"Actor: Dorothy"

• The Strike Series | DVD | (16/04/2018) from £19.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Every episode of the BBC crime drama based on the novels by J.K. Rowling. The show follows struggling private detective Cormoran Strike (Tom Burke) as he uses his skills as a former Royal Military Special Investigation Branch investigator to examine a number of murder mysteries from his small London office, including the death of a model who has fallen from a balcony in Mayfair and the disappearance of a famous author. The collection includes: 'The Cuckoo's Calling', 'The Silkworm' and 'Career of Evil'.

• Get Carter | DVD | (01/06/2006) from £6.97   |  Saving you £7.02 (100.72%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Released in 1971 (the same year Straw Dogs and A Clockwork Orange hit the screens, which must make 71 the annus mirabilis for violent films set in Britain), Get Carter opens with gangsters leering over pornographic slides and ends on a filthy, slag-stained beach in Newcastle. It's a low-down and dirty movie from beginning to end, and possibly the grittiest and best film of its kind to come out of Britain. The granddaddy of Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels and all its ilk, director Mike Hodges' Get Carter offers revenge tragedy swinging-60s style, all nicotine-stained cinematography, shabby locations and the kind of killer catchphrases Vinnie Jones would die for ("You're a big man, but you're in bad shape. With me, it's a full-time job. Now behave yourself", says Michael Caine's deadpan anti-hero Carter before inflicting a few choice punches on Brian Mosley, aka Coronation Street's Alf Roberts, to name but one example from Hodges and Ted Lewis' exquisitely laconic script). Presenting the dark horse in his family of loveable Cockney geezer roles (Alfie, The Italian Job), Michael Caine plays the title role of Jack Carter, a man so hard he barely registers a flicker of regret watching a woman he's just had sex with plunge to her death. After taking the train up to Newcastle as the credits roll and Roy Budd's chunky bass-heavy theme tune plays, Carter returns to his hometown to attend his brother's funeral and investigate the circumstances of his death. Not that he's all that sentimental about family: he shaves nonchalantly over the open coffin, and shows affection to his niece Doreen (Petra Markham) by cramming a few notes in her hand and telling her to "be good and don't trust boys". Gradually, Carter unravels the skein of drugs, pornography and corruption tangled around his brother's death, which brings him up against supremely oleaginous kingpin Kinnear (played by the author of Look Back in Anger John Osborne) among others. A remake starring Sylvester Stallone is in the offing, but quite frankly it will be a 30-degree (Celsius) Christmas night in Newcastle before Hollywood could ever make something as assured, raw and immortal as this. --Leslie Felperin

• Citizen Kane | DVD | (05/01/2004) from £5.72   |  Saving you £5.53 (123.99%)   |  RRP £9.99

  In the May of 1941 RKO radio Pictures released a controversial film by a 25 year-old first-time director. That premiere of Orson Welles' Citizen Kane was to have a profound and lasting effect on the art of motion pictures. It has been hailed as the best American film ever made and it's as powerful film today as it was fifty years ago. It earned eight Academy Award nominations and won the Oscar for Best Screenplay. Through its unique jigsaw-puzzle story-line inventive cinematograp

• The Big Country | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £7.18   |  Saving you £-3.26 (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.92

  William Wyler directed this epic Western, about the clash of East and West, intellect and action. Gregory Peck stars as a sea captain who moves way out West to marry Carroll Baker and become part of the ranch owned by her father (Charles Bickford). But he discovers that daddy's top hand (Charlton Heston) carries a torch for Baker and doesn't particularly like Peck stepping into his place. Peck also finds himself caught in the midst of a power struggle between Bickford and his surly neighbour, Burl Ives (and his reprehensibly bullying son, Chuck Connors). The Big Country is a long, sprawling tale that works because its characters are played by movie stars who know how to command the big screen in a big story. --Marshall Fine

• Citizen Kane | DVD | (29/08/2016) from £6.49   |  Saving you £0.50 (7.70%)   |  RRP £6.99

