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• Monty Python's Life Of Brian | DVD | (14/04/2003) from £9.20   |  Saving you £3.79 (41.20%)   |  RRP £12.99

  There is not a single joke, sight-gag or one-liner in Monty Python's Life of Brian that will not forever burn itself into the viewer's memory as being just as funny as it is possible to be, but--extraordinarily--almost every indestructibly hilarious scene also serves a dual purpose, making this one of the most consistently sustained film satires ever made. Like all great satire, the Pythons not only attack and vilify their targets (the bigotry and hypocrisy of organised religion and politics) supremely well, they also propose an alternative: be an individual, think for yourself, don't be led by others. "You've all got to work it out for yourselves", cries Brian in a key moment. "Yes, we've all got to work it our for ourselves", the crowd reply en masse. Two thousand years later, in a world still blighted by religious zealots, Brian's is still a lone voice crying in the wilderness. Aside from being a neat spoof on the Hollywood epic, it's also almost incidentally one of the most realistic on-screen depictions of the ancient world--instead of treating their characters as posturing historical stereotypes, the Pythons realised what no sword 'n' sandal epic ever has: that people are all the same, no matter what period of history they live in. People always have and always will bicker, lie, cheat, swear, conceal cowardice with bravado (like Reg, leader of the People's Front of Judea), abuse power (like Pontius Pilate), blindly follow the latest fads and giggle at silly things ("Biggus Dickus"). In the end, Life of Brian teaches us that the only way for a despairing individual to cope in a world of idiocy and hypocrisy is to always look on the bright side of life. On the DVD: Life of Brian returns to Region 2 DVD in a decent widescreen anamorphic print with Dolby 5.1 sound--neither are exactly revelatory, but at least it's an improvement on the previous release, which was, shockingly, pan & scan. The 50-minute BBC documentary, "The Pythons", was filmed mainly on location in 1979 and isn't especially remarkable or insightful (a new retrospective would have been appreciated). There are trailers for this movie, as well as Holy Grail plus three other non-Python movies. There's no commentary track, sadly. --Mark Walker

• Alien 1-6 Boxset | Blu Ray | (18/09/2017) from £23.99   |  Saving you £-8.32 (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.67

  All six films in the 'Alien' franchise. In Ridley Scott's 'Alien' (1979) the crew of the Nostromo starship are on their way back to Earth after completing a mission when they are diverted to a planetoid to investigate a cryptic message. While exploring an abandoned spacecraft on the planet, they come across a store of unhatched eggs. When one of the eggs releases a mysterious creature that leeches on to a crew member's face, the others bring him back on board to recover from the ordeal. Little do they know that they have also brought on board an alien lifeform that will kill anyone or anything that gets in its way. In James Cameron's sequel, 'Aliens' (1986), sole survivor from the Nostromo Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) awakens after 57 years in stasis, and with a team of Space Marines in tow she returns to the planetoid now named LV-426 to investigate the loss of contact with the terraforming colony in residence. In David Fincher's dark 'Alien 3' (1992), Ripley crash lands on an old prison planet used to house convicted murderers - but she's not alone. When Ripley discovers her body is being used to carry an alien queen she faces a difficult decision to save humanity and sacrifice herself. In Jean-Pierre Jeunet's 'Alien Resurrection' (1997), 200 years after Ripley died bearing the alien queen, a group of scientists successfully produce clones of both her and the alien. The United States Military, hoping to use the queen to breed aliens to study, fail to keep the clones locked up and they escape. It is not long before the new Ripley is forced to team up with a gang of smugglers to repel the alien clones that are set on destroying life on Earth. In 'Prometheus' (2012) Scott returns to direct a new cast of Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron and Guy Pearce. After finding fragments of alien DNA, a team of scientists known as The Company travel into space aboard the state-of-the-art Prometheus spacecraft to investigate the origins of human life on Earth. Their journey takes them into the darkest corners of the universe - but, to their horror, their inquisitive nature ends up posing a threat to the future existence of humankind. The scientists now find themselves tested to their mental and physical limits as they fight a desperate battle to preserve the future of the human race. Finally, in 'Alien: Covenant' (2017), set as a sequel to 'Prometheus' (2012), the crew of the Covenant discover a planet they believe to be paradise, but when they actually start to investigate they find a dark and dangerous world inhabited by a colony of creatures who are less than pleased to see the.

