"Actor: Jackson"

• Pennies From Heaven | DVD | (31/05/2004) from £19.95   |  Saving you £10.04 (50.33%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Dennis Potter's astonishing six-part miniseries Pennies from Heaven remains one of the edgiest, most audacious things ever conceived for television. The story tells of one Arthur Parker (Bob Hoskins), a sheet-music salesman in 1930s England. Beaten down by economic hard times and the sexual indifference of his proper wife (Gemma Craven), Arthur cannot understand why his life can't be like the beautiful songs he loves. On a sales trip through the Forest of Dean, he meets a virginal rural woman (Cheryl Campbell) he suspects may be his ideal. Ruination follows. Punctuating virtually every scene is a vintage pop song--lip-synched and sometimes danced out by the characters. This startling innovation makes the contrast between Arthur's brutish life and his bourgeois dreams even more dramatic. Potter's dark vision digs into British stoicism, sexual repression, the class system and even the coming of fascism in Europe. But it is especially poignant on the subject of the divide between art and reality. Piers Haggard directs the long piece with deft transitions between songs and story. (It was shot partly on multi-camera video, partly on film.) The cast is fine, especially the extraordinary Cheryl Campbell, who imbues her character with keen intelligence and no small measure of perversity. Bob Hoskins triumphs in his star-making part, bringing a demonic energy to his small-time Cockney, nearly bursting his button-down vests with frustration and appetite. Pennies from Heaven was remade in 1981 for the big screen (with Steve Martin), in an interesting, Potter-scripted adaptation; it's one of the reasons the original has been unavailable on home video for so long. --Robert Horton

• Samson | Blu Ray | (15/10/2018) from £5.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Chosen. Betrayed. Redeemed. Samson is an action-packed biblical epic. Starring Billy Zane, Rutger Hauer and Jackson Rathbone, Samson's journey of passion, betrayal, and redemption inspires audiences to realize that life's failures need not define their future. Samson, empowered by God with supernatural strength, endangers his destiny with impulsive decisions that lead to betrayal by a wicked prince and a beautiful temptress. When Samson calls on his God once more, he turns imprisonment and blindness into final victory. Includes subtitles for the Hard Of Hearing

• Dame Elizabeth Taylor - A Musical Celebration | DVD | (21/06/2004) from £17.25   |  Saving you £-4.26 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Like all the best celebrity tributes, Dame Elizabeth Taylor: A Musical Celebration (2001) combines the essence of its subject--in this case, charity work for HIV and AIDS research and a legendary career in movies, both meriting every ounce of recognition--with the fascination of a spectacular car smash. The highlights are the screenings of trailers for some of her best films, including Giant and Butterfield 8 (she won an Oscar but derided the picture) and an archive interview in which she memorably describes a tiresome gossip columnist as "a frustrated old biddy". The live entertainment is far shakier than the event's inspiration, though. Presented by David Frost and Stephen Fry--an uneasy, fawning partnership-- there is some real quality: Andrea Bocelli (sending the guest of honour into transports of delight), John Barry conducting a couple of his most symphonic Bond themes and Reba McEntire, the powerhouse country and western diva-turned-Broadway actress. On the down side, Marti Pellow's self-congratulatory posing would make Robbie Williams seem a model of modesty, Jay Kay's attempts to jazz up a standard are woeful and Ute Lemper is at her most pretentious for a cacophonic "Mack the Knife". Michael Jackson's mute presence at Taylor's side emphasises the hypnotic strangeness of the whole affair, though the Dame herself takes the entire marvellously lurid spectacle in her stride. On the DVD: Dame Elizabeth Taylor: A Musical Celebration comes to DVD with no extra features. A Taylor filmography would have been useful. Otherwise, the 4:3 video aspect ratio reproduces the television gala feel and for sound quality, you can choose between LPCM stereo, Dolby Digital 5.2 and DTS surround sound (best for that authentic, muddy Royal Albert Hall acoustic).--Piers Ford

• Long Shot | Blu Ray | (09/09/2019) from £20.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Fred Flarsky (Seth Rogen) is a gifted and free-spirited journalist with an affinity for trouble. Charlotte Field (Charlize Theron) is one of the most influential women in the world. Smart, sophisticated, and accomplished, she's a powerhouse diplomat with a talent for well, mostly everything. The two have nothing in common, except that she was his babysitter and childhood crush. When Fred unexpectedly reconnects with Charlotte, he charms her with his self-deprecating humour and his memories of her youthful idealism. As she prepares to make a run for the Presidency, Charlotte impulsively hires Fred as her speechwriter, much to the dismay of her trusted advisors. A fish out of water on Charlotte's elite team, Fred is unprepared for her glamourous lifestyle in the limelight. However, sparks fly as their unmistakable chemistry leads to a round-the-world romance and a series of unexpected and dangerous incidents.