  Arguably the greatest of American films, Orson Welles' 1941 masterpiece, made when he was only 25, still unfurls like a dream and carries the viewer along the mysterious currents of time and memory to reach a mature (if ambiguous) conclusion: people are the sum of their contradictions and can't be known easily. Welles plays newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane, taken from his mother as a boy and made the ward of a rich industrialist. The result is that every well-meaning or tyrannical or self-destructive move he makes for the rest of his life appears in some way to be a reaction to that deeply wounding event. Written by Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz, and photographed by Gregg Toland, the film is the sum of Welles's awesome ambitions as an artist in Hollywood. He pushes the limits of then-available technology to create a true magic show, a visual and aural feast that almost seems to be rising up from a viewer's subconscious. As Kane, Welles even ushers in the influence of Bertolt Brechton film acting. This is truly a one-of-a-kind work, and in many ways is still the most modern of modern films this century. --Tom Keogh

• The Searchers | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £6.49   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Searchers

• The Importance of Being Earnest | DVD | (05/09/2016) from £9.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  If you're looking for the definitive example of dry wit, look no further than this 1952 version of The Importance of Being Earnest. Of course, it helps to have Oscar Wilde's beloved play as source material, but this exquisite adaptation has a charmed life of its own, with a perfectly matched director and a once-in-a-lifetime cast. Mix these ingredients with Wilde's inimitable repartee, and you've got a comedic soufflé that's cooked to perfection. Opening with a proscenium nod to its theatrical origins, the film turns Wilde's comedy of clever deception and mixed identities into a cinematic treat, and while the 10-member cast is uniformly superb, special credit must be given to Dame Edith Evans, reprising her stage role as the imperiously stuffy Lady Bracknell. To hear her Wilde-ly hilarious inflections and elongated syllables is to witness British comedy in its purest form. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

• Summer Magic | DVD | (10/07/2006) from £8.25   |  Saving you £6.74 (81.70%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Hayley Mills brings a joyful enthusiasm to this nostalgic musical and bighearted adventure. When a close-knit Boston family loses their fortune they find a wealth of family secrets young love and charming summer nights in Beulah Maine. A good-natured postmaster pretentious cousin Julia and the mysterious absentee landlord Mr. Hamilton populate their new life in a charming old yellow house. Featuring an all-star supporting cast including Burl Ives Dorothy McGuire and Deborah Walley this classic and wondrous tale will delight the entire family and belongs in every Disney collection. Available for the first time on DVD!

• Swiss Family Robinson | DVD | (29/03/2004) from £5.99   |  Saving you £9.00 (150.25%)   |  RRP £14.99

  A family fleeing from the despotic regime of Napoleon is chased off course by a band of pirates. They are then shipwrecked on a tropical island where they begin a new and adventurous life. Based on the book by Johann Wyss.

• Reach For The Sky | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £3.99   |  Saving you £6.00 (150.38%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Reach for the Sky was a box-office hit in 1956 and rightly remains a fondly regarded classic of British cinema. Kenneth More is ideally cast as Douglas Bader, the gifted pilot who loses both legs in a pre-war air crash, only to play a major role in the Battle of Britain, rise to the rank of Group Captain and become a war hero. Based on Paul Brickhill's biography, this is an "official" history maybe, but Lewis Gilbert's screenplay and direction are historically accurate and informed by that very British humour, of which More was a natural. The film is graced by a decent supporting cast and a typically "widescreen" score from John Addison. On the DVD: Reach for the Sky is vividly reproduced in 16:9 anamorphic format and decent mono. There are subtitles for the hard of hearing and detailed biographies of More, Gilbert and Barder. The original theatrical trailer is included, but it would also have made sense to include an interview or documentary footage of Bader himself. --Richard Whitehouse

• It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World | DVD | (11/03/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Stanley Kramer's 1963 It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World is a sprawling comedy about a search for buried treasure by at least a dozen people--all played by well-known entertainers of their day--is the kind of mass comedy that has recently come back to the for-front of Hollywood with the film Rat Race. After a number of strangers (including Milton Berle, Jonathan Winters, Sid Caesar, Phil Silvers and others) witness a dying stranger (Jimmy Durante) identify the location of hidden money, a conflict-ridden hunt begins, watched over carefully by a suspicious cop (Spencer Tracy). The ensuing two and a half hours of mayhem has its ups and downs--some sketches and performers are certainly funnier than others. But Kramer, who is better known for socially conscious, serious cinema (Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?), is in a mood for broad comic characterization, and some of his jokes are so intentionally obvious (Durante literally kicks a bucket when he dies), they could have derived from the Airplane! reject bin. Watch for lots of cameo appearances, including Jerry Lewis. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

