Drama

• Merchant of Venice | DVD | (11/04/2005) from £7.40   |  Saving you £8.59 (116.08%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Some top Hollywood (and British) talent are on hand for this lavish version of Shakespeare's play, set in 16th century Venice.

• Hud | DVD | (07/06/2004) from £8.99   |  Saving you £7.00 (77.86%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Paul Newman is Hud a man at odds with his father tradition and himself. Hud's only interests are fighting drinking hot-rodding his Cadillac and womanising. Melvyn Douglas is the father an old-line cattle rancher and Patricia Neal is the understanding and appealing housekeeper. Academy Awards went to Patricia Neal Melvyn Douglas and James Wong Howe's brilliant cinematography.

• Layer Cake | DVD | (07/03/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £22.99

  Just as he's about to get out of the game entirely, a drug dealer gets drawn back in to the doublecrossing world of the London mafia in this refreshing British thriller.

• The Quiet American | DVD | (08/09/2003) from £14.98   |  Saving you £1.01 (6.74%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Nothing, and no one, is as it seems, in this adaptation of Graham Greene's classic and prophetic story of love, betrayal, murder and the origin of the American war in Southeast Asia.

• Center Stage | DVD | (06/02/2006) from £6.03   |  Saving you £-0.04 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  A drama with heart and energy that follows the hopes and dreams of a tight-knit group of young dance students as they try to make a name for themselves and become stars in the fiercely competitive world of professional dance.

• Chicago Med: Season Eight | DVD | (27/11/2023) from £12.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Chicago's leading medical heroes return to help save lives in Season Eight of the pulse-pounding and emotional medical drama from Emmy Award winning executive producer Dick Wolf. This season, Dr. Will Halstead (Nick Gehlfuss) deals with a medical supply chain shortage; Dr. Daniel Charles (Oliver Platt) remains at the forefront of psychiatric care; Sharon Goodwin (S. Epatha Merkerson) safeguards quality care in the face of fiscal scrutiny; Dr. Ethan Choi (Brian Tee) reexamines himself after being shot by a former patient; Dr. Dean Archer (Steven Weber) takes over as permanent chief of the ER; charge nurse Maggie Lockwood (Marlyne Barrett) balances work and family issues; Dr. Crockett Marcel (Dominic Rains) tackles his new role on the transplant team; and Dr. Hannah Asher (Jessy Schram) sees to the center's new emergency OB/GYN service.

• The Damned | DVD | (24/05/2004) from £19.98   |  Saving you £-5.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  In 1930s Germany a wealthy industrialist family struggles to maintain its status and influence in the face of the relentless rising tide of fascism. Divided by the rapidly changing social and economic climate the family members resort to blackmail sexual manipulation and murder in a desperate struggle for power and prestige.

• Ed Wood | Blu Ray | (01/02/2016) from £10.75   |  Saving you £-1.76 (N/A%)   |  RRP £8.99

  The significance of Ed Wood, both man and movie, on the career of Tim Burton cannot be emphasised enough. Here Burton regurgitates and pays homage to the influences of his youth, just as he would continue to do with Mars Attacks! and Sleepy Hollow. Everything is just right, from the decision to shoot in black and white, the performances of Johnny Depp (as Ed) and Martin Landau (as Bela Lugosi), the re-creation of 1950s Hollywood and the evocative score by Howard (Lord of the Rings) Shore. The plot struck a poignant familiar chord with Burton, who saw the relationship between the Ed and Lugosi mirroring his own with Vincent Price. Most importantly Burton responded to the story of the struggling, misunderstood artist. For all Burton's big-budget blockbusters (Batman, Planet of the Apes), he still somehow retains the mantle of the kooky niche director. And in the mid-90s, this film actually represented the last vestiges of his independent film production. Fans can only hope he'll soon return to those roots soon. On the DVD: Ed Wood on disc has a good group commentary in which Burton is interviewed rather than expected to hold forth on his own, making his insights alongside the screenwriters, Landau, and various production heads very worthwhile. Also worthy are the featurettes on Landau's Oscar-winning make-up, the FX and the Theremin instrument employed in the score. Best of all is an extremely exotic Music Video based on that score. This doesn't seem to be a new transfer of the film, but in black and white you're less likely to notice. --Paul Tonks

