Drama

• The Silence | DVD | (19/11/2001) from £8.39   |  Saving you £14.59 (270.18%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The third in Ingmar Bergman's trilogy of "chamber works" featuring characters in isolated, existentially dramatic settings, The Silence, made in 1963, is set in Timoka, a fictional Eastern European town with its own made-up language. Stylistically more sensual and maximal than its austere predecessors Through a Glass Darkly and Winter Light, it was both a success and a scandal in its day, featuring as it does scenes of masturbation, sex and even lesbian eroticism. Jorgen Lindstrom plays Jonas, a small boy travelling with his mother Anna (Gunnel Lindblom) and aunt Ester (Ingrid Thulin). His aunt is dying of consumption, but his mother is a great deal more alive and smouldering with sexual energy. As the tension between the bedridden aunt and the frustrated mother mounts, Jonas roams the hotel corridors and chances almost surreally upon the hotels only other occupants--an elderly floor waiter and a troupe of performing dwarves. Meanwhile, his mother is picked up by a waiter in a cafe, is seduced by him in a church then engages in a traumatically miserable bout of hotel sex. Sultry, full of incident and dreamlike cinematic spectacle (the performing dwarves, a rumbling tank, an overheated railway carriage) there's a sense of aimlessness and oblivion about The Silence, in which the godlessness of the universe, though never discussed, is implied throughout the movie. There is, however, a note of humanist hope struck in the conclusion, more convincing than the platitudinous finale of Through a Glass Darkly. On the DVD: Bergman's notes explain how he had long nurtured the notion of setting a movie in an imaginary city where "the rules of society cease to exist", and how the young boy's curious wanderings were inspired by his first exposure to Stockholm as a child. Critic Philip Strick's notes reveal that Greta Garbo had at one point been mooted to make a return to the screen in this film and that in certain countries, censors insisted on separate screenings of The Silence for males and females. --David Stubbs

• Spider | DVD | (14/07/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Spider is a man with a fragile grip on reality. He is released from psychiatric care into a boarding house near where he grew up and in an attempt to reconstruct his tortured past he returns to his childhood haunts.

• The Deer Hunter 40th Anniversary Edition | Blu Ray | (20/08/2018) from £7.99   |  Saving you £7.00 (87.61%)   |  RRP £14.99

  An in-depth examination of the ways in which the U.S. Vietnam War impacts and disrupts the lives of people in a small industrial town in Pennsylvania.

• Wherever She Goes | DVD | (13/07/2015) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Set against a background of crushing poverty and the hazards of gold-mining in Western Australia during the mid-1920s Wherever She Goes is based on the childhood of Eileen Joyce the celebrated Australian pianist who made her sensational professional debut at the Royal Albert Hall in 1930. Made at Ealing Studios in Australia the film depicts the people who inspired and nurtured the gifted little girls dream of becoming a professional pianist her struggle to learn and the support of the local community that helped bring her within reach of musical training. This moving life-affirming film is featured here in a brand-new transfer from the original film elements in its as-exhibited theatrical aspect ratio.

• The Death of Louis VXI | DVD | (20/11/2017) from £7.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  August 1715. After going for a walk, Louis XIV feels a pain in his leg. The next day, the king keeps fulfilling his duties and obligations, but his sleep is troubled and he has a serious fever. He barely eats and weakens increasingly. This is the start of the slow agony of the greatest King of France death from gangrene, surrounded by his doctors and closest advisors, speaking in frantic, whispered tones about their options, in an era in which little is known of such illnesses. Albert Serra's new film, The Death of Louis XIV, is an adaptation of the Duc de Saint-Simon's memoirs, starring Jean-Pierre Léaud as the Sun-King. The cult actor, who worked with all major directors from the Nouvelle Vague after being discovered in Truffaut's The 400 Blows, plays the dying king who can barely move from his bed in the Château de Versailles. His relatives and his closest counsellors come in turns at his bedside, but he attends only a few meetings and can barely rule his kingdom. His secret wife Madame de Maintenon, and his doctor Fagon dread his last breath and try to hide it from the public, to preserve the future of France. Shot in rich colour with extraordinary lighting, Jean-Pierre Léaud, in his costume, hair and poses, fully embodies the last few days of the longest serving king of France, who, with his seventy two years in power, changed the face of the monarchy and of France.

