"Actor: John H"

• Dirty Harry | Blu Ray | (09/06/2008) from £9.19   |  Saving you £10.80 (117.52%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A rooftop sniper (Andy Robinson) calling himself Scorpio has killed twice and holds the city ransom with the threat of killing again. Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) is a tough streetwise San Francisco cop whom they call Dirty Harry will nail him one way or the other no matter what the 'system' prescribes. Filming on location director Don Siegel made the City by the Bay a vital part of Dirty Harry a practice continued in its four sequels. The original remains one of the most gripping police thrillers ever made.

• Next Friday | DVD | (25/09/2000) from £9.49   |  Saving you £10.50 (110.64%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Written by and starring Ice Cube, this sequel to his 1995 smash Friday is an engaging farce that plays on the ludicrous charm of the original. It's Next Friday and Craig Jones (Ice Cube) has to pay the consequences for despatching Debo, the neighbourhood bully, to jail at the close of the first film. Hearing a rumour that Debo is to break out of the pen, Craig's father decides it would be safer if he holed up at his cousin Day-Day's house in the 'burbs. But as Craig finds out, this is one suburb that is filled with as much drama as the ghetto. Craig's Uncle Elroy is a layabout lottery winner with a sexually voracious young wife who has designs on her nephew. Day-day (Mike Epps) is being stalked for child support by a pregnant former girlfriend and lives in fear of his boss Pinky, a former pimp who runs a record store. His neighbours, a trio of pumped-up Chicano gangsters, are out for his blood after Craig is caught flirting with their sister Karla, and to top everything, Elroy's house is due to be repossessed in 24 hours due to tax violation. The ensuing hilarity centres around Craig's attempts to raise the necessary funds by fair means or foul. Much to Ice Cube's credit, this silly and scabrous comedy is laugh-out-loud funny without lapsing into American Pie-style frat-boy humour. On the DVD: The main feature is presented in 16:9 anamorphic format in an immaculate print with the choice of either Dolby Digital 2.0 or 5.1 sound and optional English subtitles. Among the special features is an alternate ending which features several small dialogue changes and a re-appearance by Cube's love interest Karla that provides a more satisfying conclusion than the actual ending to the film, which has been left intentionally open for a possible sequel, Friday After Next. Music videos by Ice Cube ("You Can Do It") and Lil' Zane ("Money Stretch") seem to have been included as an incentive to buy the all-star rap soundtrack. Additional features include a theatrical trailer and cast and crew filmographies. The "making-of" featurette advertised on the sleeve does not app ear anywhere on the disc. --Chris Campion

• Time Bandits | DVD | (12/10/2015) from £20.00   |  Saving you £-5.01 (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  From a script cowritten with his fellow Monty Python veteran Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam pulled out all the stops on his prodigious imagination for this comedy-fantasy from 1981. Film critic Pauline Kael was right when she wrote, "This may be one of those rare pictures that suffers from a surfeit of good ideas," because there's not enough plot to keep pace with the sheer inventiveness of Gilliam's filmmaking. That hasn't stopped Time Bandits from becoming a classic, of sorts, attracting a cult following as a semi-reunion of the Python gang (with Palin and John Cleese making splendid appearances) and a rousing adventure of near-epic proportions. It's about a kid named Kevin (Craig Warnock) who joins a band of mischievous dwarves on a jaunt through various eras and epochs. They've stolen a map to holes in the space-time continuum that belongs to the Supreme Being (suitably played by Sir Ralph Richardson), and as Kevin survives a variety of heroic adventures, including an encounter with King Agamemnon (Sean Connery) and an Evil Genius (David Warner) who pursues the coveted map using his nefarious magical powers. As a warm-up for Gilliam's later, even more ambitious fantasies, Brazil and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, this is a dazzling dose of cinematic whimsy, and Gilliam doesn't compromise the darkness of his tale with an artificially upbeat ending. There's as much menace in Time Bandits as there is an awesome sense of wonder, and that gives the movie an extra kick of timeless appeal. --Jeff Shannon

• The Frankie Howerd Collection | DVD | (16/10/2006) from £14.99   |  Saving you £15.00 (100.07%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Featuring four of the comic's great shows Up Pompeii Further Up Pompeii Then Churchill Said To Me and The Best Of Frankie Howerd; which includes sketches from An Evening With Frankie Howerd and the Royal Variety Performances and chatshow appearances on Parkinson and Wogan.

