"Actor: John Hurt"

• The Field | DVD | (03/12/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Irish director Jim Sheridan made The Field after scoring an art house hit and Oscar nominations for his previous film, My Left Foot. Set in Ireland during the 1930s, this ambitious and hard-hitting drama is about one man's obsession with a plot of land that his family has tended for generations. The results are decidedly mixed, and it's obvious that this kind of tragic allegory is better suited for the stage (where it originated as a play by John B Keane). What makes the film worthwhile is the Oscar-nominated performance by Richard Harris as "Bull" McCabe, the fiercely stubborn man who's nurtured a prime field of rented land for decades, only to lose it when the owner auctions the land to an unwelcome American (Tom Berenger). Rather than sacrifice his life's work to this brazen invader, McCabe wages a personal war with powerfully tragic results. It's unfortunate that this potent drama never really connects on an emotional level, but Harris is never less than fascinating in a role that virtually seems to consume him as an actor. His performance approaches greatness, even when the film falls somewhat short of its dramatic ambitions. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

• The Naked Civil Servant Blu-Ray | Blu Ray | (11/11/2024) from £9.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  The BAFTA-winning adaptation of Quentin Crisp's best-selling autobiography, The Naked Civil Servant features an arguably career-best performance by John Hurt as Crisp a flamboyant homosexual trying to live an openly gay lifestyle in the intolerant pre-war years.

• Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts | Blu Ray | (09/08/2022) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• A Man For All Seasons | DVD | (26/11/2001) from £17.98   |  Saving you £2.01 (11.18%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Robert Bolt's successful play, A Man for All Seasons, was not considered a hot commercial property by Columbia Pictures--a period piece about a moral issue without a star, without even a love story. Perhaps that's why Columbia left director Fred Zinnemann alone to make the film as long as he stuck to a relatively small budget. The results took everyone by surprise, as the talky morality play became a box-office hit and collected the top Oscars for 1966. At the play's heart is the standoff between King Henry VIII (Robert Shaw, in young lion form) and Sir Thomas More (Paul Scofield, in an Oscar-winning performance). Henry wants More's official approval of divorce, but More's strict ethical and religious code will not let him waffle. More's rectitude is a source of exasperation to Cardinal Wolsey (Orson Welles in a cameo), who chides, "If you could just see facts flat on without that horrible moral squint". Zinnemann's approach is all simplicity, and indeed the somewhat prosaic staging doesn't create a great deal of cinematic excitement. But the language is worth savouring, and the ethical politics are debated with all the calm and majesty of an absorbing chess game. --Robert Horton, Amazon.com

• The Hollow Crown: Series 1 | DVD | (13/06/2016) from £9.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Collection of four BBC adaptations of Shakespeare's history plays comprising 'Richard II', 'Henry IV: Part One', 'Henry IV: Part Two' and 'Henry V'. Beginning in the year 1399, the plays deal with events affecting the monarchy during a 16-year period, where the ruling orders of Richard II (Ben Whishaw), Henry IV (Jeremy Irons) and Henry V (Tom Hiddleston) find themselves beset by rebellion, greed and war. The cast also includes Rory Kinnear, Simon Russell Beale, Julie Walters and Lindsay Duncan.

• The Proposition | Blu Ray | (25/01/2010) from £6.89   |  Saving you £16.10 (233.67%)   |  RRP £22.99

  A brother is faced with an impossible proposition in this period Australian thriller.

• Watership Down | DVD | (25/06/2001) from £8.96   |  Saving you £7.03 (78.46%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Much like Richard Adams' wonderful novel this animated tale of wandering rabbits is not meant for small children. It is, however, rich storytelling, populated with very real individuals inhabiting a very real world. The animation is problematic, sometimes appearing out of proportion or just below par; but it seems to stem from an attempt at realism, something distinguishing the film's characters from previous, cutesy, animated animals. A band of rabbits illegally leave their warren after a prophecy of doom from a runt named Fiver (voiced by Richard Briers). In search of a place safe from humans and predators, they face all kinds of dangers, including a warren that has made a sick bargain with humankind, and a warren that is basically a fascist state. Allegories aside, Down is engaging and satisfying, and pulls off the same amazing trick that the novel did--you'll forget that this is a story about rabbits. --Keith Simanton, Amazon.com

