"Actor: Robert Ames"

• Trainspotting | DVD | (01/10/1999) from £6.18   |  Saving you £15.07 (306.30%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The film that effectively launched the star careers of Robert Carlyle, Ewan McGregor and Jonny Lee Miller is a hard, barbed picaresque, culled from the bestseller by Irvine Welsh and thrown down against the heroin hinterlands of Edinburgh. Directed with abandon by Danny Boyle, Trainspotting conspires to be at once a hip youth flick and a grim cautionary fable. Released on an unsuspecting public in 1996, the picture struck a chord with audiences worldwide and became adopted as an instant symbol of a booming British rave culture (an irony, given the characters' main drug of choice is heroin not ecstasy).McGregor, Lee Miller and Ewen Bremner play a slouching trio of Scottish junkies; Carlyle their narcotic-eschewing but hard-drinking and generally psychotic mate Begbie. In Boyle's hands, their lives unfold in a rush of euphoric highs, blow-out overdoses and agonising withdrawals (all cued to a vogueish pop soundtrack). Throughout it all, John Hodge's screenplay strikes a delicate balance between acknowledging the inherent pleasures of drug use and spotlighting its eventual consequences. In Trainspotting's world view, it all comes down to a question of choices--between the dangerous Day-Glo highs of the addict and the grey, grinding consumerism of the everyday Joe. "Choose life", quips the film's narrator (McGregor) in a monologue that was to become a mantra. "Choose a job, choose a starter home... But why would anyone want to do a thing like that?" Ultimately, Trainspotting's wised-up, dead-beat inhabitants reject mainstream society in favour of a headlong rush to destruction. It makes for an exhilarating, energised and frequently terrifying trip that blazes with more energy and passion than a thousand more ostensibly life-embracing movies. --Xan Brooks

• The X Files: Season 2 | DVD | (11/10/2004) from £14.93   |  Saving you £20.06 (134.36%)   |  RRP £34.99

  Season Two, the 1994-95 run, of The X Files was the one where creator Chris Carter, having had a surprise hit when he expected a one-season wonder, started trying to make sense of all the storylines he had thrown into the pile in the first year. Moreover, he had to cope with Gillian Anderson's maternity leave by having Scully get abducted by aliens (back then, a pretty fresh device) for a few episodes and come back strangely altered. The season also inaugurated the tradition of opening ("Little Green Men") and closing ("Anasazi") with the show's worst episodes, both pot-boiling attempts to keep the alien infiltration/government conspiracy balls up in the air while seeming to offer narrative forward-thrusts or revelations. But it's also a show noticeably surer of itself than Season One, with its stars reading from the same page in terms of their characters' relationship and attitudes to the wondrous. Scully's no-longer-workable scepticism finally starts to erode in the face of Mulder's increasingly cracked belief. There are fewer marking-time leftover-monster-of-the-week shows--although we do get a human fluke ("The Host"), vampires ("3"), an invisible rapist ("Excelsius Dei") voodoo ("Fresh Bones")--and the flying-saucer stories at last seem to be going somewhere. The powerful two-episode run ("Duane Barry", "Ascension") features Steve Railsback as Mulder's possible future, an FBI agent burned out after a UFO abduction who has become a hostage-taking terrorist, which climaxes with Scully's disappearance into the light. The standout episode is also a stand-alone--"Humbug"--the first and still most successful of the show's self-parodies (written by Darin Morgan, who had played the Flukeman in "The Host"), in which the agents investigate a murder in a circus freakshow, allowing the actors to make fun of the mannerisms they have earnestly built up in a run of solemn, even somnolent, explorations of the murk. Other worthy efforts: "Aubrey", about genetic memory; "Irresistible", a rare (and creepy) straight psycho-chiller with little paranormal content; and "The Calusari", a good ghost/mystery. Rising deputy characters include Nicholas Lea as the perfidious Krycek and Brian Thompson as the shapeshifting alien bounty hunters. Notable guest stars: Charles Martin Smith, C.C.H. Pounder, Leland Orser, Terry O'Quinn, Bruce Weitz, Daniel Benzali, John Savage, Vincent Schiavelli, Tony Shalhoub. --Kim Newman

• Recess - School's Out | DVD | (26/11/2001) from £20.00   |  Saving you £-8.01 (N/A%)   |  RRP £11.99

  In this big-screen version of the Saturday-morning animated series, the school year is finally over, and T J Detweiler is looking forward to a fun-filled summer. Boredom quickly sets in until T J uncovers a scheme to do away with summer vacation.

• Psycho | DVD | (01/01/1999) from £4.99   |  Saving you £5.00 (100.20%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Marion Crane is a Phoenix, Arizona working girl fed up with having to sneak away during lunch breaks to meet her lover, Sam Loomis, who cannot get married because most of his money goes towards alimony.

