"Actor: Michael B"

• The Machinist | DVD | (01/08/2005) from £8.45   |  Saving you £7.54 (89.23%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Christian Bale headlines this dark drama about a tortured lathe operator who is blamed for an accident.

• Sometimes They Come Back....Again | DVD | (02/01/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  In this terrifying sequel to Stephen King's Sometimes They Come Back Jon Porter (Michael Gross) returns to his hometown to mourn his mother's death. When sinister forces that caused his sister's death many years ago materialize Jon must stand up to his fear... or lose his beautiful teenage daughter forever.

• Hobson's Choice | DVD | (28/04/2013) from £15.86   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  June Barry, Patricia Routledge, John Barrie and Michael Caine (on the cusp of stardom with Zulu and Alfie) star in this acclaimed adaptation of Harold Brighouse s celebrated play, originally screened as part of the prestigious Play of the Week strand in 1962. Maggie Hobson decides to marry Willie Mossop, the gifted but underpaid boot-maker in her father s shop. Despite Willie s objections, they marry and set up for themselves and, within just one year, take almost all of Henry Hobson s trade. Hobson a heavy drinker is told by his doctor that one of his daughters must return home to look after him but they all refuse apart from Maggie who, seeing her chance, agrees to help but on one condition: Willie is to take over the business, with Hobson relegated to the position of a sleeping partner with no say in the running of the shop....

• Monty Python: The Movies (Box Set) | DVD | (16/02/2004) from £28.95   |  Saving you £11.04 (38.13%)   |  RRP £39.99

  This Monty Python Movie Box Set contains all four Python movies: And Now for Something Completely Different (1971), Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1974)--the two-disc set--Monty Python's Life of Brian--including a 50-minute documentary--and Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.

• For Those In Peril | DVD | (27/04/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Flt.Lt Murray (David Farrar) is a pilot who fails to join the RAF during WWII and decides to join the Air - Sea Rescue instead. His boat is out in all conditions picking up drowned pilots and taking them to safety. P/O Rawlings (Ralph Michael) is a new recruit who resents joining Farrar's boat and would rather be where the action is - in the air. During a mission they run into an enemy minefield and an armed trawler... For Those In Peril presents the work of the Air-Sea Rescue in documentary terms providing the public with a glimpse of an aspect of war that tends to be overlooked. It was also the closest Charles Crichton (The Lavender Hill Mob Dead of Night The Titfield Thunderbolt) got to documentary realism during his long Ealing career. The story was written by Richard Hillary a fighter pilot in the Battle of Britain whose experiences inspired his book The Last Enemy.

• Halloween Kills Boxset | Blu Ray | (17/01/2022) from £10.19   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  HALLOWEEN Jamie Lee Curtis returns to her iconic role as Laurie Strode, who comes to her final confrontation with Michael Myers, the masked figure who has haunted her since she narrowly escaped his killing spree on Halloween night four decades ago. Master of horror John Carpenter joins forces with director David Gordon Green and producer Jason Blum (Get Out, Split) for this follow up to Carpenter's 1978 classic. HALLOWEEN KILLS The Halloween night when Michael Myers returned isn't over yet. Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) left masked monster Michael Myers caged and burning in Laurie's basement but when Michael manages to free himself from the trap, his ritual bloodbath resumes. As Laurie fights her pain and prepares to defend herself against him, she inspires all of Haddonfield to rise up against their unstoppable monster. Evil dies tonight.

• The Lady and the Highwayman | DVD | (05/07/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Newly wed to the evil and lecherous Drysdale (Ian Bannen) the beautiful Lady Panthea (Lysette Anthony) is saved on her wedding day by the dashing young highwayman the Silver Blade (Hugh Grant). As he rides into the moonlight she vows never to forget this mysterious stranger who must at the final outcome save her from certain death. As this lavish tale of greed treachery and blackmail weaves its fast-moving course through the sumptuous surroundings of King Charles II's (Michale York) palace a host of stars gather in an extravaganza of spectacular proportions set amidst a heart-stopping stage of duels to the death... and love.

