"Actor: Ch"

• The Last Of The Mohicans | DVD | (01/06/2006) from £9.99   |  Saving you £9.00 (90.09%)   |  RRP £18.99

  The Last of the Mohicans is a large-scale adventure set during the colonial conflicts between Britain and France 20 years before the American War of Independence. Based loosely on the novel by James Fenimore Cooper, but actually inspired by director Michael (Manhunter, Heat) Mann's boyhood love of the 1936 film of the same name, this is rousing, romantic stuff. As "Hawkeye", a white raised by the last of the Mohican tribe, Daniel Day-Lewis delivers a performance which, had he followed it up, could have established him as an action hero for the 1990s and beyond. Despite an under-written role Madeline Stowe convinces as the heroine. The remaining cast are uniformly excellent. Filmed amid the spectacular mountains, rivers and forests of North Carolina by Mann's regular cinematographer, Dante Spinotti, the film is a visual joy, while Trevor Jones' majestic, spine-tingling score (with additional music by Randy Edleman) is one of the finest of the decade. Taking time to establish the motives of British and French colonists and the various native tribes, as well as the varying opinions and characters within these groupings, Mann offers much greater balance and complexity than The Patriot (2000), yet never looses sight of the object here: telling a stirring yarn laced with bold action set pieces and passionate romance. On the DVD: The anamorphically enhanced 2.35:1 image is a massive improvement over VHS, but still shows considerable grain in many scenes, possibly a result of the film being shot in low, natural light and containing many very dark sequences. The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack is very powerful, though little use is made of the rear channels, and in some scenes the sound effects all but drown out the dialogue. Isolated scores are usually only found on feature-packed special editions, so the inclusion here is a welcome surprise--and testament its popularity. The only other extra is an anamorphic 2.35:1 presentation of the immensely stirring theatrical trailer. --Gary S Dalkin

• Watcher in the Attic (Blu ray + DVD) | Blu Ray | (16/12/2024) from £20.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  A perverted loner roams the rafters of a boarding house in 1920s Tokyo in Watcher in the Attic, directed by one of the Nikkatsu˜s top Roman Porno filmmaking talents, Noboru Tanaka, peeping on the unusual sexual antics of its residents in this dreamlike tale of voyeurism, obsession and murder drawn from the erotic grotesque literature of Japan's foremost master of mystery and the macabre, Edogawa Rampo.

• Nikita | DVD | (31/03/2003) from £6.49   |  Saving you £6.50 (100.15%)   |  RRP £12.99

  French director Luc Besson broke the commercial taboo against female-driven action movies with Nikita, his seminal, seductively slick film about a violent street punk (Anne Parillaud) trained to become a smooth, stylish assassin. Though it amounts, in the end, to little more than disposable pop, the film has a cohesiveness in style and tone--akin to the early James Bond films--that gives it a sense of integrity. Parillaud is compelling both as a wild child and chic-but-lethal pro (trained in good manners by none other than Jeanne Moreau). Tchéky Karyo is also good as the cop mentor who develops feelings for her. --Tom Keogh

• Romancing The Stone / The Jewel Of The Nile | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £12.55   |  Saving you £2.44 (19.44%)   |  RRP £14.99

  In 1984 Romancing the Stone was a huge hit for director Robert Zemeckis (who later went on to make Forrest Gump, Contact and Castaway among others) thanks in no small part to the winning team of Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, and Danny DeVito. The chemistry between all three stars is infectious, but Turner steals the show from the guys, playing a pushy romance novelist who gets stuck among some dangerous figures in Colombia and has only a rumpled guide (Michael Douglas) as an ally. Zemeckis--whose specialty at the time was creating set pieces of raucous action (as in his Back to the Future trilogy)--keeps things hopping with lots of kinetic material. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com The Jewel of the Nile is a moderately entertaining sequel that pales by comparison to its predecessor. Romance novelist Kathleen Turner and retired soldier-of-fortune Michael Douglas return as a now-complacent couple. Bored with life on a yacht, they find excitement thrust upon them when she accepts a speaking engagement in the Middle East. Once there, she is abducted and finds herself involved with the "jewel" everyone is chasing. Douglas teams up once more with Danny DeVito to rescue his love. Less charming and more predictable than the original, this suffers for one simple reason: the characters have nowhere to go. In the original story we watched Turner blossom from timid storyteller to lusty adventuress. In this flick she is too much like all the other action adventure babes we've seen before. The same trio of stars reunited to better effect in DeVito's dark comedy The War of the Roses. --Rochelle O'Gorman, Amazon.com

