"Actor: Ben Shenkman"

• Just Like Heaven | DVD | (02/07/2006) from £6.49   |  Saving you £11.50 (177.20%)   |  RRP £17.99

  A lonely architect living in San Francisco falls in love with the ghostly spirit of a comatose woman.

• Angels In America | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £9.99   |  Saving you £4.00 (40.04%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Tony Kushner's prize-winning play Angels in America became the defining US theatrical event of the 1990s, an astonishing mix of philosophy, politics, and vibrant gay soap opera that summed up the Reagan era for an entire generation of theatre-goers. Post-9/11 would seem to be too late for a film version--philosophy and politics don't always age well--but this 2003 HBO adaptation, ably directed by Mike Nichols, provides a time capsule of the '80s and reveals the deep emotional subcurrents that will give the play lasting power. The story centers around Prior Walter (Justin Kirk) and Louis Ironson (Ben Shenkman), a gay couple that falls apart when Prior grows ill as a result of AIDS. But cancer is not the only thing invading Prior's life: He begins to have religious visions of an angel (Emma Thompson) announcing that he is a prophet. Louis, who doesn't cope well with disease and suggestions of mortality, leaves and starts a relationship with Joe Pitt (Patrick Wilson), a closeted Mormon who works for Roy Cohn (Al Pacino)--the real-life right-wing lawyer, notorious for his ruthless behind-the-scenes machinations. Add in Joe's depressed and hallucinating wife Harper (Mary Louise Parker), his determined but open-minded mother Hannah (Meryl Streep), a fierce drag queen/nurse named Belize (Jeffrey Wright, reprising his celebrated performance from the Broadway production), and you've still only begun to discover the wealth of characters and storylines in Kushner's ambitious work. The powerhouse cast (also featuring James Cromwell, Michael Gambon, and Simon Callow) is uniformly superb. The script has its weaknesses--some of the fantastic elements, including Prior's journey to Heaven towards the end, fall flat--but even what doesn't work is bristling with ideas and a ferocious desire to capture human existence in this time and place. --Bret Fetzer

• Pi - 15th Anniversary Edition | DVD | (12/08/2013) from £13.79   |  Saving you £11.20 (81.22%)   |  RRP £24.99

  From acclaimed film-maker Darren Aronofsky director of Requiem for a Dream The Wrestler and Black Swan comes the fifteenth anniversary edition of his debut feature Pi (winner of Best Director at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival). Number theorist Maximillian Cohen (Sean Gullette) has an obsession with numbers that causes him migraines. When Max's computer crashes after predicting a stock market collapse and spitting out a 216-digit number Max initially dismisses it until the prediction comes true and he realises that it could be the key he has been searching for in this surreal psychological drama.

• Pi | DVD | (19/07/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Patterns exist everywhere: in nature, in science, in religion, in business. Max Cohen (played hauntingly by Sean Gullette) is a mathematician searching for these patterns in everything. Yet, he's not the only one, and everyone from Wall Street investors, looking to break the market, to Hasidic Jews, searching for the 216-digit number that reveals the true name of God, are trying to get their hands on Max. This dark, low-budget film was shot in black and white by director Darren Aronofsky. With eerie music, voice-overs, and overt symbolism enhancing the somber mood, Aronofsky has created a disturbing look at the world. Max is deeply paranoid, holed up in his apartment with his computer Euclid, obsessively studying chaos theory. Blinding headaches and hallucinogenic visions only feed his paranoia as he attempts to remain aloof from the world, venturing out only to meet his mentor, Sol Robeson (Mark Margolis), who for some mysterious reason feels Max should take a break from his research. Pi is complex--occasionally toocomplex--but the psychological drama and the loose sci-fi elements make this a worthwhile, albeit consuming, watch. Pi won the Director's Award at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. --Jenny Brown

• Then She Found Me | DVD | (23/02/2009) from £3.89   |  Saving you £12.10 (75.70%)   |  RRP £15.99

  "Then She Found Me" is a film that simultaneously reveals and revels in the contradictions of life. Based on the best-selling novel by Elinor Lipman.

• Roger Dodger | DVD | (31/05/2004) from £8.78   |  Saving you £11.21 (56.10%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Uncermoniously dumped by his sometime girlfriend, a cynical copywriter and self-confessed modern Casanova starts to teach his 16-year-old nephew the ways of women - with surprising results.

