knock-Offs," finds himself at the centre of a Russian Mafia plot to hold American security to ransom when a shipment of jeans to Moscow proves counterfeit. For it's all in the jeans: they contain thousands of tiny macro-bombs, hidden inside manufactured goods scheduled for export from Hong Kong to America.

Maybe worth a look is an Aussie drama, Erskinville Kings, which centres around Barky (Marty Dennis), two years after he has escaped Sydney and his drunken and abusive father and headed for the Queensland canefields. Now his father is dead, Barky returns to find his brother (Hugh Jackman) resentful and bitter.

* Also on release: Shadow of Doubt (thriller), Ride (comedy), I'm Losing You (drama) and Gummo (drama).

If you think they don't make movies like that any more, you'll enjoy this week's giveaway - a selection of titles from Warner Bros' Century Collection. To be in the draw, simply write your name and address on the back of a postcard or envelope and send to: Century, 7Days, New Zealand Herald, PO Box 3290, Auckland. Entries close Friday, February 25; winners published on Thursday, March 2.