"Actor: John C"

• The Deer Hunter | DVD | (18/04/2005) from £5.99   |  Saving you £8.00 (133.56%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Winner of five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, The Deer Hunter is simultaneously an audacious directorial conceit and one of the greatest films ever made about friendship and the personal impact of war. Like Apocalypse Now, it's hardly a conventional battle film--the soldier's experience was handled with greater authenticity in Platoon--but its depiction of war on an intimate scale packs a devastatingly dramatic punch. Director Michael Cimino may be manipulating our emotions with masterful skill, but he does it in a way that stirs the soul and pinches our collective nerves with graphic, high-intensity scenes of men under life-threatening duress. Although Russian-roulette gambling games were not a common occurrence during the Vietnam war, they're used here as a metaphor for the futility of the war itself. To the viewer, they become unforgettably intense rites of passage for the best friends--Pennsylvania steelworkers played by Robert De Niro, John Savage and Oscar winner Christopher Walken--who may survive or perish during their tour through a tropical landscape of hell. Back home, their loved ones must cope with the war's domestic impact, and in doing so they allow The Deer Hunter to achieve a rare combination of epic storytelling and intimate, heart-rending drama.--Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

• Agatha Christie's The Seven Dials Mystery | DVD | (18/07/2016) from £7.75   |  Saving you £5.24 (67.61%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Cheryl Campbell stars alongside John Gielgud and Harry Andrews as Lady Bundle Brent Agatha Christie's most glamorous amateur sleuth in a stylish, feature-length television adaptation of the famous whodunit: a deadly game of Cluedo combining international treachery, romance and murder!Anticipating a weekend of leisure and pleasure, a group of Foreign Office acquaintances arrive at the palatial Hampshire estate of the Marquis of Caterham. The mood suddenly darkens when a notoriously hard-to-rouse guest fails to wake at all; and when another sinister death comes to light, the surviving guests are plunged into nervous speculation! Enter Lady Eileen Brent, the Marquis' enchanting and high-spirited daughter, affectionately known as 'Bundle'. She teams up with elegant idler Jimmy Thesiger to seek out the truth amid rumours of missing confidential papers and a cabal centred around a seedy nightclub called The Seven Dials...

• About A Boy / Notting Hill | DVD | (02/02/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  About A Boy: Will (Grant) is a 38-year old Londoner living a bachelor lifestyle on the back of royalties earned from a Christmas song penned by his father some years previously. A serial womaniser Will comes up with the idea of attending a single parents group as a new way to pick up women. Inventing a two-year old son for himself he meets lonely bullied schoolboy Marcus (Nicholas Hoult) and his depressed music therapist mother (Toni Collette). The intelligent Marcus soon learns Will's secret and so blackmails him into letting him hang out at his place and watch afternoon telly. However what starts out as an uneasy quiz show watching alliance turns into an unlikely friendship... Notting Hill: William Thacker (Hugh Grant) is the owner of a bookshop in the heart of Notting Hill in London. One day by a one-in-a-million chance the worlds most famous actress Anna Scott (Julia Roberts) comes into his shop. He watches in amazement as she leaves and he thinks he'll never see her again. But fate intervenes - and minutes later William collides with Anna on Portobello Road. So begins a tale of romance and adventure in London W11. With a little help from his chaotic flatmate Spike (Rhys Ifans) and his friends Max and Bella (Tim McInnerny and Gina McKee) William seeks the face he can't forget...

• ER: The Complete Fifteenth Season | DVD | (21/09/2009) from £23.48   |  Saving you £21.51 (91.61%)   |  RRP £44.99

  ER follows the lives of the emergency room staff and doctors of Chicago's County General Hospital a Level One Trauma Center where the difference between life and death rests on split-second decisions -- and the pressure joy and guilt are often overwhelming. These medical professionals are determined to save lives in a place where nothing is taken for granted and nothing is certain... nothing except that another desperate person will be rushed through the emergency room doors in the next moment in need of their help. Some will live and some will die but the dedication and passion of these healers will endure.

