Drama

• Hereafter | DVD | (13/06/2011) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Genre master Clint Eastwood tries something different with the languid, introspective Hereafter--and succeeds (for the most part). All of the characters at the heart of Peter Morgan's screenplay, which has the feel of a European art film, have suffered a loss or survived an ordeal. They feel disconnected from those who can't relate, which is most everybody. George Lonegan (Matt Damon, Invictus), a Bay Area factory worker, developed psychic powers after a childhood illness but just wants to lead a normal life, despite his brother Billy's efforts to turn him into a John Edwards-like celebrity (Jay Mohr plays Billy). Marie LeLay (the versatile Cécile De France), a TV reporter, emerges unharmed from 2004's Indian Ocean earthquake, only to find her Parisian existence slipping away from her (the tsunami sequence that opens the film is frightfully convincing). And in London, soft-spoken 12-year-old Marcus (Frankie McLaren) loses his twin, Jason (George McLaren), only to end up in foster care. While George reaches out to a lovely, if insecure woman (the overly jittery Bryce Dallas Howard) he meets in a cooking class, Marie writes a book about her experience, and Marcus seeks spiritual guidance. In a Babel-like turn of events, all three find themselves in the United Kingdom, where they cross paths, but what sounds contrived plays out in a surprisingly believable fashion. Eastwood and Morgan (The Queen) don't presume to know what happens after death, suggesting instead that those who search for answers deserve something other than disrespect and derision. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

• Carrington | DVD | (22/09/2003) from £12.49   |  Saving you £0.50 (4.00%)   |  RRP £12.99

  She was a gifted artist he was an eminent writer and together they created a controversy that sent shock waves through polite society. This is the true story of Dora Carrington and Lytton Strachey - their lives their loves and the desires they unleashed in a relationship that dared to challenge the taboos of England between the wars.

• The Killing Fields | DVD | (22/11/2016) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• The Ghost | Blu Ray | (20/09/2010) from £11.98   |  Saving you £13.00 (130.13%)   |  RRP £22.99

  From acclaimed director Roman Polanski and resonating with topical themes, this atmospheric and intriguing political thriller charts one man's determination to discover the truth and to tell it, if necessary, from beyond the grave.

• Belleville Rendezvous | DVD | (30/11/2015) from £10.32   |  Saving you £2.67 (25.87%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Whilst taking part in the Tour De France, Champion is kidnaped by the mafia. His loving grandma who has raised him since his parents died, Madame Souza, and her overweight dog, Bruno, embark on a journey to track him down. They get as far as the town of Belleville, but the trail goes cold. Then they meet the Triplets - three elderly sisters who have retired from the vaudeville scene - and together they begin their hunt afresh. Eventually they manage to discover where Champion is being held and attempt their daring rescue. As well as being one for older children and adults alike, this charming and delightful film is also an homage to the history of cinema and will keep the most hardened film buff entertained.

• Echo Park, L.A. (Quinceanera) (2006) | DVD | (26/02/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  As Magdalena's Quinceanera (15th birthday) approaches her simple blissful life is complicated by the discovery that she is pregnant. Kicked out of her house she finds a new family with Tomas her great-granduncle and Carlos her outcast gay cousin. Winner of both the Audience Award & Grand Jury Prize at The Sundance Film Festival this year Echo Park L.A. is a moving funny and socially poignant film about the challenges young people face when their values and desires differ from the suffocating age-old traditions of the family into which they are born. Echo Park L.A. offers an enlightening insight into the racial class and sexual tensions of a working class Latino neighbourhood in transition.

• Our Friends In The North (4 Disc Set) | DVD | (19/08/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £49.99

  An epic saga stretching from 1964 to 1995, Our Friends in the North follows the lives of four young people in North-East England. Nicky Hutchinson (Christopher Eccleston) is initially courting Mary Soulsby (Gina McKee) but the relationship cools when it takes second place to his campaigning for Harold Wilson's Labour Party. She weds Tory Tosker Cox instead, but their marriage is a miserable one, living in a rot-infested high rise block built following a dubious new housing scheme. Meanwhile, "Geordie" Peacock, finally tiring of his drunken, abusive father, headbutts him and hitches down to London, where he ends up working for a surrogate "family" led by Malcolm McDowell's flash Soho sex club baron. Over the years, the paths of these characters intertwine, diverge then cross again, albeit occasionally stretching the bounds of plausible coincidence. The drama takes place against the backdrop of local authority and police corruption in the 60s, the radical far-left militancy of the early 70s, Thatcher's election, the 1984 miner's strike and the subsequent "murder" of Northern communities. What's brilliant about Our Friends is its melding of the personal and the political, with the soap opera of family estrangement played out against a backdrop of social decline. Peter Vaughn, playing Nicky's Dad as a former Jarrow marcher stricken by Alzheimer's, is especially poignant. If you didn't see this the first time, do so now. On the DVD: Our Friends in the North has a bonus disc featuring a discussion with writer Peter Flannery and the producers and directors in which the making of the programme is revealed to have been as epic and protracted a saga as the drama itself. There are interviews also with stars Christopher Eccleston and Gina McKee. --David Stubbs