• Three Films by Yasujir? Ozu (2 x Blu-ray) | Blu Ray | (23/10/2023) from £25.65   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  This year marks the 120th anniversary of Japanese filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu's birth. From his early silent films to his final features in the 1960s, Ozu perfected a style that stripped away unnecessary plot mechanics and camera movement. In doing so, he produced a cinema whose surface simplicity belies character studies of depth, warmth and on occasion, humour. This new set features three newly restored films, all presented on Blu-ray in the UK for the first time: Dragnet Girl (1933, 99 mins) Sweet-faced Tokiko is an ordinary typist, but come nightfall she's a fun-loving gangster's moll. When her boyfriend strays, Tokiko is forced to reassess her life. Hugely popular when it was released, Ozu's Dragnet Girl remains one of his most enduring silent films. Record of Tenement Gentleman (1947, 75 mins) Tashiro, a fortune-telling resident in a poor district of Tokyo, has been followed home by a young boy whose father took him to the city but became separated from him. Initially unwilling to look after Kohei, Tashiro gradually warms to the boy. A Hen in the Wind (1948, 84 mins) A soldier returns home at the end of World War II, and refuses to forgive his wife for prostituting herself one night to pay off medical bills for their son.

• The Death and Return of Superman | DVD | (27/01/2020) from £4.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  The Death of Superman and The Reign of the Supermen in once epic film! Based on the acclaimed DC storyline, the gripping saga The Death and Return of Superman is presented here is an unabridged, seamless animated feature - over two hours of nonstop action. Witness the no-holds-barred battle between the Justice League and an unstoppable alien force known only as Doomsday. It's a fight only Superman can finish, and one that will forever change the face of Metropolis. So take flight and joing the Man of Steel on an epic and unforgettable journey.

• The Professionals | DVD | (16/06/2003) from £19.98   |  Saving you £-6.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Director Richard Brooks' marvellous ode to friendship, loyalty and disillusionment The Professionals may not have the stylistic bravado or fatalistic doom of Sam Peckinpah's more famous The Wild Bunch, but Brooks' storytelling is simple and steady and just as insightful. The difference is that Brooks is a lot more optimistic. Lee Marvin and Burt Lancaster are buddies who have drifted into oblivion after fighting together in the Mexican Revolution. Marvin, the principled loyalist and munitions expert, lost his wife and his heart. Lancaster, the dynamite expert and unprincipled adventurer, keeps losing his pants. They team up with wrangler Robert Ryan and archer Woody Strode to rescue the beguiling Claudia Cardinale, who has been kidnapped by their old revolutionary buddie Jack Palance. So it's back into bloody Mexico they go on a "mission of mercy" for railroad tycoon Ralph Bellamy, who's paying handsomely for the return of his wife. But nothing is what it seems in this exciting, existential adventure, which was beautifully shot by Conrad Hall. Sarcastic quips, philosophical musings and heart-rending reversals underlie Brooks' humanistic sentiments. These are tired, world-weary men who somehow find the strength and the will to pull together for the sake of love and commitment. Through it all, Brooks seems to be lamenting a decline in professionalism much deeper than his story. He's decrying Hollywood and the society at large, anticipating Peckinpah's later strategy. --Bill Desowitz

• Death of Superman | Blu Ray | (06/08/2018) from £7.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Superman battles against an insurmountable foe named Doomsday.