• Three Coins in the Fountain | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £13.49   |  Saving you £-3.50 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  This charming romantic comedy tells the story of three American secretaries and their search for love in Rome. After throwing a coin in the Trevi Fountain and making a wish, each of them eventually finds what they are looking for. For Frances (Dorothy McGuire) it is waspish author Clifton Webb. For Anita (Jean Peters) there's office romeo Rossano Brazzi. And for Maria (Maggie McNamara) a real-life handsome prince, Louis Jourdan.Exquisitely photographed amidst the splendours of the Eternal City and Venice, this gorgeous sun-soaked movie will make you want to book a flight on the next plane to Italy! And, as an added bonus, you also hear Frank Sinatra singing the wonderful, Oscar (1954) winning title song.

• The Greatest Story Ever Told | DVD | (31/03/2003) from £4.99   |  Saving you £11.00 (220.44%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The life of Christ got an excessively long treatment (260 minutes, later trimmed to 195) in this 1965 film directed by George Stevens (The Diary of Anne Frank). Max von Sydow does beautiful work as Jesus--his spontaneous mourning at discovering his friend Lazarus has died is not like anything in other New Testament epics--and Stevens renders the familiar tale with a handsome authenticity. But the project is nearly undone by an unwise gimmick in which seemingly half of Hollywood's living stars at the time make brief cameo appearances, some of which are ridiculous (who can forget the sight of John Wayne as a Roman Centurion solemnly intoning, "Truly he was the son of Gaaad"?). But there is a lot to like in the film, and Von Sydow's sensitive nobility sticks in the memory. --Tom Keogh

• Early Universal VOL. 1 (Masters of Cinema) 2-Disc Blu-ray Edition | Blu Ray | (13/09/2021) from £14.39   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present three early silent features from Universal Pictures, all fully restored as part of the studio's ongoing restoration program. Skinner's Dress Suit (dir. William A. Seiter, 1926) Reginald Denny stars as a shy clerk who asks his boss for a raise at the urging of his wife. His request is rejected, but he lies to his wife, who immediately goes out and buys an expensive suit, an act that upends his once-ordered life. (4K Restoration) The Shield of Honor (dir. Emory Johnson, 1927) The LAPD has a new method of fighting crime, the Air Police! Their newest recruit, young hotshot pilot Jack MacDowell (Neil Hamilton), is tasked with catching a gang of jewellery thieves. (2K Restoration) (Worldwide Debut on Blu-ray) The Shakedown (dir. William Wyler, 1929) Dave Roberts (James Murray) is a fighter better known for taking falls in fixed fights than for taking home the prize money. But then he falls head-over-heels for a fiery waitress (Barbara Kent) and a rough-and-tumble orphan (Jack Hanlon), and he begins to dramatically alter his life inside and outside of the ring. (4K Restoration) Special Features: Limited Edition O-Card Slipcase 1080p presentation on Blu-ray from restorations undertaken by Universal Pictures (Skinner's Dress Suit and The Shakedown restored in 4K, The Shield of Honor restored in 2K) Skinner's Dress Suit score by Leo Birenberg The Shield of Honor score by Alex Kovacs The Shakedown score by Michael Gatt Audio Commentary tracks on all three features A collection of additional materials from the early era of Universal Pictures, with complimentary analysis by silent film experts and historians PLUS: A Collector's Booklet featuring new writing on the films included in this set * All extras subject to change

• Citizen Kane : Special Edition | DVD | (21/07/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £7.99