• The Negotiator | DVD | (14/06/1999) from £8.78   |  Saving you £5.21 (59.34%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Although it eventually runs out of smart ideas and resorts to a typically explosive finale, this above-average thriller rises above its formulaic limitations on the strength of powerful performances by Samuel L Jackson and Kevin Spacey. Both play Chicago police negotiators with hotshot reputations, but when Jackson's character finds himself falsely accused of embezzling funds from a police pension fund, he's so thoroughly framed that he must take extreme measures to prove his innocence. He takes hostages in police headquarters to buy time and plan his strategy, demanding that Spacey be brought in to mediate with him as an army of cops threatens to attack, and a media circus ensues. Both negotiators know how to get into the other man's thoughts, and this intellectual showdown allows both Spacey and Jackson to ignite the screen with a burst of volatile intensity. Director F Gary Gray is disadvantaged by an otherwise predictable screenplay, but he has a knack for building suspense and is generous to a fine supporting cast, including Paul Giamatti as one of Jackson's high-strung hostages, and the late JT Walsh in what would sadly be his final big-screen role. The Negotiator should have trusted its compelling characters a little more, probing their psyches more intensely to give the suspense a deeper dramatic foundation, but it's good enough to give two great actors a chance to strut their stuff. --Jeff Shannon

• Asteroid | DVD | (02/06/2003) from £16.58   |  Saving you £-10.59 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  A two-part US TV miniseries here edited into a 122-minute feature, Asteroid was originally rushed onto (television) screens in 1996, well before the one-two big screen punch of Deep Impact and Armageddon. Single mum-cum-astronomy boffin Dr Lily McKee (Annabella Sciorra) works out that a comet is about to divert a meteor shower towards Earth ("at its present rate, Helios would hit with the force of a thousand Hiroshimas and the heat of the Sun") and spends the first half of the film alerting the authorities to the danger, and the second half helping rugged rescue guy Jack Wallach (Michael Biehn) haul survivors out from under the rubble caused when a bunch of minor asteroids collide with the planet (well, America); all while as the usual shenanigans go on to cope with the big, preventable chunk. The script explains everything in children's science lecture terms ("Mom, are we going to die like the dinosaurs?" "I don't think so, honey, we're much smarter than the dinosaurs") and is written in pure comforting cliché-speak ("I'm sure she's serious, but is she for real?"). With its hymn to the quick-thinking authorities and intently cooperating heroes, this may be the most pro-Establishment disaster film ever made: only a few panicky civilians cause any trouble, and we need plot contrivances to get made-for-TV he-man Biehn into danger as he outruns a flood in Kansas City or searches for the heroine's missing kid (Zachary B Charles) in the burning wreckage of Dallas. A large supporting cast of no-name labcoats, uniforms and victims clutter up the screen between the effects. Of course, this can't compete with its big-screen counterparts, but it did get there first, coopting the CGI and modelwork techniques of Independence Day to the rock-from-space sub-genre (cf: Meteor) as cities are smashed, crowds submerged, the planet battered and multitudes saved to order. --Kim Newman

