"Actor: Robert Ball"

• The Commitments | Blu Ray | (02/09/2024) from £9.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• The Commitments | DVD | (28/07/2003) from £6.95   |  Saving you £6.04 (86.91%)   |  RRP £12.99

  An irresistible, comic drama from director Alan Parker (Evita, Mississippi Burning), overflowing and alive with passion, humor and music, The Commitments showcases some old R&B standards in a new light. A headstrong, fast-talking, ambitious young Dubliner (Robert Arkins) fancies himself a promoter of talent, and sets about assembling and packaging a local Irish R&B band. His group of self-absorbed, backbiting, but stunningly talented individuals begin to succeed beyond his wildest dreams, until petty jealousies and recrimination threaten to scuttle the whole deal. A moody, vivid and soulful exploration of the Dublin club scene as well as a showcase for some wonderful unknown actors, the film (and its wonderful soundtrack) also features the actual band covering classic soul tunes from the likes of Otis Redding and Sam and Dave. It's that combination of soul and soul music that makes The Commitments a special little film. --Robert Lane, Amazon.com --This text refers to the VHS edition of this video

• Flood | DVD | (29/10/2007) from £3.99   |  Saving you £16.00 (401.00%)   |  RRP £19.99

  When a raging storm coincides with high tide it threatens the very heart of London and the millions who live there.

• The Last Castle | DVD | (12/08/2002) from £6.84   |  Saving you £3.15 (46.05%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Robert Redford stars as a wrongly convicted five star General who turns his fellow inmates into an army and threatens to take over the prison.

• The Ugly Dachshund | DVD | (29/03/2004) from £3.99   |  Saving you £11.00 (275.69%)   |  RRP £14.99

  When a Great Dane puppy is raised with a litter of Dachshunds, it naturally thinks it's a Dachshund too--even when it grows to 10 times the size. Dean Jones and Suzanne Pleshette star as the hapless couple who took in the galumphing dog, which wreaks havoc on their house and home. The Ugly Dachshund is mostly a series of spectacular disasters (the doggy demolition of Jones's art studio will delight kids and reduce adults to nervous wrecks), but it's held together by the convincing domestic banter of Jones and Pleshette (who was quite a dish in 1965); the pair went on to star in a couple of other Disney live-action flicks, Bluebeard's Ghost and The Shaggy D.A.. Despite some racial and gender stereotypes, it's a good-natured and amusing movie in the Disney mold. Also featuring classic character actor Charlie Ruggles (Bringing Up Baby, The Parent Trap). --Bret Fetzer

• 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

• In Which We Serve | DVD | (26/09/2008) from £5.29   |  Saving you £10.70 (202.27%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Noel Coward's great British war film made at the height of World War II in 1942 tells the story of a naval destroyer and its crew as they fight for their lives in a life raft after their ship is sunk.

• Once Upon A Forest | DVD | (06/10/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  A magical animated world based on the story by Rae Lambert which follows the antics of Abigail the Woodmouse Edgar the Mole and Russell the Hedgehog.

• Peter De Rome | DVD | (14/03/2016) from £7.99   |  Saving you £8.00 (100.13%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Pioneering erotic filmmaker Peter de Rome tells his astonishing life story with humour and charm in this surprising documentary Spanning more than eight decades of gay experience in Britain and the US, Peter de Rome charts Peter's journey from cinematic outlaw to celebrated film icon with contributions from collaborators and some of those he has influenced. The film uses extensive extracts from Peter's varied and often explicit work, from his early 8mm experiments in the 1960s to his extraordinary feature films to create a portrait of a true one-off.

• Flood | Blu Ray | (02/11/2009) from £5.99   |  Saving you £10.00 (166.95%)   |  RRP £15.99

  When a raging storm coincides with high tide it threatens the very heart of London and the millions who live there.

• The Work Of Director Chris Cunningham | DVD | (01/12/2003) from £21.32   |  Saving you £-3.33 (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  The Work of Director Chris Cunningham, like the other volumes in the acclaimed Director's Series (Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry) offers a feast of visual ingenuity, with one major difference: unlike the relatively playful brightness of Jonze and Gondry, Cunningham wants to involve you in his nightmares. From the urban monstrosities of Aphex Twin's "Come to Daddy" to the limb-shattering weirdness of Leftfield's "Afrika Shox", Cunningham's music videos emphasise the freakish and the bizarre, but they are also arrestingly beautiful and otherworldly, as in the aquatic effects used for Portishead's "Only You", combining underwater movements with ominous urban landscapes. Some of Cunningham's shock effects are horrifically effective (his 'flex" video installation, excerpted here with music by Aphex Twin, is as disturbing as anything conjured by David Cronenberg), while others are cathartic or, in the case of Aphex Twin's "Windowlicker", outrageously amusing. And while the eerie elegance of Madonna's "Frozen" arose from a chaotic production, the signature work in this collection is clearly Björk's "All Is Full of Love", a masterfully simple yet breathtaking vision of intimacy involving advanced robotics and seamless CGI composites. In these and other videos, Cunningham advances a unique aesthetic, infusing each video and commercial he makes with a dark, occasionally gothic sensibility. That these frequently nightmarish visions are also infectiously hypnotic is a tribute to Cunningham's striking originality. --Jeff Shannon

