Alastair Reid Movies

A gullible German reporter attempts to revive his floundering career by releasing Hitler's lost diaries, only to find that he's become the victim of an elaborate hoax, in this black comedy based on actual events. Gerd Heidemann (Jonathan Pryce) calls himself "The Bloodhound" for his uncanny ability to sniff out a lead. But lately Gerd's nose has led him astray, so upon unearthing some documents that appear to be The Führer's personal writings, he persuades Stern Manazine that the story is worth millions. But after the editors cough up the cash for the documents, it's discovered that a Stuttgart counterfeiter has been selling the fakes at his shop for years. Of course now that virtually every major media outlet in the world has run the story, they'll require a scapegoat to keep their reputations intact, and their empires from crumbling. Barry Humphries, Tom Baker, Alison Doody, and Alan Bennett co-star. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Author Armistead Maupin's serialized tale of sexual infidelity and identity in 1970s San Francisco becomes a sprawling comic melodrama in this much-acclaimed miniseries. Produced by PBS and Britain's Channel 4, Tales of the City covers in its five hours the interlocking stories of more than a dozen main characters, many of whom reside at 28 Barbary Lane, a quaint multi-apartment house overseen by the open-minded but enigmatic Mrs. Madrigal (Olympia Dukakis). Among her stable of residents are the acerbic, unlucky-in-love Mona Ramsey (Chloe Webb) and her occasional roommate Michael Tolliver (Marcus D'Amico), who's her constant companion -- that is, when he's not shacked up with one of an endless series of short-term boyfriends. Mrs. Madrigal's newest charge is the apple-cheeked Mary Ann Singleton (Laura Linney), a naïve young woman from the Midwest who's come to San Francisco to visit her friend Connie (Parker Posey), but ends up staying, in search of both a career and a husband. It isn't long before she finds the former; unfortunately, along with it comes the unwanted advances of her boss Beauchamp Day (Thomas Gibson), a philandering executive unhappily married to his boss Edgar's daughter, DeDe (Barbara Garrick). Meanwhile, the regal Edgar (Donald Moffat) happens to be conducting an affair of his own with none other than Mrs. Madrigal. Also starring Bill Campbell and Paul Gross, Tales of the City was first aired on Channel 4 in the spring of 1993 and made its PBS premiere in the winter of 1994, when it garnered some of the network's highest ratings ever, amidst vocal protest of the show's risqué content. ~ Michael Hastings, Rovi

A co-production of Euston Television and Warner Sisters, the five-part British miniseries $elling Hitler was a doggedly irreverent dramatization of one of the most notorious (and embarrassing) literary hoaxes in history. The events took place in 1983, when a smooth-talking German gent named Konrad Fischer (Alexei Sayle) appeared virtually out of nowhere, claiming to have unearthed the authentic diaries of Adolf Hitler. Fischer's story -- and the evidence at hand -- proved persuasive enough to pull the wool over the eyes of two leading publications. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This four-hour, six-episode British miniseries, broadcast on Channel 4 in 1989 and in America on PBS's Masterpiece Theatre in 1990, provided the basis for Traffic, Steven Soderbergh's 2000 Oscar winner. Though Soderbergh and screenwriter Stephen Gaghan borrowed much of their plot and structure from the original, Traffik focuses on the European drug trade instead of the American one and utilizes England, Germany, and Pakistan as its major settings. One of the three primary plot strands involves Jack Lithgow (Bill Paterson), a member of the British Parliament, who discovers that his daughter, Caroline (Julia Ormond), is a heroin addict despite the fact that he leads the country's Drug Abuse Committee. In a parallel story line, Helen Rosshalde (Lindsay Duncan), the British wife of German drug smuggler Karl Rosshalde (George Kukura), must take over her husband's illegal operations after an associate turns state's evidence and Karl goes on trial. In the third interwoven segment, and the one that diverges the farthest from the plot of the American film, Pakistani poppy farmer Fazel (Jamal Shah) ingratiates himself to drug overlord Tariq Butt (Talat Hussain) in order to support his family after the Pakistani government, at the insistence of Lithgow and other British officials, cracks down on the subsistence-level farmers who supply the heroin trade with its raw materials. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi

In this suspenseful drama, a British spy goes head-to-head with a Soviet agent to see who can be the first to retrieve top secret documents before nuclear arms negotiations begin. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Peter R. Hunt directed this World War I action-adventure, based upon the novel by Wilbur Smith. Roger Moore and Lee Marvin team up as Sebastian, a witty and cosmopolitan Englishman, and Flynn O'Flynn, a boozy and ornery Irish American, who decide to blow up a German battleship that has been hidden away for repairs in Southeast Africa. Helping the two in their quest to sink the battleship is Sebastian's wife Rosa (Barbara Parkins), who has her own reasons for seeing the ship is destroyed -- the Germans took the life of her only child. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

Also released under the title Something to Hide, this film follows the slow disintegration of a man's (Peter Finch) life due to the problems brought on by his troubled marriage, his drinking, and the appearance of a strange hitchhiker (Linda Hayden). ~ Iotis Erlewine, Rovi

Luci (Linda Hayden) is the illegitimate teenage sex kitten who goes to live with a doctor and his family after her sleazy, promiscuous mother (Diana Dors) dies. Robert (Keith Barron) is the doctor who may very well be Luci's father. Convinced Robert contributed to her mother's demise by rejecting her years ago, Luci sets out to destroy her new family. She teases the teenage son with kisses before bringing out the lesbian leanings of the mother Amy (Ann Lynn). After putting on a show for the neighbors and dancing with an ominous black man in a sleazy nightclub, Luci sets her sights on Robert in this shocking tale of a titillating teenage tramp. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi