"Actor: Duvall"

• John Carpenter's Ghosts Of Mars | DVD | (10/05/2004) from £5.89   |  Saving you £0.10 (1.70%)   |  RRP £5.99

  John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars attempts a productive combination of SF elements (a largely terraformed Mars with its long-lost civilisation) and horror (mass possession that turns the victims into rampaging, self-mutilating monsters that kill and burn). A police-force detachment turn up in a mining community to collect a bandit, whose last heist was uncharacteristically violent, and soon find themselves under siege from rampaging hordes who used to be solid citizens. This is a fairly simple set of variations on stock Carpenter elements--a hybrid between Assault on Precinct 13 and In the Mouth of Madness. However, there is some powerful chemistry between Nastasha Henstridge's icy, drug-abusing police lieutenant and Ice Cube's bandit, Desolation Williams, made stronger by the lack of sexual tension. Other characters, such as Pam Grier's tough commander and Clea Duvall's nervous rookie, are more or less defined by plot functions; the mobs never become more than faceless, or facially distorted, anonymous menaces. This is one for die-hard Carpenter fans only. On the DVD: Ghosts of Mars on disc comes with Dolby Digital sound and its original widescreen ratio of 2.35:1. A sparky commentary by Carpenter and Henstridge is included, which is informative, but otherwise there are uninspiring documentaries on the musical score, the special effects and the difficulties of shooting at night in the Mexican desert, as well as filmographies and the theatrical trailer. --Roz Kaveney

• Tender Mercies | DVD | (03/06/2013) from £8.99   |  Saving you £7.00 (77.86%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Sometimes everything comes together in a movie and it becomes something so much greater than the sum of its parts that it can only be described as a miracle. That's the case with Tender Mercies, a quietly luminous character piece about an alcoholic, washed-up country singer named Mac Sledge (Robert Duvall in an Oscar-winning performance) who hits bottom in a motel room one night and then slowly finds his way back into the land of the living with the help of the widow (Tess Harper) and her young son. It's a low-key, contemplative film that feels like a rural American family comedy in the vein of the great Japanese director, Yasujiro Ozu. Tender Mercies was directed by Australian Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy, Breaker Morant), written by Horton Foote (To Kill a Mockingbird), who won an Oscar for his screenplay, and has an unbeatable cast. This is one of Duvall's most intimate and deeply personal performances, matched only by his debut 14 years later as actor-writer-director in The Apostle. --Jim Emerson

• THX 1138 | Blu Ray | (07/12/2020) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  The visionary first film from George Lucas in a director's cut A chilling exploration of the future is also a compelling examination of the present in George Lucas's THX 1138, starring Robert Duvall as a man whose mind and body are controlled by the government. THX makes a harrowing attempt to escape from a world where thoughts are controlled, freedom is an impossibility and love is the ultimate crime. The real excitement of THX 1138 is not really the message but the medium the use of film not to tell a story so much as to convey an experience. Stunning dazzling chilling and terribly powerful (Charles Champlin, Los Angeles Times). SPECIAL FEATURES Commentary by George Lucas and Walter Murch Theatre of Noise Experience: Isolated Sound Effects Track Master Sessions: Docupod Gallery Showcasing Murch's Pioneering Work 2 Documentaries: A Legacy of Filmmakers: The Early Years of American Zoetrope and Artifact from the Future: The Making of THX 1138 Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB: Lucas' Original Student Film Vintage Production Featurette Bald Theatrical Trailers

• The Astronaut's Wife | DVD | (24/04/2000) from £5.38   |  Saving you £14.61 (271.56%)   |  RRP £19.99

  An intriguingly creepy premise but failed execution marks The Astronaut's Wife, a stylish and ultimately bland thriller about a pretty, young woman whose pretty, young astronaut husband comes back from his most recent space mission a little... odd. Before that fated space trip, Spencer (Johnny Depp) and Jillian (Charlize Theron) were a sunny, happy couple with matching blonde hairdos and a predilection for romping in the sack from extremely clever camera angles. However, after a communications blackout brings Spencer and his partner back down to earth prematurely, things are a little... peculiar. Spencer's partner goes bonkers and has a heart attack; on top of that, the partner's wife takes a fatal shower with a plugged-in radio. Getting out of the space biz, Spencer accepts a job as a corporate exec in New York, and as a welcome to the Big Apple for his comely wife, he molests her at the company cocktail party. Soon enough, Jillian is pregnant, but as you might expect, this pregnancy (twins, don't you know) is a little... unusual. Writer-director Rand Ravich takes his sweet time getting from extremely obvious plot point A to even more obvious plot point B, stretching out the development particulars in mind-numbing, suspense-killing fashion. Even Joe Morton, as a sinisterly psychotic NASA official, can't liven things up--you know you're in bad thriller territory when the biggest scare comes from a light suddenly being switched off. Theron, sporting a Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby style haircut, sleepwalks beautifully through the movie, but she did this role much, much better in The Devil's Advocate. Depp, with a cornpone Southern accent, is about as realistic as his peroxided hair. Ravich does the viewer no favours with a hackneyed ending straight out of a B-grade paperback horror novel in which the most shocking moment is Theron's sudden emergence as a brunette. With Blair Brown as a jaded socialite who offers to help out Theron by providing do-it-yourself abortion pills, and a lovely Donna Murphy as the suicidal wife who figures it all out before everyone else. -- Mark Englehart, Amazon.com

• Ghosts of Mars | Blu Ray | (30/01/2017) from £20.00   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars attempts a productive combination of SF elements (a largely terraformed Mars with its long-lost civilisation) and horror (mass possession that turns the victims into rampaging, self-mutilating monsters that kill and burn). A police-force detachment turn up in a mining community to collect a bandit, whose last heist was uncharacteristically violent, and soon find themselves under siege from rampaging hordes who used to be solid citizens. This is a fairly simple set of variations on stock Carpenter elements--a hybrid between Assault on Precinct 13 and In the Mouth of Madness. However, there is some powerful chemistry between Nastasha Henstridge's icy, drug-abusing police lieutenant and Ice Cube's bandit, Desolation Williams, made stronger by the lack of sexual tension. Other characters, such as Pam Grier's tough commander and Clea Duvall's nervous rookie, are more or less defined by plot functions; the mobs never become more than faceless, or facially distorted, anonymous menaces. This is one for die-hard Carpenter fans only. On the DVD: Ghosts of Mars on disc comes with Dolby Digital sound and its original widescreen ratio of 2.35:1. A sparky commentary by Carpenter and Henstridge is included, which is informative, but otherwise there are uninspiring documentaries on the musical score, the special effects and the difficulties of shooting at night in the Mexican desert, as well as filmographies and the theatrical trailer. --Roz Kaveney

• Eagle Has Landed Steelbook | Blu Ray | (10/09/2018) from £17.99   |  Saving you £1.96 (10.89%)   |  RRP £19.95

  German World War II plot to capture Winston Churchill, based on Jack Higgins' best-selling novel. Colonel Radl discovers that Churchill is planning to spend a couple of days in an almost-deserted village in Norfolk. Radl is convinced an attempt to kidnap him should be made and enlists the help of Colonel Steiner, who is under suspended sentence of death, and Liam Devlin, an Irishman. A crack force of German paratroopers lands safely in England, poised and ready for the kidnap. All appears to be going smoothly until an unforeseeable incident exposes the Germans, but the kidnap plan continues and Steiner, his finger on the trigger of his luger, approaches the unmistakable figure of Churchill. The star-studded cast includes Michael Caine, Donald Sutherland, Robert Duvall, Jenny Agutter, Donald Pleasence, Anthony Quayle, Jean Marsh and Judy Geeson.

• Deep Impact | Blu Ray | (01/02/2010) from £8.95   |  Saving you £11.04 (123.35%)   |  RRP £19.99

  What would you do if you knew that in a handful of days an enormous comet would collide with Earth and all humanity could be annihilated? Mimi Leder (The Peacemaker) directs guiding an all-star cast featuring Robert Duvall Tea Leoni Elijah Wood Vanessa Redgrave Maximilian Schell and Morgan Freeman. With the film's dynamic fusion of large-scale excitement and touching human-scale storylines Deep Impact makes its impact felt in a big and unforgettable way.

• Apocalypse Now Redux | DVD | (22/04/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 classic tale of the Viet Nam war, re-released with almost an hour of additional footage. Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) is given the task of sailing upriver to find and execute renegade military officer Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Br

• The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid | DVD | (10/02/2014) from £5.99   |  Saving you £7.00 (116.86%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Based on the true story of the last failed bank robbery by the James and Younger brothers this film is notable for showing the unraveling heist from the outlaws' viewpoint. The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid was shot in a meticulous semi documentary style that brings to life the glorious last ride of the infamous band of outlaws. Late in the summer of 1876 Jesse James and Cole Younger were given amnesty by their home state of Missouri; after a long and prosperous career as robbers the dynamic duo were ironically proclaimed state heroes. Faced with the possibility of a quiet and peaceful future the notorious ruffians had no choice but to plan one final heist at the biggest bank west of the Mississippi in Northfield Minnesota. The heist was a grand scheme planned with great intellectual prowess by Younger the introverted and soft-spoken leader of the group who was often overshadowed by the flashy and daredevil killer Jesse James. Together the two men executed what they thought would be a foolproof plan - until the citizens of Northfield proved them wrong.