• Anna Karenina (DVD + Digital Copy + UV Copy) | DVD | (04/02/2013) from £5.95   |  Saving you £15.30 (326.23%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Anna Karenina is acclaimed director Joe Wright's bold, theatrical new vision of the epic story of love, stirringly adapted from Leo Tolstoy's great novel by Academy Award winner Tom Stoppard (Shakespeare in Love). The film marks the third collaboration of the director with Academy Award-nominated actress Keira Knightley and Academy Award-nominated producers Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, and Paul Webster, following their award-winning box office successes Pride and Prejudice and Atonement. The timeless story powerfully explores the capacity for love that surges through the human heart, while illuminating the lavish society that was imperial Russia. The time is 1874. Vibrant and beautiful, Anna Karenina (Ms. Knightley) has what any of her contemporaries would aspire to; she is the wife of Karenin (Jude Law), a high-ranking government official to whom she has borne a son, and her social standing in St. Petersburg could scarcely be higher. She journeys to Moscow after a letter from her philandering brother Oblonsky (Matthew Macfadyen) arrives, asking for Anna to come and help save his marriage to Dolly (Kelly Macdonald). En route, Anna makes the acquaintance of Countess Vronsky (Olivia Williams), who is then met at the train station by her son, the dashing cavalry officer Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). When Anna is introduced to Vronsky, there is a mutual spark of instant attraction that cannot - and will not - be ignored.

• The House Across the Lake | DVD | (18/08/2014) from £12.98   |  Saving you £-1.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  American screen siren Hillary Brooke is a consummate femme fatale in this British noir thriller of 1954 – an early feature by Emmy-winning writer-director Ken Hughes (adapting his own novel High Wray) and one of a series of now highly regarded B-movies jointly financed by Hammer Films and American producer Robert L. Lippert. Co-starring Alan Wheatley – soon to feature in an enduring TV role as the Sheriff of Nottingham in The Adventures of Robin Hood – and a pre-Carry On Sid James The House Across the Lake (a.k.a. Heat Wave) is presented in a brand new transfer from original film elements in its original aspect ratio. The bungalow which author Mark Kenrick has rented to toil over his new novel is quiet but for the sounds coming from a lively party across the lake at the exclusive home of Beverley Forrest and his young ex-model wife Carol. When she calls Mark to ask if he would collect some stranded guests he obliges but is shocked to find that Carol is both calculating and manipulative... and he is about to find out just how far she is prepared to go in order to get what she wants! Special Features: Image gallery Original Theatrical trailer

• Chi-Raq | DVD | (09/01/2017) from £5.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  After a child is accidentally killed in a gang shooting, a group of women led by Lysistrata (Teyonah Parris) organize against the ongoing violence in Chicago's Southside: They will withhold sex from their men until they agree to lay down their arms. Lysistrata's lover, rapper/gang leader Demetrius (Nick Cannon) - nicknamed Chi-Raq - retaliates by intensifying his feud with gang lord Cyclops (Wesley Snipes). Lysistrata's movement challenges the nature of race, sex and violence in America and around the world, and raises tensions in the already violent neighbourhood. Chi-Raq is an incendiary film about gang culture and gun control in the US, directed by Academy-Award® winner Spike Lee (Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X) and also features an A-list cast including John Cusack, Jennifer Hudson, Angela Bassett and Samuel L. Jackson.

• The Loved Ones | DVD | (04/10/2010) from £7.55   |  Saving you £8.44 (111.79%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Whatever Lola wants Lola gets and pretty boy unhinged Lola wants you! The coolest Ozploitation horror in ages is director Sean Byrne's hilariously dark and supremely confident mash-up of Misery Saw and Carrie in the outback. Cute young Brent is still traumatized over the car crash death of his beloved father when he's picked out by classmate Lola to attend her gore-soaked private prom. Kidnapped by her devoted nut-job father who will do absolutely anything Lola requests Brent soon finds himself strapped to a chair and being tortured into submission by the deadliest pair since Burke and Hare. But as Brent struggles with the horrific advances of Lola and her slavish slobbering dad his girlfriend and high school mates are slowly putting the puzzle pieces of his disappearance together. Slick quick and sick Byrne's stylish twist on teen horror provides fresh jolts graphic gasps and superior scream 'n' squeal shocks.