• Django Unchained | Blu Ray | (20/05/2019) from £7.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino and featuring an award-winning cast, Jamie Foxx stars as Django a slave who teams up with bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) to seek out the South's most wanted criminals with the promise of Django's freedom. Honing vital hunting skills, his one goal is to find and rescue the wife (Kerry Washington) he lost to the slave trade long ago. When their search ultimately leads to Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), the infamous and brutal proprietor of Candyland , they arouse the suspicion of Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson), Candie's trusted house slave. Now their moves are marked and Candie's treacherous organization closes in on them.

• The Sopranos - Series 1-6 - Complete | DVD | (08/03/2009) from £60.00   |  Saving you £-10.01 (N/A%)   |  RRP £49.99

  This is the first time that all episodes of writer-producer-director David Chase's extraordinary US television series The Sopranos have been brought together in one box set which is a seminal event for any fan of the series. The Sopranos is nominally an urban gangster drama but its true impact strikes closer to home chronicling a dysfunctional suburban family in bold relief. And for protagonist Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) there's the added complexity posed by heading twin families his collegial mob clan and his own nouveau riche brood.

• Dumbo | DVD | (29/07/2019) from £3.80   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  From Disney and visionary director Tim Burton, the grand live-action adventure Dumbo expands on the beloved classic story where differences are celebrated, family is cherished and dreams take flight. Circus owner Max Medici (Danny DeVito) enlists former star Holt Farrier (Colin Farrell) and his children to care for a newborn elephant whose oversized ears make him a laughingstock in an already struggling circus. But when they discover that Dumbo can fly, the circus makes an incredible comeback, attracting persuasive entrepreneur V. A. Vandevere (Michael Keaton), who recruits the peculiar pachyderm for his newest, larger-than-life entertainment venture, Dreamland. Dumbo soars to new heights alongside the charming and spectacular aerial artist Colette Marchant (Eva Green)until Holt learns that beneath its shiny veneer, Dreamland is full of dark secrets.

• Beetlejuice | DVD | (01/06/2006) from £6.99   |  Saving you £7.00 (100.14%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Before making Batman, director Tim Burton and star Michael Keaton teamed up for this popular black comedy about a young couple (Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin) whose premature death leads them to a series of wildly bizarre afterlife exploits. As ghosts in their own New England home, they're faced with the challenge of scaring off the pretentious new owners (Catherine O'Hara and Jeffrey Jones), whose daughter (Winona Ryder) has an affinity for all things morbid. Keaton plays the mischievous Beetlejuice, a freelance "bio-exorcist" who's got an evil agenda behind his plot to help the young undead newlyweds. The film is a perfect vehicle for Burton's visual style and twisted imagination, with clever ideas and gags packed into every scene. Beetlejuice is also a showcase for Keaton, who tackles his title role with maniacal relish and a dark edge of menace.--Jeff Shannon

• Truly, Madly, Deeply | DVD | (05/03/2018) from £6.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Truly Madly Deeply is an intelligent, moving, and deeply funny story about love and death. Nina (Juliet Stevenson), a scatterbrained professional translator, has lost the love of her life, Jamie (Alan Rickman). As her life (and her flat) slowly falls to pieces, she is inundated with an endless stream of repairmen and eligible suitors. But rather than go on with life, Nina dwells on her dead love, slumped at her piano, endlessly playing half of a Bach duet. Then, in a truly magical sequence, his cello suddenly joins her melody... and Jamie's back from the dead. At first it's bliss--think of the superficially similar blockbuster Ghost, only with real people instead of pretty faces Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze. But Nina gradually realises it's a thoroughly real Jamie who's back; complete with every annoying, argumentative fault she'd conveniently forgotten. (He might be dead, he explains, but he still attends political meetings.) Moreover, he has to hide whenever any of the living are around. And he's constantly ice-cold. And he invites his dead pals to her place at all hours. What's a living woman to do? Director Anthony Minghella went on to create the melodramatic period piece The English Patient--but in this film, he shows a far more sensitive, subtle touch. The photography is brilliant, capturing the simple beauties of suburban London. And the wonderfully acted characters, quirky and all too real, will keep you laughing--and always guessing what will happen next.--Grant Balfour, Amazon.com

