In addition to new releases, the Moovies video rental store, 1504 North Leg Road at Jackson Road stocks these classic rentals Photo by Natalee Waters/Staff

Beloved flicks

The best videos aren't all to be found in the New Releases

Web posted November 17, 1996

 A few picks

By Tom Corwin
Staff Writer

You might think it is the dreamy turn-of-the-century setting, the romantic tragedy of love across time or the performances of Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. But what really gets Marie Hodges about the movie Somewhere in Time is the music.

``The music is worth it,'' said Mrs. Hodges. ``If you don't like romantic movies, rent it for the music.''

Her suggestion might be worth remembering the next time you're in the video store. When all the new, hot releases are checked out, and you dread facing Judge Dredd again, you might wander down the aisles and look for some of these forgotten classics. The movies were culled from reader and staff suggestions over the past few weeks. Some may be movies you haven't seen in years; others will be classics you've never seen. They're all worth taking a chance on.

Mrs. Hodges suggests Somewhere in Time, the 1980 movie starring Mr. Reeve as a young playwright who becomes smitten with a 1900s-era actress (Ms. Seymour) after coming across her photo. He pursues the obsession to a country inn where by force of will he is able to cross time and meet her. The music, Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, is what really transports Mrs. Hodges, who jokes that she has seen the movie ``about 500 times.''

Another movie worth returning to is The Goodbye Girl, suggests Angie Greenwald of Augusta. The 1977 Neil Simon romantic comedy features Marsha Mason as a 30-ish divorcee who finds that her ex-lover has sublet their New York apartment to an aspiring actor, Richard Dreyfuss, who then proceeds to woo and win her.

``It has held up well over the years,'' Mrs. Greenwald said.

Others to check out:

NEWER RELEASES

MYSTERY:
FARGO (1996) - Joel and Ethan Coen, the brothers who gave you the quirky comedy Raising Arizona, work a similar magic in the frozen North. A hapless car salesman hires two strange hooligans to kidnap his rich wife so they can split the ransom. Along the way, the kidnappers go on a murder spree, and a pregnant, small-town police chief gets hot on their trail. Based on a very odd true story. (R)

THE MIGHTY QUINN (1989) - A young Denzel Washington stars as a Caribbean island police chief who pursues his best friend from childhood for the murder of a wealthy island resort owner. (R)

COMEDY:
HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS (1995) - In another suggestion from Mrs. Greenwald, Holly Hunter's collapsing life only gets worse when she returns home for Thanksgiving to face her oddball family.

I LOVE YOU TO DEATH (1990) - A philandering Italian pizza parlor owner (Kevin Kline) learns just how much his wife loves him when she catches him cheating on her, and she and her Yugoslavian mother plot his demise. A nice dark comedy again based on an odd but true story. (R)

MILAGRO BEANFIELD WAR (1988) - A mystic, fairy-tale comedy about a young farmer in New Mexico who accidentally sets off a rebellion by stealing water from a wealthy landowner's canal to farm his father's bean field.

DRAMA:
DIVA (1982) - One of those rare movies in which the images on screen can truly be called breathtaking. The story follows a young messenger boy who is an opera fanatic. He secretly records a concert by the premier singer, who has never let her voice be recorded. But when his tape is then mixed up with a recording by a mob informant, he is hunted by hit men.

MATEWAN (1987) - A battle over unions in the West Virginia coalfields in the 1920s erupts in the little town of Matewan. Director John Sayles weaves a gritty and convincing story of the struggle between a union organizer and company thugs, between hard-scrabble hill people and Italian immigrants and Southern blacks who must unite to fight the powerful coal company.

MYSTIC PIZZA (1988) - Julia Roberts, Lilli Taylor and Annabeth Gish star as blue-collar waitresses in a New England resort town who sort their way through love and relationships in their comic struggle to find a better life.

SECRET OF ROAN INISH (1995) - A modern fable about a small Irish girl who is sent to live with her grandparents and yearns to see again the little brother carried away by the tide. She learns of the family's home island, the brother's true whereabouts and the family's mythic connection to the seals that line the stunning Irish coastline.