• Chicago (Special Edition) | DVD | (12/09/2005) from £7.76   |  Saving you £11.49 (176.77%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Rene Zellweger, Catherine Zeta Jones and Richard Gere star in the big screen version of the hit musical about a nighclub star who finds herself on Chicago's death row and recruits the town's slickest lawyer.

• El Cid | DVD | (16/05/2011) from £17.99   |  Saving you £-8.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Sumptuous in every way, visually magnificent, with grandiose sets, panoramic Spanish vistas and intricately detailed costumes, possessor of one of cinema's greatest music scores, boasting vast and astonishingly kinetic battles, and breathing heroic virtue in every scene, El Cid is the very epitome of epic. For this reworking of the medieval legend of the Cid (Arabic for "Lord") who united warring factions and saved 11th-century Spain from invasion, producer Samuel Bronston and director Anthony Mann insisted every set had to be created from scratch, every costume specially made for this movie alone; they also shot entirely on location in La Mancha and along the Mediterranean coast of Spain to enhance the film's authenticity. The cinematography is saturated with the burnished hues of the Spanish landscape, as are the palatial sets and rich costumes; Miklos Rozsa's resplendent score is also the result of painstaking research into medieval Spanish sources. The screenplay is imbued with knightly gravitas and more than a little salvation imagery, from the opening scene of the young Rodrigo rescuing a cross from a burning church, to the movie's indelible finale as The Cid rides "out of the gates of history into legend". Charlton Heston is at his most indomitable as Rodrigo, "The Cid", a natural leader of men and the embodiment of every manly virtue (note that he fathers twins--a sure token of his virility); Sophie Loren is ravishing as Chimene, the woman whose love for Rodrigo conflicts with her filial instincts after he kills her father, the king's champion, over a point of honour. Their scenes together create a humane warmth at the heart of this vast movie: the moment when Chimene finally declares her love (beneath a shrine of three crosses--more symbolism) to the exiled Rodrigo forms a pivotal and very intimate centrepiece. Shortly thereafter he must rise from their rural marriage bed to lead his followers into battle, and the tension between his public and private lives adds a piquancy to the film's stunning battle sequences. The international supporting cast sometimes look like makeweights, especially when chewing on the occasionally stilted dialogue, but any such faults are easily forgiven as the scale and spectacle of El Cid carries the viewer away on a tide of chivalry. --Mark Walker

• Die Another Day | Blu Ray | (20/10/2008) from £15.98   |  Saving you £4.00 (25.03%)   |  RRP £19.98

  Pierce Brosnan returns as James Bond, who comes up against a North Korean Generan, who gets his hands on a device that lets him change his facial features. Bond must travel to Iceland to unmask the traitor and prevent a war of catastrophic consequence.

• Contact | DVD | (25/09/1998) from £8.95   |  Saving you £5.04 (56.31%)   |  RRP £13.99

  The opening and closing moments of Robert (Forrest Gump) Zemeckis's Contact astonish viewers with the sort of breathtaking conceptual imagery one hardly ever sees in movies these day--each is an expression of the heroine's lifelong quest (both spiritual and scientific) to explore the meaning of human existence through contact with extraterrestrial life. The movie begins by soaring far out into space, then returns dizzyingly to earth until all the stars in the heavens condense into the sparkle in one little girl's eye. It ends with that same girl as an adult (Jodie Foster)--her search having taken her to places beyond her imagination--turning her gaze inward and seeing the universe in a handful of sand. Contact traces the journey between those two visual epiphanies. Based on Carl Sagan's novel, Contact is exceptionally thoughtful and provocative for a big-budget Hollywood science fiction picture, with elements that recall everything from 2001 to The Right Stuff. Foster's solid performance (and some really incredible alien hardware) keep viewers interested, even when the story skips and meanders, or when the halo around the golden locks of rising-star-of-a-different-kind Matthew McConaughey (as the pure-Hollywood-hokum love interest)reaches Milky Way-level wattage. Ambitious, ambiguous, pretentious, unpredictable--Contact is all of these things and more. Much of it remains open to speculation and interpretation but whatever conclusions one eventually draws, Contactdeserves recognition as a rare piece of big-budget studio film making on a personal scale. --Jim Emerson