• Danton | DVD | (13/03/2006) from £19.95   |  Saving you £0.04 (0.20%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Danton (Gerard Depardieu) and Robespierre were close friends and fought in the French Revolution but by 1793 with the new Republic in place Robespierre heads the ""Committee For Public Safety"" and has begun his now infamous ""Reign Of Terror"" flushing out any dissenting voices and sending them without hesitation to Guillotine. Danton well known as a spokesman of the people returns to Paris after his self-imposed exile to call an end to the bloodshed but in doing so makes a dangerous

• Death of Superman | DVD | (06/08/2018) from £7.19   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Superman battles against an insurmountable foe named Doomsday.

• Arsenic and Old Lace (Criterion Collection) | Blu Ray | (11/10/2022) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Drunken Angel | DVD | (25/07/2005) from £10.35   |  Saving you £9.64 (93.14%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Post-war Japan anatomised in the combative relationship between an alcoholic doctor (Takeshi Shimura) and his patient (Toshiro Mifune) a wounded young gangster. This is the film that was considered to be Kurosawa's breakthrough movie illuminating themes that would go on to dominate his succeeding work. 'Drunken Angel' also marked his first - of many - collaborations with Toshiro Mifune here playing the tubercular Yakuza hoodlum.

• Mozart - Cosi Fan Tutte | DVD | (07/08/2006) from £13.55   |  Saving you £0.44 (3.25%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Recorded live at the Aix-en-Provence Festival July 2005

• Fair Game | DVD | (24/01/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  She's a lawyer. He's a cop. Some former KGB-types with a wide variety of slippery accents and enough sophisticated technological surveillance gadgets to make one wonder how the Soviet Union could have possibly failed, want her dead. The cop (William Baldwin) is the only man who can save her. It helps that the high-powered attorney is played by Cindy Crawford, who gives new meaning to the phrase "habeas corpus." So the plot doesn't make any sense: first, they try to kill her, no questions asked. Then they capture her and spill their guts about all the details of their nefarious plan. Logic is not what Fair Game is about. It's about explosions, car crashes and more explosions. The only pauses in the action are for showers (one for Baldwin, two for Crawford) and a change of clothing (Crawford slips out of a tight T-shirt into an even tighter tank top). The best feature of the DVD is the addition of a Gallic track. With very little actual sex in the movie, having the main characters conversing in French definitely adds some sauciness to the dialogue scenes. --Richard Natale, Amazon.com

• The Michael Haneke Collection | DVD | (09/10/2006) from £22.99   |  Saving you £17.00 (73.95%)   |  RRP £39.99

  Hidden (aka. Cache) (2005): Writer/director Michael Haneke delivers a masterpiece of unsettlement with Hidden (Cache). Life seems perfect for Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and Anne (Juliette Binoche) a bourgeois Parisian couple who live in a comfortable home with their adolescent son Pierrot (Lester Makedonsky). But when an anonymous videotape turns up on their doorstep showing their house under surveillance from across the street their calm life begins to spiral out of control. Subsequent videotapes arrive accompanied by mysterious drawings and gradually Georges becomes convinced that he's being tormented by a figure from his past. But when he confronts him the man assures Georges he is innocent. A growing sense of guilt begins to rise in Georges as he recalls his less-than-angelic childhood yet for some reason he's unable to be completely honest with Anne. Soon their happy home is an emotional battleground leading to a climax that is breathtaking in its ferocity and ambiguousness. The Time Of The Wolf (2003): Michael Haneke directs this nightmarish vision of a post-apocalyptic world in which society has completely broken down. Isabelle Huppert plays Anne who flees the city with her husband Georges and their two children in the hope of finding safe refuge at the family's country home. But soon after arriving they learn they have made a terrible mistake and must embark on a gruelling odyssey through a country totally devastated by disaster without even the most basic of utilities such as water and electricity. Demonstrating yet again his unique and uncompromising cinematic vision Haneke assembles an all star cast for this typically challenging tense and gripping drama. The Piano Teacher (2001): The Piano Teacher is a powerful and controversial drama from award-winning Austrian film-maker Michael Haneke (Funny Games Code Unknown). Isabelle Huppert gives a performance of astounding emotional intensity as Erika Kohut a repressed woman in her late thirties who teaches piano at the Vienna Conservatory and lives with her tyrannical mother (Annie Girardot) with whom she has a volatile love-hate relationship. But when one of Erika's students the handsome and assured Walter Klemmer (Benoit Magimel) attempts to seduce her the barriers that she has carefully erected around her claustrophobic world are shattered unleashing a previously inhibited extreme and uncontrollable desire. Code Unknown (2000): Paris. A very busy boulevard. Someone throws a crumpled piece of paper into the outstretched hands of a beggar-woman. This is the bond which for an instant links the trajectories of several very different characters : Anne a young actress is on the threshold of making it in the cinema. Her boyfriend Georges is a war photographer he is rarely in France. His father is a farmer. Georges' younger brother Jean has no interest in taking over the farm. Amadou is a music teacher in an institute for deaf-mute children. His father a taxi driver originates from Africa. His little sister is deaf and it's because of her that Amadou has chosen his profession. Maria comes from Romania and sends home the money she gets from begging. Having been deported she goes back home to spend some time with her family before embarking on another humiliating journey to France. What do they have in common these characters and those whose path they cross?