• The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (Standard Edition) | Blu Ray | (29/05/2023) from £9.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Based on the acclaimed novel by Brian Moore, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne was the final feature film to be made by celebrated filmmaker Jack Clayton (The Innocents, The Pumpkin Eater), and boasts a truly outstanding performance by multi-award-winning actor Maggie Smith. In 1950s Belfast, penniless spinster Judith Hearne (Smith) falls for charismatic James (Bob Hoskins). Succumbing to his attentions, Judith makes a series of profound changes to her life, including re-evaluating her deep relationship with her church, to enable the love for which she so desperately yearns. Poignant and powerful, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne was the recipient of a BAFTA award for Smith, but has since become somewhat overlooked. One of the finest British films of the 1980s is presented in a 2K restoration from the original negatives, supervised and approved by cinematographer Peter Hannan. Product Features 2K restoration by Powerhouse Films from the original negative, supervised and approved by cinematographer Peter Hannan Original mono audio Judith Hearne Remembered (2019, 27 mins): documentary featuring interviews with actors Maggie Smith, Ian McNeice and Rudi Davies Selected scenes commentary with Neil Sinyard, author of British Film Makers: Jack Clayton (33 mins) Original trailer Image gallery: promotional and publicity material New and improved English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

• Sweeney 2 | DVD | (04/02/2019) from £7.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  John Thaw and Dennis Waterman star once again as the Flying Squad's finest in this brutal and uncompromising feature-film spin-off from one of television's most memorable series! Co-starring Denholm Elliott and Ken Hutchison, Sweeney 2 has been newly transferred from original film elements. A callous gang of bank robbers is creating havoc on the London streets. Efficient and ruthless and with Regan and Carter in hot pursuit they leave a trail of dead bodies and smashed cars in their wake. SPECIAL FEATURES: Theatrical Trailer Image gallery PDF material

• The Royal Hunt of the Sun | DVD | (19/11/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  An epic tale of the Spanish conquest of Peru. This film will keep you glued to the screen in anticipation of the fateful ending. ""The world will remember me promises Spanish General Francesco Pizarro to the King of Spain. He tells of a land of endless gold enough to make Spain the most powerful of nations. But Pizarro is a dreamer a man of failures. The King allows him to search but at his own expense. Thus armed with a band of ruthless gold-seeking soldiers of fortune Pizarro journeys over vast mountains and harsh desert to reach Monchepechu. When faced with the life or death of the Inca God-King Atahualpa Pizarro struggles with his duty as a soldier and his loyalties to God his men and himself all of which are called into question by his fascination with the devotion and worship of the mystical man-god. Pizarro must choose between life or death and his god or another. This true epic adventure of undying faith brave yet greedy men loyalty to god king and country and one's own sense of morality hurtles towards an ending that answers humankind's hardest question ""Whose God is the real God?""

• Never Too Late | DVD | (04/04/2022) from £7.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Wildhood (BD) | Blu Ray | (07/11/2022) from £10.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Escaping an abusive father with his younger half-brother in tow, the rebellious Link (Philip Lewitski) flees his trailer park home in search of his mother and a fresh start. On the way he meets Pasmay (Joshua Odjick), an indigenous two-spirit teenager who joins them as they travel across Mi'kmaq territory in rural Nova Scotia. As a close bond begins to form with Pasmay, Link learns to come to terms with his own complex heritage, racial identity and sexuality. Beautifully shot in stunning eastern Canada locations, Bretten Hannam's finely crafted film is a critically acclaimed and sensitively observed tale of first love and self-acceptance. Product Features Making Of Featurette Character Featurettes UK Trailer

