"Actor: Don Wood"

• Trading Places | DVD | (02/12/2002) from £4.99   |  Saving you £8.00 (160.32%)   |  RRP £12.99

  In this crowd-pleasing 1983 comedy of high finance about a homeless con artist who becomes a Wall Street robber baron, Eddie Murphy consolidated the success of his startling debut in the previous year's 48 Hours and polished his slick-winner persona. The turnabout begins with an argument between super-rich siblings, played by Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche: are captains of industry, they wonder, born or made? To settle the issue, the meanies construct a cruel experiment in social Darwinism. Preppie commodities trader Dan Aykroyd (perfectly cast) is stripped of all his worldly goods and expelled from the firm, and Murphy's smelly derelict is appointed to take his place, graduating to tailored suits and a world-class harem in record time. Eventually the two men team up to teach the nasty old manipulators a lesson, cornering the market in frozen orange juice futures in the process. Director John Landis (The Blues Brothers) doesn't have the world's lightest touch, but he hits most of the jokes hard and quite a few of them pay off. Trading Places is also a landmark film for fans of Jamie Lee Curtis. --David Chute, Amazon.com

• Homeward Bound | DVD | (12/02/2001) from £8.25   |  Saving you £7.74 (93.82%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Walt Disney studios had previously adapted Sheila Burnford's classic animal-adventure novel The Incredible Journey in 1963, and the story proves just as durable in this popular 1993 version, Homeward Bound, in which the heroic trio of animals are given voices provided by Don Ameche, Michael J Fox, and Sally Field. They don't actually speak (like the clever critters in Babe), but we hear their "voices" as the lost household pets--Shadow the golden retriever, Chance the bulldog, and Sassy the cat--survive a harrowing series of adventures as they struggle to find their way home. Perfect entertainment for kids, this frequently clever movie offers an abundance of wildlife and beautiful location scenery, and the vocal performances by Ameche, Fox and Field are surprisingly effective. A hit with parents and children alike, the film was followed by a sequel in 1996. --Jeff Shannon

• Remember The Titans | DVD | (26/11/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  In this true story Denzel Washington stars as an American football coach at a US high school in 1971 given the unenviable task of creating a segregated school football team.

• The Sixth Sense | DVD | (08/01/2001) from £5.19   |  Saving you £14.80 (285.16%)   |  RRP £19.99

  I see dead people," whispers little Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment), scared to affirm what is to him now a daily occurrence. This peaked nine-year old, already hypersensitive to begin with, is now being haunted by seemingly malevolent spirits. Child psychologist Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) is trying to find out what's triggering Cole's visions, but what appears to be a psychological manifestation turns out to be frighteningly real. It might be enough to scare off a lesser man, but for Malcolm it's personal--several months before, he was accosted and shot by an unhinged patient, who then turned the gun on himself. Since then, Malcolm has been in turmoil--he and his wife (Olivia Williams) are barely speaking, and his life has taken an aimless turn. Having failed his loved ones and himself, he's not about to give up on Cole. The Sixth Sense, M Night Shyamalan's third feature, sets itself up as a thriller, poised on the brink of delivering monstrous scares, but gradually evolves into more of a psychological drama with supernatural undertones. Many critics faulted the film for being mawkish and New Age-y, but no matter how you slice it, this is one mightily effective piece of filmmaking. The bare bones of the story are basic enough, but the moody atmosphere created by Shyamalan and cinematographer Tak Fujimoto made this one of the creepiest pictures of 1999, forsaking excessive gore for a sinisterly simple feeling of chilly otherworldliness. Willis is in his strong, silent type mode here, and gives the film wholly over to Osment, whose crumpled face and big eyes convey a child too wise for his years; his scenes with his mother (Toni Collette) are small, heartbreaking marvels. And even if you figure out the film's surprise ending, it packs an amazingly emotional wallop when it comes, and will have you racing to watch the movie again with a new perspective. You may be able to shake off the sentimentality of The Sixth Sense, but its craftsmanship and atmosphere will stay with you for days. --Mark Englehart

