"Actor: James Alexander"

• Monarch Of The Glen Complete Series 1 to 7 | DVD | (16/10/2006) from £46.35   |  Saving you £-4.35 (N/A%)   |  RRP £42.00

  Based on the Highland novels by Compton Mackenzie, Monarch of The Glen follows the fortunes of Archie MacDonald (Alastair Mackenzie) who is carving out a life for himself as a restauranteur in London when he is summoned home to the Scottish Highlands after his father, The Laird of Glenbogle (Richard Briers), is injured in an accident..

• Big Little Lies: Season 2 | DVD | (06/01/2020) from £11.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  On the surface, in the tranquil seaside town of Monterey, California, everything seems the same. The mothers continue to dote, the husbands support, the children remain adorable and the houses are just as beautiful. But the night of the schoo lfundraiser changed all that, leaving the community reeling as the Monterey Five Madeline, Celeste, Jane, Renata and Bonnie bond together to pick up the pieces oftheir shattered lives.

• Die Hard | DVD | (10/01/2000) from £3.98   |  Saving you £16.01 (402.26%)   |  RRP £19.99

  This seminal 1988 thriller made Bruce Willis a star and established a new template for action stories: "Terrorists take over a (blank), and a lone hero, unknown to the villains, is trapped with them." In Die Hard, those bad guys, led by the velvet-voiced Alan Rickman, assume control of a Los Angeles high-rise with Willis's visiting New York cop inside. The attraction of the film has as much to do with the sight of a barefoot mortal running around the guts of a modern office tower as it has to do with the plentiful fight sequences and the bond the hero establishes with an LA beat cop. Bonnie Bedelia plays Willis's wife, Hart Bochner is good as a brash hostage who tries negotiating his way to freedom, Alexander Godunov makes for a believable killer with lethal feet, and William Atherton is slimy as a busybody reporter. This film is exceptionally well directed by John McTiernan. --Tom Keogh

• Amazing Grace | DVD | (02/09/2019) from £5.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  In 1972, Aretha Franklin, the undisputed Queen of Soul, recorded an album of gospel music at The New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles, before an ecstatic live audience. The result, Amazing Grace, went on to become one of the biggest albums of Aretha Franklin's career and one of her most beloved works. But even as the album gained fans around the world, few realised that the inspirational sessions had not only been recorded, they had been filmed by a camera crew led by Oscar winning filmmaker Sydney Pollack. However, due to technical problems, the film has never been seen. Until now. Music lovers won't want to miss this thrilling film, which is both an extraordinary look at a key moment in American musical and social history, and an invaluable record of one of America's greatest artists doing what she did best. One of the great music films New York Times Pure, soaring joy James King, BBC Radio 2

• Arsenic and Old Lace | DVD | (27/01/2020) from £6.49   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• The Vikings | DVD | (31/03/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Kirk Douglas produced the trendsetting barbarian epic The Vikings and took the showiest, most aggressive role: lusty Viking Prince Einar, the "only son in wedlock" of King Ragnar (a cackling, wild-eyed Ernest Borgnine). With jagged scars down his face and a milky-white blind eye that almost glows in his skull, Douglas has a rowdy time battling defiant slave Tony Curtis (the long-lost heir to the British throne) for the hand of the beautiful princess Janet Leigh. It's pure Hollywood hokum, sure, but spectacular hokum: the great cinematographer Jack Cardiff turns his Norway locations into a lush Valhalla on earth. Faced with an absurd story, journeyman director Richard Fleischer goes for the gusto in brawling Viking parties, furious sieges, and clanging broadsword battles. An enormous hit, the film spawned a huge wave of Viking movies, some perhaps smarter but none as much fun. --Sean Axmaker

• Arsenic And Old Lace | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  A drama critic learns on his wedding day that his beloved maiden aunts are homicidal maniacs, and that insanity runs in his family.

• Submergence | DVD | (11/03/2019) from £4.81   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  In a remote hotel in Normandy, bio-mathematician Danielle Flinders (Alicia Vikander) meets James More (James McAvoy). There to prepare for their respective missions, bio-mathematician Danielle and British Secret Service Operative James, did not expect to meet the love of their lives the retreat. After days of intense passion, they must separate. Danielle embarks on a deep-sea diving project to support her theory about the origin of life on our planet, while James journeys to Somalia to track down a source for suicide bombers infiltrating Europe. Soon, they are worlds apart. James is taken hostage by Jihadist fighters and has no way of contacting Danny, and she has to go down to the bottom of the ocean in her submersible, not even knowing if James is still alive.