• Winter Light | DVD | (19/11/2001) from £10.35   |  Saving you £9.64 (93.14%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The second of an Ingmar Bergman trilogy, 1962's Winter Light is a deliberate repudiation of the "God is love" message of its predecessor Through a Glass Darkly. Gunnar Bjornstrand stars as Tomas, a pastor in a remote parish tending to a dwindling congregation, as tense and distracted as David--the novelist Bjornstrand plays in Through a Glass Darkly. He finds himself trying to counsel a local fisherman Jonas, who is plagued by a sense of impending atomic doom but realises that the religious platitudes he consoles him with--"put your faith in the Lord"--are mere drivel. He himself is wracked by religious doubts, unable to tolerate "God's silence" and unable to prevent the fisherman from committing suicide. He finds himself taking out his inner woe on his eczema-riddled mistress, played by an unflatteringly made up Ingrid Thulin. Described by Bergman's own wife as a "dreary masterpiece", the synopsis to Winter Light seems almost comically miserable, yet this passion play is gripping in its unsparing bleakness, bathed in the stark illumination implied by the title, ironically akin to the light of a religious epiphany. Released at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, its preoccupations and all-pervasive anxieties are especially apt. On the DVD: Bergman's own notes reveal that Winter Lightis among his own favourites and he explains the evolution of the film's ideas at some length. Critic Philip Strick's background notes reveal that Gunnar Bjornstrand was exhausted and ill for much of the making of the film, which doubtless enhanced his anguished performance here. --David Stubbs

• Dennis Potter: Karaoke & Cold Lazarus Boxed Set | DVD | (06/09/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £39.99

  Karaoke and Cold Lazarus were two television dramas written by the acclaimed TV playwright Dennis Potter. Having been diagnosed with terminal cancer and with less than six months to live Potter undertook a race against mortality to complete two television dramas which were uniquely to be shared between Channel 4 and the BBC. In a televised interview with Melvyn Bragg he said My only regret is if I die four pages too soon. He didn't - and the result is a fitting tribute to a life committed to the creation of some of the finest television drama ever written. Titles Comprise: Karaoke: Daniel Feeld (Albert Finney) is working on a fictional play for television. The play entitled Karaoke concerns a beautiful young woman working in a sleazy karaoke bar run by Arthur Pig Mallion. Fiction and reality begin to intertwine when Feeld overhears snatches of his dialogue in the world around him - and encounters real people bearing his character's names. The lines between the world he has created and the world in which he lives begin to blur - and a desperate struggle to control both becomes enmeshed in his evolving sickness and a terminal diagnosis. Re-writing his will to right wrongs leaving his body to a cryogenics laboratory and plotting to go out with a bang Daniel Feeld is about to write an ending for one world that will have great repercussions in the next. Cold Lazarus: In Cold Lazarus we find the cryogenically stored brain of Daniel Freed trapped in a future world where scientists gather to watch his projected memories. Under pressure from rival corporate interests the scientists fall victim to the tricks that memory can play picking at threads as they try to comprehend how personal histories are written - and can be rewritten. As elements of truth and fiction explosively intertwine will the mind of Daniel Feeld finally be set free?

• The Lakes - The Complete First And Second Series | DVD | (06/10/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  The Lakes brought writer Jimmy McGovern and actor John Simm a great deal of critical praise in 1997. Following a particularly dry period for British TV drama, the show's realistic characterisations and their painfully honest decisions hit audiences hard. Simm is a twentysomething trapped in a life of compulsive gambling, theft and being on the dole in Liverpool. On a whim he heads north to the Lake District. He expects to find the countryside quietude where his hidden poetical leanings might find a home, but instead gets caught up in a community like any other. Lies, temptation and tragedy beset every household just as much as the big city. The focus of Series 1 is Danny's relationship with Emma (Emma Cunniffe) and the consequences of having a child. As time races by, his link to the Lakes becomes an exercise in torment when the eyes of blame fall easily upon him after the accidental deaths of four schoolgirls. Stoking the flames of a series of secondary explosions in waiting are a pair of affairs, one adulterous, the other complicated by religion. In the far longer sequel series that came two years later, these back-stories would come to the fore. Although exploring Danny's tortured soul might have been the obvious continuation, instead an almost Hitchcockian murder scenario occupies far more screen time. But by stretching things out, this second series does not have the same self-contained impact of the original. Additional writers only served to drag out Danny's boy-to-man journey. Ultimately, lessons are learned, including the realistic conclusion that life is without a poetical status quo. Despite the tail-off in overall quality, you'd be hard pressed to identify a better British drama in the years since. On the DVD: The Lakes complete series 1 and 2 box set comes with two separate commentary tracks for the very first episode. In interviews, John Simm fondly recalls how cold the lake water was and director David Blair recalls putting him in it. It's a shame the two weren't recorded together. It's also a shame that's all there is in this package. Even a few cast biographies would have been welcome. Picture is 4:3 and stereo sound is as you'd expect from 1990s UK TV. --Paul Tonks

• The Kitchen | DVD | (20/01/2020) from £4.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  The wives of New York gangsters in Hell's Kitchen in the 1970s continue to operate their husbands' rackets after they're locked up in prison.

