Norman Bird Movies

This lavishly mounted adaptation of the play by William Nicholson tells the true story of the doomed love affair between novelist and noted Christian scholar C.S. Lewis and a Jewish-American poet. Anthony Hopkins stars as C.S. "Jack" Lewis, an Oxford professor and successful author of the Chronicles of Narnia series of children's fantasy novels. A confirmed bachelor, Jack's existence is an inward life of the mind. Somewhat detached from the world, his only social outlet is evenings out at a local pub discussing philosophy and religion with his fellow lecturers. Jack has been corresponding with a bluntly intelligent American woman, Joy Gresham (Debra Winger), who arrives to visit him, with her young son Douglas (Joseph Mazzello) in tow. She tells Jack that she has actually fled from an abusive marriage and plans to divorce, and Jack astonishes friends and family by agreeing to a platonic marriage with Joy so that she can obtain British citizenship. As their friendship deepens and Joy discovers that she has a terminal illness, the relationship between Joy and Jack becomes a genuine romance, and their marriage turns into a real commitment. Shadowlands (1993) had previously been filmed as a well-regarded British television movie in 1985 starring Joss Ackland as Lewis. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

The second sequel to the 1976 horror hit The Omen finds Damien Thorn assuming the full mantle of the Antichrist and preparing for a final, all-out battle with "the Nazarene." Now in his thirties, Damien (Sam Neill) has elevated the family business, Thorn Industries, into the world's biggest multinational corporation. A little bit of black magic paves the way for Damien to become ambassador to England and the head of an international youth council. He soon uses this platform to amass an army of followers to do his bidding. But when Damien notices the confluence of three stars in the sky on March 24, he gets worried about the second coming of Christ. So he orders his minions to kill all the babies born on that day, warning them: "Fail, and you will be condemned to a numbing eternity in the flaccid bosom of Christ." Damien even orders his faithful private secretary, Harvey Dean (Don Gordon), to commit infanticide on his own kid, just because the guy's wife gave birth on the wrong day; a nasty incident involving laundry-room implements soon follows. Meanwhile, Damien romances Kate Reynolds (Lisa Harrow), a beautiful television anchorwoman who feels like a moth drawn to Damien's charismatic flame -- even after he brutally sodomizes her to show her how the world looks through his eyes. Things come to a head when Brother DeCarlo (Rossano Brazzi), one of a secret cabal of monks who have assembled the seven Daggers of Meggido in hopes of assassinating Damien, reveals to Kate that the Antichrist has taken her son (Barnaby Holm) under his wing. Although The Final Conflict was the final theatrical installment of the Omen series, the made-for-TV Omen IV: The Awakening appeared a decade later. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

Controversial animator Ralph Bakshi's literal adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's classic fantasy trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, is brought to the screen in a reverent, stilted way, with Bakshi forsaking his sharp-edged animated looniness for a rotoscoped dullness. Although the film's title encompasses the entire Tolkien trilogy, this longish Bakshi feature, in fact, covers only the first book, The Fellowship of the Ring, and the first half of the second, The Two Towers. Given the complexity of the original story line, this unfortunately means that only those intimately familiar with the books will be able to understand what is happening in the movie. In brief, however, an evil sorcerer from a previous era created a magical ring which enables its users to call upon its tremendous powers to rule the world, but it inevitably warps them to evil. It was believed lost, but during a resurgence of magical evil in the world, Bilbo, a simple, plain-spoken hobbit, recovers it from its hiding place. The forces of good give his nephew Frodo the choice to bear the awful burden of the ring to a place where it may be destroyed. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Filmed in Austria, this British-made musical retells the story of Cinderella as it is found in books of fairy tales. The Prince, Edward, is played by Richard Chamberlain, Cinderella by Gemma Craven. In her role as the Prince's witty mother, Dame Edith Evans provides many of the movie's highlights. The musical score and songs written by Richard Sherman and Robert B. Sherman, who also provided the music to the movie Mary Poppins, were nominated for Academy Awards. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In this comedy, two men pursue four very valuable women who have tattooed the location of stolen bonds upon their rumps. The Mafia is also in pursuit of the marked women. The two fellows are lead to Rome where the lead character tries to sell the Sistine Chapel to American tourists. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Malcom McDowell, who went on to play a chillingly heartless young man in A Clockwork Orange, here plays Bruce, a cheerful young athlete and aspiring writer whose injuries get the better of him on the evening of his colorless brother's wedding. He loses the use of his legs and is sent to a home for the handicapped. As a result of his disability, his attitude undergoes a profound change, and he becomes a surly, resentful and difficult young man. At the home, he meets a young woman (Nanette Newman) whose disability has lasted much longer than his, and they fall in love. They become engaged, but she dies before they can get married. While this sounds relentlessly melancholy, the heart of the movie is the way in which each of the two has enriched the life of the other, and the movie is a good deal more upbeat than it sounds. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Hammer's trademark gothic style permeates this suspenseful thriller, considered one of the acclaimed British studio's superior efforts, thanks largely to the directorial skills of Peter Sasdy. This marked his last feature-length collaboration with the studio until 1980, when he returned to direct installments of the Hammer House of Horror television series. In the film's prologue, young Anna, the infant daughter of the notorious Jack the Ripper, witnesses her mother's brutal murder at her father's hands. Years later, the lovely teenage Anna (Angharad Rees) is plagued by traumatic memories of the incident and repressed impulses in which love and death are inextricably linked. These impulses finally turn homicidal when her emotions are stirred, spelling doom for anyone who arouses her. Anna's case is handled by the repressed psychoanalyst, Dr. Pritchard (Eric Porter), whose growing physical attraction to the girl could result in far worse than a mere breach of professional ethics. Sasdy weaves the psychological elements through the story with finesse, paralleling the sexual tension between the doctor and his patient with the mounting horror of the inevitable outcome. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