• Sadie, It's Cold Outside - The Complete Series | DVD | (30/01/2012) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Written by multi-award-winning playwright Jack Rosenthal one of Britain's best-loved and most consistently successful screenwriters Sadie, It's Cold Outside is a wry and sympathetic comedy starring Rosemary Leach and Bernard Hepton as Sadie and Norman Potter, a world-weary middle-aged couple lamenting their lost dreams in an exhausting, increasingly hostile world.When Sadie was a little girl, her one ambition was to be a housewife. Now, having spent the last 23 years cooking, cleaning and sleeping with her leg in an elastic bandage, her one ambition is to take all her clothes off in Tesco, stick a Green Shield stamp on her navel and scream herself sick.When Norman was a little boy, his ambition was to single-handedly thrash Australia in every Test Match or possibly win a Nobel Prize. Sadly, he s never had the time; he's been busy every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday watching television... and Sunday's his day of rest!

• Dog Day Afternoon | DVD | (13/02/2006) from £9.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  A gripping true crime yarn, a juicy slice of overheated New York atmosphere and a splendid showcase for its young actors, Dog Day Afternoon is a minor classic of the 1970s. The opening montage of New York street life (set to Elton John's lazy "Amoreena") establishes the oppressive mood of a scorching afternoon in the city with such immediacy that you can almost smell the garbage baking in the sun and the water from the hydrants evaporating from the sizzling pavement. Al Pacino plays Sonny, who, along with his rather slow-witted accomplice Sal (John Cazale, familiar as Pacino's Godfather brother Fredo), holds hostages after a botched a bank robbery. Sonny finds himself transformed into a rebel celebrity when his standoff with police (including lead negotiator Charles Durning) is covered live on local television. The movie doesn't appear to be about anything in particular, but it really conveys the feel of wild and unpredictable events unfolding before your eyes, and the whole picture is so convincing and involving that you're glued to the screen. An Oscar winner for original screenplay, Dog Day Afternoon was also nominated for best picture, actor, supporting actor (Chris Sarandon, as a surprise figure from Sonny's past), editing, and director (Sidney Lumet of Serpico, Prince of the City, The Verdict and Running on Empty). --Jim Emerson

• Deadwood: Seasons 1-3 | Blu Ray | (02/03/2015) from £23.86   |  Saving you £3.63 (15.21%)   |  RRP £27.49

  Season 1 1876. The Black Hills Indian Cession, two weeks after Custer's last stand. Witness the birth of an American frontier townand the ruthless power struggle between its just and unjust pioneers. In an age of plunder and greed, the richest gold strike in American history draws a mob of restless misfits to an outlaw set tlement where everything and everyone has a price. The settlers, ranging from an ex-lawman to a scheming saloon owner to the legendary Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane, share a constant restlessness of spirit, and survive by any means necessary. W elcome to Deadwood... a hell of a place to make your fortune. Season 2 1877. A new day is dawning in the Black Hills outlaw camp of Deadwood. F or better or worse, times are changing, and the transformation from camp to town is imminent. Unsavoury new arrivals looking to cash in on the lucrative anarchy and a government of outsiders usher in an era of hard decisions and brutal power struggles among the camp's founders. Seth Bullock is the new Sheriff and forced to stand his ground against two conniving brothel owners: cutthroat Al Swearengen, and his chief rival, the cunning Cy T olliver. The women of Deadwood prove their mettle as Calamity Jane, Alma Garret, T rixie and Joanie stake their claim in this dangerous town of scheming misfits, all learning the hard way fortune comes with a price Season 3 The lawless era in Deadwood is coming to an end. As the town's first elections approach, it becomes apparent that, like it or not, civilisation is on its way. But a civilised town is not necessarily a peaceful town, and the power struggles that determine the fate of Deadwood have never been more brutal. A ruthless newcomer, businessman George Hearst, threatens to reshape the town in his own image, forcing Deadwood's settlers including the steadfast lawman Seth Bullock and the cutthroat saloon owner Al Swearengen to form strategic alliances if they expect to thrive, and survive. While bloody conflicts change the face and fate of the town, the citizens of Deadwood come to the harsh realisation... some fortunes are better left unclaimed.

