"Actor: Dr JOHN"

• ALFRED HITCHCOCK: CLASSICS COLLECTION VOL.3 | Blu Ray | (06/11/2023) from £69.96   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  5 UNFORGETTABLE FILMS FROM THE MASTER OF SUSPENSE: The legendary Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, directed some of the most thrilling and and memorable works in movie history. The Alfred Hitchcock Classics Collection features five films from the iconic directors career including Rope, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Torn Curtain, Topaz and Frenzy in stunning 4K resolution. Starring Hollywood favorites such as James Stewart, Doris Day, Paul Newman, Julie Andrews, Frederick Stafford, John Forsythe, John Finch and Barry Foster, this collection includes hours of bonus features and captures the unique vision of one of cinemas most innovative directors.

• The Calcium Kid | DVD | (01/03/2010) from £4.90   |  Saving you £1.09 (22.24%)   |  RRP £5.99

  When happy-go-lucky milkman Jimmy (Orlando Bloom) accidentally puts out of action the UK's contender for the boxing World title, he finds himself thrust into the ring and onto the world stage as Britain's new hope.

• The Acid House | DVD | (07/06/2004) from £8.52   |  Saving you £1.47 (17.25%)   |  RRP £9.99

  In The Acid House director Paul McGuigan adapts three Irvine Welsh short stories. These are set in an unflinchingly depicted world of grey, breeze block tenements, wiry psychos, short leather skirts, beer, fags and drugs, kinky sex in badly wallpapered lounges, random violence, hideous-looking babies, raves, footy, discarded crisp packets and barely intelligible dialogue featuring the occasional use of non-profanity."The Granton Star Clause" tells the unhappy tale of wee, pasty-faced Boab Doyle, who in one long, unhappy sequence loses his place in the football team, his girlfriend, his job and gets kicked out of the house by his parents, before an encounter with God (here, a hard-bitten, lager-quaffing Maurice Roeves) leads to a surreal, Kafka-esque conclusion. The second tale, "A Soft Touch", is gruellingly and well portrayed but pointlessly depressing. Kevin McKidd plays Johnny, a supermarket employee with an appalling slag-hag of a girlfriend who takes up with his new, violently psychotic and parasitical neighbour Larry. Will he stand up for himself? The answer will leave you thoroughly unsatisfied. Finally, there's "The Acid House", the funniest but silliest of the three tales in which Ewan Bremner plays an obnoxiously livewire Hibs fan who takes one too many tabs and ends up being transported into the mind of stereotypically middle-class couple's--Martin Clunes and Jemma Redgrave--baby. The Acid House is compulsive but bleak, exhilarating but ambivalent. The viewer is asked to bring their own moral compass to these stylised yet non-judgemental episodes. Fans of Trainspotting, however, will certainly find much of the scintillating same here.On the DVD: disappointingly, only the trailer is featured here. However, the DVD transfer in letterbox format is impeccable, used to its best advantage in the more surreal, fast-cut music video-style sequences, while the soundtrack, featuring The Verve and Primal Scream among others, also benefits. --David Stubbs

• Delirious | DVD | (12/08/2002) from £14.36   |  Saving you £-1.37 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  A 1991 comedy, Delirious stars John Candy as the head writer on a soap opera set in the fictional small town of Ashford Falls, whose naff power dressing and power wrangling is distinctly reminiscent of Dynasty. Candy has a crush on the somewhat imperious and Joan Collins-esque star of the show, played by Emma Samms, although waiting in the wings to be written into the show is the more wholesome and unaffected actress Mariel Hemingway. Delirious takes a turn when Candy is felled in an accident and awakes, supernaturally, to find himself in the very world of his own soap, with Ashford Falls a real town and its fictional characters, including Samms, now real people. Candy discovers, however, that in this world he has the power to "write" situations as they suit him--in this case, by casting himself as a dashing, wealthy and mysterious Wall Street hero, able to sweep Samms off her feet. The film is in some ways a precursor of Pleasantville (in which two teens are sucked into the world of a "Honey, I'm home" black and white 1950s sitcom). However, between them the star, writers and director (Tom Mankiewicz) make a ham fist of Delirious. The parody of soap mores is quite well done but quickly palls in its obviousness; Candy's performance is misjudged, as if trying too hard to make the best of a bad job; while overall, the film feels cheap, tacky and broad, once again raising the question why in the 1980s and 90s America produced such great sitcoms but such poor film comedies. On the DVD: Delirious is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen. It's a decent enough edition but looks its age in places, in terms of colour definition in particular. The only extra is the original trailer. --David Stubbs