• Jesus' Son | DVD | (25/03/2002) from £9.99   |  Saving you £3.00 (30.03%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The intense, edgy, often hilarious story of a young man's circuitous journey from drug dependency and petty crime to a life redeemed by his startling discovery of compassion.

• Breakfast With Scot | DVD | (27/07/2009) from £4.99   |  Saving you £10.00 (200.40%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Eric and Sam have been in a committed relationship for years but their idyllic word is turned upside down when they find themselves responsible for Sam's brother Billy's son when Billy goes missing. Causing rifts between Eric and Sam at first they soon find themselves at ease with parenting especially when they find that Scot is more out of the closet than them!

• Personal Velocity | DVD | (01/09/2003) from £7.99   |  Saving you £12.00 (150.19%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A collection of stories about three women who all came from an unstable family background. There's Delia who was abandoned by her mother and was left to be brought up by her drug-addict father. Greta left home when she was young because she couldn't cope with her mother's criticism and Paula who lived on the streets for a year after running away from home.

• Chasing Sleep | DVD | (20/02/2012) from £4.99   |  Saving you £11.00 (68.80%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Ed (Jeff Daniels – Dumb and Dumber) lies awake in bed at 3:15AM. His wife has not come home. With no clues to where she may have gone, Ed gradually descends into madness and is unable to sleep. Life inside his house becomes claustrophobic and surreal, pushing him to confront his darkest secrets.

• Fight Club/Pi | DVD | (16/04/2007) from £9.97   |  Saving you £-0.98 (-10.90%)   |  RRP £8.99

  Fight Club (Dir. David Fincher 1999): A ticking time bomb insomniac and a slippery soap salesman channel primal male aggression into a shocking new form of therapy. Their concept catches on with underground ""fight clubs"" forming in every town- until a sensuous and mysterious woman comes between the two men and ignites an out-of-control spiral toward oblivion. Pitt and Norton deliver knockout performances in this stunningly original darkly comic film from David Fincher based on the controversial book by Chuck Palahniuk. Pi (Dir. Darren Aronofsky 1998): Darren Aronofsky's award-winning directorial debut Pi is a science-fiction thriller about the haunting journey into the genius mind of a renegade visionary Maximillian Cohen (Sean Gullette). A brilliant troubled man Max is on the verge of the most important discovery of his life. For the past ten years he has been attempting to decode the numerical pattern beneath the ultimate system of ordered chaos - the stock market. As Max verges on a solution chaos is swallowing the world around him. He is pursued by an aggressive Wall Street firm set on financial domination as well as a Kabbalah sect intent on unlocking the secrets behind their ancient holy texts. Max races to crack the code hoping to defy the madness that looms before him. In succeeding he uncovers a secret everyone is willing to kill for.

• Blue Valentine | Blu Ray | (20/07/2015) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Love blooms and dies at the same time in the delicate dance between Oscar nominees Ryan Gosling (Half Nelson) and Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain). Gosling's Dean, a high-school dropout, works for a New York moving company. While relocating a frail widower into a retirement home, he spots Cindy, a nursing student who's visiting her grandmother, but the film actually begins six years later. Married with a daughter, they live in rural Pennsylvania. Heavy drinker Dean's looks are fading, while Cindy still turns heads. In his elegantly constructed second feature, writer-director Derek Cianfrance pirouettes between past and present, with each scene commenting on the next (set to the bittersweet tones of Brooklyn band Grizzly Bear). The Dean of the early years pursues Cindy, who resists at first, but a spontaneous date ends with her tap dancing (badly) and him singing (not so badly). She leaves her domineering boyfriend (Mike Vogel) for this attentive stranger, leading to scenes of intimacy that are far more suggestive than pornographic--even if the MPAA briefly rated the film NC-17. Later, when the family dog goes missing, the cracks in their marriage intensify, so Dean arranges for a night of romance, which plays out like a negative image of their first date. If the two actors, who are very good, are meant to carry equal weight, Gosling has the more difficult task. It's harder to like the clingy, insecure Dean, who loves more intensely and less wisely, but that makes Gosling's the braver performance. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

• Roger Dodger | DVD | (23/01/2012) from £21.58   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network) stars in this sophisticated comedy as Nick, a virgin desperate for a piece of action in New York’s sexy singles scene. He receives a crash course in seduction from his uncle Roger (Campbell Scott – Singles), a cynical advertising copywriter who sees himself as a modern day Casanova. Spotting a couple of beautiful women in a bar, Nick becomes another weapon in Roger’s dating arsenal as he is taken out on a wild night on the prowl.