• Alien | Blu Ray | (17/04/2019) from £13.08   |  Saving you £2.91 (22.25%)   |  RRP £15.99

  By transplanting the classic haunted house scenario into space, Ridley Scott, together with screenwriters Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett, produced a work of genuinely original cinematic sci-fi with Alien that, despite the passage of years and countless inferior imitations, remains shockingly fresh even after repeated viewing. Scott's legendary obsession with detail ensures that the setting is thoroughly conceived, while the Gothic production design and Jerry Goldsmith's wonderfully unsettling score produce a sense of disquiet from the outset: everything about the spaceship Nostromo--from Tupperware to toolboxes-seems oddly familiar yet disconcertingly ... well, alien.Nothing much to speak of happens for at least the first 30 minutes, and that in a way is the secret of the film's success: the audience has been nervously peering round every corner for so long that by the time the eponymous beast claims its first victim, the release of pent-up anxiety is all the more effective. Although Sigourney Weaver ultimately takes centre-stage, the ensemble cast is uniformly excellent. The remarkably low-tech effects still look good (better in many places than the CGI of the sequels), while the nightmarish quality of H.R. Giger's bio-mechanical creature and set design is enhanced by camerawork that tantalises by what it doesn't reveal.On the DVD: The director, audibly pausing to puff on his cigar at regular intervals, provides an insightful commentary which, in tandem with superior sound and picture, sheds light into some previously unexplored dark recesses of this much-analysed, much-discussed movie (why the crew eat muesli, for example, or where the "rain" in the engine room is coming from). Deleted scenes include the famous "cocoon" sequence, the completion of the creature's insect-like life-cycle for which cinema audiences had to wait until 1986 and James Cameron's Aliens. Isolated audio tracks, a picture gallery of production artwork and a "making of" documentary complete a highly attractive DVD package. --Mark Walker

• I, Claudius | DVD | (20/09/1976) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Wild Bill | DVD | (01/03/2004) from £9.33   |  Saving you £3.66 (39.23%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Audiences overlooked Wild Bill at the cinema, but it's one of the better Westerns of the 1990s, featuring yet another terrific performance by Jeff Bridges, America's most underrated movie actor. As James Butler Hickock, he captures the sense of a man at the end of his career, one of the first media superstars who discovers that his legend is more burden than blessing. As he heads toward his final hand of poker in Deadwood, South Dakota, he flashes back to his younger days and the events that built his reputation, even as he copes with encroaching blindness caused by syphilis. Walter Hill blends action and elegy, utilising a screenplay based both on Pete Dexter's novel Deadwood and Thomas Babe's play Fathers and Sons. Wild Bill features strong supporting performances by John Hurt (as a Hickock sidekick) and Ellen Barkin (as the tough, lusty Calamity Jane)--but the centrepiece is the sad, manly performance by Bridges, who more than measures up to the part. --Marshall Fine

• Jackie | Blu Ray | (29/05/2017) from £9.25   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  JACKIE is a searing and intimate portrait of one of the most important and tragic moments in American history, seen through the eyes of the iconic First Lady, then Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy (Natalie Portman). JACKIE places us in her world during the days immediately following her husband's assassination. Known for her extraordinary dignity and poise, here we see a psychological portrait of the First Lady as she struggles to maintain her husband's legacy and the world of Camelot that they created and loved so well.

• A Turtle's Tale: Sammy's Adventures | Blu Ray | (19/09/2011) from £5.00   |  Saving you £17.99 (359.80%)   |  RRP £22.99

  A Turtle's Tale: Sammy's Adventures is an epic global adventure story, an animated family feature made spectacularly real by eye-popping 3D.A young sea-turtle's romantic quest for his first, lost love, a fellow hatchling, born on the same Californian beach, takes him on a marathon voyage across the seven seas, to the furthest corners of the earth. In a world under increasing threat from environmental pollution, where the oceans are a battleground between the forces of nature and mankind, can Sammy the sea-turtle complete his dangerous 50-year mission and find his soul mate Shelly and the happiness they deserve? The thrills and comical spills are brought to the screen by director Ben Stassen (Fly Me To The Moon) with the help of a top-class British voice cast, starring Dominic Cooper (Mamma Mia), Gemma Arterton (St Trinian's, Clash of The Titans), John Hurt (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows), Kayvan Novak (Four Lions, Fonejacker) and Robert Sheehan (Misfits).

