War

• Casino | Blu Ray | (24/11/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Director Martin Scorsese reunites with members of his GoodFellas gang (writer Nicholas Pileggi; actors Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Frank Vincent) for a three-hour epic about the rise and fall of mobster Sam "Ace" Rothstein (De Niro), a character based on real-life gangster Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal. (It's modeled after on Wiseguy and GoodFellas and Pileggi's true crime book Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas.) Through Rothstein, the picture tells the story of how the Mafia seized, and finally lost control of, Las Vegas gambling. The first hour plays like a fascinating documentary, intricately detailing the inner workings of Vegas casinos. Sharon Stone is the stand out among the actors; she nabbed an Oscar nomination for her role as the voracious Ginger, the glitzy call girl who becomes Rothstein's wife. The film is not as fast paced or gripping as Scorsese's earlier gangster pictures (Mean Streets and GoodFellas), but it's still absorbing. And, hey--it's Scorsese! --Jim Emerson

• The Golden Girls - Season 4 | DVD | (01/09/2008) from £15.93   |  Saving you £0.06 (0.38%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Long before reality-show staples Big Brother and The Real World tapped into the drama and high-hilarity of cohabitation, the long-running "Golden Girls" paved the way into that prime-time show format. The only difference is that Golden Girls was pure fiction. Season Four stays true to the format that earned the series three Emmys and a Golden Globe Award: three widowed/divorced friends in their '50s and one octogenarian mother and grandmother all share a home and their retirement in Miami, Florida. In a season that includes a UFO sighting and government cover up; the implications of drug addiction; a late-in-life wedding; the ridiculous '80s aerobics craze--spandex, headbands, leg warmers and all; a nightmarish nursing home; lesbianism; an intergenerational love triangle; and a trip to Rose's mythical St. Olaf; the episodes in Season Four are more entertaining and often downright risqué. There are some notable cameos as well--Bob Hope steals the show in "You Gotta Have Hope" as the featured talent for Dorothy's hospital charity show; Richard Mulligan of Empty Nest bridges the spin-off link as the girls' newly widowed neighbor and object of Blanche's advances; Jay Thomas plays an overactive director in "High Anxiety," where the girls' kitchen is used as a TV commercial set; and blink and you'll miss a young Quentin Tarantino as an Elvis impersonator in "Sophia's Wedding". Overall, Season Four is zestier and much less earnest than previous seasons, which is exactly what works about the series: the bawdier the grandmothers, the funnier the show. --Gabi Knight

• Freedom Radio | DVD | (08/02/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  A stirring wartime adventure. The Ryder family find their loyalty split as the Nazis rise to power.

• Black Hawk Down / Jarhead / Tears Of The Sun | DVD | (12/10/2009) from £6.22   |  Saving you £6.77 (108.84%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Jarhead: Jarhead (the self-imposed moniker of the Marines) follows Swoff (Gyllenhaal) from a sobering stint in boot camp to active duty where he sports a sniper rifle through Middle East deserts that provide no cover from the heat or Iraqi soldiers. Swoff and his fellow Marines sustain themselves with sardonic humanity and wicked comedy on blazing desert fields in a country they don't understand against an enemy they can't see for a cause they don't fully grasp. Black Hawk Down: Ridley Scott directs this fast moving action adventure about the disastrous mission in Somalia on October 3 1993 where nearly 100 U.S. Army Rangers commanded by Capt. Mike Steele were dropped by helicopter deep into the capital city of Mogadishu to capture two top lieutenants of a Somali warlord which leads to a large and chaotic firefight between the Rangers and hundreds of Somali gunmen which destroys two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters in Mogadishu. Tears Of The Sun: Loyal veteran Navy S.E.A.L. Lt. A.K. Waters is sent into the heart of war-torn Africa on a hazardous mission to rescue Dr. Lena Hendricks a U.S. citizen who runs a mission. When the beautiful doctor refuses to abandon the refugees in her care Lt. Waters finds himself having to choose between following orders and the dictates of his own conscience. Together they begin a dangerous trek through the deadly jungle all the while being pursued by a rebel militia group with only one goal in mind: to assassinate Lt. Waters' unit and the refugees in his care...

• A Kind Of Loving | DVD | (13/10/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  In this British drama Alan Bates stars as a young man who must decide whether to follow his heart or his responsibilities when his girlfriend falls pregnant and they are forced to move into her family's house.

• Rescue Dawn | Blu Ray | (06/10/2008) from £9.69   |  Saving you £10.30 (106.30%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A US Fighter pilot's epic struggle of survival after being shot down on a mission over Laos during the Vietnam War.

• The Secret Hero - Suskind: A True Story of Courage from the Holocaust (Multi Award Winning Film) | DVD | (08/02/2021) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• I Was A Spy | DVD | (19/05/2014) from £6.55   |  Saving you £7.70 (145.56%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Martha and Stephan are two Belgians working in a German hospital during the First World War. This is their cover: they are in fact spies for the Allies. After blowing up an ammunition dump Martha puts herself in more danger by accompanying the German Commandant to Brussels where she hopes to gather vital information about the Kaiser. Her mission becomes fraught with danger and it gets harder and harder for her to hide her true identity. Knowing this Stephan sets off to help her but will he be too late? Starring Madeleine Carroll Herbert Marcshall and Conrad Veidt.

