Search Results

• Quartet | DVD | (06/05/2013) from £9.99  |  Saving you £10.00 (50.00%)  |  RRP £19.99

• Broadchurch | DVD | (20/05/2013) from £14.99  |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)  |  RRP £N/A

  A hot morning in July and the Dorset town of Broadchurch, is bracing itself for the tourist season, when Danny Latimer, an 11 year old schoolboy, goes missing. His mother, Beth, frantically starts to search for him while her best friend, Ellie Miller, a local police officer, arrives at work to discover that the promotion she thought was hers has gone to D.I Alec Hardy, an outsider with a reputation for failure. When Danny's body is found beneath the picturesque cliffs that dominate the town, opposites collide. Both Miller and Hardy are determined to solve the mystery of Danny's murder, Ellie perhaps too sensitive to the people in her community; Alec as efficient as he is blunt. When news of the crime spreads through the town, a chain reaction begins which will put Broadchurch under a national spotlight, pulling the town, its residents and its secrets, apart. Special Features: Broadchurch: Behind the Scenes Cast Filmographies Picture Gallery Subtitles

• Star Trek XI (1-Disc Edition) | DVD | (16/11/2009) from £4.98  |  Saving you £15.01 (75.10%)  |  RRP £19.99

  Star Trek is back! Director J.J. Abrams brings you a brand new version of the classic space adventure! Star Trek chronicles the early days of James T Kirk and his fellow USS Enterprise crew. Leonard Nimoy returns to his iconic role as the half-Vulcan half-human Spock whilst Zachary Quinto stars as the young Spock. Chris Pine Karl urban Simon Pegg Anton Yelchin Zoe Saldana and John Cho star as the original series' characters whilst Eric Bana plays the Enterprise crew's nemesis; Nero!

• Lincoln | DVD | (10/06/2013) from £9.95  |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)  |  RRP £N/A

  As with the great John Ford (Young Mr. Lincoln) before him, it would be out of character for Steven Spielberg to construct a conventional, cradle-to-grave portrait of a historical figure. In drawing from Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals, the director instead depicts a career-defining moment in the career of Abraham Lincoln (an uncharacteristically restrained Daniel Day-Lewis). With the Civil War raging, and the death toll rising, the president focuses his energies on passage of the 13th Amendment. Even those sympathetic to the cause question his timing, but Lincoln doesn't see the two issues as separate, and the situation turns personal when his son, Robert (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), chooses to enlist rather than to study law. While still mourning the loss of one son, Mary (Sally Field) can't bear to lose another. Playwright Tony Kushner, who adapted the screenplay, takes a page from the procedural handbook in tracing Lincoln's steps to win over enough representatives to abolish slavery, while simultaneously bringing a larger-than-life leader down to a more manageable size. In his stooped-shoulder slouch and Columbo-like speech, Day-Lewis succeeds so admirably that the more outspoken characters, like congressman Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones) and lobbyist W.N. Bilbo (James Spader), threaten to steal the spotlight whenever they enter the scene, but the levity of their performances provides respite from the complicated strategising and carnage-strewn battlefields. If Lincoln doesn't thrill like the Kushner-penned Munich, there's never a dull moment--though it would take a second viewing to catch all the political nuances. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

• Star Trek XI | Blu Ray | (01/11/2010) from £7.00  |  Saving you £19.99 (74.10%)  |  RRP £26.99

  Reinventing Star Trek was always going to be controversial but Lost's J.J. Abrams has pulled it off with style creating a bold vision that is faithful without being slavish. The young cast step boldly into iconic roles and the action is bigger and more epic than ever before! Director J.J. Abrams (Alias) re-teams with his MI: III screenwriters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci to bring a new vision of the greatest space adventure of all time.

• The Great Gatsby (1974 - 2012 Re-pack) | DVD | (29/04/2013) from £3.69  |  Saving you £12.30 (76.90%)  |  RRP £15.99