• Madeline / Matilda / A Simple Wish | DVD | (03/10/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Madeline (Dir. Daisy von Scherler Mayer 1998): Madeline and her eleven friends live at school run by Miss Clavel (Frances McDormand) in an old house in Paris. The smallest of the girls Madeline is also the most adventurous! She loses her appendix but gains an awesome scare falls into the River Seine only to be rescued by a dog called Genevieve and matches wits with Pepito the devilish son of a Spanish Ambassador who moves in next door. However when stuffy Lord Covington puts the future of the school in jeopardy it's up to Madeline and her friends to save the day! Matilda (Dir. Danny DeVito 1996) Unfortunately for Matilda her father Harry (Danny DeVito) is a used car salesman who bamboozles innocent customers and her mother Zinnia (Rhea Perlman) lives for bingo and soap operas. Far from noticing what a special child Matilda is they barely notice her at all! They bundle Matilda off to Cruncham Hall a bleak school where students cower before the whip hand and fist of a hulking monster headmistress Miss Trunchball (Pam Ferris). But amid Crunchem's darkness Matilda discovers remarkable skills - including a very special talent that allows her to turn the table on the wicked grown ups in her world! A Simple Wish (Dir. Michael Ritchie 1997): Tells the sweet-natured story of Murray a bumbling fairy godfather who has good intentions but not much else. Technically Murray is a fairy godmother--the only male member of the North American Fairy Godmother Association. After barely passing his godmother's exam he is sent to New York City to watch after Anabel a young girl who wishes that her father Oliver will land a part in a Broadway musical so that the family won't have to move to Nebraska. But when the district's previous godmother a nefarious spellcaster named Claudia arrives with her wacky sidekick Boots her plans to cripple Murray and Anabel's magical association and monopolize the wish market wreak havoc on the already unstable Murray. It's up to Murray and Anabel to pool their resources and get rid of Claudia and Boots once and for all. Director Michael Ritchie turns the fairytale knob up a notch with 'A Simple Wish' also taking the time to poke fun at Broadway musicals. Featuring spectacular special effects and an extremely engaging performance by Wilson this is a children's fable with a fresh twist.

• Wax Mask | DVD | (15/03/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Paris 1900: a couple are horribly murdered by a masked man with a metal claw who rips their hearts out. The sole survivor and witness to the massacre is a young girl. Twelve years later in Rome a new wax museum is opened whose main attractions are lifelike recreations of gruesome murder scenes. A young man bets that he will spend the night in the museum but is found dead the morning after. Soon people start disappearing from the streets of Rome and the wax museum halls begin filli

• The Commitments (Special Edition) | DVD | (14/03/2005) from £12.99   |  Saving you £-3.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

• World War II Classics - Above Us The Waves / In Which We Serve | DVD | (29/10/2001) from £20.23   |  Saving you £-5.24 (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Even if all written and documentary evidence were to disappear, you could still get a real insight into Britain's involvement in the Second World War through feature films such as Above Us the Waves (1955) and In Which We Serve (1942). Directed by Ralph Thomas, Above Us the Waves tells of a Royal Navy mission to sink the "invincible" German battleship Tirpitz off the Norwegian coast. John Mills is calm and confident as the mission commander, with strong support from John Gregson and Donald Sinden--all treated by the German personnel as fellow gentlemen when captured. Despite stirring music from Arthur Benjamin, the action sequences are visually no more than adequate, and the film is only a partial success compared with the naval and domestic drama of the earlier In Which We Serve. Noël Coward wrote the screenplay and musical score, co-directed (with David Lean) and gave possibly his finest screen performance as the commander of HMS Torrin. His speech to the survivors of the sunken ship, as they prepare for reassignment, is just the highlight of a film packed with memorable visuals and perceptive dialogue. On the DVD: Though there are no additional features the black-and-white prints have come up excellently in the 4:3 video aspect ratio. There are 15 access points for each film, though the lack of subtitles is an unfortunate omission. These are period pieces that capture the mood of an era.--Richard Whitehouse

• The Last Castle | DVD | (03/07/2006) from £7.72   |  Saving you £10.27 (133.03%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Robert Redford stars as a wrongly convicted five star General who turns his fellow inmates into an army and threatens to take over the prison.

• In Which We Serve | DVD | (01/10/1999) from £14.64   |  Saving you £-4.65 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Noel Coward's great British war film made at the height of World War II in 1942 tells the story of a naval destroyer and its crew as they fight for their lives in a life raft after their ship is sunk.

• Gounod - Romeo Et Juliette (Villazon) | DVD | (26/01/2009) from £18.95   |  Saving you £1.04 (5.49%)   |  RRP £19.99

• Flood | DVD | (27/10/2008) from £16.18   |  Saving you £3.81 (23.55%)   |  RRP £19.99

  When a raging storm coincides with high tide it threatens the very heart of London and the millions who live there.

• Don Quixote | DVD | (01/12/2003) from £26.98   |  Saving you £-1.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  The legendary Rudolf Nureyev stars in this classic ballet.