• Walk Hard -The Dewey Cox Story | DVD | (12/05/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The Pixar-like roll of Judd Apatow (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Superbad) continues with another sure-fire hit. In charting the meteoric rise, catastrophic fall and Lazarus-like comeback of rocker Dewey Cox, Walk Hard parodies the classic Hollywood bio-pic, cashing in mostly on Walk the Line. John C. Reilly, one of Hollywood's most solid character actors, makes the most of his Golden Globe-nominated star turn as Dewey, whose road to stardom is paved with a childhood tragedy that claims the life of his prodigiously talented brother ("The wrong kid died," is his father's mantra), instant stardom (his first record is a hit just 35 minutes after it was recorded), sex and drugs, and the inevitable "dark (effen) period" that leads him to rehab. Reilly gets solid back-up from current and former Saturday Night Live alumni, including Kirsten Wiig as his incredibly fertile first wife who has no faith in his musical aspirations ("You're never going to make it," she cheerily ends one phone call); Tim Meadows (never better) as Dewey's drummer, who, in one of the film's best scenes, does a poor job of dissuading him from trying marijuana); and Chris Parnell as his bass player. Jenna Fischer leaves Pam back at The Office as Darlene, Dewey's virtuous duet partner. Hilarious cameos give Walk Hard a great "Hey!" factor: Hey, that's Frankie Muniz as Buddy Holly. Hey, that's "Kenneth" from 30 Rock. Hey, there's Jack Black and Paul Rudd as--no kidding--Paul McCartney and John Lennon revealing "a rift in the Beatles." Some of the jokes are obvious (come on; the guy's last name is Cox), others inspired. But the decades-spanning music, echoing the styles of gritty Johnny Cash, romantic Roy Orbison, obtuse Bob Dylan, trippy Brian Wilson, and even a bit of anachronistic punk rock, is as pitch perfect and affectionately observed as in The Rutles, This Is Spinal Tap and A Mighty Wind. Walk Hard earns its R-rating, particularly for a sure-to-be-talked-about scene of hotel-room debauchery. But: Hilarious? Outrageous? Twisted? To quote the title of one of Dewey's hit songs, "Guilty as Charged." --Donald Liebenson

• Don Juan De Marco | DVD | (17/12/2001) from £6.78   |  Saving you £6.21 (91.59%)   |  RRP £12.99

  You might not get a thrill from the sight of Faye Dunaway and Marlon Brando throwing popcorn into each other's mouths, but that didn't stop this movie from gaining a new lease on life thanks to cable television and home video. It's a quirky romantic comedy about a mental patient (Johnny Depp) who claims to be Don Juan, the world's greatest lover, and he gets quite a few women to believe it's true. Brando plays the psychiatrist who tries to analyze his patient's apparent delusion, and Dunaway plays Brando's wife, who wants to inject some Don Juan-ish romance into their marital routine. Walking a fine line between precious comedy, wistful drama, and delicate fantasy, the movie gets a big dose of charm from its esteemed cast, with Depp delivering dialogue that would have sounded ludicrous from a lesser actor. Don Juan DeMarco may not be a great movie, but it is guaranteed to put you in an amorous mood. --Jeff Shannon

• Columbo - Series 2 | DVD | (18/07/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £27.99

  ""Oh just one more thing..."" Peter Falk returns as Lt. Columbo for the complete second season which includes guest stars Robert Culp Valerie Harper Dean Stockwell Leonard Nimoy Martin Landau and Marc Singer and two episodes written by Stephen Boccho (Murder One). Expect plenty of cigar-chewing slouching and suspects being questioned about their shoes! Episodes comprise: 1. tude in Black 2. The Greenhouse Jungle 3. The Most Crucial Game 4. Dagger of the

• The Enforcer | DVD | (21/02/2002) from £6.30   |  Saving you £7.69 (122.06%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Trapped by his image in 1976, Clint Eastwood resurrected his Dirty Harry character for a third go-round (out of a total of five) in The Enforcer, a potboiler of a story in which the San Francisco detective takes on a group of revolutionary kids. Tyne Daly costars as a female cop who partners with the reluctant Harry Callahan, and she does very well by a role created merely to underscore and articulate the hero's various virtues. It's a dull package all around, but inside the wrapping are good performances by the two leads. --Tom Keogh

• Ginger Snaps | DVD | (20/12/2002) from £21.98   |  Saving you £-5.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Brigitte and Ginger Fitzgerald are a pair of weird sisters obsessed by death. When Ginger is attacked by a vicious beast and starts to display the signs of someone turning into a werewolf, her sister concocts a plan to reverse the process.