• Meet The Parents (Special Edition) | DVD | (03/07/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  This new comedy from the director of Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me follows Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) in his doomed attempts to impress his would-be father-in-law Jack Byrnes (Robert De Niro)

• The Outer Limits - The Original Series - Vol. 1 | DVD | (12/07/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £39.99

  There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission... Surrender yourself to the mysterious world of 'The Outer Limits' as one of the creepiest and most provocative series in television history comes to DVD. This fantastic box set comprises every episode from the first season and a glut of eery extras. Featuring 32 original episodes on 8 discs! Episodes comprise: 1. Galaxy Being 2. Hundred Days of

• The Box of Delights | DVD | (01/11/2004) from £19.89   |  Saving you £-4.90 (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Based on the classic children's novel by John Masefield this tale follows the adventures of Kay Harker a young boy who finds himself lured into a world of fantasy and danger after a chance encounter with an old Punch and Judy man. A magical mix of animation and live-action this spectacular production is guaranteed to thrill the fantasies of children and adults alike. Seldom is a story so sophisticated as to draw its audience spellbound into a series of such enchanting advent

• The Long Riders | DVD | (11/06/2001) from £9.43   |  Saving you £3.56 (37.75%)   |  RRP £12.99

  This terrific Walter Hill Western follows the careers of the James and Younger brothers--and uses the nifty idea of casting actual clans of acting siblings in the roles. Thus, the James brothers are played by James and Stacy Keach; the Youngers by David, Keith, and Robert Carradine; the Millers by Randy and Dennis Quaid; and the Fords by Christopher and Nicholas Guest. Hill, working with an evocative Ry Cooder score, creates a film that is at once breathtakingly exciting and elegiac in its treatment of these post-Civil War outlaws. The Keaches in particular bring a surprising dignity to the roles of Frank and Jesse James, while David Carradine is a hoot as Cole Younger--and the Quaids mimic real life (as it was for them then) in their battles as the Miller brothers. Bloody, to be sure, but also bloody good. --Marshall Fine

• Ncis: Seasons 1-13 | DVD | (11/12/2017) from £89.99   |  Saving you £-17.73 (N/A%)   |  RRP £72.26

  All episodes from the first 13 seasons of the JAG spin-off series NCIS, centering on the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, a crack team of government agents who operate outside the military chain of command. These special agents traverse the globe, investigating crimes linked to the Navy or Marine Corps from murder and espionage, to terrorism and stolen submarines. More than just an action-packed drama, NCIS shows the sometimes complex, always amusing dynamics of a team forced to work together under high-stress situations.

• Fist Of Fury (Dual Format Blu-ray & DVD) | Blu Ray | (17/04/2019) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Classic martial arts action. Chen Chen (Bruce Lee) returns to Shanghai for the funeral of his martial arts mentor, who died in suspicious circumstances. Whilst he is mourning his old friend, members of a rival school arrive and taunt Chen and his friends, who do not react at first. Chen later visits the rival school and humiliates them by beating every single one of them, but this causes bloody repercussions and begins to uncover the real reasons behind the mentor's death.

• The X Files: Season 3 | DVD | (11/10/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £34.99

  Focused lightning bolts, stigmata, possession, and ancient curses become secondary in Season 3 of The X-Files as more episodes are devoted to pursuing the increasingly complex story threads. "The Blessing Way" is an explosive start, introducing the Syndicate's well-manicured man (John Neville), while Scully's sister Melissa is shot and Mulder experiences Twin Peaks-like prophetic visions. We learn of medical records of millions, including Scully, who have been experimented upon ("Paper Clip"): the fast-paced train-bound two-parter "Nisei" and "731" suggests the experiments are about alien hybridisation. Krycek turns out to be hosting an alien in the next double-act, "Piper Maru" and "Apocrypha", in which Skinner is shot by Melissa's killer. Two great one-offs outside the arc are "Clyde Bruckman's "Final Repose", a bittersweet tale of foreseeing death (featuring an Emmy-winning performance from Peter Boyle) and Jose Chung's "From Outer Space", a spoof of alien conspiracy theories through an author's investigations into abductees. --Paul Tonks