• The Rock | DVD | (01/02/2010) from £5.99   |  Saving you £12.00 (200.33%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Between his high-octane debut, Bad Boys, and 1998's wannabe blockbuster Armageddon, hotshot director Michael Bay forged his dubious reputation with this crowd-pleasing action extravaganza. In Rock, a psychotically disgruntled war hero (Ed Harris) seizes the island prison of Alcatraz and threatens to wage chemical warfare against nearby San Francisco unless the government publicly recognises the men who were killed under Harris's top-secret command. Nicolas Cage plays the biochemist who teams up with the only man ever to have escaped from Alcatraz (Sean Connery) in an attempt to foil Harris's terrorist scheme. As one might expect, what follows is an action-packed barrage of bullets, bodies, and climactic confrontations, replete with enough plot contrivances to give even the most jaded action fan cause for alarm. It's a load of hooey, but the cast is obviously having a grand old time, and there's enough wit to make the recycled action sequences tolerable. --Jeff Shannon

• Smallville: Complete Season 1 | DVD | (13/10/2003) from £23.99   |  Saving you £33.00 (137.56%)   |  RRP £56.99

  The venerable Superman mythos gets a 21st-century updating in the imaginative and engaging TV series Smallville. The premise of the show--Superman as a teenager--takes up just a few pages in Superman's very first comic-book appearance (in Action Comics back in 1938), but producers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar flesh out that period by portraying young Clark Kent (Tom Welling) not as the noble Superman-in-waiting, but as an average teen with some not-so-ordinary supernatural powers, including incredible strength and heat vision (Clark hasn't lifted up, up, and away as of yet). Clark's desire to fit in with his peers and make sense of his extraordinary abilities grounds him in very realistic and identifiable terms for the series' primarily under-25 audience, as does his appealing and tentative romance with Kristen Kreuk as Clark's dreamgirl Lana Lang. But Smallville also strikes gold when it takes a turn towards more comic-book territory, as evidenced by the parade of shape-shifting killers and other outlandish antagonists (many generated, in one of the series' most ingenious notions, by the same devastating meteor shower that brought the infant Clark to Earth) that Clark must harness his powers to face and defeat. Gough and Millar, along with their capable cast (which includes Michael Rosenbaum as a young and already bald-pated Lex Luthor, and Annette O'Toole and John Schneider as the Kents) manage to pull off the precarious high-wire act of combining science fiction with coming-of-age drama to create this highly watchable programme. --Paul Gaita

• No Surrender | DVD | (25/07/2011) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  It’s New Year’s Eve at The Charelston, a run-down club in Liverpool owned by the local gangland boss. The new manager has arrives and soon discovers his out of favour predecessor has booked a band that can’t play, a magician with a dead rabbit and two parties of rowdy OAPs. On one coach arrives a devout catholic social club in fancy dress for a non-existent prize, among them a drunker blind ex-boxer, on the other an equally boisterous protestant revellers. When they get together mayhem ensues.

• On The Buses - Series 1 - Episodes 4 To 7 | DVD | (15/07/2002) from £20.00   |  Saving you £-10.01 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Set around a London bus depot, On the Buses starred Reg Varney as Stan, an ageing bachelor and driver of the No.11 bus who still lives with his Mum (Cicely Courtneidge), his plain sister Olive (Anna Karen) and disgruntled brother-in-law Arthur (Michael Robbins). At work, he fraternises with the laddish and lecherous Jack (Bob Grant), with whom he pursues innumerable (and improbable) giggly, mini-skirted "clippies" (conductors) and cheeks the beady-eyed and punctilious bus inspector, Blakey (Steven Lewis) This first series was broadcast in black and white in 1969. Much of the comedy derives from gender role reversal--Stan and Arthur forced to do the household chores when Olive and Mum fall ill ("Family Flu"); "The Canteen", in which the busmen decide to run the canteen themselves; or "The Darts Match", in which Stan and Jack are bested at darts by--imagine--a pair of dollybird clippies. Despite its immense popularity, On the Buses hasn't dated well. Like the buses themselves, the jokes don't arrive very often and when they do, they're visible a long way off. The studio audience whoops cathartically at anything remotely alluding to sex, making you wonder at the repressed nature of British society in 1969. In later decades it would come to be treasured as somewhat creaky kitsch by audiences nostalgic for an age of politically incorrect innocence. On the DVD: On the Buses has no extra features here. The original black and white versions have scrubbed up reasonably well, although defects such as fading sound and poor dubbing have proven beyond amendment.--David Stubbs

