"Actor: Ken Lo"

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

• Ladyhawke | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £8.25   |  Saving you £4.74 (57.45%)   |  RRP £12.99

  This lushly produced fantasy has gained a loyal following since its release in 1985, and it gave a welcome boost to the careers of Matthew Broderick, Michelle Pfeiffer and Rutger Hauer. You have to ignore the overly aggressive music score by Andrew Powell, music director of the Alan Parsons Project (critic Pauline Kael aptly dubbed it "disco-medieval") and director Richard Donner's reckless allowance of anachronistic dialogue and uninspired storytelling, but there's a certain charm to the movie's combination of romance and heroism. Broderick plays a young thief who comes to the aid of tragic lovers Isabeau (Pfeiffer), who is cursed to become a hawk every day at sunrise and Navarre (Hauer) who turns into a wolf at sunset. The curse was cast by an evil sorcerer-bishop (John Wood), and as Broderick eludes the bishop's henchmen, Navarre struggles to conquer the villain, lift the curse and be reunited with his love in human form. The tragedy of this lovers' dilemma keeps the movie going, and Broderick is well cast as a young, medieval variation of Woody Allen. --Jeff Shannon

• Dressed To Kill | DVD | (29/04/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  To condemn Dressed to Kill as a Hitchcock rip-off is to miss the sheer enjoyment of Brian De Palma's delirious thriller. Homages to Hitchcock run rampant through most of De Palma's earlier films, and this one's chock-full of visual quotes, mostly cribbed from Vertigo and Psycho. But De Palma's indulgent depravity transcends simple mimicry to assume a vitality all its own. It's smothered in thickly atmospheric obsessions with sex, dread, paranoia, and voyeurism, not to mention a heavy dose of Psycho-like psychobabble about a wannabe transsexual who is compelled to slash up any attractive female who reminds him--the horror--that he's still very much a man. Angie Dickinson plays the sexually unsatisfied, forty-something wife who's the killer's first target, relaying her sexual fantasies to her psychiatrist (Michael Caine) before actually living one of them out after the film's celebrated cat-and-mouse sequence in a Manhattan art museum. The focus then switches to a murder witness (De Palma's then-girlfriend Nancy Allen) and Dickinson's grieving whiz-kid son (Keith Gordon), who attempt to solve the murder while staying one step ahead (or so they think) of the crude detective (Dennis Franz) assigned to the case. Propelled by Pino Donaggio's lush and stimulating score, De Palma's visuals provide seductive counterpoint to his brashly candid dialogue, and the plot conceals its own implausibility with morbid thrills and intoxicating suspense. If you're not laughing at De Palma's shameless audacity, you're sure to be on the edge of your seat. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

• Freddy vs Jason | DVD | (26/01/2004) from £15.00   |  Saving you £4.99 (33.27%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The two best horror baddies in a showdown to make you squirm. Freddy comes back from Hell as the notorious Jason takes on Elm Street in his own style.

• Just A Boy's Game | DVD | (25/09/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Originally broadcast as part of the BBC's 'Play for Today' series in 1979 this gritty tale of life in depressed Greenock has since been hailed as a cult classic. Jake (Frankie Miller) lives in the shadow of his dying grandfather (Hector Nicol) who was once the town's toughest hard man. Despite their hatred of each other Jake's sole aim is to be as tough as the old man was. One day Jake's life o...f drifting drinking and fighting leads to a bleak realisation. The play also features appearances by Ken Hutchison and Gregor Fisher.

• Gunsmoke: The Complete Series | DVD | (05/05/2020) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Alice Cooper - The Nightmare Returns | DVD | (28/08/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Filmed in Detroit on Halloween Night 1986 this film captures Alice Cooper and his band in a memorable show featuring eighteen of their best songs and all the theatrics to go with them. Includes 'Welcome To My Nightmare' 'No More Mister Nice Guy' 'Billion Dollar Babies' and 'Go To Hell'.