• Cross Of Iron (Digitally Restored) | DVD | (12/09/2011) from £4.93   |  Saving you £11.06 (224.34%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Based on the novel by Will Heinrich, Sam Pekinpah's (The Wild Bunch) only war film is an intense and uncompromising affair that brilliantly reflects both the futility of conflict and the director's fascination with individuals confronted by events beyond their control.A World War II tale told from the German perspective, Cross Of Iron follows a platoon of German soldiers in Russia when the German Wehrmacht forces had been decimated and the Germans were retreating along the Russian front. Rolf Steiner (James Coburn) is a German corporal and recipient of the Iron Cross who has grown disenchanted with Hitler's war machine. When Captain Stransky (Maximillian Schell) assumes charge, the pair are thrown into immediate conflict, the autocratic but ultimately cowardly Stransky coveting the loyalty and honour Steiner commands.Evocatively shot by John Coquillon (Billy the Kid) in sombre tones to emphasise the horrors of combat, the superlative lead performances are matched by David Warner and James Mason as war-weary senior officers. Viewed as one of Peckinpah's most powerful works, it's an unflinching vision of the Second World War.

• Recon: 1944 The Enemy Within | DVD | (18/01/2021) from £4.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Coronation Street - Out Of Africa | DVD | (10/11/2008) from £2.99   |  Saving you £7.00 (234.11%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Coronation Street favourites Chesney Kirk and Fiz set out for South Africa to be reunited with Cilla. With regular Corrie viewers able to watch the fallout in Weatherfield on ITV1 the action in South Africa is only available to watch on ITV DVD. Guaranteed to make the christmas wish list of every Corrie fan this is the first Coronation Street DVD special for ten years.

• Born On The Fourth Of July | Blu Ray | (04/07/2011) from £6.99   |  Saving you £13.00 (185.98%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The second film in Oliver Stone's Vietnam trilogy moves from the brutality of war in Platoon to its equally traumatic aftermath. Based on the memoir of combat veteran Ron Kovic, the film stars Tom Cruise as Kovic, whose gunshot wound in Vietnam left him paralysed from the chest down. He is deeply embittered by neglect in a veteran's hospital and by the shattering of his patriotic idealism because of the horror and futility of the Vietnam conflict. While painfully and awkwardly adjusting to his disability and a changing definition of masculinity, Kovic joins the burgeoning movement of antiwar protest, culminating in a climactic appearance at the 1976 Democratic national convention. Born on theFourth of July is a powerfully intimate portrait that unfolds on an epic scale and is arguably Stone's best film (if you can forgive its often strident tone). Cruise's Oscar-nominated role is uncompromising in its depiction of one man's personal anguish and political awakening. --Jeff Shannon

• City of War - Multi-Award-Winning Film (Starring Steve Buscemi and Daniel Bruhl) | DVD | (15/03/2021) from £11.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  For nearly 30 years now, businessman John Rabe (Ulrich Tukur) has been living with his wife Dora in the capital city of China, Nanking, where he heads the Siemens industrial plant. It is difficult for him to hand over the reins of the operation to his successor and return to Berlin. He has learned to love the country, and he knows that while he is a man of influence here, at the Siemens headquarters in Berlin he is replaceable. During the farewell ball in his honour, Nanking is bombed by Japanese airplanes following the Japanese army's capture of Shanghai. As panic breaks out in the city, Rabe resolutely opens the company gates and offers refuge to the desperate families of his employees. Learning that the city will be attacked by the Japanese, an international diplomat Dr. Rosen (Daniel Bruhl) presents an idea to the city officials about the creation of a safety zone for civilians that had saved lives in Shanghai. John Rabe is nominated as chairman of the new safety zone. The committee also elect Dr. Wilson (Steve Buscemi), an American senior physician of the local hospital, who detests Rabe because he believes he works in the interests of the Third Reich. These three men must now learn to work together to try and protect the people. While the Imperial Japanese Army continue to unleash a wave of brutality, rape and murder on the civilian population, Rabe, Wilson and Rosen courageously negotiate with the Japanese and wrest a guarantee for a safety zone for the civilians. However hundreds of thousands of desperate people pour into the zone - much more than expected. The Japanese continue to harass and attack the population, and it becomes a life and death struggle as Rabe and his comrades try to protect them. The Japanese now plan to use a pretence to storm the zone and with the threat of a looming massacre - so a race against time begins for Rabe, Wilson and Rosen...

