"Actor: Miller"

• The Book Group: Series 1 | DVD | (18/07/2005) from £25.63   |  Saving you £-5.64 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Who says reading is good for you? American Claire (Anne Dudek) has just moved to Glasgow and is extremely keen to meet some new and interesting people. She decides to start a book group. To her utter dismay those who turn up for the first session are very peculiar. They are clearly not the friends she hoped for. Amongst the group there's Kenny (Rotry McCann) a handsome guy in a wheelchair who wants to be a writer. Then there's Janice (Michele Gomez) a bored and frustrated wife of a famous Scottish footballer and the eccentric student Barney (James Lance) who Claire is strangely attracted to. Scottish BAFTA winner Annie Griffin has written and directed this six-part comedy drama about a group of individuals who want to make new friends lead new lives and improve themselves by reading books. Unfortunately it doesn't quite work that way. A little education can be a dangerous thing...

• The Net | DVD | (09/09/2002) from £7.40   |  Saving you £5.59 (75.54%)   |  RRP £12.99

  For a while The Net looked like it was going to be quickly outdated by the technology it showcased. But now we know that anyone can personalise their systems and Internet search engines, so the colourful displays endlessly intercut on Sandra Bullock's screens look perfectly contemporary. As a movie, the concept was already outdated by the time of its 1995 release, however. The plot takes pains to emulate the style and formula of a Hitchcock chase thriller. There's a computer disc "McGuffin" being sought after by conspiratorial baddies; while the lonely hero on the run is eminently sympathetic yet attractively flawed. Bullock, though, was perfectly cast at a point well before her star status took over. Although some of the suspense contrivances may seem simplistically predictable, there's an undeniable fascination in the theme of losing one's identity. Everywhere Bullock turns she's faced with either a bald reflection or mirroring metaphor of how the computer age strips us of individuality. And, indeed, privacy. Sooner or later, the technology will become outdated of course. Until then, be careful how you surf. On the DVD: The Net comes to disc in Dolby 5.1 sound and widescreen 1.85:1. It's hard to choose between the two commentaries included. Both the Writer's and the joint talk from the Director and Producer are crammed with anecdotal reference (with a little overlap). Then there are two documentaries of about 20 minutes each, but here the newest is by far the most interesting. Trailers and filmographies fill out the package. --Paul Tonks

• Star Wars - Ewoks Adventures | DVD | (09/05/2005) from £19.99   |  Saving you £-4.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  When the Towani family crash their Starcruiser onto the planet Endor the children Cindel and Mace are separated from their parents who have been kidnapped by the evil monster Gorax. Now they must rescue their parents but first they endeavour to befriend the shy resourceful Ewoks whose aid will prove integral to their operation! After the successful completion of their mission and the recovery of the Towani parents the group must defend the Ewok community from the invasion o

• Shrek - 20th Anniversary Edition 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital | Blu Ray | (11/05/2021) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Primeval - Series 1 And 2 | DVD | (17/03/2008) from £9.48   |  Saving you £28.50 (439.14%)   |  RRP £34.99

  When evolutionary zoologist Nick Cutter discovers prehistoric creatures alive and well in the present day the natural world is turned on its head and humanity faces a threat to its very existence. Unexplained anomalies are ripping holes in the fabric of time allowing creatures from the very earliest stages of Earths development to roam the modern world. Cutter and his team struggle to keep the looming disaster secret while dealing with savage dinosaurs and other deadly foes.