  Perhaps no movie could capture F Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby in its entirety, but this adaptation, scripted by Francis Ford Coppola, is certainly a handsome try, putting costume design and art direction above the intricacies of character. Robert Redford is an interesting casting choice as Gatsby, the millionaire isolated in his mansion, still dreaming of the woman he lost. And Sam Waterston is perfect as the narrator, Nick, who brings the dream girl Daisy Buchanan back to Gatsby. The problem seems to be that director Jack Clayton fell in love with the flapper dresses and the party scenes and the jazz age tunes, ending up with a Classics Illustrated version of a great book rather than a fresh, organic take on the text. While Redford grows more quietly intriguing in the film, Mia Farrow's pallid performance as Daisy leaves you wondering why Gatsby, or anyone else, should care so much about his grand passion. The effective supporting cast includes Bruce Dern as Daisy's husband, and Scott Wilson and Karen Black as the low-rent couple whose destinies cross the sun-drenched protagonists. (That's future star Patsy Kensit as Daisy's little daughter.) The film won two Oscars--not surprisingly, for costumes and musical score. --Robert Horton

• Quartet | Blu Ray | (06/05/2013) from £12.50  |  Saving you £7.49 (37.50%)  |  RRP £19.99

• The Notebook | DVD | (07/02/2005) from £3.11  |  Saving you £16.88 (84.40%)  |  RRP £19.99

  When you consider that old-fashioned tearjerkers are an endangered species in Hollywood, a movie like The Notebook can be embraced without apology. Yes, it's syrupy sweet and clogged with clichés, and one can only marvel at the irony of Nick Cassavetes directing a weeper that his late father John--whose own films were devoid of saccharine sentiment--would have sneered at. Still, this touchingly impassioned and great-looking adaptation of the popular Nicholas Sparks novel has much to recommend, including appealing young costars (Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams) and appealing old costars (James Garner and Gena Rowlands, the director's mother) playing the same loving couple in (respectively) early 1940s and present-day North Carolina. He was poor, she was rich, and you can guess the rest; decades later, he's unabashedly devoted, and she's drifting into the memory-loss of senile dementia. How their love endured is the story preserved in the titular notebook that he reads to her in their twilight years. The movie's open to ridicule, but as a delicate tearjerker it works just fine. Message in a Bottle and A Walk to Remember were also based on Sparks novels, suggesting a triple-feature that hopeless romantics will cherish. --Jeff Shannon

• Firefly - The Complete Series (Exclusive to Amazon.co.uk) | Blu Ray | (19/09/2011) from £11.75  |  Saving you £18.24 (60.80%)  |  RRP £29.99

  Much praised and much missed after its premature cancellation, Firefly is the first SF TV series to be conceived by Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy and cocreator of Angel. Set five centuries in the future, it is a show where the mysterious personal pasts of the crew of the tramp spaceship Serenity continually surface. In fact, it's a Western in space where the losers in a Civil War are heading out to a barren frontier. Mal Reynolds is a man embittered by the war, yet whose love of his comrades perpetually dents his cynicism--even in the 14 episodes that exist we see him warm to the bubbly young mechanic Kaylee, the preacher Book, the idealistic doctor Simon, even to the often demented River, Simon's sister, the psychic result of malign experiments. Firefly is also about adult emotional relationships, for example Kaylee's crush on Simon, the happy marriage of Mal's second officer Zoe and the pilot Wash, the disastrous erotic stalemate between Mal and the courtesan Inara. Individual episodes deal with capers going vaguely wrong, or threats narrowly circumvented; character and plot arcs were starting to emerge when the show was cancelled. Fortunately, the spin-off movie Serenity ties up some of the ends; and in the meantime, what there is of Firefly is a show to marvel at, both for its tight writing and ensemble acting, and the idiocy of the executives who cancelled it. On the DVD: Firefly on DVD is presented in anamorphic 1.78:1 with Dolby Surround Sound. It includes commentaries on six episodes by various writers, directors, designers and cast members as well as featurettes on the conception of the show and the design of the spaceship Serenity, four deleted scenes, a gag reel, and Joss Whedon singing the show's theme tune, more or less. One of the things that emerges from all of this is how committed to the project everyone involved with it was, and is--unusually, you end up caring as much for the cast and crew as for the characters.