• Joe Kidd | Blu Ray | (09/09/2016) from £10.11   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Clint Eastwood's stardom was supernova, thanks to Dirty Harry; John Sturges, the man behind The Magnificent Seven and a dozen other memorably leathery Westerns, was directing; and Elmore Leonard was the screenwriter. It just goes to show. Joe Kidd is a muddle and a drag, the shoddiest Eastwood vehicle since Rowdy Yates trod in his last cow flop. Kidd, first seen as a duded-up drunk sleeping one off in jail, is supposed to be a horse rancher and an expert tracker--just the fellow a rapacious land-grabber (Robert Duvall committing lazy villainy) needs to chase down the uppity Latino (John Saxon) who's trying to reclaim the grabbed land for its rightful owners. Neither the characters nor the overland pursuit makes any sense, thanks to chasms in the continuity and no direction to speak of. An absurdly arbitrary assault-by-locomotive provides the climax; as Eastwood observed, "Jesus, anything at this point--let's end it." --Richard T. Jameson

• Lonesome Dove | DVD | (06/08/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones star as Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call, ageing cowboys and former Texas rangers, who organise a 2,500 mile cattle drive for one last great adventure in this excellent 1989 miniseries adaptation of Larry McMurtry's novel. The best friends, who steal the herd from a gang of Mexican cattle rustlers, drive their herd from Texas to Montana, battling horse thieves, angry Indian tribes, and a renegade half-breed killer named Blue Duck (Frederic Forrest) on a mission of revenge. The excellent cast also includes Robert Urich as cardsharp and former Ranger Jake Spoon, Anjelica Huston as McCrae's old flame Clara Allen, Danny Glover, Ricky Schroder, Diane Lane, Chris Cooper, DB Sweeney, Steve Buscemi, and even a small role for author Larry McMurtry. Australian director Simon Wincer shows a tremendous capacity for balancing sweeping drama and intimacy against the gorgeous landscape of the American Southwest, giving a grandly epic feel to the film despite its small-screen target and limited budget, and for forging memorable characters of even the smallest supporting parts. The heart of the drama belongs to McCrae and Call, memorably etched by Duvall and Jones as the last of the range romantics. In the age of revisionist Westerns, this excellent cattle-drive drama nicely maintains an old -fashioned feeling while still showing the dark side of the American West. --Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com

• The Gingerbread Man | DVD | (11/10/1999) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  When released in 1997, The Gingerbread Man was the only John Grisham movie that did not use one of the popular novelist's bestsellers as its inspiration. Rather, it's based on an original screenplay by Grisham that displays the author's familiar flair for Southern characters and settings within a labyrinthine plot propelled by his trademark narrative twists and turns. Sporting a spot-on Georgian accent, Kenneth Branagh plays a Savannah attorney who comes to the assistance of a troubled woman (Embeth Davidtz) and finds himself enmeshed in a scenario involving the woman's father (Robert Duvall) that grows increasingly complex and dangerous, where nothing, of course, is really as it seems. It's a totally absorbing movie made in the modern film noir tradition; what's most interesting here (and most underrated by critics at the time) is the combination of Grisham's mainstream mystery and the offbeat style of maverick director Robert Altman. Despite a battle with executives that nearly caused Altman to disown the film, The Gingerbread Man demonstrates the director's skill in bringing a fresh, characteristically offbeat approach to conventional material, especially in the use of a threatening hurricane to hold the plot in a state of dangerous urgency. Unfortunately overlooked during its theatrical release, this intelligent thriller provides a fine double bill with Francis Coppola's film of Grisham's The Rainmaker. --Jeff Shannon

• Thieves Like Us (Limited Edition) | Blu Ray | (17/07/2023) from £21.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Time Bandits | DVD | (30/09/2002) from £9.07   |  Saving you £13.91 (228.78%)   |  RRP £19.99

  With Time Bandits, only his second movie as director, Terry Gilliam's barbed humour and hyperactive visual imagination got themselves gloriously into full gear. Sketched out in a matter of weeks over Michael Palin's kitchen table while Gilliam struggled to get his dream project Brazil off the ground, this is a children's film made by a director who "hates kid films" and all the "mawkish sentimental crap" that goes with them. The 11-year-old hero, Kevin, finds himself lugged out of his suburban bedroom and off through a series of wormholes in time and space by a gang of rapacious, bickering midgets in search of loot, en route encountering (and casually despoiling) a gallery of eminent historical figures that include Agamemnon, Napoleon and Robin Hood, along with assorted ogres, giants and monsters. As co-screenwriters, Gilliam and Palin cheerfully filch ideas from everyone from Homer and Jonathan Swift to Lewis Carroll and Walt Disney, while the sets--as always with Gilliam--ingeniously work towering miracles on puny budgets. "The whole point of fairy tales", according to Gilliam, "is to frighten the kids" and Time Bandits taps into some archetypal nightmare imagery. But the whole farrago is much too good-humoured to be seriously scary. Not least of the movie's pleasures are a series of ripe cameos from the likes of Ian Holm as an irascible Bonaparte, Sean Connery good-humouredly spoofing his own image as Agamemnon, John Cleese's version of Robin Hood as inanely condescending minor royalty ("So you're a robber too! Jolly good!"), David Warner hamming it up gleefully as the Evil Genius, and the great Ralph Richardson playing the Supreme Being as a tetchy public-school headmaster. On the DVD: Time Bandits on disc comes with a generous wealth of extras. Along with the expected trailer--sent up Python-style by a disaffected voice-over--we get excerpts from Gilliam's storyboard and notated script, filmographies for Gilliam, Palin, Connery and David Rappaport (the leader of the vertically challenged gang), stills, production shots, a scrapbook with cast photos and drawings, notes on the film and plenty more background data, plus a cheerfully relaxed 27-minute interview with Gilliam and Palin. There's also an informative and appealingly unpretentious full-length commentary shared between Gilliam, Palin, Cleese, Warner and Craig Warnock, who played Kevin. The transfer, clean and crisp, is in the original full-width ratio, and there's a choice of Dolby Stereo or Dolby 5.1 sound. --Philip Kemp

• Portrait Of A Lady | DVD | (25/06/2001) from £4.98   |  Saving you £5.01 (100.60%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Nicole Kidman is Isabel Archer a young woman of daring independence and equally fierce desires. But her headstrong innocence is no match for the manipulations of her duplicitous friend Madame Merle (Barbara Hershey in an Oscar-nominated performance) and the devious Gilbert Osmond (John Malkovich). Adapted from the novel by Henry James.

• Wild Horses | DVD | (12/10/2015) from £5.99   |  Saving you £9.00 (150.25%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Texas Ranger Samantha Payne (Luciana Duvall) reopens a 15-year-old Missing Persons case, uncovering clues linking a local boy's death to wealthy family man, Scott Briggs (Robert Duvall). Samantha will stop at nothing to discover the truth even if it means risking her own life. With the unexpected return of his estranged son Ben (James Franco), Briggs must find a way to either silence the law for good, or come to terms with the hidden relationship between Ben and the boy that he tried to end years ago.

• Drive To Dream | DVD | (02/04/2012) from £6.46   |  Saving you £6.53 (50.30%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Drive to Dream tells the story of high school senior Roy (Gosling) from a small Montana town where there isn't much to do except drink and play football. After being cut from the school football team Roy falls for local barmaid Skyla (Duvall) and starts playing in an unsanctioned six-man football league. He is recruited and coached by an out-of-towner Gideon (Morse) who draws suspicion from the community and later from Roy. He begins to serve as a father figure to Roy whose own dad recently committed suicide. But what role does such a figure play in the life of an eighteen-year-old? And are Gideon’s intentions towards Roy actually noble? 

• True Confessions | DVD | (21/07/2003) from £6.45   |  Saving you £6.54 (101.40%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Oscar winners Robert De Niro Robert Duvall play brothers the Reverend Desmond Spellacy and Tommy Spellacy who are drawn together after many years apart in this tale of murder and sibling rivalry...

• Alfred Hitchcock Presents - Season Seven (5 disc box set) | DVD | (02/11/2015) from £23.15   |  Saving you £6.84 (29.55%)   |  RRP £29.99

• The 6th Day/Last Action Hero | DVD | (01/12/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  The 6th Day: Arnold Schwarzenegger is Adam an ace pilot in the very near future who is having a serious identity crisis. An illegal corporation illegally cloned him and now they're trying to kill him to hide the evidence. Torn from his beloved family and faced with a shocking exact duplicate of himself Adam races against time to reclaim his life and save the world from the underground cloning movement. Last Action Hero: Danny Madigan (Austin O'Brien) a young cinem