• Orchestra Wives | DVD | (09/04/2012) from £11.46   |  Saving you £-1.47 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  While Gene Morrison's band (the Glenn Miller Band) is on tour, trumpet player Bill Abbot (George Montgomery) falls for a girl in the audience, Connie Ward (Ann Rutherford). When they elope, no one's more surprised than Abbot's girlfriend, Jaynie Stevens (Lynn Bari). As the musicians blow hot on the bandstand, their wives are engulfed in enough flammable jealousy and dirty tricks to break up the band. Now, Connie must prove her love for Bill, as well as try to get the band back together.o

• National Lampoon's Animal House (1979) | DVD | (04/02/2002) from £9.93   |  Saving you £6.06 (37.90%)   |  RRP £15.99

  A groundbreaking screwball caper, 1978's National Lampoon's Animal House was in its own way a rite of passage for Hollywood. Set in 1962 at Faber College, it follows the riotous carryings-on of the Delta Fraternity, into which are initiated freshmen Tom Hulce and Stephen Furst. Among the established house members are Tim Matheson, Peter Riegert and the late John Belushi as Bluto, a belching, lecherous, Jack Daniels guzzling maniac. A debauched house of pranksters (culminating in the famous Deathmobile sequence), Delta stands as a fun alternative to the more strait-laced, crew-cut, unpleasantly repressive norm personified by Omega House. As cowriter the late Doug Kenney puts it, "better to be an animal than a vegetable". Animal House is deliberately set in the pre-JFK assassination, pre-Vietnam era, something not made much of here, but which would have been implicitly understood by its American audience. The film was an enormous success, a rude, liberating catharsis for the latter-day frathousers who watched it. However, decades on, a lot of the humour seems broad, predictable, boorish, oafishly sexist and less witty than Airplane!, made two years later in the same anarchic spirit. Indeed, although it launched the Hollywood careers of several of its players and makers, including Kevin Bacon, director John Landis, Harold Ramis and Tom Hulce, who went on to do fine things, it might well have been inadvertently responsible for the infantilisation of much subsequent Hollywood comedy. Still, there's an undeniable energy that gusts throughout the film and Belushi, whether eating garbage or trying to reinvoke the spirit of America "After the Germans bombed Pearl Harbour" is a joy. On the DVD: Animal House comes to disc in a good transfer, presented in 1.85:1. The main extra is a featurette in which director John Landis, writer Chris Miller and some of the actors talk about the making of the movie. Interestingly, 23 years on, most of those interviewed look better than they did back in 1978, especially Stephen "Flounder" Furst. --David Stubbs

• The Howling | DVD | (09/10/2017) from £9.70   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  An instant werewolf classic, The Howling was directed by Joe Dante, a graduate of Roger Corman's school of low-budget ingenuity who had gained enough momentum with 1978's Piranha to rise to this bigger challenge. He brought along Piranha screenwriter John Sayles, too, and recruited makeup wizard Rob Bottin to create what was then the wildest on-screen transformation ever seen. With Gary Brandner's novel The Howling as a starting point, Sayles and Dante conceived a werewolf colony on the California coast, posing as a self-help haven led by a seemingly benevolent doctor (Patrick Macnee), and populated by a variety of "patients", from sexy, leather-clad sirens (Elisabeth Brooks) to an old coot (John Carradine) who's quite literally long in the tooth. When a TV reporter (Dee Wallace) arrives at the colony to recover from a recent trauma, the resident lycanthropes prepare for a howlin' good time. Dante handles it all with equal measures of humour, sex, gore, and horror, pulling out all the stops when the ravenous Eddie (Dante favourite Robert Picardo, later known as The Doctor on Star Trek: Voyager) transforms into a towering , bloodthirsty werewolf. (Bottin's mentor Rick Baker would soon raise the make-up ante with An American Werewolf in London.) As usual in Dante's movies (qv. Gremlins), in-jokes abound, from characters named after werewolf movie directors, amusing cameos (Corman, Sayles, Forrest J Ackerman), and hammy inserts of wolfish cartoons and Allen Ginsberg's "Howl". It's best appreciated now as a quintessential example of early-80s horror, with low-budget limitations evident throughout, but The Howling remains a giddy genre milestone. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

• Claws | DVD | (01/08/2016) from £12.13   |  Saving you £0.86 (7.09%)   |  RRP £12.99

  When a meteor storm crashes down, destroying a calm lake in the remote countryside, a centuries old beast, a giant killer crab, is awakened. As the people of a small nearby town find the devastating destruction, they rally together to put right the damage, none the wiser that there is a crazed-crustacean-monster on the loose! As the beast begins tearing through the town, destroying everything and everyone in its path, it s now up to the local folk to defend their homes and fight for their lives. Can anything stop the Queen crab before she can hatch an army of pincered warriors bent on mass destruction?