• Papillon | DVD | (04/12/2000) from £5.39   |  Saving you £7.60 (141.00%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Franklin J Schaffner's Papillon is quite possibly the definitive prison escape drama. Not as thrilling as The Great Escape, nor as emotionally cathartic as The Shawshank Redemption, its unflinching emphasis on the barbarism of "civilised" societies is nevertheless unparalleled. Significantly, the only characters to display any real kindness in this film are the social outcasts: the lepers and native Indians; everyone else has been corrupted and debased by the true villain, the penal system itself. Based on Henri Charrière' s heavily fictionalised "autobiography", the film's timeless themes of man's insatiable desire for freedom and the indomitability of the human spirit are thankfully not dependent for their impact on the source material's veracity. Dalton Trumbo's liberal-minded screenplay echoes the themes of his earlier script for Spartacus, and Schaffner's innate gift for epic cinema (this was made just two years after his great war biography Patton) is fully equal to the task of realising it on screen. The director's painterly eye for widescreen composition and his careful pacing impart a gravitas to proceedings even during the film's most squalid depictions of brutality, of which there are many emphasising the cheapness of human life among the convicts and their equally criminal prison guards in the penal colony of French Guiana. Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman form a remarkable screen pairing, with Hoffman outstanding as the pusillanimous Dega. McQueen magnificently overcomes his tough-guy persona in the extraordinary solitary confinement sequences as he is gradually reduced to a shambling, cockroach-eating wreck. Longtime collaborator Jerry Goldsmith, who had previously scored Schaffner's Planet of the Apes and Patton, attained yet another career high with his music. On the DVD: The anamorphic widescreen print of the original Panavision 2. 35:1 ratio looks fine without being as stunning as some more modern prints; the Dolby 5.1 audio does however do great service to Jerry Goldsmith's score, which can also be selected separately from the Audio Setup menu as an isolated track (note that there's no music at all in the first 20 minutes of the film). The 12-minute "Magnificent Rebel" featurette was made at the time of the film's release , and includes some fascinating footage of Henri Charrière touring the prison se t, reminiscing about his experiences and pontificating ("Society does not want free men, society wants conditioned men"). --Mark Walker

• The Searchers | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £6.49   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Searchers

• Harold & Maude | DVD | (13/05/2002) from £8.99   |  Saving you £4.00 (44.49%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Black comedies don't come much blacker than cult favourite, Harold and Maude (1972), and they don't come much funnier either. It seems that director Hal Ashby was the perfect choice to mine a load of eccentricity from the original Colin Higgins script, about the unlikely romance between a death-obsessed 19-year-old named Harold (Bud Cort) and a life-loving 79-year-old widow named Maude (Ruth Gordon). They meet at a funeral, and Maude finds something oddly appealing about Harold, urging him to "reach out" and grab life by the lapels as opposed to dwelling morbidly on mortality. Harold grows fond of the old gal--she's a lot more fun than the girls his mother desperately tries to match him up with- -and together they make Harold and Maude one of the sweetest and most unconventional love stories ever made. Much of the early humour arises from Harold' s outrageous suicide fantasies, played out as a kind of twisted parlour game to mortify his mother, who has grown immune to her strange son's antics. Gradually, however, the film's clever humour shifts to a brighter outlook and finally arrives at a point where Harold is truly happy to be alive. Featuring soundtrack songs by Cat Stevens, this comedy certainly won't appeal to all tastes (it was a box-office flop when first released), but if you're on its quirky wavelength, it might just strike you as one of the funniest films you've ever seen. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

• Edge of Darkness (BBC) | Blu Ray | (04/11/2019) from £14.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Classic 1980'S Bafta-Winning Bbc Drama, Available On Blu-Ray For The Very First Time! Remastered From The Original 16Mm Film. Winner Of Six Baftas, Including Best Drama Series, Best Actor & Best Original Television Music. Featuring Music By Eric Clapton & Michael Kamen As Yorkshire Detective Ronald Craven Investigates The Murder Of His Daughter, The Story Spirals Into A Gripping Eco-Thriller Of Political Conspiracy, Secret Service Machinations And Even Shady Medieval Societies. As He Draws Closer To The Dangerous Inner Sanctums Of Organised Environmental Protests And Nuclear Power Interests, He Discovers The Ultimate Truths At The Heart Of Our Society. Features: Eric Clapton And Michael Kamen'S Bafta Award Winning Score. The Baftas 1986 Including Interviews With Bob Peck And Joe Don Baker. The Broadcasting Press Guild Awards 1986 Featuring Interviews With Producer Michael Wearing And Actor Bob Peck. Magnox The Secrets Of Edge Of Darkness. Featuring Contributions From Writer, Cast And Production Team. Bbc Arts Programme Did You See ? Reviews Edge Of Darkness. Bob Peck Interview From The Bbc Breakfast Time Programme.

• The Lost Coast Tapes | DVD | (03/09/2012) from £6.62   |  Saving you £9.37 (141.54%)   |  RRP £15.99

  A highly acclaimed investigative journalist sees a news report on a Bigfoot Hunter who claims to possess the body of a dead Sasquatch. He believes the man is a phony and decides to create a new show that reveals people's paranormal claims as hoaxes. He assembles a crew and heads to Northern California's Lost Coast to meet and interview the man. But as night falls around his remote cabin deep in the woods, they find that the story is not just real, but more strange and terrifying than they could have ever possibly imagined...