• On The Buses - Series 2 - Episodes 1 To 3 | DVD | (15/07/2002) from £14.25   |  Saving you £-8.26 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Set around a London bus depot, On the Buses starred Reg Varney as Stan, an ageing bachelor and driver of the No.11 bus who still lives with his Mum (Doris Hare), his plain sister Olive (Anna Karen) and disgruntled brother-in-law Arthur (Michael Robbins). At work, he fraternises with the laddish and lecherous Jack (Bob Grant), with whom he pursues innumerable (and improbable) giggly, mini-skirted "clippies" (conductors) and cheeks the beady-eyed and punctilious bus inspector, Blakey (Steven Lewis) Despite its immense popularity, On the Buses hasn't dated well. Like the buses themselves, the jokes don't arrive very often and when they do, they're visible a long way off. The studio audience whoops cathartically at anything remotely alluding to sex--even a bared male nipple--making you wonder at the repressed nature of British society in 1969. In later decades it would come to be treasured as somewhat creaky kitsch by audiences nostalgic for an age of politically incorrect innocence. On the DVD: On the Buses has no extra features here. The original black and white versions have scrubbed up reasonably well, although defects such as fading sound and poor dubbing have proven beyond amendment. --David Stubbs

• The Hills Have Eyes | Blu Ray | (31/07/2017) from £22.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  THE LUCKY ONES DIED FIRST... Horror master Wes Craven achieved critical and commercial success with the likes of Scream and A Nightmare on Elm Street but for many genre fans, the director s seminal 1977 effort The Hills Have Eyes remains his masterpiece. Taking a detour whilst on route to Los Angeles, the Carter family run into trouble when their campervan breaks down in the middle of the desert. Stranded, the family find themselves at the mercy of a group of monstrous cannibals lurking in the surrounding hills. With their lives under threat, the Carters are forced to fight back by any means necessary. As gruelling a viewing experience today as it was upon initial release, The Hills Have Eyes stands alongside the likes of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Night of the Living Dead as one of the defining moments in American horror cinema.

• Hedwig And The Angry Inch | DVD | (21/01/2002) from £24.98   |  Saving you £-4.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Adapted from the critically acclaimed off-Broadway rock theatre hit, Hedwig and The Angry Inch tells the story of an "internationally ignored" rock singer, Hedwig, and her search for stardom and love.

• Little House on the Prairie: Season 9 | DVD | (09/01/2012) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £10.49

  Best known for its life-affirming lessons and heartwarming adventures. Little House On The Prairie made its TV debut in 1974 and significantly altered the landscape of television. Loyal fans will relive these exciting and touching adventures while new viewers will discover the Ingalls' unconquerable courage to build a new way of life. The series nominated for 17 Emmy Awards and 3 Golden Globes has become a TV milestone

• One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest | DVD | (30/10/2002) from £12.43   |  Saving you £1.56 (12.55%)   |  RRP £13.99

