"Actor: Helen McDonald"

• A Town Like Alice (1981) | DVD | (13/11/2020) from £24.65   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Mr Accident | DVD | (30/06/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Writer/director/producer/comedian Yahoo Serious turns out his third opus this time starring as egg factory maintenance man Roger Crumpkin. Roger's a little bit cracked but his love for Sunday Valentine (Helen Dallimore) will make him stop at nothing to prove his worth. When it turns out his employers might be adding something to their eggs to make them more addictive Roger dons the yolk of social responsibility and sets out to scramble the factory's nefarious schemes!

• All Or Nothing | DVD | (28/04/2003) from £6.85   |  Saving you £13.14 (191.82%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A 2002 Mike Leigh drama, All or Nothing is at times almost unbearably bleak and poignant, yet funny, truthful and richly rewarding. The film's revolves around Timothy Spall's mini-cab driver, his family and the various characters and acquaintances on the South-east London estate where he lives. It's perhaps even better than Secrets and Lies, in which Spall also starred, which was marred a little by some of the tearful excesses of Brenda Blethyn's bravura performance. It's evidence that Leigh has matured and improved with age, rather than mellowed and softened. He's developed into a highly distinctive but rounded and humane filmmaker. Spall's cabbie is too gentle and thoughtful to be described as a slob, but his lack of even the most basic ambition and stoic non-resistance to life has created an unspoken rift between him and wife Penny (Lesley Manville). Working on a supermarket checkout, she must cook dinner and fend off insults from her fat, frustrated, obnoxious 18-year-old son Rory. She receives only passive sympathy from her older daughter Rachel. Only when Rory is taken ill is Phil snapped out of his torpor as the family pull together. A host of minor characters also feature; fatuous cabbie Ron (Paul Jesson) his alcoholic wife and sluttish daughter, as well as the wonderfully good-humoured and resilient Maureen, Penny's best friend, concerned at her daughter's relationship with a violent boyfriend. Once accused of caricaturing his "lower class" characters, here Leigh (with the collaborative assistance of his actors) exhibits them in all their authentic complexity, neither idealising nor sentimentalising them. On the DVD: All or Nothing's extras include the original trailer, as well as interviews with several members of the cast. Timothy Spall is interesting on the unnerving process of collaboration favoured by Leigh, whereby characters are "built from zero" by the actors. The smart and rather posh Lesley Manville strikes quite a contrast in real life with her mousey, put-upon character. There's also a meticulous and absorbing commentary from Mike Leigh, who talks about filming in Greenwich and how he has moved away from some of the more dogmatic ideas about filmmaking of his earlier, avant-garde days. --David Stubbs

• Archer's Adventure | DVD | (17/01/2003) from £6.28   |  Saving you £-2.29 (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  It's 1862 and the Victoria Turf Club in Melbourne Australia has just announced the highest stakes horse race ever. Young horse handler Dave Power sets off on the journey of a lifetime to take Archer a top contender for the race to Melbourne.