• The Last Waltz (Criterion Collection) | Blu Ray | (13/06/2023) from £45.00   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Chicken Run/James & the Giant Peach/Anastasia | DVD | (06/09/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Chicken Run: Trouble is brewing down on Mrs Tweedy's poultry farm: the chickens are revolting (yes that old chestnut) and clucky hen Ginger (voiced by Julia Sawalha) is planning her latest coop um coup. Getting one or two birds out of the farm is no problem whatsoever. Unfortunately Ginger plans to get everyone out at the same time and when one of the would-be escapees happens to be kind-hearted but bird-brained Babs (Jane Horrocks) Ginger is fighting a losing battle. As she contemplates her next escape attempt with Scottish engineering genius Mac (Lynn Ferguson) Ginger sees their salvation in the form of a rooster named Rocky (Mel Gibson) if the cocksure Rocky can teach all of the hens how to fly then they can all fly out of Tweedy's clutches before she gives them the chop! James And The Giant Peach: This is the story of James Henry Trotter a lonely orphan sent to live with his horribly wicked and greedy Aunts Spiker (Joanna Lumley) and Sponge (Miriam Margoyles). When James meets a strange old man who promises that marvelous things will happen indeed they do. Escaping his aunts by climbing inside a giant peach that mysteriously and suddenly grows on their barren tree he meets some very unusual new friends and as they break free in the peach from Spiker and Sponge they embark on a series of wildly imaginative adventures. Anastasia: The lost Russian Princess Anastasia and her incredible quest to find her true identity. When the shadow of revolution falls across Russia Anastasia the royal family's youngest daughter barely escapes with her life. Years later joined by a band of heroic companions Anastasia must battle the evil Rasputin his sidekick Bartok the bat and a host of ghostly minions in a headlong race to reach Paris reclaim her rightful destiny.... and solve the greatest mystery of the 20th century!

• Dirty Harry | DVD | (02/10/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Whether or not you can sympathise with its fascistic/vigilante approach to law enforcement, Dirty Harry (directed by star Clint Eastwood's longtime friend and directorial mentor, Don Siegel) is one hell of an American cop thriller. The movie makes evocative use of its San Francisco locations as cop Harry Callahan (Eastwood) tracks the elusive "Scorpio killer" who has been terrorising the city by the Bay. As the psychopath's trail grows hotter, Harry becomes increasingly impatient and intolerant of the frustrating obstacles (departmental red tape, individuals' civil rights) that he feels are keeping him from doing his job. A characteristically taut and tense piece of filmmaking from Siegel (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Shootist, Escape from Alcatraz), it also remains a fascinating slice of American pop culture. It was a big hit (followed by four sequels) that obviously reflected--or exploited--the almost obsessive or paranoid fears and frustrations many Americans felt about crime in the streets. At a time when "law and order" was a familiar slogan for political candidates, Harry Callahan may have represented neither, but from his point of view his job was simple: stop criminals. To him that end justified any means he deemed necessary. --Jim Emerson

• Analyze This/Analyze That | DVD | (15/09/2003) from £23.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £23.99

  Analyze That has more bada bing than its lukewarm box office reception would lead you to expect. Analyze This (1999) had the advantage of a then-fresh idea--Robert De Niro as a neurotic mob boss seeking therapy with reluctant shrink Billy Crystal--but that idea's stale (and has been handled more authentically in The Sopranos), so this sequel relies on established chemistry and zesty dialogue that matches the original. There's nothing wrong with a retread when it's this funny, and De Niro's latter-day penchant for comedy suits him well when, as kingpin Paul Vitti, he lures Dr Sobel (Crystal) into a prison breakout scheme involving faked catatonia and West Side Story show tunes. The contrived plot involves Vitti's criminal comeback. Unfortunately, there's little room for Lisa Kudrow as Sobel's sarcastic wife, but De Niro's Raging Bull co-star Cathy Moriarty-Gentile is welcomed as a rival mob queen. You want a comedy masterpiece? Fuhgeddaboudit. You want 95 minutes of easy fun? It's right here... and don't miss those obligatory outtakes. --Jeff Shannon

• Near Dark | DVD | (25/08/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  The word "vampire" is never mentioned in Near Dark, but that doesn't stop this 1987 cult favourite from being one of the best modern-era vampire films. It put then-unknown director Kathryn Bigelow on Hollywood's radar and gave choice roles to Aliens costars favoured by Bigelow's ex-husband James Cameron--Lance Henriksen is the leader of a makeshift family of renegade bloodsuckers, nocturnally seeking victims in rural Oklahoma; his immortal gal pal is Aliens and T2 alumnus Jenette Goldstein; and Bill Paxton is the group's deadliest leather-clad ass kicker. Fellow traveller Jenny Wright lures Okie farm boy Adrian Pasdar into the group with a love bite and he's soon turning toward vampirism with a combination of frightened revulsion and relentless desire. With Joshua Miller as the youngest vampire, Near Dark is Bigelow's masterpiece of low-budget ingenuity--a truck-stop thriller that begins well, gets better and better (aided by a fine Tangerine Dream score) and goes out in a blaze of glory. --Jeff Shannon