  The most acclaimed film in cinema history, Citizen Kane receives extra bolstering each time it tops a "greatest films ever" list. As a piece of filmmaking it ticks all the right boxes: a precociously talented director and lead actor in Orson Welles, Gregg Toland's innovative cinematography, a strong screenplay by Welles and Herman J Mankiewicz, rich scoring from Bernard Herrmann, and so on. For its time, it was technically groundbreaking, and laid out a blueprint for Hollywood filmmaking that's still influential. But, most importantly, as a viewing experience it's still one of the most mesmerising and beautiful films in existence. From its opening scenes--Kane's eerie Gothic mansion, his lone figure muttering the word "Rosebud" as he dies, journalists discussing the newsreel footage of his obituary--Kane lays out an enigma: who exactly was this man? Looping flashbacks build up a portrait of a contradictory figure who, despite living in the public eye, remained a mystery at heart. A testament to the corrupting influence of money, fame and the media and at its centre the tale of a man in search of love, Citizen Kane is a personal tragedy on an epic scale. Technically, it's a lesson in filmmaking in itself whose daring aesthetics nonetheless remain unobtrusive. It's doubtful that a debut director will ever be given such free reign by a studio again and even if this happened, it's doubtful that such a masterpiece would be created. On the DVD: Citizen Kane in this DVD special edition is beautifully remastered and comes with a feature illustrating the before and after of the restoration process. A 50-minute documentary, "Anatomy of a Classic", hosted by Barry Norman, delves into the making of the film as well as trying to deal with some of the myths that surround it, like the (untrue) rumour that Welles ran over both time and budget. Film historian Ken Barnes takes over for a commentary and Welles himself is featured in his controversial 1938 radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds and 1945 broadcast of The Happy Prince. A photo gallery, extensive cast and crew profiles, breakdown of all the films expenses and trailer round off this admirable package.--Laura Bushell

• The Magdalene Sisters | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  The award winning story of the Magdalene Asylums of 1960s Ireland, where countless young women were ritually abused by the Catholic Church.

• Citizen Kane | Blu Ray | (28/02/2022) from £21.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Hailed by critics and fans alike as one of the greatest films ever made, Citizen Kane continues to influence filmmakers and astound viewers 80 years later. Nominated for nine 1941 Academy Awards, with a win for Best Original Screenplay. Orson Welles' controversial masterpiece uses innovative flashbacks and ground-breaking cinematography to follow the epic rise and fall of wealthy newspaper magnate. For any fan of films, this is an essential viewing experience. Special Features on Blu-ray: Separate Commentaries by Roger Ebert and Peter Bogdanovich Interviews with Ruth Warrick and Robert Wise Opening: World Premiere of Citizen Kane Still Photography with Commentary by Roger Ebert and More

• Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil | DVD | (25/01/1999) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Readers of John Berendt's bestselling novel, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, were bound to be at least somewhat disappointed by this big-screen adaptation, but despite mixed reaction from critics and audiences, there's still plenty to admire about director Clint Eastwood's take on the material. Readers will surely miss the rich atmosphere and societal detail that Berendt brought to his "Savannah story," and the movie can only scratch the surface of Georgian history, tradition and wealthy decadence underlying Berendt's fact-based murder mystery. Still, Eastwood maintains an assured focus on the wonderful eccentrics of Savannah, most notably a gay Savannah antiques dealer (superbly played by Kevin Spacey), who may or may not have killed his friend and alleged lover (Jude Law). John Cusack plays the Town & Country journalist who arrives in Savannah to find much more than he bargained for--including the city's legendary drag queen Lady Chablis (playing "herself")--and John Lee Hancock's smoothly adapted screenplay succeeds in bringing Berendt's characters vividly to life with plenty of flavourful dialogue. --Jeff Shannon

• Spawn of the North (Limited Edition) | Blu Ray | (21/04/2025) from £16.31   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  From director Henry Hathaway (Peter Ibbetson) comes Spawn of the North, a thrilling adventure starring George Raft (You and Me), Henry Fonda (Madigan), and Dorothy Lamour (Road to Morocco).Jim (Fonda), an Alaskan salmon fisherman, is reunited with his friend Tyler (Raft). When a dismayed Jim finds that Tyler has joined the gang of poachers that are stealing his stock, he enlists Tyler's lover, Nicky (Lamour), to help him defeat the thieves without endangering his friend.Co-written by Jules Furthman (Shanghai Express), and co-starring Akim Tamiroff (Dangerous to Know) and John Barrymore (Twentieth Century), Spawn of the North is filmmaking on a grand scale, utilising an expansive Alaskan set featuring a 375,000-gallon water tank, as well as extensive location work on genuine Alaskan salmon runs.

• The Steamie | DVD | (24/03/2014) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Tony Roper wrote The Steamie for Glasgow's Mayfest in 1987 and since then the play has always been in production somewhere in Britain. This is now your chance to own the original version of the smash-hit of the year which played to packed audiences in the theatre and was watched by millions when it was produced for television. Return to Hogmanay 1957 when a feisty bunch of Glasgow women - Mrs Culfeathers, Dolly, Doreen and the irrepressible Magrit - all meet at The Steamie to d...