  A big Oscar winner in 1975, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest still holds up remarkably well. Ken Kesey's novel, an allegory of repression and rebellion set in a mental hospital in the early 1960s, is cannily adapted by Czech director Milos Forman into a comedy drama with a cool, unassuming, near-documentary look. Jack Nicholson has his most jacknicholsonian role as Randle P McMurphy, a livewire troublemaker who unwisely cons his way out of prison and into a mental institution without realising he has switched from serving a sentence with a release date to being committed until adjudged sane by the same people he is winding up on a daily basis. Louise Fletcher, in a career-defining turn, is Nurse Ratched, the soft-spoken sadist who represents the worst type of matronly authoritarianism and clashes with Randle all down the line. Taking another look at the picture after all these years, it's a surprise that all the unknown actors who seemed like real mental patients have graduated to becoming prolific character actor stars: Danny DeVito, Christopher Lloyd, Vincent Schiavelli, Brad Dourif, the late Will Sampson, Sidney Lassick, Michael Berryman. Unlike many Best Picture Oscar winners, this deals with profound subject matter without seeming self-important: Forman's approach and all-round great acting make it play as a small character story as well as a Big Statement about the human condition. Full marks also for Jack Nitzsche's musical saw-based score. On the DVD: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest comes to DVD in a two-disc special edition with a great-looking anamorphic 1.85:1 print and 5.1 Dolby Digital soundtrack, plus tracks in French and Italian and optional subtitles in half a dozen languages. Disc 2 has the trailer, about 13 minutes of deleted scenes (mostly from the first third of the film, and all pretty good) and a making-of retrospective documentary with interesting material from producers Michael Douglas (who inherited the rights from Kirk) and Saul Zaentz, Forman, screenwriter Bo Goldman and many cast-members (though not Nicholson). There's also a commentary track by Forman, Douglas and others which repeats a few things from the documentary but also goes into more scene-specific detail about the development and shooting. --Kim Newman

• Terminator 1-4 (4-Disc Set) | DVD | (23/11/2009) from £29.00   |  Saving you £5.99 (20.66%)   |  RRP £34.99

  The TerminatorThe Terminator was the film that cemented Arnold Schwarzenegger's place in the action-brawn firmament, and both his and the movie's subsequent iconic status are well deserved. He's chilling as the futuristic cyborg that kills without fear, without love, without mercy. James Cameron's story and direction are pared to the bone and are all the more chillingly effective for it. But don't overlook the contribution of Linda Hamilton, who more than holds her own as the Terminator's would-be victim, Sarah Connor, thus creating--along with Sigourney Weaver in Alien--a new generation of rugged, clear-thinking female action stars. The film's minimalist, malevolent violence is actually scarier than that of its far more expensive, more effects-laden sequel. --Anne Hurley, Amazon.comTerminator 2: Judgment DayArguably the finest movie of its kind, Terminator 2: Judgment Day captured Arnold Schwarzenegger at the very apex of his Hollywood celebrity and James Cameron at the peak of his perfectionist directorial powers. Nothing the star did subsequently measured up to his iconic performance here, spouting legendary catchphrases and wielding weaponry with unparalleled cool; and while the director had an even bigger hit with the bloated and sentimental Titanic, few followers of his career would deny that Cameron's true forte has always been sci-fi action. With an incomparably bigger budget than its 1984 precursor, T2 essentially reworks the original scenario with envelope-stretching special effects and simply more, more, more of everything. Yet, for all its scale, T2 remains at heart a classic sci-fi tale: robots running amok, time travel paradoxes and dystopian future worlds are recurrent genre themes, which are here simply revitalised by Cameron's glorious celebration of the mechanistic. From the V-twin roar of a Harley Fat Boy to the metal-crunching Steel Mill finale, the director's fascination with machines is this movie's strongest motif: it's no coincidence that the character with whom the audience identifies most strongly is a robot. Now that impressive but unengaging CGI effects have come to over-dominate sci-fi movies (think of The Phantom Menace), T2's pivotal blending of extraordinary live-action stuntwork and FX looks more and more like it will never be equalled. --Mark WalkerTerminator 3: Rise of the MachinesTerminator 3: Rise of the Machines starts in high gear and never slows down. The apocalyptic "Judgment Day" of Terminator 2 was never prevented, only postponed: John Connor (Nick Stahl, replacing T2's Edward Furlong), now 22 and disconnected from society, is being pursued yet again, this time by the advanced T-X, a sleek "Terminatrix" (coldly expressionless Kristanna Loken) programmed to stop Connor from becoming the saviour of humankind. Originally programmed as an assassin, a disadvantaged T-101 cyborg (Arnold Schwarzenegger, bidding fond farewell to his signature role) arrives from the future to join Connor and future wife Kate (Claire Danes) in thwarting the T-X's relentless pursuit. The plot presents a logical fulfilment of T2's prophecy, disposing of Connor's mother (Linda Hamilton is sorely missed) while computer-driven machines assume control, launching a nuclear nightmare that Connor must survive. With Breakdown and U-571 serving as rehearsals for this cautionary epic of mass destruction, director Jonathan Mostow wisely avoids any stylistic connection to James Cameron's classics; instead he's crafted a fun, exciting popcorn thriller, humorous and yet still effectively nihilistic, and comparable to Jurassic Park III in returning the Terminator franchise to its potent B-movie roots. --Jeff Shannon Terminator Salvation SynopsisSet in the post-apocalyptic 2018, with Christian Bale starring as John Connor, the man fated to lead the human resistance against Skynet and its army of Terminators. But the future Connor was raised to believe in is altered in part by the appearance of Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a stranger whose last memory is of being on death row. Connor must decide whether Marcus has been sent from the future, or rescued from the past. As Skynet prepares its final onslaught, Connor and Marcus both embark on an odyssey that takes them into the heart of Skynet’s operations, where they uncover the terrible secret behind the possible annihilation of mankind.

