8-Film British Cinema Collection V.2

I bought this set only for this one movie. It's the only one I've watched so far. In my entire life, I've only seen this movie twice, so I wanted my own copy to watch over and over. To see Katharine Hepburn and Lawrence Olivier spar is superb!! It's one of the few movies where the delight in watching it spreads a huge smile on my face all the way through. You'll just be amazed at their acting and repartee. This is one of my favorite movies of all times. I couldn't begin to say which actor I loved the most in this movie. They are both just incredible. I can't imagine ever getting tired of watching it - each time there is something new to observe and notice. Love it, love it, love it!!

These 8-film British Cinema collections are a good deal because they usually mix genres. So if one film is not your cup of Oolong, then others may be. I have only watched _Rowing with the Wind_ and _Dirty Pretty Things_, but each was entertaining regarding the novel _Frankenstein's_ creation (Rowing) or enlightening about London's underclass of undocumented workers (Things). The only reason I do not give five stars is that some films are of greater quality than others: more a major work by a given actor while other films are minor.

Imagine getting 16 award winning films that you never saw for $14 + change and you would snap it up. That is what is being offerred between the 2 volumes available. I never read Stevenson's St. Ives but boy was that an interesting story. I also loved Katherine Hepburn in Love among the ruins and enjoyed the inheritance. Just those 3 movies alone are worth $14 and you still have 13 more to choose from. These are movies unlikely to appear often on American TV but they are all Award Winners of British Cinema. I wholeheartedly recommend both DVD sets...

Not going to go into details on each film's plot and such, because many of you are probably here for maybe only one or two of the titles and you already know what you'd like to know about them.While the top banner says "Miramax," only four of the films actually came from Miramax:Robert Louis Stevenson's St. Ives (the only such film on its disc)Dirty Pretty ThingsRowing With The WindRogue TraderThe others come from their respective US rights holders, except for Anna Karenina, which is public domain.The set is a 2-DVD amaray case with two discs inside, each one also available on its own. Each DVD9 disc holds four movies, so yes they're compressed to about half the filesize they should be. Adjust your expectations accordingly, especially if viewing on a high definition television, but the picture quality definitely isn't as bad as you'd expect having previewed all of the films and watched two of them so far in full. Many seem to be sourced from direct film-to-digital transfers, although The Inheritance, Love Among The Ruins, and Anna Karenina seem to be sourced from videotape masters. This is one of the better public domain copies of Anna Karenina you'll find - the print used seems to have fewer issues than most, but still doesn't compare to what I've seen of the official DVD from Fox.The main draw for many to this set will be the US DVD debut of Love Among The Ruins, a 1975 ABC movie directed by George Cukor and featuring the only screen pairing of lifelong friends Katharine Hepburn and Laurence Olivier - all three won Emmys for their work. The disc featuring that film, plus St. Ives, Anna Karenina, and The Inheritance is also available separately, and Love Among The Ruins and Anna Karenina are also available in an 8-DVD 36-film set from Echo Bridge called Hollywood Greats. Out of print on VHS and laserdisc for years, not seen on TV in decades, and only released to DVD outside the US, it's nice to not only have it on DVD, but in nicely-priced sets that give you 3, 7, or 35 other films. (Try to find the Hollywood Greats set on sale for less than the $22.49 Amazon's asking - most of those films will be public domain copies, and I find $22.49 to be a bit much to pay for 36 public domain films when one can often buy Mill Creek's 50-movie sets for $10-$15.)There are no subtitles, chapter menus only exist on one disc and just list them with generic names, although all 8 movies do have chapter stops approximately every 10 minutes. For the disc with Love Among The Ruins, you have to navigate to each movie's menu by clicking "Next" or "Previous," while the other disc simply has all four movie covers on one single menu. Audio is Dolby Digital 2.0. Three movies are in their original 4:3 release aspect ratio, one movie inexplicably is in roughly 16:9, but letterboxed within a 4:3 frame, and the other 4 are anamorphic widescreen. Bonus features are non-existent, which is fine considering how compressed the discs are to begin with and how little you're paying for 8 movies.So far I have watched Love Among The Ruins and Anna Karenina, and enjoyed both immensely. (Although I wouldn't place Anna Karenina above either of Greta Garbo's film adaptations, it was nice to see Vivien Leigh looking lovely and giving a great performance in the title role.) That alone makes it worth the $5.70 I paid for this disc. Would I have liked for them to have used 4 DVD9 discs with 2 movies on each one? Yes. Or even 2 flipper discs with each side being a DVD9. For a while, Mill Creek seemed to do many of their licensed titles from big Hollywood studios that way - only one movie per DVD5 or two movies per DVD9, although that still sometimes required compression, but it seems they've gone back to their original model of squeezing 2 films on a DVD5 or 4 films on a DVD9. Would I like subtitles? Yes. But I knew I wasn't going to get any of that when I purchased this set. For what it is, it's a nice set, and I'm looking forward to watching a few more of these films and hoping they're enjoyable enough that I've really gotten my money's worth.And on a superficial note, I really like the cover art on this release, and the quality of the printing. Echo Bridge has put out a lot of DVD's with covers that look like someone made them in PowerPoint and printed them off on a crappy printer. This DVD cover looks very classy and simply-but-elegantly designed, and the quality of the printing, at least on my copy, looks like it was printed at an actual DVD company and not someone's basement. Plus it's nice to have Katharine Hepburn be the star of the front cover, just as she was in real life.