• Go Now | DVD | (12/09/2016) from £20.00   |  Saving you £-0.01 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A gritty, uplifting drama of love and illness. Construction worker and keen amateur footballer Nick Cameron (Robert Carlyle) has the best of everything when he meets and moves in with soulmate Karen (Juliet Aubrey). But complications arise when symptoms of a mysterious illness including numbness and double vision begin to sap his energy. As MS sets in, his physical powers quickly diminish and he loses his job, his sport and his sexual drive. Eroded by frustration, anger and self-pity, Nick lashes out at Karen, even accusing her of sleeping with her boss. At his lowest ebb, summoning vestiges of pride and self-sacrifice, Nick urges Karen to leave him. Will she accept an easy escape from his despondency and rancour, or stand by this frail shell of the man she fell in love with? Heart-wrenching, intense and unforgettable, the raw emotion is cut with laddish dark humour, and the electrifying central performances are supported by engaging early screen appearances by James Nesbitt and Sophie Okonedo. First shown as part of BBC Two's ˜Love Bites' season of dramas in 1995, and now released on DVD, writers Jimmy McGovern and Paul Henry Powell who drew on his own experiences battling MS shared the Royal Television Society's Best Writer award the following year. £1 from every copy sold donated to MS Society UK by Simply Media Winner of the 1996 BAFTA for Best Editing and Royal Television Society Award for Best Writer (Jimmy McGovern and Paul Henry Powell) Directed by acclaimed BAFTA winner Michael Winterbottom (24 Hour Party People) and written by Emmy and multi-BAFTA winner Jimmy McGovern (The Street) Stars Primetime Emmy nominee and BAFTA winner Robert Carlyle (Trainspotting / The Full Monty) and BAFTA winner Juliet Aubrey (Middlemarch) Also features Golden Globe nominee James Nesbitt (Cold Feet/ The Missing) and Oscar nominee Sophie Okonedo (Hotel Rwanda) Includes exclusive interview with Danny Wallace on football and MS

• Zachariah | DVD | (08/04/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Advertised in 1970 as "the first electric Western", Zachariah is an endearingly pretentious effort that prefigures such genre oddities as Jodorowsky's El Topo and Alex Cox's Straight to Hell. The story is the archetypal one about two friends who become gunslingers and must inevitably face off against each other in the finale, but it's treated here as if it Meant Something Deeper--which means that after enjoying 75 minutes of violence we can all agree that peace and love and harmony is on the whole better for children and other living things. Curly haired farmboy Zachariah (John Rubinstein) and eternally grinning apprentice blacksmith Matthew (Don Johnson) are the fast friends who run away from home to join up with a gang of outlaws known as the Crackers (played by hippie folk-rock collective Country Joe and the Fish). These apparent 19th-century Westerners tote electric guitars and are given to staging free festival freak-outs at one end of town to distract from the bank robbery at the other. The boys soon hook up with Job Cain (Elvin Jones), an all-in-black master gunfighter who is also an ace drummer (his solo is impressive), but then drift apart as Zachariah has a liaison with Old West madame Belle Starr (Pat Quinn) in a town that consists of fairground-style brightly painted wooden cut out buildings (a gag reused in Blazing Saddles), then gets rid of his outrageous all-white cowboy outfit to settle down on a homestead and grow his own dope and vegetables. Matthew, of course, goes for the black leather look after outdrawing Cain, and comes a gunning for the only man who might be faster than him, but the hippie-era message is once these kids have killed everyone else they can still make peace with each other and the desert or something, man. Aside from a Beatle-haired teenage Johnson making a fool of himself by over-emoting to contrast with Rubinstein's non-performance, the film offers a lot of beautiful "acid Western" scenery and excellent prog rock and bluegrass music from the James Gang, White Lightnin' and the New York Rock Ensemble. Comedy troupe the Firesign Theatre (huge on album in 1970) provided the script, which explains satirical touches like the horse-and-buggy salesman (Dick Van Patten) spieling like a used car dealer and the madame's claim to have had affairs with gunslingers from Billy the Kid to Marshal McLuhan. The DVD extras are skimpy, but the print quality is outstanding. --Kim Newman

• Waking Ned | DVD | (12/06/2000) from £5.95   |  Saving you £7.04 (118.32%)   |  RRP £12.99

  When local wag Jackie O'Shea (Ian Bannen) discovers that one of his neighbours in the village of Tulaigh Mohr is a lottery winner he sees a chance to share in the wealth. Things get complicated when Jackie and his pal Michael O'Sullivan (David Kelly) discover that the winner, Ned Devine, died of shock at the very moment he learned of becoming a millionaire. Undaunted, Jackie and Michael dispose of the lucky stiff and hatch a plot to impersonate him and claim the prize. Soon the whole village is involved and the plot rapidly thickens. This film has been compared to The Full Monty, but it lacks the vein of desperation that added depth to that film. Instead, Waking Ned is closer in tone to classic British comedies like Whisky Galore!, with its cast of eccentrics gleefully conspiring to outwit the authorities. Those with a low tolerance for twinkly eyed Irish charm might be tempted to steer clear, although the movie is saved, for the most part, by its central performances. Bannen is superb as an old man who is clearly hungry for any excitement he can drum up and David Kelly is remarkable as his scrawny sidekick. Kelly has had a long career as a character actor in film and television, but here he has a chance to really let loose. His naked motorcycle ride is a marvellous set-piece and in all of his other scenes his twitchy, perfectly timed performance quite simply steals the movie. --Simon Leake, Amazon.com

