"Actor: Martin Stark"

• Alfie | DVD | (26/08/2002) from £4.96   |  Saving you £11.03 (222.38%)   |  RRP £15.99

  What's it all about, Alfie?" asked the hit Burt Bacharach/Hal David title song, to which the less philosophical answer might be: an amoral young man comically seducing a succession of beautiful women in swinging-sixties London. Michael Caine was the titular anti-hero, here consolidating his new star status from Zulu (1964) and The Ipcress File (1965), his conquests including Shelley Winters, Jane Asher and Shirley Ann Field. Alfie was a huge success, bringing a new frankness about changing sexual attitudes to the screen, in which respect it was almost the male companion to Julie Christie's then shocking, Oscar-winning performance in Darling (1965). It was also a sort-of contemporary Tom Jones, which had swept the Oscars for 1963, however, Alfie was not only better made, but in Michael Caine's guilelessly amoral asides to camera, offered a groundbreaking illustration of a newly self-conscious cinema. It is a technique Caine would reprise as the middle-aged philanderer in Blame It On Rio (1983). With Blow Up also released in 1966, and Ken Russell's Women In Love following in 1969, British film-making was truly in the midst of a sexual revolution. Michael Caine would reunite with director Lewis Gilbert and meet his female match in Educating Rita (1983). --Gary S. Dalkin

• Since the last time we met | DVD | (15/04/2024) from £12.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Keeping Mum Series 1 | DVD | (15/11/2008) from £9.99   |  Saving you £5.00 (50.05%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Peggy Beare (Stephanie Cole) is a rather manipulative crafty but somewhat forgetful old lady who lives with her son Andrew (Martin Ball) a recent divorcee who has his hands full looking after her and making sure that she stays out of trouble. Despite Andrew's devoted attention Peggy thinks that her other son Richard (David Haig) is wonderful and can do no wrong... even though he does as little as possible to help out. Poor Andrew hopes to get back together with his ex-wife Kate but if he does it will be over Peggy's dead body regardless of this he loves her and hasn't got the heart to put her in a home. The daily trials and tribulations between the brothers their mother and Tina (Meera Syal) the acid-tongued wife of Richard help to create many hilarious moments in this superb comedy. It's a situation that people everywhere can relate to: an elderly parent a caring son and selfish relations. From the inside it's a living hell but from the outside it can just be very very funny.