"Actor: Anne H"

• Fatal Attraction | DVD | (13/03/2006) from £11.99   |  Saving you £4.00 (33.36%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Stylish and sexy Fatal Attraction took audiences to terrifying new heights with its thrilling story of a casual encounter gone terribly awry. Michael Douglas plays Dan Gallagher a New York attorney who has a tryst with seductive Alex Forrest (Glenn Close) while his wife (Anne Archer) is away. Dan later shrugs off the affair as a mistake and considers it over. But Alex won't be ignored. Not now not tomorrow not ever; even if it means destroying Dan's family to keep him...

• The Dark Knight Rises Bat Cowl - Limited Edition Premium Pack | Blu Ray | (03/12/2012) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £69.99

  Of all the "most anticipated" movies ever claiming that title, it's hard to imagine one that has caused so much speculation and breathless expectation as Christopher Nolan's final chapter to his magnificently brooding Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises. Though it may not rise to the level of the mythic grandeur of its predecessor, The Dark Knight Rises is a truly magnificent work of cinematic brilliance that commandingly completes the cycle and is as heavy with literary resonance as it is of-the-moment insight into the political and social affairs unfolding on the world stage. That it is also a full-blown and fully realized epic crime drama packed with state-of-the-art action relying equally on immaculate CGI fakery and heart-stopping practical effects and stunt work makes its entrée into blockbuster history worthy of all the anticipation and more. It deserves all the accolades it will get for bringing an opulently baroque view of a comic book universe to life with sinister effectiveness. Set eight years after the events of The Dark Knight, TDK Rises finds Bruce Wayne broken in spirit and body from his moral and physical battle with the Joker. Gotham City is at peace primarily because Batman took the fall for Harvey Dent's murder, allowing the former district attorney's memory to remain as a crime-fighting hero rather than the lunatic destructor he became as Two-Face. But that meant Batman's cape and cowl wound up in cold storage--perhaps for good--with only police commissioner Jim Gordon in possession of the truth. The threat that faces Gotham now is by no means new; as deployed by the intricate script that weaves themes first explored in Batman Begins, fundamental conflicts that predate his own origins are at the heart of the ultimate struggle that will leave Batman and his city either triumphant or in ashes. It is one of the movie's greatest achievements that we really don't know which way it will end up until its final exhilarating moments. Intricate may be an understatement in the construction of the script by Nolan and his brother Jonathan. The multilayered story includes a battle for control of Wayne Industries and the decimation of Bruce Wayne's personal wealth; a destructive yet potentially earth-saving clean energy source; a desolate prison colony on the other side of the globe; terrorist attacks against people, property, and the world's economic foundation; the redistribution of wealth to the 99 percent; and a virtuoso jewel thief who is identified in every way except name as Catwoman. Played with saucy fun and sexy danger by Anne Hathaway, Selina Kyle is sort of the catalyst (!) for all the plot threads, especially when she whispers into Bruce's ear at a charity ball some prescient words about a coming storm that will tear Gotham asunder. As unpredictable as it is sometimes hard to follow, the winds of this storm blow in a raft of diverse and extremely compelling new characters (including Selina Kyle) who are all part of a dance that ends with the ballet of a cataclysmic denouement. Among the new faces are Marion Cotillard as a green-energy advocate and Wayne Industries board member and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a devoted Gotham cop who may lead Nolan into a new comic book franchise. The hulking monster Bane, played by Tom Hardy with powerful confidence even under a clawlike mask, is so much more than a villain (and the toughest match yet for Batman's prowess). Though he ends up being less important to the movie's moral themes and can't really match Heath Ledger's maniacal turn as Joker, his mesmerizing swagger and presence as demonic force personified are an affecting counterpoint to the moral battle that rages within Batman himself. Christian Bale gives his most dynamic performance yet as the tortured hero, and Michael Caine (Alfred), Gary Oldman (Gordon), and Morgan Freeman (Lucius Fox) all return with more gravitas and emotional weight than ever before. Then there's the action. Punctuated by three or four magnificent set pieces, TDKR deftly mixes the cinematic process of providing information with punches of pow throughout (an airplane-to-airplane kidnap/rescue, an institutional terrorist assault and subsequent chase, and the choreographed crippling of an entire city are the above-mentioned highlights). The added impact of the movie's extensive Imax footage ups the wow factor, all of it kinetically controlled by Nolan and his top lieutenants Wally Pfister (cinematography), Hans Zimmer (composer), Lee Smith (editor), and Nathan Crowley and Kevin Kavanaugh (production designers). The best recommendation TDKR carries is that it does not leave one wanting for more. At 164 minutes, there's plenty of nonstop dramatic enthrallment for a single sitting. More important, there's a deep sense of satisfaction that The Dark Knight Rises leaves as the fulfilling conclusion to an absorbing saga that remains relevant, resonant, and above all thoroughly entertaining. --Ted Fry