• A.I. Artificial Intelligence | DVD | (18/03/2002) from £5.49   |  Saving you £8.50 (154.83%)   |  RRP £13.99

  History will place an asterisk next to A.I. as the film Stanley Kubrick might have directed. But let the record also show that Kubrick--after developing this project for some 15 years--wanted Steven Spielberg to helm this astonishing sci-fi rendition of Pinocchio, claiming (with good reason) that it veered closer to Spielberg's kinder, gentler sensibilities. Spielberg inherited the project (based on the Brain Aldiss short story "Supertoys Last All Summer Long") after Kubrick's death in 1999, and the result is an astounding directorial hybrid. A flawed masterpiece of sorts, in which Spielberg's gift for wondrous enchantment often clashes (and sometimes melds) with Kubrick's harsher vision of humanity, the film spans near and distant futures with the fairy-tale adventures of an artificial boy named David (Haley Joel Osment), a marvel of cybernetic progress who wants only to be a real boy, loved by his mother in that happy place called home. Echoes of Spielberg's Empire of the Sun are evident as young David, shunned by his trial parents and tossed into an unfriendly world, is joined by fellow "mecha" Gigolo Joe (played with a dancer's agility by Jude Law) in his quest for a mother-and-child reunion. Parallels to Pinocchio intensify as David reaches "the end of the world" (a Manhattan flooded by melted polar ice caps), and a far-future epilogue propels A.I. into even deeper realms of wonder, just as it pulls Spielberg back to his comfort zone of sweetness and soothing sentiment. Some may lament the diffusion of Kubrick's original vision, but this is Spielberg's A.I., a film of astonishing technical wizardry that spans the spectrum of human emotions and offers just enough Kubrick to suggest that humanity's future is anything but guaranteed. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com On the DVD: A perfect movie for the digital age, A.I. finds a natural home on DVD. The purity of the picture, its carefully composed colour schemes and the multifarious sound effects are accorded the pin-point sharpness they deserve with the anamorphic 1.85:1 picture and Dolby 5.1 sound, as is John Williams's thoughtful music score. On the first disc there's a short yet revealing documentary, "Creating A.I.", but the meat of the extras appears on disc two. Here there are good, well-made featurettes on acting, set design, costumes, lighting, sound design, music and various aspects of the special effects: Stan Winston's remarkable robots (including Teddy, of course) and ILM's flawless CGI work. In addition there are storyboards, photographs and trailers. Finally, Steven Spielberg provides some rather sententious closing remarks ("I think that we have to be very careful about how we as a species use our genius"), but no director's commentary. --Mark Walker

• Into The Sun | DVD | (11/04/2005) from £5.42   |  Saving you £14.57 (268.82%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Only one man has the skills to stop the Yakuza... When a government official is killed American operative Travis Hunter (Seagal) with experience in the Yakuza culture is brought into investigate...

• Shackleton | DVD | (14/04/2003) from £6.99   |  Saving you £3.00 (42.92%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Shackleton is not a biopic of the great Anglo-Irish explorer but a dramatisation of the failed trans-Antarctic expedition of 1914-16. As written and directed by Charles (Longtitude) Sturridge the production, filmed on real ice floes in Greenland, stays remarkably close to the facts, capturing the look of the surviving expedition photos of Frank Hurley (collected in the book South With Endurance) with great fidelity. Kenneth Branagh makes no attempt at an authentic accent but otherwise gives a powerful impression of a most commanding personality. When the expedition ship Endurance became locked in the Antarctic ice Shackleton vowed to bring every man home alive, and against virtually impossible odds, including a 700-mile journey in an open boat through some of the worst seas in the world, he did just that. This superlative mini-series realises the story with production values and cinematography which would not disgrace a big-budget feature (Hurley's own 1919 documentary film can be seen on video in South). Intense physical drama, strong performances and Adrian Johnston's fine score combine here to deeply moving effect, marred only a little by a rushed conclusion. With Roland Huntford, author of the definitive Shackleton biography, as production advisor, this easily stands as the benchmark for all future comparable films. --Gary S Dalkin

• On The Beach | DVD | (03/05/2004) from £23.24   |  Saving you £-10.25 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The war is over. Nobody won. Only the inhabitants of Australia and the men of the U.S. submarine Sawfish have escaped the nuclear destruction. Captain Dwight Towers (Gregory Peck) takes the Sawfish on a mission to see if an approaching radiation cloud has weakened but returns with grim news: the cloud is lethal. With the days and hours dwindling each person confronts the grim situation in his or her own way as the final chapter of human history is coming to a close...