• The Singing Detective | DVD | (08/03/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The late Dennis Potter was a master at mining the popular songs of the 1930s and '40s for dramatic effect, but he never did it better than in The Singing Detective. The inestimable Michael Gambon plays a mystery writer named Philip E Marlow, who is suffering a torturous bout of psoriatic arthritis in hospital, where he is a victim of both his disease and the National Health Service. Unable to move without pain, he escapes into his imagination, plotting out a murder tale in which he is both a big-band singer and a private eye. But Potter and director Jon Amiel also mix in flashbacks of Marlow's youth and his unhappy marriage to explain how the real Marlow reached this sorry pass. Flawlessly, intricately, kaleidoscopically assembled, the six one-hour episodes fly by like some fantastic fever dream. –Marshall Fine

• Heaven Knows What | Blu Ray | (23/01/2017) from £10.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Harley loves Ilya. He gives her life purpose and sets her passion ablaze. So, when he asks her to prove her love by slitting her wrists, she obliges with only mild hesitation, perhaps because of her other all-consuming love: heroin. Directed by celebrated filmmakers Josh and Benny Safdie (LENNY COOKE, DADDY LONGLEGS), HEAVEN KNOWS WHAT blends fiction, formalism and raw vérité as it follows a young heroin addict (Arielle Holmes) who finds mad love in the streets of New York. The filmwhich world premiered at Venice (where it won the CICAE award) and subsequently played NYFF, Toronto and SXSW among other prestigious festivalsis based on Holmes' soon-to-be-published memoir Mad Love in New York City. Co-starring Caleb Landry-Jones (X-MEN: FIRST CLASS, BYZANTIUM), HEAVEN KNOWS WHAT also features street legend Buddy Duress and gore rap phenom Necro.

• Catherine Cookson - The Round Tower | DVD | (04/06/2007) from £5.94   |  Saving you £-0.95 (N/A%)   |  RRP £4.99

  This is the story of convent-educated Vanessa Ratcliffe the rebellious seventeen-year-old daughter of a wealthy middle-class family and Angus Cotton an ambitious charge-hand at her father's engineering works in Newcastle. A sequence of unexpected and dramatic events draws the unlikely couple close together but not before Vanessa destroys the tranquillity of the Ratcliffe family by becoming pregnant...

• Blue Valentine | Blu Ray | (09/05/2011) from £13.67   |  Saving you £9.32 (68.18%)   |  RRP £22.99

  Ryan Gosling (The Notebook, Half Nelson) and Michelle Williams (Shutter Island, Brokeback Mountain) star in Blue Valentine, a honest portrait of a relationship on the rocks.

• Following | DVD | (07/07/2003) from £14.74   |  Saving you £1.25 (8.48%)   |  RRP £15.99

  When writer Bill (Jeremy Theobald) is confronted by his latest 'target' of inspiration a man called Cobb (Alex Haw) he is drawn into a life of snooping and breaking and entering...

• Havana | DVD | (07/02/2005) from £13.40   |  Saving you £-6.15 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Robert Redford and Lena Olin star in Oscar-winning director Sydney Pollack's passionate romantic adventure set in a place once called ""the sexiest city in the world."" High-rolling poker player Jack Weil (Redford) is trying to make one big score in 1958 Havana a pleasure-seeker's paradise on the verge of revolution. But his plan doesn't include falling for Roberta (Olin) the beautiful enigmatic wife of revolutionary Arturo Duran (Raul Julia). After Arturo is removed by the police Jack is drawn closer to Roberta who ignites a passion that threatens his last chance for the big score. Breathtaking cinematography a powerful story and a sensual score be Dave Grusin make Havana an unforgettable experience.

• THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA | Blu Ray | (12/03/2018) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  A high point in the already success-laden career of writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz (A Letter to Three Wives, All About Eve), and one of the most glamorous and extravagant films from Hollywood s Golden Age, The Barefoot Contessa is a tragic drama about the tumultuous rise and fall of fictional Hollywood actress Maria Vargas (Ava Gardner). Humphrey Bogart plays down on his luck writer and director Harry Dawes, reduced to working for an egotistical and abusive producer, Kirk Edwards (Warren Stevens). Whilst scouting for the female lead in his new movie, Dawes meets the beautiful and charismatic Maria Vargas, a barefooted flamenco dancer, in a Madrid night club and convinces her to star in his movie. Maria is an overnight sensation, but cannot find satisfaction in the shallow world of Hollywood, and the men in her life who treat her as nothing more than a commodity. Also featuring Edmund O Brien in an Oscar winning role as a duplicitous publicist, and featuring cinematography from the legendary Jack Cardiff, The Barefoot Contessa was a massive success upon release, and The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present the film in a special Dual Format edition, that includes the film on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK. Features: 1080p presentation of the film on Blu-ray Optional 5.1 and uncompressed LPCM dual mono soundtracks Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing Rarely seen archival interview with director Joseph L. Mankiewicz Audio commentary with film historians Julie Kirgo and David Del Valle Original theatrical trailer A collector s booklet featuring a new essay by Farren Smith Nehme; and rare archival material.

• Sex and the City: Series 2 | DVD | (01/07/2002) from £17.98   |  Saving you £19.00 (118.82%)   |  RRP £34.99

  Much like the novels of Fanny Burney or Jane Austen 200 years before, Sex and the City tackles that perennial female conundrum, how to maintain independence from men (intellectual, sexual, financial) while seeking the ideal life-partner for whom that much-cherished independence can safely be sacrificed. So it is that Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha prowl relentlessly the canyons of Manhattan in search of mates, all of whom fall woefully short of their needs in one crucial way or another. Yet, with biological clocks ticking and suppressed nesting instincts fighting back, the foursome occasionally find themselves dangerously close to despair. The dating game can be deadly serious sometimes. Which is why Sex and the City is not just good TV, it's great TV: for all its refreshingly cynical wit and superficial vivaciousness, the show has at its heart a streak of pathos and painful truth that resonates deeply with its audience. In the show's second season, the scrutiny falls more on the women than their succession of useless dates. Carrie has to learn the painful truth about Big all over again; Miranda has panic attacks about being alone for the rest of her life; Sam is humiliated by the ladies who lunch into confessing that she's a whore; and Charlotte is reduced to trading kinky foot massages for free shoes. Savage love, indeed. On the DVD: Sex and the City, Season 2 has all 18 episodes on three discs. Frustratingly, the menus have no "Play All" facility so you can't just sit back and enjoy--each episode requires navigation from the main menu to an episode list to a redundant preview screen before the play selection is offered. There are mini trailers for each episode and a short (eight-minute) promo featurette. The picture is a little fuzzy in places, doubtless the result of transfer from NTSC format, but is still an improvement over the first season. --Mark Walker

• Touch - Season 1 | DVD | (01/04/2013) from £5.03   |  Saving you £29.96 (595.63%)   |  RRP £34.99

  We are all interconnected. Our lives are invisibly tied to those whose destinies touch ours. This is the hopeful premise of the new drama Touch from creator and writer Tim Kring (Heroes, Crossing Jordan) and executive producers Peter Chernin (New Girl, Terra Nova) and Katherine Pope (New Girl, Terra Nova). Blending science, spirituality and emotion, the series will follow seemingly unrelated people all over the world whose lives affect each other in ways seen and unseen, known and unknown. At the story’s center is Martin Bohm (Kiefer Sutherland), a widower and single father, haunted by an inability to connect to his emotionally challenged 11-year-old son, Jake (David Mazouz). Caring, intelligent and thoughtful, Martin has tried everything to reach his son. But Jake never speaks, shows little emotion and never allows himself to be touched by anyone, including Martin. Jake is obsessed with numbers – writing long strings of them in his ever-present notebooks – and with discarded cell phones. Social worker Clea Hopkins (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) believes that Jake’s needs are too serious for Martin to handle. She sees a man whose life has become dominated by a child he can no longer control. She believes that it’s time for the state to intervene. So Jake is placed in foster care, despite Martin’s desperate objections. However, everything changes after Martin meets Arthur Teller (Danny Glover), a professor and an expert on children who possess special gifts when it comes to numbers. Martin learns that Jake possesses an extraordinary gift – the ability to perceive the seemingly hidden patterns that connect every life on the planet. While Martin wants nothing more than to communicate directly with his son, Jake connects to his father through numbers, not words. Martin realizes that it’s his job to decipher these numbers and recognize their meaning. As he puts the pieces together, he will help people across the world connect as their lives intersect according to the patterns Jake has foreseen. Martin’s quest to connect with his son will shape humanity’s destiny.