Stars: Charlie Sheen, Willem Dafoe, Tom Berenger, Joe Pesci, Tom Cruise, Dustin Hoffman, Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton

Director: James Cameron

Summary: Collection of male-skewed 80s-era epics. Includes PLATOON, RAGING BULL, RAIN MAN, DIE HARD and THE TERMINATOR.

WIN DVDs by rating this DVD

Average User Rating:

WIN DVDS by being amongst the first to review this DVD. Reviewing DVDs earns you bonus entries and lets you WIN DVDs!Please login before reviewing this DVD. If you're a new user, register for free and enter to WIN FREE DVDs!

Winning a raft of awards, not least of which were four Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, Oliver Stone's Platoon was a box-office smash heralding Hollywood's second wave of Vietnam war films. Platoon simply showed the daily reality of the war from the point of view of ordinary soldiers and Stone's own service in Vietnam gives his work a unique authenticity. Charlie Sheen gives his best performance to date, enduring a series of increasingly large-scale and bloody battles but against this gruelling verity the film falters over the symbolic conflict between good and evil sergeants played by Willem Dafoe and Tom Berenger. Even though this was also based in real life, it strikes a too conventionally Hollywood-like note in a film which otherwise maintains much of the raw power of Stone's other film from 1986, Salvador. Stone would return to Vietnam with the more sophisticated Born on the Fourth of July and Heaven and Earth.

The high-point in the long fruitful partnership of Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, and widely reckoned one of the finest films of the 1980s, Raging Bull still looks like a contender. Based on the ghosted autobiography of 1940s boxing champion Jake La Motta, it's the most searing, intense and often painful to watch of Scorsese's explorations into the nature of masculinity and macho values. The rise of La Motta, the taut, cocky young fighting machine from the Bronx, is bookended by the scenes in which, as a paunchy, bloated has-been 20 years later, he's reduced to acting out self-pitying monologues in a tawdry Manhattan nightclub. Making their starring debuts, Joe Pesci (as La Motta's long-suffering brother and manager), and Cathy Moriarty as his delicate-featured, abused child-wife, both grab their opportunities with both hands. But the film's dominated from the outset by De Niro's tour de force performance as the brutal, hair-triggered La Motta, viciously lashing out at the world in self-destructive fury. Raging Bull was nominated for eight Oscars and picked up two, one for De Niro, and one for Thelma Schoonmaker's editing.

Rain Man is the kind of touching drama that Oscars are made for--and, sure enough, the film took Academy honours for best picture, director, screenplay, and actor (Dustin Hoffman) in 1988. Hoffman plays Raymond, an autistic savant whose late father has left him $3 million in a trust. This gets the attention of his materialistic younger brother, a hot-shot LA car dealer named Charlie (Tom Cruise) who wasn't even aware of Raymond's existence until he read his estranged father's will. Charlie picks up Raymond and takes him on a cross-country journey that becomes a voyage of discovery for Charlie, and, perhaps, for Raymond, too. Rain Man will either captivate you or irritate you (Raymond's sputtering of repetitious phrases is enough to drive anyone crazy), but it is obviously a labour of love for those involved. Hoffman had been attached to the film for many years, as various directors and writers came and went, but his persistence eventually paid off--kind of like Raymond in Las Vegas. Look for director Barry Levinson in a cameo as a psychiatrist near the end of the film. --Jim Emerson

This seminal 1988 thriller made Bruce Willis a star and established a new template for action stories: "Terrorists take over a (blank), and a lone hero, unknown to the villains, is trapped with them." In Die Hard, those bad guys, led by the velvet-voiced Alan Rickman, assume control of a Los Angeles high-rise with Willis's visiting New York cop inside. The attraction of the film has as much to do with the sight of a barefoot mortal running around the guts of a modern office tower as it has to do with the plentiful fight sequences and the bond the hero establishes with an LA beat cop. Bonnie Bedelia plays Willis's wife, Hart Bochner is good as a brash hostage who tries negotiating his way to freedom, Alexander Godunov makes for a believable killer with lethal feet, and William Atherton is slimy as a busybody reporter. This film is exceptionally well directed by John McTiernan. --Tom Keogh

The Terminator was the film that cemented Arnold Schwarzenegger's place in the action-brawn firmament, and both his and the movie's subsequent iconic status are well deserved. He's chilling as the futuristic cyborg that kills without fear, without love, without mercy. James Cameron's story and direction are pared to the bone and are all the more chillingly effective for it. But don't overlook the contribution of Linda Hamilton, who more than holds her own as the Terminator's would-be victim, Sarah Connor, thus creating--along with Sigourney Weaver in Alien--a new generation of rugged, clear-thinking female action stars. The film's minimalist, malevolent violence is actually scarier than that of its far more expensive, more effects-laden sequel. --Anne Hurley, Amazon.com

Aspect Ratio:	16:9 Anamorphic Wide Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Interactive menu, Scene selection
Release Date:	October 1, 2007
Runtime:	596 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	3759601000
Keywords:	Man, Die, Bull, English, Club, Movie, Rain, General, Young, Ultimate, Hard, Guns, Platoon, Raging, Drama, 80s, Vol
Genre:	Drama