• The Fighting Sullivans | DVD | (21/10/2002) from £20.00   |  Saving you £-14.01 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Before Private Ryan was saved the Sullivan Brothers did their part for World War II. This rivetting and tragic drama was the basis for Steven Speilgberg's Saving Private Ryan and follows the true story of the five Sullivan brothers who served together at Guadalcanal in 1942. Their patriotisim and devotion to each other was overwhelming and took precedence over all else with tragic results. One of Hollywood's lost classics it was originally pulled from cinemas after its devastating effect on audiences of the time. The Fighting Sullivans is a story you may never have heard of but it's a movie you will never forget.

• Il Ritorno D'Ulisse In Patria - Monteverdi | DVD | (28/11/2005) from £3.99   |  Saving you £11.00 (275.69%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Il Ritorno D'Ulisse In Patria - Recorded At The Glyndebourne Festival Opera 1973.

• Henry - Portrait Of A Serial Killer | DVD | (25/05/2001) from £12.84   |  Saving you £-2.85 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Most horror films exist in a fantasy movie-world safely removed from our existence, populated by zombie-like killers and psychopathic madmen. The power of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is its chilling placement in the mundane existence of everyday life. Michael Rooker plays Henry not as a raving psychopath but as the frumpy guy next door, a drifter who takes out his frustrations on random victims and escalates his body count after teaming up with the violent ex-con Otis (Tom Towles). Though not exceedingly gory in light of the excesses of such fantasy horrors as the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street series, director John McNaughton's straightforward presentation and documentary-like style creates a chilling realism that many viewers will find hard to watch. McNaughton neither comments on nor flinches at the brutal violence, which reaches its apex in a disturbing camcorder-eye view of a particularly sadistic murder of a middle-class couple, with Henry and Otis smiling through the deed as they record it for their continued pleasure. Henry straddles the line between True Crime (though fictional, the story was inspired by the confessions of real-life serial killer Henry Lee Lucas) and horror, a bleak, brutal kind of terror for a generation deadened by the escalating outrageousness of movie murders and nightly news crime scene clips. --Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com

• Without Reservations | DVD | (14/06/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Returning from his stint in World War II tough Marine Rusty meets up with a famous writer.

• The Book Group - The Complete First Series | DVD | (24/03/2003) from £12.14   |  Saving you £7.85 (64.66%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The Book Group, the creation of writer-director Annie Griffin, is a superb, Glasgow-based comedy-drama. Annie Dudek stars as Claire, the prissy and neurotic American expatriate who initiates the titular group with a view to meeting high-minded types like herself. Instead, she gets Dirka, Fist and Janice, three Scottish footballers' wives, the wheelchair-bound Kenny, a leisure-centre worker with ambitions to be a writer despite his apparent inarticulacy, the stubbly-faced football-mad Rab and the insufferable Barney, a post-grad student and heroin addict at whom Claire makes one of the most embarrassingly disastrous passes in TV history in the opening episode. The Book Group is a magnificent device for bringing an unlikely cast of characters together, supposedly out of a love of literature but in fact because each of them in their own way has pretensions or ambitions to make something different out of their lives. Waves of sexual longing between the group members are among the many things that interfere with the discussions of the texts, with Kenny in particular an object of fascination for both Dirka and Fist. With each episode cleverly themed around the chosen book of the week, The Book Group is hilarious yet wise, understated and often painfully melancholic, based on detailed character study rather than contrived situations or eye-catching melodrama. It is indispensable viewing. On the DVD: The Book Group's main extra is a poorly edited but absorbing sequence of interviews with all of the cast members except James Lance, who plays Barney. Rory McGann (Kenny), who comes from a non-acting background, is particularly interesting. --David Stubbs

