"Actor: Marisa Berenson"

• Barry Lyndon Steelbook | Unknown | (31/12/9999) from £31.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Redmond Barry is an Irish country boy who falls in love with a well-to-do local girl and is subsequently tricked by her family into leaving town. Disillusioned with love, the brokenhearted youngster embarks on an adventure which sees him serve in the Seven Years War, earn a living as a professional gambler, and eventually move into the higher ranks of society, when he meets and marries the beautiful Lady Lyndon. Despite the luck that has brought him such riches, it is this final move, the cynical choice to marry for social advancement rather than love, which brings about his downfall.

• Barry Lyndon 4K | Unknown | (31/12/9999) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Redmond Barry is an Irish country boy who falls in love with a well-to-do local girl and is subsequently tricked by her family into leaving town. Disillusioned with love, the brokenhearted youngster embarks on an adventure which sees him serve in the Seven Years War, earn a living as a professional gambler, and eventually move into the higher ranks of society, when he meets and marries the beautiful Lady Lyndon. Despite the luck that has brought him such riches, it is this final move, the cynical choice to marry for social advancement rather than love, which brings about his downfall.

• Cabaret - 30th Anniversary Special Edition | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £16.99   |  Saving you £-12.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £4.99

  Cabaret is one of those film musicals whose cultural and stylistic influence extend well beyond the cinema. It confirmed Bob Fosse's status as one of the boldest choreographers of the 20th century and gave Liza Minnelli an early peak in a film career which would never scale such heights again. Minnelli is both the film's strength--on its own merits her performance is an Oscar-winning tour de force--and weakness. The real Sally Bowles was a third-rate performer and just one of a rich gallery of characters; here, the constant allowances for Minnelli's star turns and mannerisms ultimately throw the story off balance. But the source material is impeccable: Kander and Ebb's stage show, based on the autobiographical stories of Christopher Isherwood, has long since been acknowledged a classic. The songs, augmented by some new numbers in the film, are ageless. Joel Grey from the original Broadway production is the Emcee, the master of ceremonies who, with his Kit Kat Klub girls, provides a depraved Greek chorus satirising the rise of the Nazi regime and the lazy complacency of the 1930s Berlin cabaret-goers. The "divine decadence" tag is only part of the story, though. Cabaret still works a sinister, uncomfortable magic which sets it apart as a uniquely powerful film musical. On the DVD: Cabaret's 30th Anniversary Special Edition is packed with extras which include a scratchy "making of" documentary from 1972 and a retrospective from 1997, the latter featuring reminiscences from the cast. There’s also the original theatrical trailer, though in the absence of the late director Fosse the lack of some kind of commentary is a disappointment. The picture itself, presented in widescreen 16:9 letterbox format with a Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo soundtrack, gleams as sharply, visually and aurally, as it did on its first release. --Piers Ford

• Cabaret | DVD | (04/10/2004) from £16.08   |  Saving you £-10.09 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

• Barry Lyndon | DVD | (10/09/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Perhaps Stanley Kubrick's most underrated film, Barry Lyndon--adapted from the picaresque novel by William Makepeace Thackeray--inhabits the 18th century in the way A Clockwork Orange and 2001: A Space Odyssey inhabit the future: perfect sets, costumes and cinematography capture characters whose rises and falls are at once deeply tragic and absurdly comical. Narrated in avuncular form by Michael Hordern, the film follows the fortunes of Redmond Barry (Ryan O'Neal), a handsome Irish youth forced to flee his hometown after a duel with a cowardly English officer (Leonard Rossiter). Stripped of his small fortune by a deferential highwayman, Barry joins the British army and fights in the Seven Years War, attempting a desertion that leads him into the Prussian army. A position as a spy on an exquisitely painted con man (Patrick Magee) leads to a life of gambling around the courts of Europe, and just before the intermission our hero achieves all he could want by marrying a wealthy, titled beautiful widow (Marisa Berenson). However, Part Two reveals that Barry can no more be a clockwork orange than the protagonist of Kubrick's previous film, and his spendthrift ways, foolhardy pursuit of social advancement and unwise treatment of his new family lead to several disasters, climaxing in another horrific, yet farcical duel. Shot almost entirely in the "magic hour", that point of the day when the light is mistily perfect, with innovative use of candlelight for interiors, Barry Lyndon looks ravishing, but the perfection of its images is matched by the inner turmoil of its seemingly frozen characters. Kubrick is often accused of being unemotional, but his restraint is all the more affecting when, for example, Barry is struck by the deaths of those close to him, his wife writhes into madness or his stepson (Leon Vitali) vomits before he can stand his ground in a duel.On the DVD: The extras are skimpy, a trailer and a list of awards, a French alternate soundtrack and subtitles in seven languages. However, the film--"digitally restored and remastered"--is served superbly by the medium. Letterboxed to 1.59:1 (which fits the 14:9 option of a widescreen TV), with a 5.1 Dolby Digital soundtrack, the print looks and sounds wonderful, which not only allows a fresh appreciation of the wit and beauty of the film but shows just how good the apparent underplaying (unusual in Kubrick films) of the cast is. --Kim Newman