As another reviewer noted, Love Among The Ruins is extraordinary - a film you will watch again and again for the immense satisfaction of enjoying the performance of two film icons in their senior years. If you have seen both of them in other films, seeing them together is almost a privilege. Yes, the focus is not crisp but once you get caught up in the acting you won't care. I haven't watched the other films yet but don't hesitate to buy this DVD for this film alone.

I've watched the first four movies in this collection, and I couldn't be more pleased with them. For any who who expects perfectly high color and clarity, expect that not all the movies will have sharp contract, color, etc. The acting is superb as only some of these classic actors, such as Kathryn Hepburn and others can provide. This is a great price and deal for the $7.xx investment.

I WAS RELUCTANT TO ORDER THESE TWO SETS--I'M ALL TOO FAMILIAR WITH "ANTHOLOGY" COLLECTIONS THAT ARE FOUND IN WALMART DUMPSTERS. NOT THIS TIME. THESE ARE IN TASTEFULLY DESIGNED AND WORKABLE CASES. BUT THE BIGGER PRIZE WAS A MASTERFUL SELECTION OF MAJOR FILMS, BEAUTIFULLY TRANSFERRED. WE'VE SCREENED FIVE TITLES FROM ONE OF THE VOLUMES AND THEY'RE ABSOLUTELY FIRST RATE.

A beautiful, well acted movie by two wonderful actors- love, trust, aging !!A wonderful movie about later life.Robert George

If you like great British acting then this, and the first collection, is a must have. Pretty well all are very well done and highly watchable. These collections are the sort that after you have watched them you want to keep them to watch a year later, they are those kind of movies.

We had not seen any of the films on these DVDs before, although the names of a couple of them were very familiar. There were two films we did not like, but the others were much better than we had expected - and the cost certainly made them very inexpensive!

Love among the Ruins is the best acting seen for some time and a story that holds the interest , St. Ives is well acted though the story is a bit unbelievable in places, the Inheritance is well acted and a good story, Anna Karenna is a great story bu the reproduction suffers in places, Rowing with the Wind is also engaging, the other three are add-ons to the good films and can be watched or left to die slow deaths. School for Seduction is without merit of any kind while Rogue Trader is mostly not understandable and slow and Dirty Pretty Things is watchable but not really believable.

I had seen this before. I only purchased it because I am a huge Kathryn Hepburn fan. Certainly not her best work. Most of the films were bordering on pornographic therefore I didn't watch. So dissapointing

Can't go wrong for the very reasonable price of this movie package. I like background noise when I'm sewing and I have a small tv off to the side of the sewing table. I've enjoyed every one of the movies in this package.