About Richard Baylis
Richard was born in Chesterfield in November 1957, which makes him 45 at the time of writing. Since then he has lived in Kent, Sussex, and Gwent. He now lives in Chelmsford, Essex with his wife and two children who largely tolerate his passion for DVD and Home Cinema, and the time he spends studying or browsing the web. The fact that he is still madly in love with his wife is probably a sign of a biological imbalance or illness from which he does not want to be cured, thank you very much.
A fan of DVD since buying his first player and disk back in February 2000, his only regret is the inevitable limit that family finances put on acquiring DVDs. Otherwise the living room would be full of them. Actually, then he'd have another regret - that he doesn't have time to watch them all, so perhaps it's just as well.
With some films crossing multiple genre boundaries, he finds it difficult to easily categorise what films he does like. So he finds it easier to say he's not a fan of very violent movies, gross-out comedies, and any film that insults the audience's intelligence with bad plotting and characters. Otherwise, turn down the lights, bring on the popcorn, and let's go.
Latest Reviews By: Richard Baylis
Richard Baylis
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11/07/2005 00:00:00
Plot Outline
In the mid-1940s people didn't talk openly about their sex lives. Alfred Kinsey, an Indiana University professor specialising in studying Gall Wasps, comes to realise that his students are fearful and ill-informed on sexual matters and resolved to provide a course to combat the ignorance and misinformation so prevalent at....
Richard Baylis
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11/04/2005 00:00:00
Plot Outline
Charles Condomine (Rex Harrison) is a successful writer who has invited the rather eccentric local medium Madame Arcati (Margaret Rutherford) to provide an after dinner séance. He assumes that she's a charlatan and plans to gather material from the evening for his latest book. His second wife, Ruth (Constance Cummings), and their guests are....
Richard Baylis
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11/04/2005 00:00:00
Plot Outline
Like a lot of teenage girls, Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) feels frustrated at being neither a girl nor yet a woman, and finds comfort playing out scenes from her favourite book "Labyrinth". When her anger at being left once again to look after her baby step-brother boils over, she imagines the goblins from this fantasy world will come and take him....
Richard Baylis
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11/04/2005 00:00:00
Plot Outline
Bill Markham is an engineer and on a trip with his family out to the area where he is building a dam in Brazil. His young son, Tommy, is exploring when he encounters a mysterious tribe who shun contact with the modern world. When he disappears with these 'Invisible People' into the rainsforest...
Richard Baylis
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11/04/2005 00:00:00
Plot Outline
It's 1940 and Violette Bushell (Virginia McKenna) is indulging her French mother's idea to offer hospitality to a French soldier who is on leave in London and may be feeling a little homesick. Thus Violette meets Etienne Szabo (Alain Saury), a rather handsome officer and it spurred on by the accelerated need to live life fully that often happens in....
Richard Baylis
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11/04/2005 00:00:00
They are Four Foot Tall, Fat and Furry. The Wombles have been picking up rubbish since the dawn of time, quietly and unseen by Mankind. But things have got so bad recently that young Bungo Womble decides to try and make them listen before it's too late. Unfortunately, most people don't see the Wombles because they don't realise they exist.
Richard Baylis
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11/04/2005 00:00:00
As a twist on the conventional tale of Sherlock Holmes, it's Dr. Watson (Ben Kingsley) who is the super sleuth. But as his hopes for an important appointment would be damaged by admitting this, he invents the character of Sherlock Holmes. Unfortunately as Holmes' fame spread he needed a real person to appear as the super sleuth. So he employed an out of work actor Reginald...
Richard Baylis
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11/04/2005 00:00:00
Is there anyone who really needs a synopsis of this one? OK... Patrick McGoohan plays an unnamed man who resigns from an obviously sensitive job in a British intelligence service. On returning to his home he is knocked out by gas and awakens in a mysterious place known only as the Village.
Richard Baylis
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11/04/2005 00:00:00
Tagline
Your children are not your children, for they dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit even in your dreams.
Plot Outline
The Tomorrow People are a group of youngsters that represent the next step in the evolution of mankind. Gifted with powers of telepathy, teleportation (which they called 'jaunting'), and telekinesis they fend off alie
Richard Baylis
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11/04/2005 00:00:00
Plot Outline
In the first story, reviewed here, The Tomorrow People had to prevent Jedikiah from carrying out his evil plan and whilst onboard a spaceship orbiting Earth, Jedikiah is revealed as a shape changing robot. Cast into space during the showdown, the new story starts with Jedikiah being marooned for 50
Richard Baylis
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11/04/2005 00:00:00
Richard Baylis takes a look at the Special Edition DVD release of A Fish Called Wanda and finds an excellent release of one of his favourite comedies.
Richard Baylis
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11/04/2005 00:00:00
Plot Outline
On April 11 1970, three men set off on the thirteenth Apollo mission, and although there was nothing routine about landing on the moon to the professionals in the space program, public apathy had already set in. This was the third time Americans would have landed on the moon, and whilst experienced veteran Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks) did a live broadcast from the spac.....
Richard Baylis
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11/04/2005 00:00:00
Plot Outline
Garfield (voice by Bill Murray) enjoys an idyllic life of lazing and lasagne in the home of his 'primary carer' Jon (Breckin Meyer). He even tolerates his interest in Veterinary Surgeon Liz (Jennifer Love Hewitt) despite the fact that this increases his trips to the surgery whilst Jon struggles to get up the courage to ask her out. One such trip leads to Jon tak.....
Richard Baylis
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11/04/2005 00:00:00
Alex Linden (played by Art Garfunkel) is an American Research Psychologist living in Vienna who has been drawn into an emotional nightmare of a relationship with free-spirited Milena (Theresa Russell). At the hospital where surgeons attempt to save her life from an overdose of pills, he reflects on the events that have led up to this act...