• Halston - Director's Cut | DVD | (22/07/2019) from £5.80   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Biographical documentary from film-maker Frederic Tcheng centred on the life and career of fashion designer Halston. The film examines the rags-to-riches history of Halston's fashion label and the reams of celebrities who flocked to spend time with him.

• Cabaret | DVD | (26/11/2007) from £28.49   |  Saving you £-22.50 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Cabaret brings 1931 Berlin to life inside and outside the Kit Kat Klub. There, starry eyed American Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli) and an impish emee (Joel Grey) sound the call for decadent fun, while in the street the Nazi party is beginning to grow into a brutal political force. Into this heady world arrives British language teacher Brian Robert (Michael York) who falls for Sally's charm and soon, the two of them find themselves embroiled in the turmoil and decadence of the era.

• Stanley Kubrick | DVD | (10/09/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £99.99

  This superb nine-disc Stanley Kubrick Box Set contains all the late director's work from 1962's Lolita to Kubrick's final film, the highly controversial Eyes Wide Shut (1999). There's also the excellent and highly informative two-hour documentary: Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, narrated (a little drably) by Tom Cruise. It isn't exactly a warts-and-all portrait of Stan the Man, which is not surprising, really, given that it's directed and produced by Kubrick's brother-in-law Jan Harlan, and that Kubrick's widow Christine was closely involved in the making of it. But it does give a detailed and revealing portrait of a brilliant, demanding and often infuriating man, airing rare footage that goes right back to his earliest years as a brash youngster in the Bronx, already playing to camera with a frightening degree of self-awareness. Six of the eight movies (all but Dr Strangelove and Eyes Wide Shut) have been digitally restored and remastered, and almost all (barring Strangelove again and Lolita) now boast Dolby Digital 5.1 stereo sound remixes. For some bizarre reason, Kubrick insisted on mono sound for the 1999 set, which he approved shortly before his death. Visually the improvement over the often grainy, scratchy prints previously on offer--The Shining (1980) was notoriously messy--is immense. All the features are presented in their original ratios, which in the case of Strangelove means the changing ratios in which it was originally shot, and for 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) the full glorious 2.21:1 expanse of the Cinerama screen.So what don't you get? Essentially, the early Kubrick--the work of the young, hungry director before he moved to England and started to gather all the controlling strings into his own hand: most notably the tough, taut thriller The Killing (1956) and the icily furious war film Paths of Glory (1957). Too bad Warners couldn't have negotiated the rights for those too. But what we have here is the culminating phase of Kubrick's filmmaking career--the final 27 years of one of the great masters of cinema. On the DVDs: Besides the visual and sonic improvements mentioned above, each of the eight features includes the original theatrical trailer and multiple-language subtitles. The DVD of Dr Strangelove also gives us filmographies of the principal players, plus theatrical posters and a photo gallery, while Eyes Wide Shut includes interviews (taped after Kubrick's death) with Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman and Steven Spielberg, plus a couple of 30-second TV spots. And with The Shining we get a fascinating 34-minute documentary made by Kubrick's then 17-year-old daughter Vivian, plus--just to add a further layer--Vivian's present-day voice-over commentary on her film. --Philip Kemp

• Legendary Ladies of Hollywood | DVD | (08/12/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Legendary Ladies Of Hollywood includes performances from Lucille Ball Cher Raquel Welch Jill St. John Brooke Shields Cybill Shephard Gladys Knight Tom Jones Tina Turner Ella Fitzgerald Sondra Locke Dusty Springfield Marisa Berenson Dionne Warwick Linda Ronstadt Chaka Khan Rita Coolidge Freda Payne and many more.

• Cabaret | Blu Ray | (09/09/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99