• The Presidio | DVD | (22/01/2001) from £8.60   |  Saving you £4.39 (51.05%)   |  RRP £12.99

  In The Presidio the titular piece of real estate is the San Francisco military base that starts at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge and sprawls back into the city itself, co-existing uneasily with Baghdad by the Bay. The two cultures clash when a murder at the Presidio is assigned to civilian police detective Mark Harmon. Harmon has an uncomfortable history with the base commander, Sean Connery--and this relationship doesn't get any less tense when he also becomes romantically entangled with Connery's daughter, Meg Ryan. Unfortunately, the script by Larry Ferguson is a stiff, which suits Harmon's acting style. Director Peter Hyams knows how to choreograph an action sequence, but he has to keep stopping so that Harmon can actually speak. Thankfully, Harmon has the always-interesting Connery and Ryan to interact with, but that's only a small saving grace. --Marshall Fine, Amazon.com

• Taggart: Classic Taggart - Through The Years | DVD | (02/09/2013) from £21.97   |  Saving you £18.02 (82.02%)   |  RRP £39.99

  Six timeless episodes starring Mark McManus James MacPherson Blythe Duff and John Michie. Taggart is one of the best remembered detective series in television history thanks to a superb mix of brilliant writing direction and performances from its entire cast. Each episode took months to research and write: this was not formula television. Over the years the storylines became more sophisticated to involve a whole range of influences from the IRA to the Gulf War Roman burial sites to ex-hitmen. Now 30 years after it first appeared on our screens the popularity of Taggart shows no signs of diminishing and it has rightly achieved classic status in British television history. This unforgettable collection includes six vintage episodes that span the generations starring James MacPherson John Michie Blythe Duff and two classic episodes starring Mark McManus the actor who remains synonymous with his career-defining role as DCI Jim Taggart. Packed with intriguing plot lines plenty of twists and turns as well as the obligatory mysterious murder each programme keeps you guessing right to the end. So sit back and enjoy over 10 hours of Taggart at its very best. They just don't make them like this anymore. Episodes Comprise: The Hit Man Secrets A Few Bad Men Long Time Dead Do or Die Running Out of Time

• The Exterminator | Blu Ray | (07/11/2011) from £9.39   |  Saving you £15.60 (166.13%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Scorching the streets clean...Flamethrowers ready as the alleyways of skid row are set ablaze with the brutal vengeance of one man... The Exterminator!John Eastland has been to 'Nam and he's seen things... Things you wouldn't believe. Surviving torture and witnessing the brutal deaths of his friends, John returns home to a tough neighbourhood in New York and his loving family. But when some local thugs take a crippling dislike to his best friend Mike, leaving him paralysed, something snaps in John. Did he fight the Vietcong for this?Taking the law into his own hands, Eastland sets out to clean the streets of every low life, good for nothing gang banger, mobster and ghetto ghoul across the city in director James Glickenhaus' (McBain) brutally violent vigilante classic.

• Joker Steelbook | Blu Ray | (10/02/2020) from £69.95   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Red Corner | DVD | (01/02/2000) from £9.43   |  Saving you £6.56 (69.57%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Using a faulty thriller for his soapbox as an outspoken critic of China, a devout follower of the Dalai Lama, and an influential supporter of Tibetan freedom, Richard Gere resorts to the equivalent of propagandistic drama to deliver a heavy-handed message. In other words, Red Corner relies on a dubious strategy to promote political awareness, but director Jon Avnet appeals to the viewer's outrage with such effective urgency that you're likely to forget you're being shamelessly manipulated. Gere plays a downtrodden TV executive who sells syndicated shows on the global market, and during a business trip to China he finds himself framed for the murder of the sexy daughter of a high Chinese official. Once trapped in a legal system in which his innocence will be all but impossible to prove, Gere must rely on a Chinese-appointed lawyer (played by Bai Ling) who first advises him to plead guilty but gradually grows convinced of foul play. Barely attempting to hide its agenda, Red Corner effectively sets the stage for abundant anti-Chinese sentiment, and to be sure, the movie gains powerful momentum with its tale of justice gone awry. It's a serious-minded, high-intensity courtroom drama with noble intentions, but one wonder if it has to be so conspicuously lacking in subtlety. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

• Deep Impact - Special Edition | DVD | (02/07/2006) from £6.08   |  Saving you £13.91 (228.78%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Fourteen-year-old Leo Beiderman (Elijah Wood) did not expect to make an earth-shattering discovery when he joined his high school astronomy club. He didn't expect to make any discoveries at all; he simply hoped that classmate Sarah Hotchner (Leelee Sobieski) would discover him. Yet a photograph he takes through his small telescope makes him co-discoverer of Comet Wolf-Beiderman...a comet that scientists determine is on a fatal collision course with the Earth. What would you do if you