• The Young Lions | DVD | (12/03/2012) from £19.99   |  Saving you £-10.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  One of the most thoughtful films about World War II, this 1958 Edward Dmytryk (The Left Hand of God) drama, based on a novel by Irwin Shaw The Young Lions, tells parallel stories of two American soldiers (Montgomery Clift and Dean Martin) and one German officer (Marlon Brando), whose war experiences we follow until they intersect outside a concentration camp. Martin plays what he calls "a likeable coward," Clift is intense as a Jewish GI and Brando experiments with the limits of his part as a Nazi re-evaluating his beliefs. Legend has it that Clift accused Brando of bleeding-heart excessiveness. Interestingly, the two Method actors share no scenes together. --Tom Keogh

• Hell And High Water (Masters of Cinema) Blu-ray | Blu Ray | (07/12/2020) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Eureka Entertainment to release HELL AND HIGH WATER; Samuel Fuller's Cold War submarine adventure starring Richard Widmark; presented on Blu-ray from a stunning 4K restoration, as a part of The Masters of Cinema Series. Available from 7 December 2020, the release will be limited to 1000 copies only. In the summer of 1953, it was announced that an atomic bomb of foreign origin had been exploded somewhere outside of the United States... This is the story of that explosion. Starting with a nuclear explosion and only escalating from there (Fuller was a master of the opening scene If a story doesn't give you a hard-on in the first couple of scenes, throw it in the goddamn garbage.), Hell and High Water is a white-knuckle Cold War thriller that would have a huge influence on the future of blockbuster cinema (Steven Spielberg was so enamoured with the film that he kept a print in his car for many years). When military intelligence suggests a secret atomic base is being covertly set-up on an island near Japan, former US Navy commander Adam Jones (Richard Widmark) is sent on a covert mission to prevent a nuclear attack that could trigger World War 3. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Samuel Fuller's Hell and High Water on Blu-ray from a stunning 4K restoration. Special Edition Contains: 1080p presentation on Blu-ray from Fox's 4K restoration Original, uncompressed, monaural soundtrack Optional English SDH Audio commentary by author Scott Harrison Audio commentary with Film historians Alain Silver and James Ursini Richard Widmark: Strength of Characters [45 mins] a documentary on the actor Original theatrical trailer PLUS: A collector's booklet featuring an essay by film critic Philip Kemp and the words of Samuel Fuller.

• Zulu Dawn | DVD | (05/01/2004) from £9.62   |  Saving you £4.37 (45.43%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Cy Endfield cowrote the epic prequel Zulu Dawn 15 years after his enormously popular Zulu. Set in 1879, this film depicts the catastrophic Battle of Isandhlwana, which remains the worst defeat of the British army by natives--the British contingent was outnumbered 16-to-1 by the Zulu tribesmen. The film's opinion of events is made immediately clear in its title sequence: ebullient African village life presided over by King Cetshwayo is contrasted with aristocratic artifice under the arrogant eye of General Lord Chelmsford (Peter O'Toole). Chelmsford is at the heart of all that goes wrong, initiating the catastrophic battle with an ultimatum made seemingly for the sake of giving his troops something to do. His detached manner leads to one mistake after another and this is wryly illustrated in a moment when neither he nor his officers can be bothered to pronounce the name of the land they're in. That it's a beautiful land none the less is made clear by the superb cinematography, which drinks in the massive open spaces that shrink the British army to a line of red ants. Splendidly stiff-upper-lipped support comes from a heroic Burt Lancaster and a fluffy, yet gruff, Bob Hoskins. Although the story is less focused and inevitably more diffuse than the concentrated events of Rorke's Drift that followed soon after, Zulu Dawn is an unflinchingly honest depiction of British Imperial diplomacy. --Paul Tonks

• Just A Gigolo | Blu Ray | (30/08/2021) from £18.67   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Paul von Przygodski (David Bowie), a young Prussian gentleman, arrives in the trenches in time to be caught in the final explosion of the Great War. After recuperating in a military hospital, where he is mistaken for a French hero, he returns to Berlin. His family home has been turned into a boarding house, his father (Rudolf Schu¨ndler) is paralyzed, and his mother (Maria Schell) is working in the Turkish baths. Attempting to find a new purpose, his childhood friend, Cilly (Sydne Rome), abandons him for fame and fortune; his former commanding officer, Captain Kraft (David Hemmings), tries to persuade him to join his right-wing movement and a widow, Helga von Kaiserling (Kim Novak), briefly seduces him with the finer things in life. In a society where the individual comes first and anyone can be bought, he is recruited by Baroness von Semering (Marlene Dietrich) as one in her regiment of gigolos. The cynical and decadent world of entertaining rich widows leads an increasingly disillusioned Paul to a poignant, chilling end.

• Across The Universe | Blu Ray | (11/02/2008) from £19.80   |  Saving you £5.19 (26.21%)   |  RRP £24.99

  A love story set against the backdrop of the 1960s amid the turbulent years of anti-war protest, mind exploration and rock 'n roll.

• Paris | DVD | (02/02/2009) from £8.47   |  Saving you £11.52 (57.60%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The moving story of a Parisian who is sick and thinks he may die at any moment. His condition makes him look at all the people he meets in a new and different way.

• The Bells Go Down | DVD | (19/07/2010) from £9.64   |  Saving you £6.35 (65.87%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The Bells Go Down