"Actor: Tom Malone"

• The Blues Brothers, The / Blues Brothers 2000 | DVD | (26/03/2001) from £4.83   |  Saving you £8.16 (168.94%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The Blues Brothers: John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd--as "legendary" Chicago brothers Jake and Elwood Blues--brought their "Saturday Night Live" act to the big screen in this action-packed hit from 1980. As Jake and Elwood struggle to reunite their old band and save the Chicago orphanage where they were raised, they wreak enough good-natured havoc to attract the entire Cook County police force. The result is a big-budget stunt-fest on a scale rarely attempted before or since, including extended car chases that result in the wanton destruction of shopping malls and more police cars than you can count. Along the way there's plenty of music to punctuate the action, including performances by Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Cab Calloway and James Brown that are guaranteed to knock you out. Keep an eye out for Steven Spielberg as the city clerk who stamps some crucial paperwork near the end of the film. The Blues Brothers 2000: It's hard to ignore the sad and conspicuous absence of the late John Belushi, but this long-delayed sequel still has Dan Aykroyd to keep the music alive. Once again, Elwood's trying to reunite the original Blues Brothers Band, and this time he's got a strip-joint bartender (John Goodman) and a 10-year-old orphan named Buster (J Evan Bonifant) joining him at centre stage. It's a shameless clone of the first film, and nobody--especially not Aykroyd or director John Landis--seems to care that the story's not nearly as fun as the music. Of course there's a seemingly endless parade of stunts, including a non-stop pileup of police cars that's hilariously absurd, but what really matters here--indeed, the movie's only saving grace--is the great line-up of legendary blues musicians. Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Junior Wells, Eric Clapton, BB King, Jonny Lang, Eddie Floyd and Blues Traveler are among the many special guests assembled for the film, and their stellar presence makes you wonder if the revived Blues Brothers shouldn't remain an obscure opening act. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

• Notes On A Scandal | Blu Ray | (03/02/2014) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Academy Award Winners Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett give wickedly entertaining Oscar-Nominated performances - one as a woman consumed by her colleague's guilty secret the other a victim to her own dark obsessions - in this sexy stylish thriller. Dench mesmerises as Barbara Covett a teacher who rules over her classroom with an iron fist yet leads a desperate solitary life outside it. That is until she meets radiant new art teacher Sheba Hart (Blanchett). Although at first overjoyed with her newfound kindred spirit when Barbara discovers that Sheba is having an affair with a student her jealousy and rage spiral out of control. Also starring Bill Nighy Notes on a Scandal 'has all the right ingredients: lust greed envy secrets lies betrayal!'

• Contact | DVD | (25/09/1998) from £7.19   |  Saving you £6.80 (94.58%)   |  RRP £13.99

  The opening and closing moments of Robert (Forrest Gump) Zemeckis's Contact astonish viewers with the sort of breathtaking conceptual imagery one hardly ever sees in movies these day--each is an expression of the heroine's lifelong quest (both spiritual and scientific) to explore the meaning of human existence through contact with extraterrestrial life. The movie begins by soaring far out into space, then returns dizzyingly to earth until all the stars in the heavens condense into the sparkle in one little girl's eye. It ends with that same girl as an adult (Jodie Foster)--her search having taken her to places beyond her imagination--turning her gaze inward and seeing the universe in a handful of sand. Contact traces the journey between those two visual epiphanies. Based on Carl Sagan's novel, Contact is exceptionally thoughtful and provocative for a big-budget Hollywood science fiction picture, with elements that recall everything from 2001 to The Right Stuff. Foster's solid performance (and some really incredible alien hardware) keep viewers interested, even when the story skips and meanders, or when the halo around the golden locks of rising-star-of-a-different-kind Matthew McConaughey (as the pure-Hollywood-hokum love interest)reaches Milky Way-level wattage. Ambitious, ambiguous, pretentious, unpredictable--Contact is all of these things and more. Much of it remains open to speculation and interpretation but whatever conclusions one eventually draws, Contactdeserves recognition as a rare piece of big-budget studio film making on a personal scale. --Jim Emerson

• Notes On A Scandal | DVD | (04/06/2007) from £6.96   |  Saving you £16.02 (403.53%)   |  RRP £19.99

  An illicit affair with one of her students has unforeseen consequences for a teacher in this story of loneliness, loyalty, envy and love.

• Children Of The New Forest | DVD | (14/08/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Four children are orphaned and forced into hiding with an old forester who lives deep in the woods. They have to fight and help save Charles Stuart King of England from his enemies. Contains all six episodes from the TV series.

• Film Noir Thrillers | DVD | (03/02/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99