• Silver Linings Playbook | DVD | (01/04/2013) from £9.00  |  Saving you £10.99 (55.00%)  |  RRP £19.99

  In lesser hands than director David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook could have been a typically cringe-inducing throwaway Hollywood rom-com. As it is, this unusual and deeply affecting story of crazy love is a bold observation about the joys and tragedy of life lived by deeply flawed characters facing triumph and adversity against a backdrop of painfully familiar family dysfunction. It's also a tremendous achievement in formal structure, with a flair for storytelling that's as moving as it is delightful. Bradley Cooper plays Pat, an until-recently undiagnosed bipolar person who's just home from a lengthy stay in a mental institution and doing his darnedest to get his head and his life back on track. His concerned parents, vividly embodied by Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver, have plenty of troubles of their own when they warily take him in and tiptoe around the eggshells of a psyche that still veers wildly from seeming self-control to scary bouts of mania. Pat has a plan to win back the unfaithful wife whose restraining order is still in force because of the violent episode that sent him away after he nearly killed her lover. Interjected into this wobbly family scenario is Tiffany, a friend of a friend who is embroiled in her own turmoil of mental instability following the recent death of her husband. Jennifer Lawrence is a charming revelation as Tiffany, flexing sensitive acting muscles that are as toned as her lithe form. She throws herself into the role of a depressed, promiscuous young woman who needs Pat in her life about as much as she needs another personal tornado to rip her apart. But the movie magically reveals that these two disturbed souls have a destiny that's never really in doubt; although the whirlwind turns the movie takes to get them there are often breathtaking. Russell liberally adapted the movie from Matthew Quick's 2008 novel, and he deftly imbues the story with a vibrant sense of place (suburban, blue-collar Philadelphia) and each character, no matter how tangential to Pat and Tiffany's journey, with quirks and nuances that brilliantly reveal their essence. The subject of mental illness has rarely been portrayed with such honesty and candid respect. Constantly keeping us off guard, Silver Linings Playbook soars from darkness to a kind of screwball comedy that is as tender and touching as it is unpredictable. There are several tour-de-force moments that Russell constructs with the surest hand of direction, dialogue, and the talents of his cast. A key scene unfolds in a small living room where eight people are crammed together, each adding important pieces to the whole, and which thrums with a masterfully rhythmic pace. Another sequence follows the buildup to one of Pat's manic outbursts with a dizzying and increasingly stressful manifestation of the madness careening around in his head. It seems hard to believe that a love story with real humour, real pain, and genuine resonance that gets from point A to point B--it begins with a lone figure mumbling to himself and ends with a jubilantly staged ballroom dance--can succeed with so few missteps. But Silver Linings Playbook turns it all into an absorbing reality wherein life stumbles heartwarmingly toward what real love is all about. --Ted Fry

• War Horse | DVD | (07/05/2012) from £4.99  |  Saving you £13.00 (72.30%)  |  RRP £17.99

  From director Steven Spielberg comes War Horse, an epic adventure for audiences of all ages. Set against a sweeping canvas of rural England and Europe during the First World War, War Horse begins with the remarkable friendship between a horse named Joey and a young man called Albert, who tames and trains him. When they are forcefully parted, the film follows Joey?s the extraordinary journey as he moves through the war, changing and inspiring the lives of all those he meets ? British cavalry, German soldiers and a French farmer and his granddaughter ? before the story reaches its emotional climax in the heart of No Man?s Land. The First World War is experienced through the journey of this horse ? an odyssey of joy and sorrow, passionate friendship and high adventure. War Horse is one of the great stories of friendship and war ? a best-selling book by author Michael Morpurgo, it was turned into an award-winning stage production and now comes to screen in an epic adaptation by one of the great directors in film history.

• Song for Marion | DVD | (24/06/2013) from £10.25  |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)  |  RRP £N/A

  Song for Marion is a heartwarming comedic drama following shy grumpy pensioner Arthur as he is reluctantly inspired by his beloved wife Marion to join a highly unconventional local choir. At odds with his son James it is left to charismatic choir director Elizabeth to try and persuade Arthur that he can learn to embrace life. London-set the story follows Arthur as he embarks on a hilarious life-affirming journey of musical self-discovery. The superb British cast in Song For Marion is made up of Academy Award Winner Vanessa Redgrave (Julia Atonement Howard's End) cinema legend Terence Stamp (Billy Budd The Limey The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert) Gemma Arterton (Quantum of Solace Prince of Persia Tamara Drewe) and Christopher Eccleston (Shallow Grave Elizabeth Doctor Who).

• The Perks of Being a Wallflower | DVD | (11/02/2013) from £7.00  |  Saving you £8.99 (56.20%)  |  RRP £15.99

  Based on the best-selling novel by Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a modern classic that captures the dizzying highs and crushing lows of growing up. Starring Logan Lerman, Emma Watson and Ezra Miller, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a moving tale of love, loss, fear and hope - and the unforgettable friends that help us through life.