• Primeval - Series 1-3 | DVD | (01/06/2009) from £19.98   |  Saving you £25.01 (125.18%)   |  RRP £44.99

  Primeval: Series 1 -3 (7 Discs)

• The Purple Mask | DVD | (08/08/2016) from £5.75   |  Saving you £7.24 (55.70%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Only one swashbuckling man of mystery can deliver Royalist rebels from Napoleon's clutches! Paris, 1803: as Napoleon is set to declare himself as leader of the freshly instituted French Empire, an underground movement of Royalist rebels is fired up by the daring deeds of the mysterious Purple Mask. The unknown swordsman boldly rescues noblemen from the guillotine and kidnaps Napoleon's cronies to extort ransom money for the Royalist cause. Laurette de Latour (Colleen Miller), the niece of a jailed marquis, hatches a scheme in which the foppish Count Rene de Traviere (Tony Curtis) imitates the Purple Mask and allows himself to be captured to encourage the release of her uncle. Little does Laurette realise she has engaged the Purple Mask himself! Continuing the charade, and attracting amused ridicule, Rene is swiftly imprisoned alongside the marquis. But the intrepid one has a trick or two up his lacey sleeve, and as the two men are marched towards the guillotine, at an agreed signal rebels spring from the Paris sewers, swords at the ready.

• King Kong Escapes | DVD | (10/04/2006) from £15.17   |  Saving you £-3.92 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  In another King Kong installment by Ishiro Honda the giant ape monster's skills are required for a science project by Doctor Who and his helpers. When a mechanically devised robot version of the creature cannot do the job the team of scientists must go and retrieve the real King Kong himself. But no sooner do they get their hands on the enormous beast than they realize they are no match for a creature of his size. Calling on his robotic imposter for help the scientists unk

• The Exorcist - Director's Cut | DVD | (08/10/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Director William Friedkin was a hot ticket in Hollywood after the success of The French Connection, and he turned heads (in more ways than one) when he decided to make The Exorcist as his follow-up film. Adapted by William Peter Blatty from his controversial best-seller, this shocking 1973 thriller set an intense and often-copied milestone for screen terror with its unflinching depiction of a young girl (Linda Blair) who is possessed by an evil spirit. Jason Miller and Max von Sydow are perfectly cast as the priests who risk their sanity and their lives to administer the rites of demonic exorcism, and Ellen Burstyn plays Blair's mother, who can only stand by in horror as her daughter's body is wracked by satanic disfiguration. One of the most frightening films ever made, The Exorcist was mysteriously plagued by troubles during production, and the years have not diminished its capacity to disturb even the most stoical viewers. --Jeff Shannon

• Jean Cocteau - Le Sang D'Un Poete | DVD | (05/08/2019) from £9.00   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  In an artist's studio, an unfinished statue comes to life. The lips of its androgynous face move, pressing a kiss to the artist's hand. At the statue's demand, he plunges it into a mirror.

• The Loft | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £11.76   |  Saving you £6.23 (52.98%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Taking its cues from director Erik Van Looy's own Belgian thriller of the same name, 'The Loft' sees five married friends embark on a decision to rent their very own loft apartment for exclusive use as a home for their extra-marital affairs.

