"Actor: Oscar"

• Indiscretion Of An American Wife | DVD | (28/12/2009) from £10.78   |  Saving you £-2.79 (-34.90%)   |  RRP £7.99

  A collaboration between producer David O. Selznick and Italian director Vittorio De Sica (The Bicycle Thief) could only end up an interesting movie. And that's just what happened with Indiscretion Of An American Wife (1954). Jennifer Jones married to Selznick at the time is the American wife on holiday in Rome; Montgomery Clift is her Italian lover. She bids him farewell at the train station he begs her to stay. That's form the basis of a very well-acted character study. While the plot's simplicity itself production was not. A trainload of writers toiled on the script some with no credit: Truman Capote Carson McCullers Paul Gallico and Alberto Moravia among others. De Sica spoke no English. Selznick hated the original title Terminal Station and had it changed. And it's rumored that Jones had an interest in Clift that he didn't return. It's a wonder the movie was finished at all. And it is quite a testament to Jones and Clift that they give such strong performances. Stars and subject matter produced a money-maker. And the picture's costume design by Chrisitian Dior was nominated for an Oscar.

• Mystery Of The Maya | DVD | (22/12/1998) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

• A Most Violent Year | Blu Ray | (18/05/2015) from £19.15   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• The Most Dangerous Game | DVD | (07/09/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £7.99

  The Most Dangerous Game

• The Ages Of Lulu | DVD | (16/12/2002) from £9.32   |  Saving you £10.67 (114.48%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The Ages of Lulu is a gruelling sexual odyssey from Spanish director Bigas Luna, made immediately prior to his popular trilogy Jamón, jamón (1992), Golden Balls (1993) and The Tit and the Moon (1994). Starting as the somewhat queasy story of the young Lulu's affair with the manipulative Pablo (Oscar Ladoire), the movie takes a much darker turn once they are wed. It is conventional cinematic wisdom that there's no such thing as sex after marriage, but here Lulu's husband incomprehensibly leads her into blindfolded incest, then is heartbroken when she reacts with disgust. Soon Lulu (superbly played by Francesca Neri from ingénue to hardened 30-something), is paying gay men for group sex, eventually becoming an unwilling attraction in a commercial sado-machochistic orgy. The closest most UK audiences will have come to this before is in Ken Russell's The Devils (1971) and Crimes of Passion (1984), and it is surely one of the most gut-churningly nightmarish scenes ever passed for home viewing. While Ages of Lulu may function as a reactionary warning against the wilder shores of sex, Luna's intention remains unsatisfyingly enigmatic, since the script is under-written and psychologically unconvincing. The end result is pretentious, repellent pornography which degrades human beings of any sexual persuasion. On the DVD: The Ages of Lulu is transferred at an anamorphically enhanced 1.78:1 and image quality is very good, though in some scenes very slightly soft. The film can be watched with or without English subtitles, and the sound is unremarkable stereo. The main extras are a seven-page essay on Bigas Luna and five pages detailing the now restored 110 seconds of cuts made to the 1998 video release. The main title still contains 65 seconds of alternate footage to the cinema original for legal reasons. Also included are filmographies of Lunas and Oscar Ladoire, two trailers plus trailers for six other films. --Gary S Dalkin

• The Man Who Knew Too Much | DVD | (24/05/2004) from £8.38   |  Saving you £-2.39 (-39.90%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Alfred Hitchcock himself called this 1934 British edition of his famous kidnapping story "the work of a talented amateur", while his 1956 Hollywood remake was the consummate act of a professional director. Be that as it may, this earlier movie still has its intense admirers who prefer it over the Jimmy Stewart--Doris Day version, and for some sound reasons. Tighter, wittier, more visually outrageous (back-screen projections of Swiss mountains, a whirly-facsimile of a fainting spell), the film even has a female protagonist (Edna Best in the mom part) unafraid to go after the bad guys herself with a gun. (Did Doris Day do that that? Uh-uh.) While the 1956 film has an intriguing undercurrent of unspoken tensions in nuclear family politics, the 1934 original has a crisp air of British optimism glummed up a bit when a married couple (Best and Leslie Banks) witness the murder of a spy and discover their daughter stolen away by the culprits. The chase leads to London and ultimately to the site of one of Hitch's most extraordinary pieces of suspense (though on this count, it must be said, the later version is superior). Take away distracting comparisons to the remake, and this Man Who Knew Too Much is a milestone in Hitchcock's early career. Peter Lorre makes his British debut as a scarred, scary villain. --Tom Keogh

• Stranger on the Third Floor | DVD | (15/06/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Dexter: New Blood | Blu Ray | (22/03/2022) from £46.25   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A