• To Kill A Mockingbird | DVD | (03/07/2006) from £3.00  |  Saving you £12.99 (81.20%)  |  RRP £15.99

  Gregory Peck won an Oscar for his brilliant performance as the Southern lawyer who defends a black man accused of rape in this film version of the Pulitzer Prize winning novel. The setting is a dusty Southern town during the Depression. A white woman accuses a black man of rape. Though he is obviously innocent the outcome of his trial is such a foregone conclusion that no lawyer will step forward to defend him - except Peck the town's most distinguished citizen. His compassionate de

• Flight | DVD | (03/06/2013) from £10.00  |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)  |  RRP £N/A

  Few directors can meld high-tech whiz-bang with solid narrative values like Robert Zemeckis, a filmmaker whose best work (Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the Back to the Future trilogy, Cast Away) stands tall among the blockbusters. Although there have been times when Zemeckis's insistence on pushing the special effects envelope can end up overshadowing the story being told (as in his animated version of A Christmas Carol), his innate gifts persist: when he's in the groove, he can show you something you've never seen before, as well as a reason to care about it. Flight, the director's first wholly live-action film in over a decade, serves as a reminder of just how good he can be, featuring both an exquisitely terrifying crash sequence and a fearless central performance from Denzel Washington. John Gatins's script serves as a bizarro inversion of the Sully Sullenberger tale: when a routine flight over Atlanta goes terrifyingly wrong, the aircraft's pilot (Washington) saves his passengers with a near-miraculous display of skill. As the investigation into the disaster begins, however, it becomes apparent that its hero's impromptu bravery hides a multitude of bad habits. Washington does a brilliant job as a man who is all too aware of his feet of clay, subverting his innate nobility to shattering effect. (As in the earlier Training Day, when he goes to the dark side, the shock ripples the screen.) The strength of his central performance is only amplified by some outstanding supporting work from Kelly Reilly (as a recovering heroin addict), Don Cheadle, Bruce Greenwood, and a scene-stealing John Goodman, who gets a few lines crass enough to remind you that yes, Zemeckis is the same person who once made the low-taste classic Used Cars. Impressive as the cast is, though, it's unlikely that things would work nearly as well without the director's grasp of the material, which shifts between horror, black comedy, and uplifting pathos without missing a beat. In his hands, this potential sap story makes for a smart, worldly addiction saga that blessedly refuses to stay within the usual melodramatic lines. Just don't ever, ever expect to see it as the in-flight entertainment. --Andrew Wright

• Of Mice And Men | DVD | (20/01/2003) from £4.92  |  Saving you £8.00 (61.60%)  |  RRP £12.99

  We have a dream. Someday we'll have a little house and a couple of acres. A place to call home. John Steinbeck's timeless classic comes magnificently to life in this beautiful and stirring film starring Oscar nominees John Malkovich (Being John Malkovich) and Gary Sinise (The Green Mile). Directed by Sinise from an adaptation by two-time Oscar winner Horton Foote this ""flawless miracle of movie-making"" (Susan Granger ""American Movie Classics"") is a must-see for all audiences.

• Anna Karenina (DVD + Digital Copy + UV Copy) | DVD | (04/02/2013) from £7.00  |  Saving you £12.99 (65.00%)  |  RRP £19.99

  Anna Karenina is acclaimed director Joe Wright's bold, theatrical new vision of the epic story of love, stirringly adapted from Leo Tolstoy's great novel by Academy Award winner Tom Stoppard (Shakespeare in Love). The film marks the third collaboration of the director with Academy Award-nominated actress Keira Knightley and Academy Award-nominated producers Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, and Paul Webster, following their award-winning box office successes Pride and Prejudice and Atonement. The timeless story powerfully explores the capacity for love that surges through the human heart, while illuminating the lavish society that was imperial Russia. The time is 1874. Vibrant and beautiful, Anna Karenina (Ms. Knightley) has what any of her contemporaries would aspire to; she is the wife of Karenin (Jude Law), a high-ranking government official to whom she has borne a son, and her social standing in St. Petersburg could scarcely be higher. She journeys to Moscow after a letter from her philandering brother Oblonsky (Matthew Macfadyen) arrives, asking for Anna to come and help save his marriage to Dolly (Kelly Macdonald). En route, Anna makes the acquaintance of Countess Vronsky (Olivia Williams), who is then met at the train station by her son, the dashing cavalry officer Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). When Anna is introduced to Vronsky, there is a mutual spark of instant attraction that cannot - and will not - be ignored.