• Sebastiane | DVD | (18/06/2001) from £20.00   |  Saving you £-0.01 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The first and only film shot entirely in subtitled Latin, Sebastiane is Derek Jarman's first work as a director (though he shared the job with the less well-known Paul Humfress) and is a strange combination of gay nudie movie, pocket-sized Ancient Roman epic and meditation upon the image of Saint Sebastian. It opens with the Lindsay Kemp dance troupe romping around with huge fake phalluses to represent the Ken Russell-style decadence of the court of the Emperor Diocletian in AD 303, then decamps to Tuscany as Diocletian's favourite guard Sebastian (Leonardo Treviglio) is demoted to ordinary soldier and dispatched to a backwater barracks because the Emperor (Robert Medley) suspects him of being a covert Christian. The bulk of the film consists of athletic youths in minimal thongs romping around the countryside, soaking themselves down between bouts of manly horseplay or sylvan frolic. It all comes to a bad end as the lecherous but guilt-ridden commanding officer Severus (Barney James) fails to cop off with Sebastian and instead visits floggings and tortures upon his naked torso, finally ordering his men to riddle the future saint with arrows, thus securing him a place in cultural history. The public schoolboy cleverness of scripting dialogue in Latin--a popular soldier's insult is represented by the Greek "Oedipus"--works surprisingly well, with the cast reeling off profane Roman dialogue as if it were passionate Italian declarations rather than marbled classical sentences. The film suffers from the not-uncommon failing that the best-looking actor is given the largest role but delivers the weakest performance: Treviglio's Sebastian is a handsome cipher, far less interesting than the rest of the troubled, bullying, awkward or horny soldiers in the platoon. Peter Hinwood, famous for the title role in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, can be glimpsed in the palace orgy. The countryside looks as good as the cast, and Brian Eno delivers an evocative, ambient-style score. --Kim Newman

• Last Man Standing | DVD | (01/10/1999) from £10.41   |  Saving you £5.58 (53.60%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Best known for making movies about men and violence, director Walter Hill scored a misfire with this ambitious but ultimately dreary remake of Akira Kurosawa's samurai classic Yojimbo. The story's essentially the same but the setting has been switched to a dusty, almost ghostly Texas town in the 1930s, where two rival Chicago gangs are locked in an uneasy truce. Bruce Willis plays the lone drifter who allies himself with both gangs to his own advantage, working both sides against each other according to his own hidden agenda. The violence escalates to a bloody climax, of course, with Christopher Walken, David Patrick Kelly and Michael Imperioli as trigger-happy lieutenants in a lonely, desolate war. Fans of gangster movies will want to see this, and, if nothing else, Hill has brought his polished style to a vaguely mythic story. It's far from being a classic, however, and although its action is at times masterfully choreographed, the movie's humourless attitude is unexpectedly oppressive. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

• The Pillow Book | DVD | (16/06/2003) from £10.48   |  Saving you £-0.49 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Peter Greenaway (The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, Drowning by Numbers) continues to delight and disturb us with his talent for combining storytelling with optic artistry. The Pillow Book is divided into 10 chapters (consistent with Greenaway's love of numbers and lists) and is shot to be viewed like a book, complete with tantalising illustrations and footnotes (subtitles) and using television's "screen-in-screen" technology. As a child in Japan, Nagiko's father celebrates her birthday retelling the Japanese creation myth and writing on her flesh in beautiful calligraphy, while her aunt reads a list of "beautiful things" from a 10th-century pillow book. As she gets older, Nagiko (Vivian Wu) looks for a lover with calligraphy skills to continue the annual ritual. She is initially thrilled when she encounters Jerome (Ewan McGregor), a bisexual translator who can speak and write several languages, but soon realises that although he is a magnificent lover, his penmanship is less than acceptable. When Nagiko dismisses the enamoured Jerome, he suggests she use his flesh as the pages which to present her own pillow book. The film, complete with a musical score as international as the languages used in the narration, is visually hypnotic and truly an immense "work of art". --Michele Goodson

• Jackie Chan - My Story / My Stunts | DVD | (03/09/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Jackie Chan lays down the ground rules for the world's most dangerous game.......... He's the biggest action movie star in the world (and possibly the smallest too) already a living legend for the spectacular and death-defying stunts he performs which electrify movie audiences worldwide and often land him in casualty nursing sometimes serious injuries. He's Jackie Chan and he has himself produced and directed a 90 minute behind-the-scenes look at what amounts to the world's most

• The Herbie Collection | DVD | (04/10/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £34.99

  A collection of movies featuring the lovable little Volkswagon! Herbie - The Love Bug: He tale of a struggling race car driver named Jim Douglas who only begins winning races once he starts driving Herbie. Elated at his new found success Jim does not realise that it is the Volkswagen who is responsible for the first-place finishes! Herbie Goes Bananas: There's disorder south of the border when Herbie the almost human Volkswagen meets Paco the pickpocket and has to

• Joe Bullet (Blu-ray) | Blu Ray | (11/09/2017) from £9.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  When a mysterious gangster starts sabotaging soccer team The Eagles' chance at winning the upcoming championship final, there is only one man who can save the day...Joe Bullet.