ACTION:
LA FEMME NIKITA (1991) - A beautiful but feral young woman is saved from the guillotine only by agreeing to become an assassin for the French government. A dark and haunting thriller, French with English subtitles, but worth the effort. (R)

SCI-FI:
THE ABYSS (1989) - Even if you've seen it, it's worth renting again. An underwater drilling crew called on by the government to rescue a crippled submarine runs into eerie secrets and madness deep under the ocean. (R)

BLADE RUNNER (1982) - Harrison Ford creates another woeful tough guy, this time in a haunting, multi-ethnic future Los Angeles where his mission is to hunt down human-like robots that were meant for space work but escaped to Earth. Rutger Hauer is the superhuman android who eludes him as he hunts for his ``creator.''

CLASSICS

DRAMA:
BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK (1954) - Spencer Tracy is a crippled war veteran who comes to the small town of Black Rock in 1945 to deliver a medal won posthumously by a farmer's son. Instead, he stumbles across the town's sinister secret.

BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (1925) - Good luck finding this one, but good for you if you do. The silent Russian classic by director Sergei Einstein depicts a mutiny by the crew of the Potemkin during the uprising of 1905.

THE GRADUATE (1967) - Dustin Hoffman is a young, naive college graduate who gets a lot of advice (``One word. Plastics.'') and a little more attention than he can handle from a lusty neighbor, Mrs. Robinson. Amidst their affair, however, he falls for her daughter, Elaine. Simon and Garfunkel soundtrack.

IMITATION OF LIFE (1959) - The beautiful daughter of a black maid decides to try to pass herself off as a white woman, only to lose her soul and her mother in the process. Lana Turner stars.

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (1962) - Bette Davis is a former child star eclipsed by her quieter but more talented sister, played by Joan Crawford, until the sister becomes bedridden. Forced to care for her helpless sister, Ms. Davis in her resentment begins to torture her.

COMEDY:
REMEMBER THE NIGHT (1940) - Fred McMurray is a prosecutor who takes pity on a poor woman brought up for trial on shoplifting charges and delays her case so he can take her home to the kind of family she never had.

MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE (1948) - Cary Grant and Myrna Loy are hoping to escape the city and build their lives around a country dream house only to find that they bought more than they could handle.

SCI-FI:
THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951) - A classic science fiction thriller about aliens who come to Earth and turn out to be not monsters but saviours.

MYSTERY:
A SHOT IN THE DARK (1964) - One of the earliest - and funniest - Inspector Clouseau mysteries. Peter Sellers bumbles his way through the murder investigation of a millionaire while trying to clear the man's sexy maid, Elke Sommer.

THE CONVERSATION (1974) - Surveillance man Gene Hackman finds himself under surveillance and pulled into a web of deceit and murder. Considered one of director Francis Ford Coppola's better movies.

IN COLD BLOOD (1967) - An all-too-real but stylish depiction of Truman Capote's true tale of two Kansas drifters who murder a family and the detective who tracks them down.

ROPE (1948) - In the space of an actual hour and a half, two demented intellectuals will kill their friend, stuff his body in a box and then serve a dinner party to his friends. James Stewart is the former professor who gets suspicious and in a terrific cat-and-mouse game of sly questioning tries to discover the truth. A great Alfred Hitchcock film.

SUSPICION (1941) - Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine in another mesmerizing Hitchcock movie. Ms. Fontaine marries playboy Mr. Grant, then suspects he is trying to kill her for her money to pay off his debts. There is a terrific scene where he goes down to the kitchen to get a glass of milk to help her sleep. As he carries the suspicious glass through the darkened house it seems to glow.

WESTERNS:
MISSOURI BREAKS (1976) - Jack Nicholson is a sleazy thief out to avenge a friend's death and steal a few horses on the side; Marlon Brando plays the twisted, vicious hired gun sent to kill him and his gang.

THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES (1976) - You've probably seen it, but it's worth renting again. Clint Eastwood is Wales, a Missouri farmer whose family is slaughtered, sending him on rampage of revenge that results in a price on his head. Along the way, he inadvertently rescues an old chieftain, a squaw and a Kansas family who claim that ``nothing good ever came out of Missouri.''