• Scoop | DVD | (13/07/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Scoop

• Magnolia - Two Disc Set (1999) | DVD | (02/10/2000) from £11.98   |  Saving you £-0.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £10.99

  24 hours in L.A.; it's raining cats and dogs. Two parallel and intercut stories dramatize a man about to die: both men are estranged from a grown child, both want to make contact, and neither child wants anything to do with dad.

• Star Trek: The Next Generation - Season 2 | DVD | (10/06/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £84.99

  Although the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1988-9) was curtailed by a writers’ strike, its 22 episodes nevertheless saw some refreshing new developments. Tasha Yar was gone, giving Worf more room to flex his muscles as Chief Security Officer; Geordi was promoted to Head of Engineering; Whoopi Goldberg’s mysterious Guinan presided benevolently over the crew’s rest area, Ten Forward; Dr. Crusher was replaced by the far more acerbic McCoy-like Dr. Pulaski; and mischievous super-entity Q returned to introduce Picard and the Enterprise crew to their greatest nemesis, The Borg. By the end of a transitional season the show had settled down enough to be acknowledged by all as a worthy successor to the 1960s original. On the DVD: Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 2 comes packaged exactly like Season 1 in a solid metallic-style plastic outer case with a fold-out cardboard inner, although because of the fewer episodes this time there are only six discs not seven. Sound throughout is vivid Dolby Digital 5.1, with a full frame (1.33:1) picture that occasionally shows its age. Once again the menus neatly imitate the Enterprise’s own computer interfaces. Disc 6 contains the extra features: the "Mission Overview--Year 2" introduces the new characters and has producer Rick Berman revealing "We were all filled with piss and vinegar" at the success of the show; the "Selected Crew Analysis" continues the same thread interviewing Patrick Stewart, Levar Burton, Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis and Diana Muldaur; the "Departmental Briefing" gives some background on special effects, writing, costumes, props and music; "Memorable Missions" highlights specific episodes and guest stars; finally, and best of all, is "Inside Starfleet Archives", a guided tour with Penny Juday around Paramount’s warehouses stuffed full of Star Trek props and memorabilia.--Mark Walker