"Actor: Bernard Bloch"

• Ronin | Blu Ray | (14/08/2017) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Robert De Niro stars as an American intelligence operative adrift in irrelevance since the end of the Cold War--much like a masterless samurai, a.k.a. "ronin." With his services for sale, he joins a renegade, international team of fellow covert warriors with nothing but time on their hands. Their mission, as defined by the woman who hires them (Natascha McElhone), is to get hold of a particular suitcase that is equally coveted by the Russian mafia and Irish terrorists. As the scheme gets underway, De Niro's lone wolf strikes up a rare friendship with his French counterpart (Jean Reno), gets into a more-or-less romantic frame of mind with McElhone, and asserts his experience on the planning and execution of the job--going so far as to publicly humiliate one team member (Sean Bean) who is clearly out of his league. The story is largely unremarkable--there's an obligatory twist midway through that changes the nature of the team's business--but legendary filmmaker John Frankenheimer (Seconds, The Manchurian Candidate) leaps at the material, bringing to it an honest tension and seasoned, breathtaking skill with precision-action direction. The centerpiece of the movie is an honest-to-God car chase that is the real thing: not the how-can-we-top-the-last-stunt cartoon nonsense of Richard Donner (Lethal Weapon), but a pulse-quickening, kinetic dance of superb montage and timing. In a sense, Ronin is almost Frankenheimer's self-quoting version of a John Frankenheimer film. There isn't anything here he hasn't done before, but it's sure great to see it all again. --Tom Keogh

• Hidden Agenda | DVD | (28/04/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  American activists Paul Sullivan (Dourif) and his fiancee Ingrid Jessner (McDormand) journey to Belfast to probe allegations of brutal human rights abuses by British security forces. When Paul is killed under mysterious circumstances the official reports list him as an I.R.A. accomplice. But Ingrid and British policeman Paul Kerrigan (Cox) question the findings and begin to uncover a shocking high-level conspiracy. Now with their safety in jeopardy they must decide whether to risk

• Hidden Agenda | Blu Ray | (16/10/2015) from £18.75   |  Saving you £1.24 (6.61%)   |  RRP £19.99

  American activists Paul Sullivan (Brad Dourif) and his fiancée Ingrid Jessner (Frances McDormand) journey to Belfast to probe allegations of human rights abuses by the British military in Northern Ireland. But when Paul is killed in mysterious circumstances and denounced as an IRA accomplice, Jessner teams up with Peter Kerrigan (Brian Cox), a British investigator acting against the will of his own government, to uncover a high-level conspiracy with far-reaching consequences. This daring political thriller, from one of Britain's most celebrated filmmakers, features unforgettable performances from McDormand and Cox, and ranks as a true classic of modern cinema.

• Novo | DVD | (26/09/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Sergei Eisenstein's revolutionary sophomore feature has so long stood as a textbook example of montage editing that many have forgotten what an invigoratingly cinematic experience he created. A 20th-anniversary tribute to the 1905 revolution, Eisenstein portrays the revolt in microcosm with a dramatisation of the real-life mutiny aboard the battleship Potemkin. The story tells a familiar party-line message of the oppressed working class (in this case the enlisted sailors) banding together to overthrow their oppressors (the ship's officers), led by proto-revolutionary Vakulinchuk. When he dies in the shipboard struggle the crew lays his body to rest on the pier, a moody, moving scene where the citizens of Odessa slowly emerge from the fog to pay their respects. As the crowd grows Eisenstein turns the tenor from mourning a fallen comrade to celebrating the collective achievement. The government responds by sending soldiers and ships to deal with the mutinous crew and the supportive townspeople, which climaxes in the justly famous (and often imitated and parodied) Odessa Steps massacre. Eisenstein edits carefully orchestrated motions within the frame to create broad swaths of movement, shots of varying length to build the rhythm, close-ups for perspective and shock effect, and symbolic imagery for commentary, all to create one of the most cinematically exciting sequences in film history. Eisenstein's film is Marxist propaganda to be sure but the power of this masterpiece lies not in its preaching but its poetry. --Sean Axmaker

• Ronin | UMD | (09/01/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99