• Once Upon A Texas Train | DVD | (01/09/2001) from £31.03   |  Saving you £-29.04 (-1,459.30%)   |  RRP £1.99

  20 years after Captain Hayes puts outlaw John Henry behind bars he is released and holds up a bank. Hayes takes up the chase once more...

• The X Files : Series 7 | DVD | (22/09/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  With the original conspiracy plot arc fallen into a muddle of loose ends no-one could possibly fathom, once-hungry lead actors on the verge of big screen careers and making demands for more time off or shots at writing and directing, and the initial wish list of monsters-of-the-week long exhausted, it's a miracle The X Files is still making its airdates, let alone managing something pretty good every other show and something outstanding at least once every four episodes. Season seven opens with a dreary two-parter ("Sixth Extinction" and "Amor Fati") and winds up with the traditional incomprehensible cliffhanger ("Requiem"), but along the way includes a clutch of shows that may not match the originality of earlier seasons but still effortlessly equal any other fantasy-horror-sf on American television. Highlights in this clutch: "Hungry", a brain-eating mutant story told from the point of view of a monster who tries to control his appetite by going to eating disorder self-help groups; "The Goldberg Variation", a crime comedy about a weaselly little man who has the gift of incredible good luck, which means Wile E Coyote-style doom for anyone who crosses him; "The Amazing Maleeni", guest-starring Ricky Jay in a rare non-fantastic crime story about a feud between stage magicians that turns out to be a cover for a heist; "X-Cops", a brilliant skit on the US TV docusoap Cops with Mulder and Scully caught on camera as they track an apparent werewolf in Los Angeles (season-best acting from David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson); "Theef", a complex revenge drama with gaunt Billy Drago as a hillbilly medicine man stalking a slick doctor; "Brand X", a horror comic tale of corruption in the tobacco industry; "Hollywood AD" (written and directed by Duchovny), in which Tea Leoni and Garry Shandling are cast as Scully and Mulder in a crass movie version of a real-life X file; and "Je Souhaite", a deadpan comedy about a wry, cynical genie at the mercy of trailer trash masters who haven't an idea what to wish for. Among the disasters are: "Fight Club", a grossly laboured comedy; "All Things", Gillian Anderson's riotously pretentious religious-themed writing-directing debut; "En Ami", written and understood by William B Davis, the cigarette-smoking villain; and the very silly "First Person Shooter", the lamest killer video-game plot imaginable courtesy of distinguished guest writer William Gibson. Still essential, despite the occasional pits, but yet again you go away thinking that the next season had better come up with some answers. --Kim Newman

• Naked Killer | DVD | (22/04/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  There actually is no naked killer in Naked Killer but that's about all this mad, adults-only comic book action rollercoaster is missing. Flirty, feral Chingmy Yau gives an abusive jerk an impromptu vasectomy in front of cop Simon Yam, an impotent detective who vomits whenever he draws his gun. He's tracking a series of sex murders where all the male victims are missing their private organs when he falls in love with chief suspect Chingmy. She's subsequently recruited by the real killer, a hit-woman who targets rapists at large and practises on drooling sex-mad psychos chained up in the attic. When they finally head out for the real thing, they take out victims in a display of mid-air somersaults, cracking whips, flying ropes and flashing guns. This kind of foreplay attracts the lustful attentions of rival assassin Carrie Ng, a lesbian killer ready to abandon her purring sex kitten for the savage Chingmy. This is one of the most energetically gonzo Hong Kong logic-bombs ever made, a crazy melodrama that revels in absurd extravagance, sick humour (you may never eat link sausage again) and pure adrenaline driven displays of gymnastic action and orgiastic gunplay. Incoherence is a small price to pay for such guilty delights. --Sean Axmaker