• YULI - The Carlos Acosta Story | DVD | (05/08/2019) from £9.79   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  The film follows Carlos Acosta - nicknamed Yuli by his father - from growing up on the streets of his native Cuba, through his time at the country's National Dance School, to performing at London's prestigious Royal Ballet. Based on his 2007 UK bestseller autobiography No Way Home

• The Piano | DVD | (10/07/2006) from £5.49   |  Saving you £10.50 (191.26%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Ada her nine-year-old daughter and her piano arrive to an arranged marriage in the remote bush of nineteenth century New Zealand. Of all her belongings her husband refuses to transport the piano and it is left behind on the beach. Unable to bear its certain destruction Ada strikes a bargain with an illiterate tattooed neighbour. She may earn her piano back if she allows him to do certain things while she plays; one black key for a lesson. The arrangement draws all three deeper into a complex emotional sexual bond remarkable for its nave passion and frightening disregard for limits... Winner of 3 Oscars for Best Screenplay (Jane Campion) Best Actress (Holly Hunter) and Best Suporting Actress (Anna Paquin) and 11 awards from the Australian Film Institiute.

• Henry VIII And His 6 Wives | DVD | (23/07/2012) from £7.99   |  Saving you £8.00 (100.13%)   |  RRP £15.99

  On his deathbed, King Henry VIII looks back over his eventful life and his six marriages.

• Warrior | DVD | (20/02/2012) from £6.19   |  Saving you £13.80 (222.94%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Warrior stars Tom Hardy (Inception, The Dark Knight Rises) and Joel Edgerton (The Thing). An inspirational and exhilarating roller-coaster of a film, Warrior centres around Tommy (Hardy) - an ex marine haunted by a tragic past, who enlists the help of his estranged father (Nick Nolte) to train up for the fight of his life. A former wrestling prodigy, Tommy blazes a path towards SPARTA - the biggest 'winner takes all' Mixed Martial Arts event in history. His brother, Brendan (Joel Edgerton), an ex-fighter-turned teacher, also returns to the ring in a desperate bid to save his family from financial ruin. So when Brendan's unlikely, underdog rise sets him on a collision course with the unstoppable Tommy, the two brothers must finally confront each other - and the forces that pulled them apart - in the ultimate face off.

• Alfie | DVD | (26/08/2002) from £5.15   |  Saving you £10.84 (210.49%)   |  RRP £15.99

  What's it all about, Alfie?" asked the hit Burt Bacharach/Hal David title song, to which the less philosophical answer might be: an amoral young man comically seducing a succession of beautiful women in swinging-sixties London. Michael Caine was the titular anti-hero, here consolidating his new star status from Zulu (1964) and The Ipcress File (1965), his conquests including Shelley Winters, Jane Asher and Shirley Ann Field. Alfie was a huge success, bringing a new frankness about changing sexual attitudes to the screen, in which respect it was almost the male companion to Julie Christie's then shocking, Oscar-winning performance in Darling (1965). It was also a sort-of contemporary Tom Jones, which had swept the Oscars for 1963, however, Alfie was not only better made, but in Michael Caine's guilelessly amoral asides to camera, offered a groundbreaking illustration of a newly self-conscious cinema. It is a technique Caine would reprise as the middle-aged philanderer in Blame It On Rio (1983). With Blow Up also released in 1966, and Ken Russell's Women In Love following in 1969, British film-making was truly in the midst of a sexual revolution. Michael Caine would reunite with director Lewis Gilbert and meet his female match in Educating Rita (1983). --Gary S. Dalkin

• Red Dog | DVD | (04/06/2012) from £5.39   |  Saving you £10.60 (196.66%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Based on the legendary true story of the Red Dog who united a disparate local community while roaming the Australian outback in search of his long lost master.