• Deep In My Heart | DVD | (13/03/2006) from £3.49   |  Saving you £2.50 (71.63%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Given up for adoption as a baby Barbara Ann (Gloria Reuben) a child of mixed race is facing a life of confusion prejudice and isolation. Raised by a loving foster mother in a black neighbourhood she is suddenly torn from this happy existence and placed in a world with no friends no joy and no sense of family. But she survives and grows up to become the mother of five children. And it is then that Barbara Ann finds the courage to face her past to meet with the woman who gave bir

• The Lies Boys Tell | DVD | (03/12/2001) from £6.97   |  Saving you £2.01 (50.50%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Before he dies Ed Reece has got some unfinished business... Hollywood legend Kirk Douglas gives a terrific performance as an eccentric old man determined to revisit some milestones from his past and reconcile with his feuding family in this superb drama. With a brilliant witty script from Oscar winning Ernest Thompson (On Golden Pond). 'The Lies Boys Tell' also stars Craig T Nelson (Poltergiest) and the veteren character actress Eileen Brennan (Private Benjamin).

• Hans Werner Henze ; Der Prinz Von Homburg | DVD | (18/10/2002) from £10.53   |  Saving you £15.72 (169.58%)   |  RRP £24.99

  An opera in three acts by one of Germany's most important contemporary composers - Hans Werner Henze. Musical direction comes from Wolfgang Sawallisch.

• The Revenant | Blu Ray | (02/04/2012) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A soldier is killed in Iraq and then finds himself resurrected as a revenant, or one who has returned from the dead. He turns to his slacker best friend to help him manage his newfound thirst for blood, and the duo quickly realize that this zombie-fied state is a perfect opportunity to become vigilante crime fighters. However, their adventure quickly becomes more complicated and bloody than they expected as the movie escalates into a series of unexpected and horrifying twists.

• Bizet - Carmen (Mcvicar, Jordan, Lpo, Von Otter) | DVD | (12/02/2003) from £9.60   |  Saving you £20.39 (212.40%)   |  RRP £29.99

  'Carmen' is here restored to the original Opera Comique in a production from Glyndebourne. Music is under the direction of Philippe Jordan.

• Stage Fright | DVD | (13/10/2003) from £9.98   |  Saving you £-3.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Director Michele Soavi does the impossible by squeezing a few more drops of blood out from the slasher genre. Not only that, Soavi lensed one of the most beautiful and suspenseful horror movies of the 1980s. A genuinely haunting horror where the killer dressed as an owl goes to bloody work with a chainsaw that slices through flesh and bone...

• Essential Opera Collection | DVD | (11/10/2013) from £81.56   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Au Hasard Balthazar | DVD | (22/11/2004) from £32.37   |  Saving you £-12.38 (-61.90%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Taking man's inhumanity to man as its central theme 'Au Hasard Balthazar' traces the life of a donkey christened Balthazar by a group of young children from birth to death. Balthazar's story begins on a small farm in a rural district of France. Throughout his life he is owned by many of the locals returning to some of them more than once and is set various tasks from drawing a carriage to performing in a circus turning a grindstone to acting as a smuggler's means of transport.