• Menace II Society | DVD | (14/02/2000) from £14.18   |  Saving you £-1.19 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Tyrin Turner may not have broken out into stardom as was initially expected, but his work in Menace II Society is one of the more powerful cinematic debuts. The film, from the brother writer-director team of Allen and Albert Hughes, chronicles life in the Los Angeles 'hood. Similar territory was covered in the equally commanding Boyz N the Hood, but what makes this cautionary tale stand out is not only the Hughes brothers' forceful story, (written with their friend, Tyger Williams) and direction, but the naturalness of then-newcomer leads Turner as Caine, Larenz Tate as O-Dog, and Jada Pinkett as Ronnie. They are so credible--occasionally frighteningly so--that the repressive universe of violent ghetto life is captured effectively. Life as portrayed here-and no doubt accurately so--is both figuratively and literally narrow. As a very young boy, Caine witnesses his dad murdered over something inconsequential, and his mom OD. His is a world where respect comes from intimidation, power from violence. Despite his understanding of right and wrong (values passed on by a good friend, his kind grandparents, a caring teacher), his life and its entrapments are too much to overcome. --N.F. Mendoza

• Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son (DVD + Digital Copy) | DVD | (18/07/2011) from £5.59   |  Saving you £14.40 (257.60%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Martin Lawrence returns as Master of Disguise--well, just one disguise, honestly, but he's really, really good at it--FBI agent Malcolm Turner in the second sequel to 2000's blockbuster Big Momma's House. Here, the agent must throw on the padding to pose as the housemother at an exclusive Female School of the Arts, in an attempt to ferret out a murderous Russian Mobster. The twist? This time he's forced to bring his stepson (Tropic Thunder's Brandon T. Jackson) along with him. The presence of Jackson makes this genially mellow sequel feel like a low-impact passing of the torch, with Lawrence (who also executive produced) seemingly content to let his younger co-star handle most of the cross-dressing comedic heavy lifting (ballet lessons, slumber parties, etc.). Only a scene where Big Momma faces off in a game of Twister against an equally gargantuan security guard (an uncredited and very funny Faizon Love) really feels of a piece with the earlier films. Stranger still is the inclusion of a half-dozen musical numbers, including one in a lunchroom that blossoms into full-out High School Musical territory. Awkward as these song-and-dance interludes often are, the filmmakers should deserve some credit for attempting to inject some form of new energy into a scenario that could definitely use a boost. Longtime fans of the franchise and Lawrence, however, may wonder if someone at Fox accidentally let Glee into the telepod. --Andrew Wright

• Den of Thieves: Pantera SteelBook | Blu Ray | (03/11/2025) from £35.00   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  TBC

• The Professionals: Mk IV | DVD | (26/06/2017) from £21.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Long-awaited, long-overdue: The Professionals as you have never seen them before. Bodie and Doyle need little by way of introduction, but if the series had at all escaped you since its debut in 1977 their boss George Cowley, head of CI5, couldn't put it more succinctly than his opening gambit: anarchy, acts of terror, crimes against the public. To combat it I've got special men experts from the army, the police, from every service. These are The Professionals . Featuring the perfect ensemble cast of Martin Shaw, Gordon Jackson (completely against type here) and the much-missed Lewis Collins, the series ran for 57 action-packed episodes and made an immediate impact on British and then international audiences which has sustained 35 years. But the series has never looked this good. Painstakingly restored from the camera-original negatives the series could have been made yesterday. No matter how many times you have seen The Professionals, this is a new experience, like seeing it for the first time. FEATURES ON THIS NEW EDITION Brand-new restorations of all 18 episodes in series four and five from the camera-original negatives Brand-new 5.1 tracks from original sound elements Remastered original as-broadcast mono tracks Remastered music-only tracks featuring Laurie Johnson's original scores Photo galleries featuring hundreds of rare and previously unseen images Restoration featurette ATV Today: two newsclips featuring Martin Shaw and Lewis Collins The Professionals Serving the Professionals: outtakes from a 1982 NAAFI promo Then and Now The Location Files PDF PDF material featuring scripts and memorabilia All episodes are presented in their original production order English HOH subtitles