• Alien 3 | DVD | (15/05/2000) from £2.89   |  Saving you £17.10 (591.70%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Directed by stylemaster David Fincher, who went on to greater things with Seven and Fight Club, Alien 3 was the least successful of the Alien series at the box-office. Ripley, the only survivor of her past mission, awakens on a prison planet in the far corners of the solar system. As she tries to recover, she realises that not only has an alien got loose on the planet, the alien has implanted one of its own within her. As she battles the prison authorities (and is aided by the prisoners) in trying to kill the alien, she must also cope with a distinctly shortened life span that awaits her. But the striking imagery makes for muddled action and the script confuses it further. The ending looks startling but it takes a long time--and a not particularly satisfying journey--to get there. --Marshall Fine, Amazon.com On the DVD: The clarity of the digital picture throws light into some of Fincher's darker recesses, but is unkind to the primitive computer animation (the CGI alien is never convincing). Compared to the Alien DVD there are few extras, although a "making of" featurette that covers all three movies is included.

• Dude Where's my Car? | DVD | (10/12/2001) from £6.22   |  Saving you £6.77 (108.84%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Two twenty-something wasters wake up one morning with no recollection of the night before and where they left their car!

• The Marine 1-3 | DVD | (08/07/2013) from £29.68   |  Saving you £-9.69 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The MarineWWE Champion John Cena stars as marine John Triton. Wherever there's danger Triton is usually in the middle of it... and he doesn't play by the rules! After he's unwillingly discharged from Iraq Triton's beautiful wife Kate (Nip/Tuck's Kelly Carlson) is kidnapped by merciless jewel thieves led by a vicious killer (Robert Patrick). Now Triton must fight to save her utilising his most powerful weapon... himself! The Marine 2Action thriller sequel. While on leave Marine sniper Joe Linwood (Ted DiBiase) takes his wife Robin (Lara Cox) on holiday to a luxurious five-star resort on the South Seas. But their relaxing break comes to an abrupt end when a terrorist group seizes control of the resort and takes the billionaire owner and several guests - including Robin - hostage. Can Joe use his Marine training to free the hostages and save the day? The Marine 3WWE superstar Mike 'The Miz' Mizanin delivers a knock-out performance in the most explosive action-packed Marine adventure yet. After returning to his hometown on leave Sgt. Jake Carter learns that his sister has been abducted by a band of violent extremists. To save her Carter launches a daring one-man assault on their base of operations... only to discover the group's ruthless leader is plotting a deadly terrorist strike. With time running out Carter realises he's the only man who can stop the impending massacre - but this American hero may have to make the ultimate sacrifice to save thousands of innocent lives.

• Lost Horizon | DVD | (26/02/2001) from £14.98   |  Saving you £5.01 (33.44%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Ronald Colman and Jane Wyatt star in this lavishly produced classic about the enchanted paradise of Shangri-La where time stands still. Frank Capra's enduring masterpiece Lost Horizon (based on the best-selling novel by James Hilton) had a running time of 132 minutes upon its initial release in 1937. For a World War II re-issue 24 minutes were cut to tone down the film's pacifist message. Film preservationist Robert Gitt working over a period of 25 years has utilized footage fo

• I Am | DVD | (18/02/2013) from £9.43   |  Saving you £3.56 (37.75%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Change your life... and change the world. I Am is the incredible story of how one man went from riches to rags and it changed his life for the better. One of Hollywood's leading comedy directors, Tom Shadyac is the creative force behind such blockbusters as Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Liar Liar, The Nutty Professor and Bruce Almighty. However, in I Am, Shadyac steps in front of the camera to recount what happened to him after a cycling accident left him incapacitated, possibly for good. Meeting with a variety of thinkers from the worlds of science, philosophy, academia, and faith - including Noam Chomsky and Archbishop Desmond Tutu - Shadyac emerges with a new sense of purpose, determined to share his own awakening to his prior life of excess and greed and investigate how he as an individual, and we as a race, could improve the way we live our lives. The result is a fresh, energetic, and life-affirming film that that poses two practical and provocative questions: what's wrong with our world, and what can we do to make it better?