• Cedar Rapids | Blu Ray | (19/09/2011) from £9.68   |  Saving you £13.30 (198.80%)   |  RRP £19.99

  When a naive, small-town insurance agent named Tim Lippe (Ed Helms, The Hangover) goes to a convention in the big city of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, his life gets turned inside out under the influence of three convention veterans. This sort of fish-out-of-water comedy could have been a flimsy excuse for broad slapstick and absurd high jinks; instead, in the confident hands of director Miguel Arteta (The Good Girl, Chuck & Buck), Cedar Rapids becomes something more humane and, in a quiet way, more ambitious. Helms manages to make Tim genuine, a man-child but not a cartoon; the movie's situations skirt wackiness, yet always remain in the realm of something emotionally real. (The movie also reflects the influence of producers Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, who created the similarly character-rich movies Sideways, Almost Schmidt, and Election.) The whole cast hits the right notes, from such familiar faces as John C. Reilly (Magnolia, Talladega Nights), Anne Heche, and Sigourney Weaver to such stealthy character actors as Stephen Root (NewsRadio), Rob Corddry (Hot Tub Time Machine), Isiah Whitlock Jr. (The Wire), and Alia Shawkat (Arrested Development). Cedar Rapids is sweet without being cloying, funny without being manic, and even a little sad at times, without ever turning up the violins on the soundtrack. It's an honest movie, and there are all too few of them out there. --Bret Fetzer

• Liebestraum | DVD | (02/02/2004) from £9.43   |  Saving you £3.56 (27.40%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas) directs an incredibly sexy cast (Kevin Anderson Pamela Gidley and Kim Novak) in this tale of lust and murder -- one of the most visually stunning films of the '90s.

• Map Of The Human Heart | DVD | (14/07/2008) from £33.99   |  Saving you £-24.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Magical adventure story of Avik and Albertine - and a love that survived decades of time impossible distances and the ravages of war.

• One Day | Blu Ray | (06/02/2012) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Lone Scherfig directs this romcom, based on the best-seller by David Nicholls, about two friends who reunite every year on the anniversary of their first meeting. Since the day when they first met at their college graduation - July 15th,1988 - Emma Morley (Anne Hathaway) and Dexter Mayhew (Jim Sturgess) have kept in touch, meeting up again on the same day each year. Over the following two decades, the ups and downs of the relationship between the idealistic Emma and wealthy ladies' man Dexter are revisited every July 15th, as they try to take stock of their lives, and attempt to discover what they've both been missing all along.

• Carmen | DVD | (12/02/2003) from £26.98   |  Saving you £3.01 (11.16%)   |  RRP £29.99

  All too often Bizet's great comic opera Carmen has been pared down to its basic bodice-ripping components, leaving its adored melodies with only torrid clichés to cling on to. Nothing of the sort happens here. David McVicar's 2002 production for Glyndebourne restores it to its rightful place as a stupendous musical entertainment. Bold, lusty, tightly directed and designed in sanguine shades of red and black, this Carmen spills and bustles across the stage and out of the screen like a living painting. At first glance, Anne Sofie von Otter is not an obvious choice for the title role, but just look at how she seizes and inhabits the character, wrenching her from the jaws of dark, sultry stereotype and rendering a complex modern woman. Her Carmen both revels in and is tormented by the ripe sexuality that fascinates her lovers and sets her apart from the other women. Von Otter's interpretation suggests it has its roots in a hinterland of wretched, bitter experience; the "Habanera", the "Gypsy Song" and the "Seguidilla" become multi-layered expressions of hope and desire: we never forget that for all its gusto, Carmen ends up a tragedy. And the men aren't ciphers. Laurent Naouri's proud Escamillo and Marcus Haddock's immature, damaged Don José are rounded, richly sung characters. So too, is Lisa Milne's touching Micaëla. All told, this Carmen is full-length, fibrous and, with conductor Philippe Jordan at the helm, a triumph. On the DVD: Carmen is spread over two discs, presented in anamorphic widescreen format that opens up the stage and capitalises on some refreshingly brisk camerawork. The sound quality (Digital Surround sound) is finely balanced. A rich set of extras includes fascinating short documentaries on various aspects of the production, from stage fights to characterisation and costume design. There's also a useful spoken synopsis and a stroll through the famous Glyndebourne Gardens. --Piers Ford