• Blake's 7 - The Complete Collection | DVD | (12/03/2018) from £49.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  In the third century of the second calendar, after the chaos of the intergalactic wars, a powerful dictatorship has risen to dynamic proportions and engulfed most of the populated worlds. Liberty has become a crime punishable by death, and the majority of the population lives in a drug-induced state of docility. This tyrannical authority fulfils George Orwell's prophecy of 1984 to its most terrifying extremes. This government is known as the Federation. Each world has its share of rebels who either turned to crime or the Resistance. This is the story of one such group of rebels, led by a man named Blake. His group is largely composed of escaped convicts, thieves and smugglers, who are thrown together by chance. The Blake's 7 Complete Collection includes all 4 series of the cult 1970's British sci-fi show from the mind of Terry Nation. Includes digitally remastered episodes and extras from all individual releases.

• Alien 1-6 Boxset | DVD | (18/09/2017) from £24.19   |  Saving you £-9.20 (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  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

• The Death of Stalin | DVD | (26/02/2018) from £7.05   |  Saving you £-2.06 (N/A%)   |  RRP £4.99

  The internal political landscape of 1950's Soviet Russia takes on darkly comic form in a new film by Emmy award-winning and Oscar-nominated writer/director Armando Iannucci. In the days following Stalin's collapse, his core team of ministers tussle for control; some want positive change in the Soviet Union, others have more sinister motives. Their one common trait? They're all just desperately trying to remain alive. A film that combines comedy, drama, pathos and political manoeuvring, The Death of Stalin is a Quad and Main Journey production, directed by Armando Iannucci, and produced by Yann Zenou, Kevin Loader, Nicolas Duval Assakovsky, and Laurent Zeitoun. The script is written by Iannucci, David Schneider and Ian Martin, with additional material by Peter Fellows.

• Sharpe: Classic Collection | DVD | (10/10/2010) from £20.16   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Collection of the feature-length television movies set during the Napoleonic Wars, starring Sean Bean as the maverick British rifleman Richard Sharpe. 15 episodes feature, including the special, 'Sharpe: The Legend', in which Rifleman Cooper (Michael Mears), who fought alongside Sharpe throughout the Peninsula Wars, looks back at all the adventures and romances that his senior officer got up to, showing clips from the best of the long-running ITV drama. The other episodes comprise: 'Sharpe's Rifles', 'Sharpe's Eagle', 'Sharpe's Company', 'Sharpe's Enemy', 'Sharpe's Honour', 'Sharpe's Gold', 'Sharpe's Battle', 'Sharpe's Sword', 'Sharpe's Regiment', 'Sharpe's Siege', 'Sharpe's Mission', 'Sharpe's Revenge', 'Sharpe's Justice' and 'Sharpe's Waterloo'.

• John Wick 1&2 | Blu Ray | (12/06/2017) from £12.71   |  Saving you £2.28 (17.94%)   |  RRP £14.99

  John Wick When a retired hit man is forced back into action by a brutal Russian mobster, he hunts down his adversaries with the ruthlessness that made him a crime underworld legend in John Wick, a stylish tale of revenge and redemption. After the sudden death of his beloved wife, John Wick receives one last gift from her, a beagle puppy named Daisy, and a note imploring him not to forget how to love. But John's mourning is interrupted when his 1969 Boss Mustang catches the eye of sadistic thug Iosef Tarasov who breaks into his house and steals it, beating John unconscious and leaving Daisy dead. Unwittingly, they have just reawakened one of the most brutal assassins the underworld has ever seen. John's search for his stolen vehicle takes him to a side of New York City that tourists never see, a hyper-real, super-secret criminal community, where John Wick was once the baddest guy of all. John Wick: Chapter Two In this next chapter following the 2015 hit, legendary hitman John Wick [Keanu Reeves] is forced back out of retirement by a former associate plotting to seize control of a shadowy international assassins' guild. Bound by a blood oath to help him, John travels to Rome where he squares off against some of the world's deadliest killers.

• The Damned United | DVD | (31/08/2009) from £5.98   |  Saving you £14.01 (234.28%)   |  RRP £19.99

  "The Damned United" centres around controversial football manager Brian Clough, set in 1974 but flashing back to the 1960s, about the famed manager's ill-fated 44-day reign as coach of Leeds United, then one of the country's most successful teams.