• Titans of Cult: 2001: A Space Odyssey Steelbook | Blu Ray | (31/08/2020) from £29.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Stanley Kubrick's dazzling, Academy Award®-winning* achievement is a compelling drama of man vs. machine, a stunning meld of music and motion. Kubrick (who co-wrote the screenplay with Arthur C. Clarke) first visits our prehistoric ape-ancestry past, then leaps millennia (via one of the most mind-blowing jump cuts ever) into colonised space, and ultimately whisks astronaut Bowman (Keir Dullea) into uncharted space, perhaps even into immortality. Open the pod bay doors, HAL. Let an awesome journey unlike any other begin. This Limited Edition Set Includes: 2001: A Space Odyssey in 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray feature and bonus discs Limited Edition SteelBook Case Exclusive Enamel Pin Exclusive Embroidered Patch Special Features: Commentary by Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood Channel Four Documentary200 1: The Making of a Myth4 Insightful Featurettes:Standing on the Shoulders of Kubrick: The Legacy of 2001 Vision of a Future Passed: The Prophecy of 2001 2001: A Space Odyssey A Look Behind the Future What Is Out There? 2001: FX and Early Conceptual ArtworkLook: Stanley Kubrick! Audio-Only Bonus:1966 Kubrick Interview Conducted by Jeremy Bernstein Theatrical Trailer

• The Last Detail | DVD | (05/08/2002) from £19.99   |  Saving you £-7.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The Last Detail nearly didn't get a release. Columbia, for whom it was made, was alarmed by the movie's barrage of profanity and resented the unorthodox working style of its director, Hal Ashby, who loathed producers and made no secret of it. Only when the film picked up a Best Actor Award for Jack Nicholson at Cannes did the studio reluctantly grant it a release--with minimal promotion--to widespread critical acclaim. Nicholson, in one of his best roles, plays "Bad-ass" Buddusky, a naval petty officer detailed, along with his black colleague "Mule" Mulhall (Otis Young), to escort an offender from Virginia to the harsh naval prison at Portsmouth, NH. The miscreant is a naïve youngster, Meadows (Randy Quaid), who's been given eight years for stealing $40 from his CO's wife's favourite charity. The escorts, at first cynically detached, soon start feeling sorry for Meadows and decide to show him a good time in his last few days of freedom. Ashby, a true son of 60s counterculture, avidly abets the anti-authoritarian tone of Robert Towne's script. Meadows is a sad victim of the system--but so too are Buddusky and Mulhall, as they gradually come to realise. A lot of the film is very funny. Nicholson gets to do one of his classic psychotic outbursts--"I am the fucking shore patrol!"--and there are some pungent scenes of male bonding pushed to the verge of desperation. But the overall tone is melancholy, pointed up by the jaunty military marches on the soundtrack. Shot amid bleak, wintry landscapes, in buses and trains and grey urban streets, The Last Detail is a film of constant, compulsive movement going nowhere--a powerful, finely acted study of institutional claustrophobia. On the DVD: The Last Detail disc doesn't have much in the way of extras. There are abbreviated filmographies for Ashby, Nicholson and Quaid (though not for Young) and a trailer for A Few Good Men (1992). The mono sound comes up well in Dolby Digital, and the transfer preserves DoP Michael Chapman's subtle, subfusc palette and the 1.85:1 ratio of the original. --Philip Kemp

• Dungeons And Dragons - Vol. 1 | DVD | (10/05/2004) from £14.98   |  Saving you £-8.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  After taking a ride of the 'Dungeons And Dragons' attraction at their local theme park a group of kids are thrust into an unusual world and given magical weapons which they must use to try and find their way home ever pursued by the evil villain Venger... Episodes comprise: 1. The Night Of No Tomorrow 2. The Eye Of the Beholder 3. The Hall Of Bones 4. Valley Of The Unicorns 5. In Search Of The Dungeon Master 6. Beauty And The Bogbeast 7. The Prison Without Walls

• Mandy | DVD | (06/07/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  A loud resounding crash reverberates around the room though the small child in the cot remains motionless and oblivious to the sound. The young child's parents worst fears are realised - little Mandy is deaf! As she cannot hear how will she ever learn to speak? Harry and Christine Mandy's parents argue over their child's education. Christine wants to send Mandy to special school where deaf children are taught to lip-read and learn to speak but Harry will not allow it. So the child remains at home until one violent argument Christine leaves taking Mandy with her.

• The American Civil War - a film by Ken Burns | DVD | (14/09/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £59.99

  It divided a country. It created a nation.