• Princess Blade | DVD | (23/09/2002) from £14.98   |  Saving you £0.01 (0.07%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Shinsuke Sato's The Princess Blade is, in some respects, a standard Japanese action adventure with a lot of swordplay and repayment of blood debts; but it differs in that it stretches the formula in interesting ways. Its moody angst is turned up to full power and it has a twilit elegiac quality, a sense of the sadness of things, which is at once very Japanese and very stylish. Yukio is one of the assassins of the house of Takemikazuchi, a group of exiled royal guards from a neighbouring kingdom who have created a life in the isolated low-tech kingdom Japan has become in some near future. She is in fact the last of the original Takemikazuchi family, who have gradually been marginalised and murdered. Informed of this and on the run from her fellow swordsmen, she takes refuge with, and falls for, Takashi, an assassin of a more modern kind, an alienated young man whose concern for his retarded sister sits uneasily with his bomb-making. The film moves steadily from explosions of passionate action beautifully choreographed to quiet intense moments of stillness, ending ambiguously on the latter. It is a superior film in its genre because it coherently questions the values and actions it celebrates. --Roz Kaveney

• Poetic Justice | DVD | (10/03/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  After witnessing the murder of her first and only boyfriend young Justice decides to forget about college and become a South Central Los Angeles hairdresser. Avoiding friends the only way for her to cope with her depression is by composing beautiful poetry...

• Hanasaku Iroha Collection BLU-RAY | Blu Ray | (08/03/2021) from £33.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Hanasaku Iroha Collection When Ohana's mother flees with her boyfriend to avoid paying his debts, Ohana is sent to live with her grandmother, who owns the hot spring inn, Kissuiso. Upon arriving Ohana is put to work at the inn. Thrust into a life where the customers always come first, she struggles to find her place at the inn and fit in with her coworkers.

• Time Of The Wolf | DVD | (24/05/2004) from £7.99   |  Saving you £12.00 (150.19%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Michael Haneke directs this nightmarish vision of a post-apocalyptic world in which society has completely broken down. Isabelle Huppert plays Anne who flees the city with her husband Georges and their two children in the hope of finding safe refuge at the family's country home. But soon after arriving they learn they have made a terrible mistake and must embark on a gruelling odyssey through a country totally devastated by disaster without even the most basic of utilities such as

• Rhapsody In August | DVD | (14/04/2000) from £15.93   |  Saving you £0.06 (0.40%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Japanese grand master Akira Kurosawa's eloquent examination of the nuclear holocaust in Nagasaki as seen though the eyes of a survivor and her four grandchildren 44 years after the event. The grandmother recalls the history of her family and Japanese society. As she searches for an understanding of the past she falls into despair over the loss of her husband in the blast as its anniversary draws near.