• Cloud Atlas | Blu Ray | (01/07/2013) from £16.25  |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)  |  RRP £N/A

  From acclaimed filmmakers Lana and Andy Wachowski creators of The Matrix Trilogy and Tom Tykwer director of Run Lola Run the powerful and inspiring sci-fi epic Cloud Atlas explores how the actions and consequences of individual lives impact one another throughout the past the present and the future. Action mystery and romance weave dramatically through the story as one soul is shaped from a killer into a hero and a single act of kindness ripples across centuries to inspire a revolution in the distant future. Special Features: A Film Like No Other - Three directors. Six stories across 800 years. Actors jumping through time space and personality. How did three visionaries of cinema divvy up the filmmaking to create a coherent whole and how did this massive endeavour come to be? Everything is Connected - Six interweaving tales that somehow relate into a larger story about life love and history. Tom Hanks Halle Berry the Wachowskis and Tykwer and the rest of the film’s cast delve into the film’s stories genres and bonds. It’s all about the connections. The Impossible Adaptation - When ‘Cloud Atlas’ was released in 2004 Hollywood told auth or David Mitchell it could not be adapted to the screen. Nearly a decade later the Wachowskis and Tykwer proved Hollywood wrong. The Essence of Acting - Why did Tom Hanks and each of the Film’s 12 principal actors jump at the opportunity to play multiple roles in the film and what did they get out of the ultimate acting exercise? Spaceships Slaves & Sextets - Unlock the mysteries of 'Cloud Atlas' and delve into the finer themes of the tale: the will to power the limitations of genre and the evolution toward the good over time and examine the film’s structure and subtext seen through the eyes of the cast filmmakers author and producers The Bold Science Fiction of Cloud Atlas - Explore Cloud Atlas’ cutting-edge future with tales of cloning consumer-speak and extra-planetary exploration. Eternal Recurrence: Love Life and Longing in Cloud Atlas - Love longing and romance carry across 600 years in the film in the most epic love story ever.

• The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 | DVD | (12/03/2012) from £4.16  |  Saving you £15.83 (79.20%)  |  RRP £19.99

  The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 delivers strongly for the rabid fan base who have catapulted the young adult novel series and subsequent movie adaptations to the worldwide phenomenon that it's become, but it alienates a broader audience with a lack of any real action. Similar to the tone of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, the first film of the two-part Twilight conclusion is heavy on romance, love, and turmoil but light on fight scenes and gruesome battles. The movie doesn't waste any time getting to the goods and opens with Bella and Edward's much-hyped wedding scene. It works--the vows are efficient and first-time franchise director Bill Condon (Dreamgirls) moves the party along quickly and amusingly with a well-edited toast scene and some surprisingly moving moments between Bella and her father, cast standout Billy Burke. The honeymoon plays as a slightly awkward soft-focus made-for-TV movie, with a lot of long moments spent staring in the mirror and some love scenes that feel at once overly intimate and completely passionless. It's a relief when Bella retches on a bite of chicken she's cooked herself and quickly concludes she's pregnant with a potentially demonic baby. From bliss to horror, the Cullens return to Forks, where Bella spends the second half of the movie wasting away and Edward and Jacob are aligned in their anger and frustration over her decision. Throw in some over-the-top scenes with Jacob and his pack--including a strange showdown where the wolves communicate in their canine form by having a passionate nonverbal fight in their minds (a plot point that works much better in print, it's portrayed in the film via aggressive voice-over)--and the film overshoots intensity and goes straight to silly. The birth scene is horrific, but not as gruesome as in the book, and by the end, Bella has of course survived, though is much altered. The final scene features a delightfully campy Michael Sheen as Volturi leader Aro and makes it clear that the action and fun in Breaking Dawn, Part 1 is ready to start. Fans will just have to wait until Part 2 to get it. --Kira Canny

• The Bridge | DVD | (21/05/2012) from £16.33  |  Saving you £23.66 (59.20%)  |  RRP £39.99

  The body of a woman is found in the middle of the Oresund Bridge. Half of it belongs to a Swedish politician, the other half to a Danish prostitute.Trapped in the middle of the bridge connecting Sweden and Denmark, a bi-national investigatory team is put together to solve the crime. Laid-back Danish family man, Martin, and Swedish single woman, Saga, have to work together to stop the horrific staged murders before the terrorist wins over public opinion with his anti-corruption agenda.