• Gilda (1946) | DVD | (01/10/2018) from £5.00   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Gilda, are you decent? RITA HAYWORTH (The Lady from Shanghai) tosses her hair back and slyly responds, Me? in one of the great star entrances in movie history. Gilda, directed by CHARLES VIDOR (Cover Girl), features a sultry Hayworth in her most iconic role, as the much-lusted-after wife of a criminal kingpin (Paths of Glory's GEORGE MACREADY), as well as the former flame of his bitter henchman (3:10 to Yuma's GLENN FORD), and she drives them both mad with desire and jealousy. An ever-shifting battle of the sexes set on a Buenos Aires casino's glittering floor and in its shadowy back rooms, Gilda is among the most sensual of all Hollywood noirs. BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES: New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack Audio commentary from 2010 by film critic Richard Schickel New interview with film noir historian Eddie Muller Appreciation of Gilda from 2010 featuring filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Baz Luhrmann Rita Hayworth: The Columbia Lady, a 2000 featurette on Hayworth's career as an actor and dancer Trailer PLUS: An essay by critic Sheila O'Malley

• Street Hawk - The Complete Series | DVD | (22/03/2010) from £24.49   |  Saving you £15.50 (63.29%)   |  RRP £39.99

  Enjoy for the first time ever all 13 episodes including the feature length pilot of this much loved 1980's motorcycle contender to Knight Rider. Jesse Mach an ex-motorcycle cop injured in the line of duty-now a police trouble shooter has been recruited for a top secret government mission to ride Street Hawk an all terrain attack motorcycle designed to fight urban crime capable of incredible speeds of up to 300 mph and immense firepower. Only one man Norman Tuttle knows Jesse Machs true identity. The Man The Machine Street Hawk. This is the first time that this 80s' cult classic has ever been released anywhere in the entire world on DVD. The series also features a groundbreaking score by the legendary electronic supergroup 'Tangerine Dream'.

• Rocky II | Blu Ray | (06/03/2023) from £19.90   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Rocky struggles in family life after his bout with Apollo Creed, while the embarrassed champ insistently goads him to accept a challenge for a rematch.

• Romeo And Juliet | DVD | (07/02/2000) from £5.02   |  Saving you £7.97 (158.76%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Baz Luhrmann (Strictly Ballroom) takes a shot at reinventing Shakespeare's story of star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet as a visual pastiche inspired by MTV imagery, Hong Kong action-picture clichés, and Luhrmann's own taste for deliberate, gaudy excess. The result is explosive chaos, both in terms of bullets and visual sensibility, which some may find impossible to stick with for more than a few minutes. Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes play the leads, though not with much distinction, while Pete Postlethwaite makes a huge impression as this movie's version of Friar Laurence. The film is successful in spots, but overall its fever-dream game plan is difficult to ride out. --Tom Keogh

• The Bookshop (DVD) | DVD | (22/10/2018) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £10.29

  Based on Penelope Fitzgerald's novel of the same name; The Bookshop is set in 1959, Florence Green (Emily Mortimer), a free-spirited widow, puts grief behind her and risks everything to open up a bookshop the first such shop in the sleepy seaside town of Hardborough, England. Fighting damp, cold and considerable local apathy she struggles to establish herself but soon her fortunes change for the better.

• Reaching for the Moon | DVD | (12/05/2014) from £8.95   |  Saving you £7.04 (78.66%)   |  RRP £15.99

  This award winning drama is set at the height of 1950s glamour and recounts the sensual relationship between Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Elizabeth Bishop (played by Miranda Otto Lord of the Rings) and Brazilian architect Lota de Macedo Soares (the beautifully handsome Brazilian TV star Gloria Pires). When Bishop leaves America in search for inspiration she never counted on meeting the love of her life. At first the two women voice their differing world views but animosity quickly turns to affection and their long-lasting affair dramatically alters Bishop's relationship to the world around her. From Oscar nominated director Bruno Barreto Reaching for the Moon is an intimate portrait of two women finding the most incredible love.

• Little Otik | DVD | (16/06/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Based on a Czech folk tale Jan Svankmajer's most accessible film is the story of Karel and Bozena a married couple who long to have a baby. Whilst digging up an tree stump Karel decides to carve the roots into the image of a child; when his melancholy childless wife sees it her love brings the wooden form to life...

• Burning | DVD | (27/05/2019) from £8.95   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Adapted from a short story by Haruki Murakami, Lee Chang-Dong's BURNING follows the story of deliveryman Jongsu (Ah-In Yoo), who is out on a job when he runs into Haemi (Jong-Seo Jun), a girl who once lived in his neighbourhood. Friendly and flirtatious, she asks if he can look after her cat while she's away on a trip to Africa, and he happily obliges. On her return, she asks Jongsu to meet her at the airport- and promptly introduces him to Ben (Steven Yeun) - an enigmatic young man she met during her trip. As the group spend more time together, Jongsu slowly gets to know the inscrutable visitor until one day, Ben tells him about his most unusual hobby...

• Carve Her Name With Pride | DVD | (22/01/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  The moving and dramatic story of Violette Szabo (McKenna) a courageous WW2 secret agent who was captured in northern France... Carve Her Name With Pride is the inspiring true life story of Violette Szabo. During World War II Violette (Virgina McKenna) volunteers to parachute into France as a secret agent to aid a Resistance group. Her mission successful she joins the Resistance where she stays until captured by the Germans. Tortured by the Gestapo for information she refuses to betray her comrades... Directed by Lewis Gilbert Carve Her Name With Pride is a moving tale about the endurance of the human spirit in even the most adverse circumstances.

• Thelma and Louise | Blu Ray | (06/02/2012) from £9.25   |  Saving you £0.74 (8.00%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Thelma & Louise is a feminist manifesto writ large on the big screen, a smart and funny gender reversal of the standard Hollywood buddy formula, a road movie extraordinaire, with characters who became instant cultural icons. No matter how you define it, Ridley Scott's 1991 box-office hit pinched a nerve and made the cover of national news magazines for tweaking gender politics like no movie before or since. Callie Khouri's screenplay overhauls the buddy formula with its story about two best friends (Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis) who embark on a liberating adventure that turns into an interstate police chase after a traumatic incident makes both women into fugitives; they are en route to a destiny they could never have imagined. The perfect casting of Sarandon and Davis makes Thelma & Louise a movie for the ages and Brad Pitt became an overnight star after his appearance as the con-artist cowboy who gives Davis a memorable (but costly) night in a roadside motel. --Jeff Shannon

• Mahler | DVD | (23/01/2012) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  From its stunning opening sequence, featuring Georgina Hale (who plays the wife of Gustav Mahler in this Ken Russell film) isolated in full mummy wrap and writhing with erotic yearning to the lush strains of her husband's music, Mahler distinguishes itself as the most poetic and archetypal of Russell's great-composer works. A kind of cinematic response to Luchino Visconti's 1971 adaptation of Death in Venice, in which Dirk Bogarde plays a Mahler-esque composer in search of beauty in the plague-filled city, Mahler stars Robert Powell as the great Jewish romantic from 19th-century Vienna, drafting enormous symphonic works in the midst of rising anti-Semitism. Converting to Christianity as a means of survival, Mahler carries on with his work but experiences an erosion of his health and sense of identity. Meanwhile, his self-effacing spouse represses her own creative drives to keep the resident genius afloat, plugging every leak and receding all but invisible into the woodwork. While the film is the least ostentatious of Russell's movies about music, it is hardly conventional--a mix of lyrical tableaux and comic fantasy that adds up to a stirring, dream-like experience. --Tom Keogh

• Sansho The Bailiff (1954) | Blu Ray | (27/01/2020) from £31.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  When an idealistic governor disobeys the reigning feudal lord, he is cast into exile, his wife and children left to fend for themselves and eventually separated by vicious slave traders. Under the dazzling direction of KENJI MIZOGUCHI (Ugetsu), this classic Japanese story became one of cinema's greatest masterpieces, a monumental, empathetic expression of human resilience in the face of evil. Blu-Ray Special Edition Features Restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack Audio commentary by Japanese-literature professor Jeffrey Angles Video interviews with critic Tadao Sato, assistant director Tokuzo Tanaka, and legendary actress Kyoko Kagawa, on the making of the film and its lasting importance PLUS: A book featuring an essay by film writer Mark Le Fanu and two versions of the story on which the film was based: Ogai Mori's 1915 Sansho Dayu and a written form of an earlier oral variation