• South Pacific | DVD | (20/03/2006) from £4.19   |  Saving you £8.80 (210.02%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Blessed with a treasure of timeless songs South Pacific combines the passionate heartwarming romance of a naive young Navy nurse (Mitzi Gaynor) and an older French plantation owner (Rossano Brazzi) with South Seas splendour and a world at war while the breathtaking score is highlighted by some of the most romantic songs ever written.

• Red Dwarf: Series 3 | DVD | (03/11/2003) from £6.15   |  Saving you £13.84 (225.04%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The third series of Red Dwarf introduced some radical changes--all of them for the better--but the scripts remained as sharp and character-focussed as ever, making this a firm candidate for the show's best year. Gone were the dull metallic grey sets and costumes, gone too was Norman Lovett's lugubrious Holly, replaced now by comedienne Hattie Hayridge, who had previously played Hilly in the Series 2 episode "Parallel Universe". New this year were custom-made costumes, more elaborate sets, the zippy pea-green Starbug, bigger special effects and the wholly admirable Robert Llewellyn as Kryten. The benefits of the show's changes are apparent from the outset, with the mind-bending hilarity of "Backwards", in which Kryten and Rimmer establish themselves as a forwards-talking double-act on a reverse Earth. After a modest two-hander that sees Rimmer and Lister "Marooned", comes one of the Dwarf's most beloved episodes, "Polymorph". Here is the ensemble working at its best, as each character unwittingly has their strongest emotion sucked out of them. Lister loses his fear; Cat his vanity; Kryten his reserve; and Rimmer his anger ("Chameleonic Life-Forms. No Thanks"). "Body Swap" sees Lister and Rimmer involved in a bizarre attempt to prevent the ship from self-destructing. "Timeslides" delves deep into Rimmer's psyche as the boys journey haphazardly through history. Finally, "The Last Day" shows how completely Kryten has been adopted as a crewmember, when his replacement Hudzen unexpectedly shows up. On the DVD: Red Dwarf, Series 3 two-disc set maintains the high standard of presentation and wealth of extra material established by its predecessors. Among other delights there are the usual "Smeg Ups" and deleted scenes, plus another fun commentary with the cast. There's a lengthy documentary, "All Change", specifically about Series 3, a tribute to costume designer Mel Bibby, Hattie Hayridge's convention video diary, and--most fascinating--the opportunity to watch "Backwards" played forwards, so you can finally understand what Arthur Smith's backwards-talking pub manager actually says to Rimmer and Kryten in the dressing room. --Mark Walker

• American Pie 1-8 | DVD | (19/11/2012) from £24.99   |  Saving you £-15.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Tuck into the whole pie. Here they are all frantically funny and deliciously sexy slices of American Pie available together. Join the fun and experience everything from prom night and summer vacation to marriage and babies in this unforgettable collection packed with bonus features that every self-disrespecting pie love must own.

• Tiger Bay | DVD | (17/05/2004) from £5.49   |  Saving you £7.50 (136.61%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Polish sailor Korchinsky (Buchholz) is furious to discover his lover has left him for another man and in a confrontation murders her. The crime is witnessed by 10 year old Gillie (Hayley Mills) who steals the gun used and as officer Graham (John Mills) closes in Korchinsky abducts Gillie...