• Angela's Ashes | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £5.97   |  Saving you £10.02 (167.84%)   |  RRP £15.99

  In 1935, when it is more common for Irish families to leave their famine-stricken country for America, the impoverished McCourt family do the reverse.

• NCIS - Season 11 | DVD | (30/11/2015) from £11.99   |  Saving you £23.00 (191.83%)   |  RRP £34.99

  Season 11 of the hard-hitting drama NCIS takes action to greater heights. With 24 adrenaline-packed episodes Special Agent Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) continues to guide the elite unit from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service into dangerous waters in order to protect the nation from biological attacks hospital bombings and an unpredictable terrorist group known as “The Brotherhood of Doubt”. This season the NCIS team is tested like never before when one of their own is taken hostage by a terrorist at large and the mysterious re-emergence of the infamous Privileged Killer takes the team to New Orleans for a thrilling two-part episode. Co-starring Michael Weatherly Sean Murray Pauley Perrette Rocky Carroll Brian Dietzen David McCallum and Emily Wickersham as new team member Ellie Bishop – the NCIS crew is back and stronger than ever!

• The Sopranos: Complete Series 2 | DVD | (24/11/2003) from £15.74   |  Saving you £46.25 (293.84%)   |  RRP £61.99

  The second series of The Sopranos, David Chase's ultra-cool and ultra-modern take on New Jersey gangster life, matches the brilliance of the first, although it's marginally less violent, with more emphasis given to the stories and obsessions of supporting characters. Sadly, the programme-makers were forced to throttle back on the appalling struggle between gang boss Tony Soprano and his Gorgon-like Mother Livia, the very stuff of Greek theatre, following actress Nancy Marchand's unsuccessful battle against cancer. Taking up her slack, however, is Tony's big sister Janice, a New Age victim and arrant schemer and sponger, who takes up with the twitchy, Scarface-wannabe Richie Aprile, brother of former boss Jackie, out of prison and a minor pain in Tony's ass. Other running sub-plots include the hapless efforts by Chris (Michael Imperioli) to sell his real-life Mafia story to Hollywood, the return and treachery of Big Pussy and Tony's wife Carmela's ruthlessness in placing daughter Meadow in the right college. Even with the action so dispersed, however, James Gandofini is still toweringly dominant as Tony. The genius of his performance, and of the programme-makers, is that, despite Tony being a whoring, unscrupulous, sexist boor, a crime boss and a murderer, we somehow end up feeling and rooting for him, because he's also a family man with a bratty brood to feed, who's getting his balls busted on all sides, to say nothing of keeping the government off his back. He's the kind of crime boss we'd like to feel we would be. Tony's decent Italian-American therapist Dr Melfi's (Loraine Bracco) perverse attraction with her gangster-patient reflects our own and, in her case, causes her to lose her first series cool and turn to drink this time around. Effortlessly multi-dimensional, funny and frightening, and devoid of the sentimentality that afflicts even great American TV like The West Wing, The Sopranos is boss of bosses in its televisual era. --David Stubbs

• NCIS: Tony & Ziva - Season One | DVD | (13/07/2026) from £19.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Nobody | Blu Ray | (13/09/2021) from £15.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Hutch is a nobody. As an overlooked and underestimated father and husband, he takes life's indignities on the chin and never rocks the boat. But when his daughter loses her beloved kitty-cat bracelet in a robbery, Hutch hits a boiling point no one knew he had. What happens when a pushover finally pushes back? Hutch flips from regular dad to fearless fighter by taking his enemies on a wild ride of explosive revenge. The writer of John Wick showcases Emmy® winner° Bob Odenkirk (Better Call Saul ) as fans have never seen him before: an average family man who becomes a lethal vigilante unlike any ordinary action hero. Special Features Feature Commentary with Actor/Producer Bob Odenkirk and Director Ilya Naishuller Deleted Scenes Hutch Hits Hard Breaking Down The Action Just a NOBODY

• Sky High | DVD | (06/02/2006) from £8.40   |  Saving you £9.59 (114.17%)   |  RRP £17.99

  The son of two legendary superheroes must try and find his own powers in this comedy.

• Kill Bill, Volume 1 | DVD | (19/04/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Uma Thurman stars as a pregnant assassin who is shot by her boss, Bill, on her wedding day. After being in a coma for five years, she wakes to seek revenge on her co-workers and boss who had attacked her.