"Actor: Derek Simmons"

• Henry V | DVD | (17/06/2002) from £6.54   |  Saving you £3.45 (52.75%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Very few first-time film directors would have been capable of making such a triumphant adaptation of Henry V; but a still-youthful Kenneth Branagh's years of stage experience paid off handsomely and his 1989 version qualifies as a genuine masterpiece, the kind of film that comes along once in a decade. He eschews the theatricality of Laurence Olivier's stirring, fondly remembered 1945 adaptation to establish his own rules: Branagh plays it down and dirty, seeing the Bard's play through revisionist eyes, framing it as an anti-war story in contrast to Olivier's patriotic spectacle. Branagh gives us harsh close-ups of muddied, bloody men, and of himself as Henry, his hardened mouth and wilful eyes revealing much about the personal cost of war. Not that the director-star doesn't provide lighter moments: his scenes introducing the French Princess Katherine (Emma Thompson) trying to learn English quickly from her maid are delightful. What may be the crowning glory of Branagh's adaptation comes when the dazed leader wanders across the battlefield, not even sure who has won. As King Hal carries a dead boy (a young Christian Bale) over the hacked bodies of both the English and French, a panorama of blood and mud and death greet the viewer as Branagh opens up the scene and Patrick Doyle's rousing hymn "Non nobis, Domine" provides marvellous counterpoint (like the director, the composer was another filmic first-timer). A more potent expression of the price of victory could scarcely be imagined. --Rochelle O'Gorman, Amazon.com

• Rhineland 1945 DVD | DVD | (27/08/2012) from £6.90   |  Saving you £0.09 (1.30%)   |  RRP £6.99

  Set in March, 1945 during the battle known as The last great killing ground in the west. Rhineland tells the story of a young replacement thrown into an under-strength mine platoon. A burned-out lieutenant and a bitter sergeant are his only guides as he struggles to come to terms with the brutality of war during the final bloody months of World War II.

• Insaniac | DVD | (20/01/2003) from £21.02   |  Saving you £-4.03 (-23.70%)   |  RRP £16.99

  A deranged young woman with amnesia is hynoptised so that she may explore her own mind. Whilst trying to recover lost memories she discovers that her mind is a nightmare landscape of violence and horror...