• Do The Right Thing | DVD | (06/07/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Spike Lee's incendiary look at race relations in America, circa 1989, is so colourful and exuberant for its first three-quarters that you can almost forget the terrible confrontation that the movie inexorably builds toward. Do the Right Thing is a joyful, tumultuous masterpiece--maybe the best film ever made about race in America, revealing racial prejudices and stereotypes in all their guises and demonstrating how a deadly riot can erupt out of a series of small misunderstandings. Set on one block in Bedford-Stuyvesant on the hottest day of the summer, the movie shows the whole spectrum of life in this neighbourhood and then leaves it up to us to decide if, in the end, anybody actually does the "right thing." Featuring Danny Aiello as Sal, the pizza parlour owner; Lee himself as Mookie, the lazy pizza-delivery guy; John Turturro and Richard Edson as Sal's sons; Lee's sister Joie as Mookie's sister Jade; Rosie Perez as Mookie's girlfriend Tina; Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee as the block elders, Da Mayor and Mother Sister; Giancarlo Esposito as Mookie's hot-headed friend Buggin' Out; Bill Nunn as the boom-box toting Radio Raheem; and Samuel L Jackson as DJ Mister Señor Love Daddy. This is a rich and nuanced film to watch, treasure and learn from--over and over again. --Jim Emerson

• Boogie Nights | DVD | (01/10/1999) from £12.95   |  Saving you £7.04 (54.36%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Even if the notorious 1970s porn-filmmaking milieu doesn't exactly turn you on, don't let it turn you off to this movie's extraordinary virtues, either. Boogie Nights is one of the key movies of the 1990s and among the most ambitious and exuberantly alive American movies in years. It's also the breakthrough for an amazing new director, whose dazzling kaleidoscopic style here recalls the Robert Altman of Nashville and the Martin Scorsese of Good Fellas. Although loosely based on the sleazy life and times of real-life porn legend John Holmes, at heart it's a classic Hollywood rise-and-fall fable: a naive, good-looking young busboy is discovered in a San Fernando Valley disco by a famous motion picture producer, becomes a hotshot movie star, lives the high life and then loses everything when he gets too big for his britches, succumbs to insobriety and is left behind by new times and new technology. Of course, it isn't exactly A Star Is Born or Singin' in the Rain. Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson (in only his second feature!) puts his own affectionately sardonic twist on the old showbiz biopic formula: the ambitious upstart changes his name and achieves stardom in porno films as "Dirk Diggler." Instead of drinking to excess, he snorts cocaine (the classic drug of 70s hedonism); and it's the coming of home video (rather than talkies) that helps to dash his big-screen dreams. As for the britches ... well, the controversial "money shot" explains everything. And the cast is one of the great ensembles of the 90s, including Oscar nominees Burt Reynolds and Julianne Moore, Mark Wahlberg (who really can act--from the waist up, too!), Heather Graham (as Rollergirl), William H. Macy, John C. Reilly and Ricky Jay. --Jim Emerson

• Savages (DVD + Digital Copy + UV Copy) | DVD | (11/02/2013) from £4.89   |  Saving you £15.10 (308.79%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Three-time Oscar-winning filmmaker Oliver Stone brings to life this ferocious, sexy epic. In a glittering California beach town, two best friends' innovative marijuana business has come to the attention of the ruthless Mexican Baja Cartel. As a seemingly unwinnable war unfolds around them, they're forced to take part in a savage battle of wills to save the girl they both love. Starring Taylor Kitsch, Blake Lively, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, John Travolta, Benicio del Toro and Salma Hayek.

• Home to Roost - Complete Series | DVD | (01/09/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Henry Willows is a middle-aged divorcee contentedly living alone. Feathers really fly as his orderly life is disrupted when his teenage son Matthew whom he has not seen for seven years appears out of the blue intending to stay. While Henry has never quite seen himself as the typical loving parent he reluctantly agrees to give the arrangement a try. The differences in age and temperament between father and son produce hilarious situations as they attempt to adjust to life together. Matthew is a typical teenager who likes rock music girls telling lies and drinking his father's whiskey. From the moment he moves in life for poor Henry will never be the same.

• Always | DVD | (10/04/2003) from £9.80   |  Saving you £0.19 (1.94%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Steven Spielberg directs this heartwarming romantic adventure USA Today calls a ""winner"". Pete Sandrich (Richard Dreyfuss) is a legendary pilot with a passion for daredevil firefighting. However Dorinda (Holly Hunter) the woman he loves and Al (John Goodman) Pete's best friend know that legends can't take risks forever. After sacrificing himself to save Al the ace pilot faces his most challenging mission: helping Dorinda move on with her life. Breathtaking cinematography and exhilarating aerial choreography highlight this compelling adventure that co-stars Brad Johnson and features a special appearance by Audrey Hepburn.