• Convoy | DVD | (05/03/2001) from £8.95   |  Saving you £5.04 (56.31%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Even in the tiny genre of films based on songs, Convoy is a strange effort--CW McCall's 1977 CB radio-themed novelty hit was just a collection of trucker slang, but here it is gussied up by Sam Peckinpah (no less) as a big rig reprise of The Wild Bunch with Kris Kristofferson as trucker outlaw hero Rubber Duck and a wonderfully oversized Ernest Borgnine as "Dirty Lyle", the "bear" who hates "breakers" and finally decides to call in the National Guard to help him enforce traffic laws with machine guns. The plot is almost invisible, as Rubber Duck and his breaker buddies just up and decide to trundle their lorries across the Western States in a dash for Mexico (no one ever mentions delivering their loads to intended destinations) and becoming such a folk hero that the creepy governor (Seymour Cassell) tries to cash in. Kristofferson and Borgnine were old Peckinpah hands, as is heroine Ali MacGraw (a characterless photographer) and sidekick Burt Young ("Love Machine" aka "Pigpen"), and there's a lot of business about cops and outlaws who mirror each other, but the main attraction is the visuals--huge trucks rolling across desert roads in clouds of dust, police cars crashing through billboards, trucks demolishing a corrupt small town. There are traces of road-movie melancholia in the depressed cafes, jails and laybys where free spirits are broken, but it's still mostly a cash-in on Smokey and the Bandit with a few rags of poetry tossed into the mix. On the DVD: A letterboxed print, enhanced for 16x9, looks pretty good, with enough widescreen to get all the trucks into the image. But otherwise this is the sort of release that passes off "chapter search" and "multilingual menus" as extras, although there are basic filmographies for the principal and a poster/photo album. The mono soundtrack comes in English, French, Spanish and Italian. --Kim Newman

• Cone Of Silence | DVD | (25/02/2008) from £18.99   |  Saving you £-6.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Veteran pilot George Gort (Bernard Lee) faces a Court of Inquiry as the result of the crash of a Phoenix jet airliner He is severely cross-examined by Sir Arnold Hobbes Q.C. (Gorge Sanders) and found guilty of a pilot error. The pressure mounts on Gort when Captain Judd (Peter Cushing) accuses him of bringing the aircraft in too low at Calcutta. With passenger lives at risk Gort's daughter Charlotte (Elizabeth Seal) fights to clear her father's name by enlisting the help of Captain Dallas (Michael Craig).

• Ingrid Goes West | DVD | (26/03/2018) from £8.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Ingrid Thorburn is an unhinged social media stalker with a history of confusing 'likes' for meaningful relationships. Taylor Sloane is an Instagram-famous 'influencer' whose perfectly curated, boho-chic lifestyle becomes Ingrid's latest obsession.

• Tunes Of Glory | DVD | (23/07/2007) from £13.92   |  Saving you £2.07 (14.87%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Major Jock Sinclair has been in this Highland regiment since he joined as a boy piper. During the Second World War as Second-in-Command he was made acting Commanding Officer. Now the regiment has returned to Scotland and a new commanding officer is to be appointed. Jock's own cleverness is pitted against his new CO his daughter his girlfriend and the other officers in the Mess.

• Scream 2 | DVD | (26/02/2001) from £7.61   |  Saving you £11.64 (183.31%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Fully aware of its status as the sequel to the surprise hit thriller of 1996, this lively follow-up trades freshness for familiarity, playing on our affection for returning characters while obeying--and then subverting--the "rules" of sequels. Once again, movie references are cleverly employed to draw us into the story, which takes place two years after the events of Scream, at a small Ohio college, where the Scream survivors reunite when another series of mysterious killings begins. Capitalising on the guesswork involving a host of potential suspects, director Wes Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson have crafted a thriller that's more of a Scream clone than a genuinely inventive new story. But the shocks are just as effective, and escalating tension leads to a tautly staged climax that's simultaneously logical and giddily over the top. Background information for trivia buffs: to preserve the secrecy of plot twists, copies of the screenplay were heavily guarded during production and restricted to only the most crucial personnel. When an early draft was circulated on the Internet, screenwriter Kevin Williamson did rewrites, and subsequent drafts were printed with red ink on brown paper, eliminating the threat of photocopying. None of the cast members knew who the killer was until the final scenes were filmed. -- Jeff Shannon

• Margaret Thatcher - The Long Walk To Finchley / Magaret | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Titles Comprise: Margaret Thatcher: The Long Walk to Finchley: Satirical drama based on Margaret Thatcher's early years in politics. Young Margaret wants nothing more than to be an MP but may be too much of a rebel for the Conservative Party of the 1950s. She did not have a 'good war' she is interested in politics and she thinks a woman's place can be in the House as well as the home. Margaret: Drama charting Margaret Thatcher's astonishing fall from power one of the most extraordinary stories of political assassination the world has seen. It took only eleven days for Thatcher to go from being the most powerful woman in the world to the tearful figure in the back of the car. A major tragedy in the true Shakespearean sense in Margaret we watch a woman lose the one thing she really cares about - power - changing from leader to victim before our eyes.

• Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief | Blu Ray | (05/07/2010) from £6.83   |  Saving you £18.16 (265.89%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Percy Jackson is about to have a very bad day! Being kicked out of school is the least of his problems when the gods of Mount Olympus and a menagerie of monsters escape from his Greek mythology homework!

• Sugar Rush | DVD | (15/08/2005) from £9.47   |  Saving you £10.52 (111.09%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Being a teenage girl is tough. Being an uncool 15 year old lesbian who's completely infatuated with the most outrageous and popular girl in school is downright unfair! Sugar Rush explores the world of Kim and her earth-shattering lust for the gorgeous and sassy Maria Sweet otherwise known as Sugar. And if Sugar wasn't enough to blow Kim's mind there's also her dysfunctional embarrassing family; a mini-freak for a brother an obsessively house-proud dad and a

• The Waltons - Season 3 | DVD | (11/09/2006) from £28.99   |  Saving you £11.00 (37.94%)   |  RRP £39.99

  The television series that captured the American spirit of family loyalty returns for a third season on DVD. Episodes comprise: 1. The Conflict (Part 1) 2. The Conflict (Part 2) 3. The First Day 4. The Thoroughbred 5. The Runaway 6. The Romance 7. The Ring 8. The System 9. The Spoilers 10. The Marathon 11. The Book 12. The Job 13. The Departure 14. The Visitor 15. The Birthday 16. The Lie 17. The Matchmakers 18. The Beguiled 19. The Caretakers 20. The Shivaree 21. The Choice 22. The Statue 23. The Song 24. The Woman 25. The Venture

• Brightburn (2 Discs - UHD & BD) (Tradewide) | Blu Ray | (11/08/2020) from £19.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  What if a child from another world crash-landed on Earth, but instead of becoming a hero to mankind, he proved to be something far more sinister? With Brightburn, the visionary filmmaker of Guardians of the Galaxy and Slither presents a startling, subversive take on a radical new genre: superhero horror.

• Iron Sky (Blu-ray + Digital Copy) | Blu Ray | (28/05/2012) from £10.46   |  Saving you £9.53 (91.11%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Iron Sky is a sci-fi black comedy that takes place in the year 2018, when the Nazis, who fled the Earth to the dark side of the Moon in 1945, return to claim the Earth.

• Powerpuff Girls - The Movie | DVD | (31/03/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  The Powerpuff Girls, Cartoon Network's animated trio of butt-kicking superheroines, make their big-screen debut in a film that will please fans of the TV series and animation fans young and old. The plot begins with the girls' creation at the hands of the kindly but naive Professor Utonium, who combined "sugar, spice and all things nice" to create three perfect little girls--practical Blossom, feisty Buttercup, and wussy Bubbles. Unfortunately, his ape assistant, Jojo, broke a bottle of the mysterious Chemical X in the lab and the girls' superpowers--as well as Jojo's--were born. After wrecking Townsville during a somewhat boisterous game of Tag, the girls are treated as outcasts by their fellow citizens and determine never to use their powers in public again--until they're confronted by Jojo and the girls find themselves called upon to foil his evil schemes and "save the world before bedtime". Though it takes a while to get going, The Powerpuff Girls is exciting enough to keep younger viewers engrossed while throwing in a few--though not really enough--monkey-related in-jokes to get the adults chortling once in a while. The heavily stylised pastel colouring and frenetic pace of the animation, while distinctive, may be off-putting to people used to the more polished style of Disney, and some of the later scenes, full of screeching, sharp-toothed apes, may be upsetting to very young viewers. The film's ostensible message--"don't treat people badly just because they're different" seems to take a bit of a back seat too. Nevertheless, The Powerpuff Girls provides a solid 80 minutes of fun, despite lacking the mainstream appeal of the likes of Shrek or the Disney/Pixar movies. --Rikki Price