• Die Hard / Die Hard 2 / Die Hard With A Vengeance | DVD | (15/09/2003) from £9.99   |  Saving you £10.00 (100.10%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Exceptionally well-directed by John McTiernan, Die Hard made Bruce Willis a star back in 1988 and established a new template for action stories. Here the bad guys, led by the velvet-voiced Alan Rickman, assume control of a Los Angeles high-rise with Willis's visiting New York cop inside. The attraction of the film has as much to do with the sight of a barefoot mortal running around the guts of a modern office tower as it has with the plentiful fight sequences and the bond the hero establishes with an LA beat cop. Bonnie Bedelia plays Willis's wife, Hart Bochner is good as a brash hostage who tries negotiating his way to freedom, Alexander Godunov makes for a believable killer with lethal feet and William Atherton is slimy as a busybody reporter. Director Renny Harlin took the reins for the 1990 sequel, Die Harder, which places Willis's New York City cop in harm's way again with a gaggle of terrorists. This time, Willis awaits his wife's arrival at Dulles Airport in Washington, DC when he gets wind of a plot to blow up the facility. Noisy, overbearing and forgettable, the film has none of the purity of its predecessor's simple story; and it makes a huge miscalculation in allowing a terrible tragedy to occur rather than stretch out the tension. Where Die Hard set new precedents in action movies, Die Hard 2 is just an anything-goes spectacle --Tom Keogh The second sequel, Die Hard with a Vengeance brings Detective John McClane to New York City to face a better villain than in Die Hard 2. Jeremy Irons is the brother of Alan Rickman's Germanic terrorist-thief from the original film. But this bad guy has his sights set higher: on the Federal Reserve's cache of gold. As a distraction, he sets McClane running fool's errands all over New York--and eventually, McClane attracts an unintentional partner, a Harlem dry cleaner (Samuel L Jackson) with a chip on his shoulder. Some great action sequences can't obscure the rather large plot holes in the film's final 45 minutes. --Marshall Fine

• How I Won The War | DVD | (07/02/2005) from £17.50   |  Saving you £-4.51 (-34.70%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Lieutenant Goodbody (Crawford) has absolutely no idea how to lead his British regiment in the North African battlefield of WWII. But what he lacks in experience he makes up for in enthusiasm. And when he's ordered to build a cricket playing field 100 miles behind enemy lines he's determined to succeed even if this means most of his men are killed in the process. Abandoned by his superiors betrayed by his inferiors and finally captured by Nazis it's going to take more than his unre

• White Palace | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Glenn Savan's depressing and self-loathing novel about a 27-year-old upper-class Jewish widower mired in self-pity after his beloved wife dies, and who finds love and sexual rebirth with a trailer-trash older woman, was brought to the big screen by the competent director Luis Mandoki (When a Man Loves a Woman, Message in a Bottle). But the savage irony in Savan's book has been face-lifted by screenwriters Ted Tally (The Silence of the Lambs) and Alvin Sargent (Ordinary People) into something else entirely: what passes for low-rent "slumming" in Hollywood means hiring sexy Susan Sarandon to play Nora Baker, the poor, uneducated 43-year-old waitress in a White Palace burger joint who strikes up an unlikely relationship with sad Max Baron (James Spader). Widower Max attends a bachelor party for best pal Neil (Jason Alexander) and discovers that the local White Palace has stiffed the boys a whopping six burgers. Max barges into the joint, bent on getting his money back, and meets a testy Nora, who is bemused at the young man's insolence. While driving home, Max stops abruptly at a bar for a drink. Inside, Nora is nursing a vodka and takes a shine to the tuxedo-clad, handsome, and morose younger man. He gives her a lift, she seduces him, and the rest of the movie examines how two such opposites in manners and morals can find happiness. The only common bond they have is great sex and a private tragedy. White Palace nudges at the dark journey and the smashing of illusion that was at the heart of the novel, but there is still a fairy-tale element to the film that negates the earthy essence that distinguished the book. In Mandoki's vision, White Palace is about overcoming class, family, and outside opinion to find true love. In Savan's book, Max wastes into decline while Nora ultimately thrives in the quest for truth, redemption, and self-forgiveness. She becomes his salvation only after he stops hating himself. But mainstream Hollywood shuns making "protagonists" so mad, bad, or sad, and as such, too much glitter is tossed on Spader, while Sarandon, as usual, is the only one who seems to embody and understand her character's angst. She deserved her Oscar for Nora, not the nun in Dead Man Walking. --Paula Nechak

• Amazing Grace | Blu Ray | (02/09/2019) from £9.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  In 1972, Aretha Franklin, the undisputed Queen of Soul, recorded an album of gospel music at The New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles, before an ecstatic live audience. The result, Amazing Grace, went on to become one of the biggest albums of Aretha Franklin's career and one of her most beloved works. But even as the album gained fans around the world, few realised that the inspirational sessions had not only been recorded, they had been filmed by a camera crew led by Oscar winning filmmaker Sydney Pollack. However, due to technical problems, the film has never been seen. Until now. Music lovers won't want to miss this thrilling film, which is both an extraordinary look at a key moment in American musical and social history, and an invaluable record of one of America's greatest artists doing what she did best. One of the great music films New York Times Pure, soaring joy James King, BBC Radio 2

• The Others | DVD | (23/09/2002) from £6.63   |  Saving you £13.36 (201.51%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Nicole Kidman stars as the mother of two ailing children in this moody tale of the supernatural, set on the island of Jersey just after World War Two.