• Rollerball | DVD | (24/06/2002) from £23.36   |  Saving you £-2.11 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Norman Jewison's dystopian Rollerball portrays a near-future in the aftermath of the Corporate Wars, in which nations have crumbled and conglomerates rule. In place of freedom the people are given bread and circuses: material comfort and rollerball itself. Played on a circular, slanted track by men on skates and motorbikes, this extreme sport is the ultimate extrapolation of the primitive blood lust implicit in many team sports. James Caan is outstanding as Jonathan E, star player with the Houston team. In the elegant detachment of Jewison's direction, emphasised by the stark, alienating use of classical music, there are echoes of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Notwithstanding the brilliantly staged arena sequences, Rollerball is essentially about freedom versus conformity and the corruption of unfettered capitalism, with Caan leading an existential rebellion in the tradition of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 which leads to a chilling, apocalyptic finale. Certainly the most prophetic film of the 1970s, Rollerball has an intelligence and power overlooked by those who simply denounce its brutal violence. On the DVD: Rollerball arrives on DVD with clear three-channel Dolby Digital sound, although obviously it lacks the impact of a more modern 5.1 soundtrack. The 1.77:1 transfer is anamorphically enhanced and is generally very sharp and detailed with excellent colour. Some scenes show a lot of grain, but this is presumably a consequence of having to shoot with very fast lenses to capture the swift and dramatic action under indoor lighting conditions. "Return to the Arena--The Making of Rollerball" is a new 25-minute documentary (4:3 with letterboxed film clips) that features Jewison, Harrison and various other personnel reminiscing about the making of the film. The highlight of the extras are commentary tacks from the Jewison and Harrison, and while there is inevitably some overlap of information, and some quite lengthy gaps in Harrison's track, there is also much to interest the serious film buff. Also included is an original seven-minute promotional featurette "From Rome to Rollerball: The Full Circle", the chilling original trailer, the teaser trailer and a trailer for the remake.--Gary S Dalkin

• Saturday Island | DVD | (16/11/2015) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Appearing in his first major screen role, Hollywood teen idol Tab Hunter stars opposite Linda Darnell in this drama of restrained passion set on a remote South Pacific island during World War Two. Re-titled Island of Desire on its US release, Saturday Island is featured here in a brand-new transfer from the original colour film elements, in its as-exhibited theatrical aspect ratio. On a calm night in tropical seas, a troopship carrying sick and wounded from the Far East hits a magnetic mine, with the ensuing explosion forcing the crew to abandon ship. Corporal 'Chicken' Dugan and Nurse Elizabeth Smythe survive, and manage to make their way to a deserted island. After months alone, a tender relationship builds until it becomes complicated by the arrival of a pilot who has survived a plane crash... SPECIAL FEATURES: Original theatrical trailer Image gallery Press release PDF

• 9 (Nine) | DVD | (22/02/2010) from £4.50   |  Saving you £15.49 (344.22%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Visionary filmmakers Tim Burton (The Corpse Bride Charlie and The Chocolate Factory) and Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted Nightwatch) join forces to produce wunderkind director Shane Acker's distinctively original and thrilling tale. 9 stars Elijah Wood John C. Reilly Jennifer Connelly Martin Landau Christopher Plummer and Crispin Glover and features the music of Danny Elfman. When 9 (The Lord of the Ring's Elijah Wood) first comes to life he finds himself in a post-apocalyptic world. All humans are gone and it is only by chance that he discovers a small community of others like him taking refuge from fearsome machines that roam the earth intent on their extinction. Despite being the neophyte of the group 9 convinces the others that hiding will do them no good. They must take the offensive if they are to survive and they must discover why the machines want to destroy them in the first place. As they'll soon come to learn the very future of civilization may depend on them.

• TALES FROM THE CRYPT PRESENTS: DEMON KNIGHT | Blu Ray | (20/10/2015) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A