• Outlander | Blu Ray | (31/08/2009) from £10.31   |  Saving you £12.68 (122.99%)   |  RRP £22.99

  In the face of an alien threat and a Viking clan's destruction, the tale of the Outlander becomes legend.

• V For Vendetta (2 Disc Deluxe Edition with Comic) | DVD | (31/07/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £25.99

• Last Exit To Brooklyn | DVD | (04/06/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  In April 1994 the airplane of the Hutu President of Rwanda crashes and the Hutu militias slaughter the Tutsi population. In the Ecole Technique Officielle the Catholic priest Christopher and the idealistic English teacher Joe Connor lodge two thousand and five hundred Rwandans survivors in the school under the protection of the UN Belgian force and under siege of the Hutu militia.

• Hellboy II: The Golden Army | Blu Ray | (06/05/2019) from £21.85   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  The fate of mankind hangs in the balance in Hellboy II: The Golden Army when a ruthless prince awakens an unstoppable army of creatures and wages war with the human world. It's up to Hellboy (Ron Perlman) and his team of paranormal outcasts to face off with the forces of darkness in the ultimate battle of good versus evil! Prepare to be taken by the visionary director of The Shape of Water (Guillermo del Toro) into a fantastical world with imaginative creatures and thrilling fight sequences unlike anything you've ever seen before! Disc 1: FOR THE ULTIMATE MOVIE WATCHING EXPERIENCE, THIS DISC FEATURES: ¢ 4X sharper picture than HD ¢ HDR (HIGH DYNAMIC RANGE) for brilliant brights and deepest darks ¢ IMMERSIVE AUDIO for a multi-dimensional sound experience ¢ COMMENTARIES Disc 2: Blu-ray Movie + Bonus Features: ¢ FEATURE COMMENTARY WITH DIRECTOR GUILLERMO DEL TORO (PLUS PROLOGUE) ¢ FEATURE WITH CAST COMMENTARY ¢ SCENE EXPLORER: SCHUFFTEN GOGGLE VIEW ¢ DIRECTORS NOTEBOOK ¢ SET VISITS ¢ CONCEPT ART GALLERY

• Alien 40th Anniversary | DVD | (01/04/2019) from £4.52   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Alien is the first movie of one of the most popular sagas in science fiction history, and introduces Sigourney Weaver as Ripley, the iron-willed woman destined to battle the galaxy's ultimate creature. The terror begin when the crew of the spaceship Nostromo investigates a transmission from a desolate planet and makes a horrifying discovery - a life form that breeds within a human host. Now the crew must fight now only for its survival, but for the survival of all mankind.

• The Plague Dogs | DVD | (07/01/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Two dogs escape from a laboratory and are hunted as they could be possible carriers of the bubonic plague.

• The Tigger Movie | DVD | (25/09/2000) from £7.73   |  Saving you £4.26 (55.11%)   |  RRP £11.99

  From deep in the Hundred Acre Wood comes an all-new Tigger Feature with with five new songs from the Academy Award ® winning team of Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman.

• Aria | DVD | (15/06/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Conceived developed and produced by Don Boyd Aria is a completely unique film both structurally and also in the sheer scale of the production itself. Ten of the world's most creative and celebrated directors were each given the same brief; to choose a piece of opera music and then present a visual interpretation of that music. The result is by turns erotic violent funny and poignant. The stills photographers assigned to each were equally celebrated among them David Bailey Annie Leibovitz Lord Snowdon Terry O'Neill and John Swannell. The impressive cast list includes John Hurt Tilda Swinton Bridget Fonda and Elizabeth Hurley Teresa Russell. A remarkable collective achievement Aria is a cinematic experience like no other.