• Matewan | DVD | (02/04/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  A little-known chapter of American labour history is brought vividly to life in this period drama from writer-director John Sayles. It's a fictional story about labour wars among West Virginia coal miners during the 1920s, but every detail is so right that the film has the unmistakable ring of truth. The tension begins when the Stone Mountain Coal Company of Matewan, West Virginia, announces a lower pay rate for miners, who respond by calling a strike under the leadership of a United Mine Workers representative (Chris Cooper). Proving strength in numbers, the miners are joined by black and Italian miners who initially resist the strike, and a fateful battle ensues when detectives hired by the coal company attempt to evict miners from company housing. Violence erupts in a sequence of astonishing, cathartic intensity, and Matewan achieves a rare degree of moral complexity combined with gut-wrenching tragedy. The film salutes a pacifist ideal while recognising that personal and political convictions often must be defended with violence. To illustrate this point, Sayles enlisted master cinematographer Haskell Wexler, who creates the film's authentic visual texture--a triumph of artistry over limited resources. The result is a milestone of independent filmmaking, and Matewan remains one of Sayles's finest achievements. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

• Arsenic and Old Lace (Criterion Collection) | Blu Ray | (11/10/2022) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• An American Haunting | DVD | (10/09/2007) from £4.99   |  Saving you £11.00 (220.44%)   |  RRP £15.99

  A family is terrorized by a cruel and noisy spirit in this period chiller.

• The Basketball Diaries | DVD | (05/08/2002) from £18.13   |  Saving you £-5.14 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The pre-Titanic Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Jim Carroll, the poet and musician who spent much of his adolescence addicted to heroin and shooting hoops with fellow Catholic high-school kids. As a biography, the film doesn't amount to more than the sum of its gritty scenes of smack use, violence, perversions (poor Bruno Kirby plays a lecherous coach who comes on to young Jim), and the usual scream-and-puke dramas that go along with a cold-turkey session. Director Scott Kalvert doesn't seem to realise that most people don't know who Carroll is and therefore can't possibly understand why they should care about his gutterball youth. DiCaprio, having nowhere to go with his performance but maintain Carroll's tailspin, is boring and redundant. Some kind of allusion to the literary and rock & roll life that follows the mess we're watching might have been helpful. The DVD release offers the choice of a full or widescreen (letterbox) picture, plus interviews. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

• The Watcher | DVD | (18/02/2002) from £6.80   |  Saving you £3.19 (46.91%)   |  RRP £9.99

  James Spader is an FBI agent taunted by serial killer Keanu Reeves, a man who sends his adversary a photo of each victim before he kills them, daring his adversary to catch him.

• Winchester 73 | DVD | (23/08/2004) from £8.64   |  Saving you £-3.65 (N/A%)   |  RRP £4.99

  Frontiersman Lin McAdam (Stewart) is attempting to track down both his father's murderer and his one-of-a-kind rifle the Winchester '73 as it passes among a diverse group of desperate characters including a crazed highwayman (Dan Duryea) an immoral gunrunner (John McIntire) a savage young Indian chief (Rock Hudson) and McAdam's own murderous brother (Stephen McNally)...

• Straw Dogs | DVD | (12/03/2012) from £2.29   |  Saving you £15.70 (87.30%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Forty years after Sam Peckinpah's hugely controversial 1971 original, Rod Lurie adapted and directed a new version of Straw Dogs, with a very deliberate change of location and an updating of the social context. Instead of being set in Britain, the story now takes place in small-town Mississippi, where Hollywood screenwriter David Sumner (James Marsden) is moving with his wife Amy (Kate Bosworth). She grew up in Blackwater, which she aptly refers to as "backwater," but has since become a much-desired TV actress. In their isolated house, David will write while Amy's ex-beau (Alexander Skarsgård) repairs the adjacent barn with his redneck buddies. In drawing the unease between this effete, conflict-averse intellectual and the swaggering, flag-waving, God-fearing locals, Lurie (The Contender) seems to be aiming at the hostility between red state/blue state America in 2011. But the movie breaks down when it gets to the sadistic plot turns that lead to the savage finale, a siege in which David is pushed to his primal self. In the Peckinpah film, this was a hellish and ambiguous exorcism, but here the events just seem ugly, and the movie loses control of its perspective about halfway through. James Marsden is a game actor, but he can't be as convincing a bookworm as Dustin Hoffman was in the original film. Kate Bosworth's ambivalence is the most interesting thing at play here, as she suggests the marriage might have been less than perfect all along. That subtle discontent is more intriguing than the movie's lurid collapse into ultraviolence. --Robert Horton