• Sabrina | Blu Ray | (10/09/2013) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Audrey Hepburn is the delightful, young, eponymous Sabrina, the daughter of a chauffeur who is hopelessly in love with David Larrabee (William Holden), the playboy younger son in the rich Long Island household her father works for. In order to help her forget her woes, Sabrina is shipped off to cooking school in Paris. While there, she befriends a baron who provides a bit of culture--and the encouragement to snip off her childlike ponytail. Upon her return to New York, Sabrina is transformed into a sophisticated woman, and David is entranced by her. However, his older brother Linus (Humphrey Bogart) has arranged David's marriage to Elizabeth Tyson in order to seal a business merger and thus must steer David away from Sabrina. To do this, Linus takes on the task of wooing her for himself. Full of great dialogue ("A woman happy in love, she burns the soufflé; a woman unhappy in love, she forgets to turn on the oven") and wonderful performances, this film is a romantic masterpiece. Also enjoyable is the 1995 remake, starring Julia Ormond and Harrison Ford. --Jenny Brown

• M - A Film by Fritz Lang | DVD | (06/10/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Fritz Lang's first sound movie, the serial-killer film M, has often been voted the best German film of all time, but, until now, most of us have never seen it properly. What we have seen is a heavily cut 1950s re-edit with extra sound and music patched in, where Lang was deliberately economical with the new technology. This new "Ultimate Edition" is dominated by a marvellous restoration which is true to his intentions and oft-voiced complaints about what had been done to his best film. The young Peter Lorre is terrifyingly ordinary as the child-murderer whom police and criminals hunt down in what is still one of the best forensic police procedurals ever made, while Gustaf Grundgens has effortless charisma as the chief gangster. Lorre's Hollywood exile and decay, and Grundgens' betrayal of old friends and principles under the Nazis, merely add a layer of irony to all this. Lang's ironic cuts--a gangster's gesture is completed by his police equivalent--and dark, studio-bound cinematography make this one of the great precursors of American film noir. Simply, seen without cracks and pops and lines running down the screen, M is revealed as a true classic--a film that shames everything made in its genre since. On the DVD: M on disc has a great deal of documentary material featuring scholars and technicians telling us just how clever they have been in preparing this splendid restoration. The film also comes with a detailed commentary into which has been spliced interview material with Lang talking in English about specific sequences. There is a German-language film interview with Lang in which he talks through his career and re-enacts the interview with Goebbels that led to his exile; an audio interview with Peter Bogdanovich; and an intelligent video critical essay by film historian R Dixon Smith. The restored film is shown in its correct, unusual visual aspect ratio of 1.90:1 and has vivid cleaned-up digital mono sound: the murderer's whistling of "In the Hall of the Mountain King" has never sounded so chilling. --Roz Kaveney

• What The Bleep Do We Know!? | DVD | (26/09/2005) from £7.05   |  Saving you £12.94 (183.55%)   |  RRP £19.99

  What the Bleep Do We Know? is a lecture on mysticism and science mixed into a sort-of narrative. Marlee Matlin stars in the dramatic thread, about a sourpuss photographer who begins to question her perceptions. Interviews with quantum physics experts and New Age authors are cut into this story, offering a vaguely convincing (and certainly mind-provoking) theory about... well, actually, it sounds a lot like the Power of Positive Thinking, when you get down to it. Talking heads (not identified until film's end) include JZ Knight, who appears in the movie channeling Ramtha, the ancient sage she claims communicates through her (other speakers are also associated with Knight's organization). What she says actually makes pretty good common sense--Ramtha's wiggier notions are not included--and would be easy to accept were it not being credited to a 35,000-year-old mystic from Atlantis. --Robert Horton, Amazon.com

• The Breed | DVD | (09/10/2003) from £6.98   |  Saving you £-0.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  With a hot cast and a sexy look 'The Breed' puts a stylish twist on the classic vampire tale. FBI Agent Steven Grant (Woodbine) is reluctantly assigned to track a renegade bloodsucker that is bent on exposing a government plan to integrate vampires into society. Along with his new partner 'good' vampire cop Aaron Grey (Paul) Grant follows the clues and the bodies to the lair of the stunningly beautiful Lucy (Ling). Trusting any vampire is difficult for Grant but when he finds hi

• Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens Classics | DVD | (22/08/2017) from £6.47   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  The first BBC television adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic, Constance Cox's adaptation of Oliver Twist (1962) is now available for the first time to own on DVD. Starring Bruce Prochnik and BAFTA nominees Max Adrian and Peter Vaughan. Constance Cox s uncompromising 1962 adaptation of Dickens tale of a gang of orphan boys turned to crime changed the face of British Sunday teatime viewing. Her unvarnished depiction of despair and depravity in the back alleys of 19th-century London, and the cruel divide between rich and poor, shattered expectations of cosy family drama. But this is Oliver as Dickens intended, without the enforced jollity of the blockbuster Lionel Bart/Carol Reed musical. Max Adrian stars as villainous Fagin, Peter Vaughan an indelibly brutal Bill Sikes, Bruce Prochnik a gentle Oliver, Melvyn Hayes a spry Artful Dodger, and Carmel McSharry the trapped and powerless Nancy. In support are Willoughby Goddard as bullying beadle Bumble, Gay Cameron as kindly aunt Rose Maylie, John Carson s cowardly Monks and Donald Eccles bitter undertaker Sowerberry. This landmark BBC production, released for the first time on DVD, was a gritty game-changer that raised the bar and stretched the boundaries of TV adaptation and serial drama.

• The Unforgiven | DVD | (01/03/2004) from £5.28   |  Saving you £7.71 (146.02%)   |  RRP £12.99

  No relation to the 1992 Clint Eastwood film of almost the same name, 1959's The Unforgiven is based--like John Ford's The Searchers--on a novel by Alan LeMay. Again the story focuses on a frontier family divided by racism. But instead of the complex, endlessly resonant demonology of the Ford picture, here John Huston aims for a pat, civil-rights-era allegory of loving solidarity triumphing over societal prejudice--and, to be sure, some noble but dangerous Kiowas. Burt Lancaster and Audrey Hepburn costar as, respectively, the eldest son of a ranching family and the beloved sister who's not his sister at all, but an Indian. However, the film's dark heart belongs to Joseph Wiseman as an avenging ghost who materialises out of the wind and Lillian Gish as the matriarch who will do whatever she must to protect her clan. --Richard T Jameson

• Bean - The Ultimate Disaster Movie | DVD | (24/12/2001) from £7.48   |  Saving you £8.51 (113.77%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Translating Rowan Atkinson's Mr Bean character from British television to the big screen takes a bit of a toll, but there are some hilarious sequences in this popular comedy. The eponymous Bean, a boy-man twit with a knack for getting into difficult binds (and then making them worse and worse and worse), is a London museum guard who is sent to Los Angeles in the company of the famous painting Whistler's Mother. He's mistaken as an art expert by the well-meaning curator (Peter MacNicol) of an LA museum, but Bean's famously eccentric behaviour soon causes the poor guy to almost lose his family and job. The insularity of Bean's TV world is sacrificed in this film, and that change diminishes some of the character's appeal. But Atkinson is a man naturally full of comedy, and he doesn't let his fans down. --Tom Keogh

• Straight Talk | DVD | (01/03/2004) from £12.38   |  Saving you £3.87 (34.80%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Dolly Parton (9 to 5 Steel Magnolias) and James Woods (The Hard Way) star in this lighthearted romantic comedy about a country girl who accidentally becomes Chicago's hottest talk radio celebrity. With her homespun wit and down-home advice Shirlee Kenyon wins listeners' hearts... and the heart of investigative reporter Jack Russell. But when Jack discovers the hidden secret to her success it jeopardises both her newfound celebrity status and their future together. Filled with roman

• The Hound Of The Baskervilles | DVD | (20/10/2003) from £16.99   |  Saving you £-4.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Sherlock Holmes gets the Gothic treatment in Hammer's Hound of the Baskervilles, a typical mix of mystery and supernatural horror from the famous studio. Peter Cushing is perfectly cast as the great detective, the very embodiment of science and reason (which also made him a great Van Helsing in the Dracula series) in a case wound around a legacy of aristocratic cruelty and a devilish dog wandering the swampy moors. Christopher Lee is a less satisfying fit as the last of the Baskervilles, as he waffles between fear and apathetic disregard, but Andre Morell is a fine Dr Watson and a far cry from Nigel Bruce's sweet bumbler from the Hollywood incarnation of the 1940s. Director Terence Fisher was Hammer's top stylist and the film drips with the mood of the moors, mist hanging in the air, the dying vegetation itself threatening to come to life and trap the next unwary traveller. --Sean Axmaker

• Hard Candy | DVD | (10/09/2007) from £5.70   |  Saving you £12.29 (215.61%)   |  RRP £17.99

  A provocative drama about a 32-year-old man who takes home a 14-year-old girl he meets on the Internet - with surprising consequences.

• Nearest And Dearest - Series 1 | DVD | (08/04/2013) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Comedy greats Jimmy Jewel and Hilda Baker star as Eli Pledge and his sister Nellie in the classic award-winning comedy - Nearest and Dearest. Eli - an aging lothario - and Nellie - virtuous to the last but in possession of a wonderfully flexible grip on the English language - inherit clapped out condiment company Pledge's Purer Pickles from their father. Much hilarity ensues amongst the malaproprisms bolshie workforce and none-too-subtle double entendres as the siblings try their