Like Socrates of ancient Athens, Michael Rimmer (Peter Cook) of modern England believes the key to success is to ask the right questions. Lots of questions. So he gets a job with an advertising agency that conducts polls, rises swiftly through the ranks, and eventually runs the agency. Then he bombards England with questions. His ingenious system enables him to predict the outcome of a general election. (Every voter in England had received a questionnaire.) So accomplished is Rimmer at asking questions that he finds his future wife through market research. To insure that he gets the right answers, Rimmer is not above manipulating the polls. For example, when he asks residents of Coventry their religion, 95 percent identify themselves as Buddhists, thanks to an influx of Rimmer stooges. Then he enters politics. In a short time, he gets himself elected to Parliament, becomes a cabinet minister and eventually moves into Ten Downing Street as prime minister after pushing the incumbent prime minister off an oil platform. By this time, every eligible voter in Britain can cast ballots with a television remote control. Alas, the electorate tires of the endless referendum questions that they must answer as part of their daily routine. This development serves only to catapult Rimmer to further success, for the people decide to place all decisions in his hands as dictator of England. So Rimmer keeps rising and rising and rising. And asking questions. ~ Mike Cummings, All Movie Guide

This story of Cold War double-crossing finds British secret agent Manston (Craig Stevens) trying to break up a group of Russian agents who return defectors to Moscow for brainwashing. When a Russian ballerina defects to Germany, Manston goes after the head of The Limbo Line in an effort to stop the group from kidnapping the defectors. Acting against the orders of his boss, Manston is faced with killing the communist leader of the movement in Germany or allowing the dancer to be turned over for interrogation and reprisals for her political beliefs. Matters are further complicated when Manston finds himself falling for the ballerina. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Years before the story proper in The Wrong Box gets under way, a "tontine" is drawn up on behalf several young British boys. Each of the boys' parents had placed 1000 pounds in a pool, to be invested and expanded upon. The resultant fortune will go to the last surving member of the tontine. A series of montages depicts the various demises of the heirs (our favorite occurs when one of them is inadvertently beheaded while being knighted by Queen Victoria). Finally, only two of the tontine participants are left: aged brothers Ralph Richardson and John Mills. On his last legs, Mills is determined that Richardson will not outlive him, and to that end attempts to kill his brother; each attempt fails spectacularly, with the doddering Richardson none the wiser. Standing to benefit from the tontine are Mills' dimwitted med-student son Michael Caine and Richardson's greedy nephews Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. When Richardson is supposedly killed in a train wreck, Cook and Moore don't want the authorities to find out, so they appropriate what they think is their uncle's corpse and ship it home in a box. Thus it is that Caine finds the body of a perfect stranger on his doorstep. The farcical complications begin flying about thick and fast from this point onward. Among the participants in this wacky gigglefest are such formidable talents as Peter Sellers, Tony Hancock, Wilfred Lawson, Thorley Walters, Norman Rossington, Irene Handl and Cicely Courtenedge. Based on a novel by Robert Louis Stevenson, The Wrong Box is a delightful harkback to the glory days of Britain's Ealing comedies. We were so wrapped up in the story that we didn't even notice all those TV antennae sprouting up on the rooftops of Victorian London. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Beauty Jungle can hardly be considered an expose of the beauty-contest business, since most of what happens in the film is what the average viewer has suspected all along. The lovely and graceful British leading lady Janette Scott stars as an ambitious typist who enters the "Miss Globe" pageant. She doesn't care what she does or whom she hurts along the way, the result being that she wins the competition. But when the anticipated decline sets in, she confronts the same embittered people on the downward spiral that she stepped over during her upward climb. Cliched though it may seem on paper, The Beauty Jungle is fascinating in its own garish way; the film was issued to the US under the title Contest Girl. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This staid British thriller stars John Turner as 18th-century nobleman Sir John Fordyce, whose blissful honeymoon holiday is cut brutally short by angry locals who accuse him of raping a woman from the village. Worse, they claim to have seen the ghost of his first wife riding through town on horseback, shrieking that she had died by her husband's hand. Despite Sir John's protestations of innocence, the hand of fate seems to be closing in, as more violent acts are perpetrated -- including the death of his father -- and his new bride (Heather Sears) is prepared to shoot him dead if he comes near her. All is revealed in the contrived climax -- which plays out like a Gothic version of a "Scooby-Doo" episode. The filmmakers tried to punch things up with a plethora of cheap spook-house gimmicks but fail to disguise the threadbare plot. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

This British comedy comes from Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, writers of the hit television program Steptoe and Son. Harry H. Corbett (who played Steptoe, Jr. on the tube) is Hemel, a canal-cruising bargee who is dead-set against marriage. He goes about his freewheeling ways until he finds out that he has impregnated one of his playthings (Julia Foster). Unfortunately for him, the young woman's father (Hugh Griffith) is the lock-keeper and he is not about to get out of this predicament without a vow or two. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide