Drama

• Richard III | DVD | (08/05/2000) from £17.97   |  Saving you £-4.98 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  This film adaptation of a critically acclaimed stage production of Shakespeare's historical drama stars Ian McKellen in the title role. The setting is a comic-book vision of 1930s London: part art deco, part Third Reich, part industrial-age rust and rot. The play's force is turned into a synthetic high by art directors and storyboard sketchers, all of whom have a field day condensing the material into disposable pop imagery. Richard III is a fun film, more than anything, so infatuated with its own monstrous stitchery that even the most awkward casting (Annette Bening and Robert Downey Jr) seems a part of the ridiculous design. McKellen is the best thing about the movie, his mesmerising portrayal of freakish despotism and poisoned desire a thing to behold. --Tom Keogh

• The Kindergarten Teacher | Blu Ray | (01/07/2019) from £10.75   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Maggie Gyllenhaal stars as Lisa Spinelli, a kindergarten teacher and poet fed up with her career, her oblivious husband and teenage kids who largely ignore her. When she discovers that a five-year-old in her class may be a poetic prodigy, Lisa becomes fascinated and tries to protect him from neglectful parents. She soon finds herself risking her career and family to nurture his talent. Special Features: Maggie Screen talk

• The Boy With Green Hair | DVD | (07/02/2011) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Peter Fry (Dean Stockwell - Quantum Leap) is a boy with no hair who refuses to speak to child psychologist Dr Evans (Robert Ryan) as to why he has been found lost and completely bald. But when the doctor shares his hamburger with him Peter tells his incredible story expect doubting that the doctor will believe him. Peter a typical American boy is orphaned when his parents are caught in the London Blitz. With no one wishing to tell him of his parents' fate Peter is shuttled from one selfish relative to the next ending with Gramp (Pat O'Brien) a kindly ex-vaudevillian. Peter learns from his teacher Miss Brand (Barbara Hale) that he is a war orphan and the very next morning his hair turns green! But other kids jeer at him; adults are perturbed and even the kindly milkman turns against him. The absurd over-reactions of stupid people make his life a misery and drive him away. The Boy With Green Hair is Joseph Losey's film parable of tolerance and pacifism that was way ahead of its time.

• Miss You Already | Blu Ray | (01/02/2016) from £7.40   |  Saving you £10.59 (143.11%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Friends since childhood Jess and Milly can't remember a time they didn't share everything secrets, clothes, even boyfriends. Their differences are the glue that binds them together. That is until Milly is hit with the life changing news that she has breast cancer and needs Jess's support more than ever. As Jess tries to balance her own life as well as being there for Milly it is only a matter of time before the pressure on their bond takes its toll.

• The OC - The Complete Third Season | DVD | (04/09/2006) from £17.00   |  Saving you £45.98 (328.19%)   |  RRP £59.99

  The O.C. - also known as Orange County California - is an idyllic paradise a wealthy harbour-front community where everything and everyone appears to be perfect. But beneath the surface is a world of shifting loyalties and identities of kids living secret lives hidden from their parents and of parents living secret lives hidden from their children... Episodes Comprise: 1. The Aftermath 2. The Shape Of Things To Come 3. The End Of Innocence 4. The Last Waltz 5. The Perfec

• Maurice (the Merchant Ivory Collection) | DVD | (06/09/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  The second of the Merchant/Ivory films (A Room with a View, Howard's End), Maurice deals with a theme few period pieces dare mention--a young man's struggle with his homosexuality. It's not just a gay coming-of-age story, however. The hero wrestles with British class society as much as his personal and sexual identity.The film opens on a stormy, windswept beach, as an older man awkwardly instructs young, fatherless Maurice Hall (James Wilby) in the "sacred mysteries" of sex. The same turbulent, wordless struggle with passion lasts throughout this slowly evolving, beautifully filmed story. Novelist E M Forster's brainy, British melodrama hinges on choice and compulsion, as the pensive hero falls for two completely different men. First comes frail, suppressed Clive (Hugh Grant), who wants nothing more than classical Platonic harmony ... and a straight lifestyle. (Grant's performance is so convincing, one wonders how he ever became a heterosexual sex symbol.) After Clive's wedding, Maurice turns to hypnosis to cure his unspeakable longings. Unfortunately, his "cure" is interrupted by Clive's lustful, brooding, barely literate gamekeeper Scudder (Rupert Graves), a worker more at home gutting rabbits than discussing the classics. Maurice's love for a "social inferior" forces him to confront his illicit desire and his ingrained class snobbery. --Grant Balfour

• Grace Is Gone | DVD | (11/06/2012) from £10.98   |  Saving you £6.00 (66.74%)   |  RRP £14.99

  An awkward family man struggles to take care of his two daughters while his wife is fighting in Iraq. When tragedy strikes the family, he attempts to bond with his children and find the courage to tell them about their mother.

• Alfie Darling | Blu Ray | (09/03/2020) from £20.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Sixties icon Alfie Elkins makes a ribald return appearance in this sequel to the classic comedy-drama that shot Michael Caine to stardom. Alan Price stars as the Jack-the-Lad with an over-active libido alongside Jill Townsend, Hannah Gordon, Rula Lenska and Joan Collins. Alfie Darling is presented here as a brand-new High Definition transfer from the original film elements in its original theatrical aspect ratio. Alfie makes a good living driving huge trucks across Europe, with a girl hidden away in every place he visits - as well as some along the way! Then he meets cool, aloof Abby, who resists his charms - but Alfie was never one to shy away from a challenge! Special Feature: Image gallery

• Return From Witch Mountain | DVD | (22/03/2004) from £8.86   |  Saving you £7.13 (80.47%)   |  RRP £15.99

  An entire city teeters on the brink of nuclear disaster when greedy criminals manipulate a young boy's supernatural powers for their own devious gain.

• Clockwork Orange | DVD | (13/11/2000) from £8.99   |  Saving you £11.00 (122.36%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The controversy that surrounded Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Anthony Burgess's dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange while the film was out of circulation suggested that it was like Romper Stomper: a glamorisation of the violent, virile lifestyle of its teenage protagonist, with a hypocritical gloss of condemnation to mask delight in rape and ultra-violence. Actually, it is as fable-like and abstract as The Pilgrim's Progress, with characters deliberately played as goonish sitcom creations. The anarchic rampage of Alex (Malcolm McDowell), a bowler-hatted juvenile delinquent of the future, is all over at the end of the first act. Apprehended by equally brutal authorities, he changes from defiant thug to cringing bootlicker, volunteering for a behaviourist experiment that removes his capacity to do evil.It's all stylised: from Burgess' invented pidgin Russian (snarled unforgettably by McDowell) to 2001-style slow tracks through sculpturally perfect sets (as with many Kubrick movies, the story could be told through decor alone) and exaggerated, grotesque performances on a par with those of Dr Strangelove (especially from Patrick Magee and Aubrey Morris). Made in 1971, based on a novel from 1962, A Clockwork Orange resonates across the years. Its future is now quaint, with Magee pecking out "subversive literature" on a giant IBM typewriter and "lovely, lovely Ludwig Van" on mini-cassette tapes. However, the world of "Municipal Flat Block 18A, Linear North" is very much with us: a housing estate where classical murals are obscenely vandalised, passers-by are rare and yobs loll about with nothing better to do than hurt people. On the DVD: The extras are skimpy, with just an impressionist trailer in the style of the film used to brainwash Alex and a list of awards for which Clockwork Orange was nominated and awarded. The box promises soundtracks in English, French and Italian and subtitles in ten languages, but the disc just has two English soundtracks (mono and Dolby Surround 5.1) and two sets of English subtitles. The terrific-looking "digitally restored and remastered" print is letterboxed at 1.66:1 and on a widescreen TV plays best at 14:9. The film looks as good as it ever has, with rich stable colours (especially and appropriately the orangey-red of the credits and the blood) and a clarity that highlights previously unnoticed details such as Alex's gouged eyeball cufflinks and enables you to read the newspaper articles which flash by. The 5.1 soundtrack option is amazingly rich, benefiting the nuances of performance as much as the classical/electronic music score and the subtly unsettling sound effects. --Kim Newman

• True Women | DVD | (23/04/2012) from £19.39   |  Saving you £-13.40 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Spanning five decades from the Texas Revolution through the American Civil War, True Women is a story of love, friendship, survival and triumph. Telling the story of three women, all very different in their ideals and personalities, but similar in their strength and courage, True Women is a sweeping saga of love, war and adventure told on an epic scale.

• Memories Of Murder | DVD | (24/01/2005) from £33.99   |  Saving you £-14.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  This is a true story... 1986 to 1991: in a small town outside Seoul over the course of six years 10 women are raped and murdered in a radius of just 2km. Against a backdrop of air raid drills and fear of invasion from the north South Korean society's first serial killer takes the lives of 10 victims ranging from a 71 year-old grandmother to a 13 year old schoolgirl. At a time in South Korea when a murder investigation only meant grilling those who knew the victim for these offic

• All the Queen's Men/Nightmaster/Buster/Love the Hard Way | DVD | (26/11/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £1.99

  All the Queen's Men/Nightmaster/Buster/Love the Hard Way Four Great films!

• The Entertainer | DVD | (01/03/2004) from £20.97   |  Saving you £-4.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The Entertainer of the title is Archie Rice, a mediocre music hall artist upholding a dying tradition in an English seaside against a background of the 1956 Suez Crisis. Laurence Olivier stars and is supported by a superb cast including a young Alan Bates as his son, Roger Livesey as his kindly, now retired, always more talented and popular father, and Joan Plowright as his daughter (who, ironically given the story, married Olivier the following year). Albert Finney makes his screen debut in a tiny role and the remarkable cast also features Daniel Massey, Shirley Anne Field, Thora Hird and Charles Gray. Archie himself is a hollow man who brings pain to all around him, and while Olivier's brilliant performance reveals the layers of cynicism which disguise the emptiness inside, the emotional resonance lies with those forced to endure Rice's manipulations, adulteries and deceits. On stage John Osborne's play proved to be a signature part for Olivier, and director Tony Richardson--who filmed Osborne's equally sour Look Back In Anger (1958)--handles the material with unvarnished realism. Unfolding like a dark variation on Chaplin's Limelight (1952), the film equally casts a shadow over the less stellar Tony Hancock vehicle The Punch and Judy Man (1963), ultimately working as both family tragedy and allegory for a declining post-war England. Surprisingly an American 1976 TV movie remake starring Jack Lemmon held its own against this minor British classic. On the DVD: The Entertainer is presented letterboxed at 1.66:1, and sourced from an excellent print preserves the look of the original black and white cinematography very well. Even so a little material is clipped from either side of the image, though this is most notable on the left of the picture. The mono sound is very good. There are no features other than optional subtitles, including English for those hard of hearing. --Gary S Dalkin

• Innocent Sinners | DVD | (09/10/2017) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  A fine example of a 1950's post war drama produced by the Rank Film Studios and starring Flora Robson, David Kossoff, June Archer and directed by Philip Leacock. Lovejoy Mason (June Archer) is an independently minded young rascal living in bombed out London. Bored with her mundane existence Lovejoy finds an outlet for beauty and self-expression by building a small garden in the ruins of a bombed out church yard. Though she is ignored by her mother and ridiculed by other local children, Lovejoy is aided in her project by Tip Malone (Christopher Hey). Tragedy strikes when her garden is vandalised by a local boys' gang, however impressed by her determination, they offer to help her rebuild it. Lovejoy's troubles are not over, and she faces further challenges before she gets the garden of her dreams. Britain, like Lovejoy's garden, was rising from the rubble of war and thriving.

• Hong Kong 1941 | DVD | (21/01/2002) from £21.29   |  Saving you £-1.30 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Hong Kong 1941 is a film from the former Crown Colony uniquely focusing on the Japanese occupation during the Second World War. Starring Chow Yun-Fat, shortly before A Better Tomorrow (1986) made him a superstar, this is a war drama far removed from the usual action fare expected from Hong Kong cinema. The English title deliberately evokes Spielberg's 1941, though the content anticipates the same director's Empire of the Sun, even to the extent that the hymn "Suo Gan" is used in both movies. The story of two friends in love with the same woman may call to mind Pearl Harbor, though this comparatively low-budget feature offers an infinitely more convincing account of the horrors of war than Michael Bay's glossy big-budget epic, with some of the most harrowing sequences since The Deer Hunter. The film does not shy away from the moral complexities of collaboration with the enemy, and likewise presents the main characters as fully three-dimensional. Chow Yun-Fat inevitably dominates (he won a Golden Horse award for his performance), yet Cecilia Yip Tong makes a strong impression as the heroine whose terminal illness does not result in the expected sentimental clichés. Alex Man is memorable as the third corner of the triangle, but what makes Hong Kong 1941 genuinely notable is its emotionally charged evocation of WWII from a rarely seen perspective. On the DVD: Hong Kong 1941 is presented in an anamorphically enhanced transfer at 1.77:1, cropping just a little of the original Hong Kong Critics Award-winning cinematography. The picture is excellent, with no blemishes, fine detail, rich colours and barely a hint of grain. The sound is offered in stereo in the original Cantonese, with optional English subtitles, or in a Dolby Digital 5.1 remix and dubbed into English. Both tracks have occasional distortion on the music. The original version preserves the performances much better, though some of the subtitles are wildly inaccurate--references to living in the 21st century and to Japanese jet planes--while the dubbed track offers better than average voice acting but with many of the cultural references Westernised. The multi-channel remix adds only discrete ambient effects and is barely noticeable. The main special features are an information-packed commentary by Hong Kong movie expert Bay Logan, and two interviews. Chow Yun-Fat speaks rather nervously in English for 12 minutes on a variety of topics, concentrating on his work with John Woo. The interview with Cecilia Yip Tong, specific to Hong Kong 1941, is in Cantonese with English subtitles, runs 27 minutes and is anamorphically enhanced with excellent image quality. Also included is a routine photo gallery, the original theatrical trailer and 12 Hong Kong Legends DVD trailers. --Gary S Dalkin

• Everlasting Moments | DVD | (28/09/2009) from £8.94   |  Saving you £9.05 (101.23%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Based on a true story, in Sweden in the early 1900s in a time of social change and unrest, of war and poverty, Maria, a young working class woman, wins a camera in a lottery and decides to keep it, a decision which alters her whole life.

• Doctor Zhivago | DVD | (23/03/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Omar Sharif stars in the title role of Doctor Zhivago portraying the surgeon-poet over a half-century period. Zhivago who is married to Tonya (Geraldine Chaplin) an aristocratic girl with whom he raises a family is also in love with Lara (Julie Christie) a nurse whose life has been destroyed by tragedy. Repeatedly brought together and separated from each woman by war and revolution Zhivago is torn apart by conflict. He loves Tonya deeply but his poetic soul belongs to Lara. Much like his beloved country Zhivago's spirit becomes battered by the devastation of war as he struggles to maintain his individualism in the face of overwhelming odds.

• The Hi-Line | DVD | (11/12/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Vera Johnson (Rachael Leigh Cook) is two years out of high school but still lives with her parents. Wasting time with meaningless jobs she dreams of life beyond the limits of her small Montana town. When a young stranger walks into her life bearing a horrible dark secret it will turn her world upside down forever!

• Brazil - Limited Edition Steelbook | Blu Ray | (03/03/2014) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  It's only a state of mind. Jonathan Pryce stars as Sam Lowry in this surrealistic spectacle about a daydreaming bureaucrat trapped in a future dystopia where love is forbidden from interfering with efficiency. But with the help of an underground superhero (Robert De Niro) and a beautiful mystery woman (Kim Greist) Sam learns to soar to freedom on the wings of his untamed imagination or so he thinks. Acclaimed filmmaker Terry Gilliam directs with an acerbic wit and poet's eye that dazzles like never before in glorious high