• The Searchers | DVD | (19/06/2006) from £6.46   |  Saving you £9.53 (147.52%)   |  RRP £15.99

  With The Searchers John Wayne and director John Ford forged an indelible saga of the frontier and the men and women who challenged it. Wayne plays Ethan Edwards an ex-Confederate who sets out to find his niece captured by Comanches who massacred his family. He won't surrender to hunger thirst the elements or loneliness. And in his obsessive quest Ethan finds something unexpected: his own humanity. One of the most influential movies ever made.

• The Sixth Sense - 2 Disc Collector's Edition | DVD | (14/10/2002) from £7.17   |  Saving you £10.82 (150.91%)   |  RRP £17.99

  M Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense sets itself up as a thriller, poised on the brink of delivering monstrous scares, but gradually evolves into more of a psychological drama with supernatural undertones. Many critics faulted the film for being mawkish and New Agey, but no matter how you slice it, this is one mightily effective piece of filmmaking. The bare bones of the story are basic enough, but the moody atmosphere created by Shyamalan and cinematographer Tak Fujimoto made this one of the creepiest pictures of 1999, one that forsakes excessive gore for a sinisterly simple feeling of chilly otherworldliness. Bruce Willis is in his strong, silent type mode here, and gives the film wholly over to Haley Joel Osment, whose crumpled face and big eyes convey a child too wise for his years; his scenes with his mother (Toni Collette) are small, heartbreaking marvels. And even if you figure out the film's surprise ending, it packs an amazing emotional wallop when it comes; it will have you racing to watch the movie again with a new perspective. You may be able to shake off the sentimentality of The Sixth Sense, but its craftsmanship and atmosphere will stay with you for days. --Mark Englehart

• Westerns Collection | DVD | (18/09/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £18.99

  The Searchers: John Wayne plays Ethan Edwards an ex-Confederate who sets out to find his niece captured by Comanches who massacred his family. He won't surrender to hunger thirst the elements or loneliness. And in his obsessive quest Ethan finds something unexpected: his own humanity. One of the most influential movies ever made. Unforgiven: an exciting modern classic that rode off with four 1992 Academy Awards. Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman play retired down-on-their-luck outlaws who pick up their guns one last time to collect a bounty offered by the vengeful prostitutes of the remote Wyoming town of Big Whiskey: Richard Harris is an ill-fated interloper a colourful killer-for-hire called English Bob. Gene Hackman is the sly and brutal local sheriff whose brand of Law enforcement ranges from unconventional to ruthless. Big trouble is coming to Big Whiskey...

• Live Aid | DVD | (08/11/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £39.99

  The greatest show on earth and a gargantuan humanitarian effort to help those starving in Africa Live Aid took place on July 13th 1985 and brought together some of the biggest music stars of all time! ""Twenty years ago they not only played 'real good for free ' they took an issue that was nowhere on the agenda of the political world and placed it at the very top "" says concert organizer Bob Geldof. ""By buying the Live Aid DVD that day continues far off into some distant but hopeful

• Zappa (Dual Format DVD+Blu-Ray) | Blu Ray | (06/12/2021) from £17.44   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Conveying the scope of his prodigious and varied creative output and the breadth of his extraordinary personal and political life, director/producer Alex Winter and producer Glen Zipper were granted exclusive access by Gail Zappa to a vast collection of his unreleased music, movies, incomplete projects, unseen interviews and unheard concert recordings, much of which was deteriorating and in danger of being lost forever.

• Casino - 20th Anniversary Edition | Blu Ray | (04/05/2015) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £26.99

  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

• Paradise | DVD | (27/04/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  After a personal tragedy the Reeds take in their ten year old nephew and re-awaken their marriage.... A heartwarming drama based on the French novel and film Le Grand Chemin.

• Edge Of Darkness - Part 1: Into The Shadows / Part 2: Northmoor | DVD | (17/09/2001) from £15.98   |  Saving you £12.00 (92.38%)   |  RRP £24.99

  This is the twilight world of half-truths and half-lives where the obsessive apparatus of state security interlocks with sinister and furtive forces from big business. It is the hidden battleground where private grief and individual suffering and death are dwarfed by the struggle for absolute power and the nightmare of nuclear catastrophe. Part One - 'Into The Shadows': His investigation into his daughter's murder reveals to Ronald Craven her involvement in nuclear power politics terrorism and death. Despite the agonies of his grief Craven finds himself drawn into Emma's secret world. Part Two - 'Northmoor': Craven and renegade US agent Jedburgh pursue their mission to discover the deadly secret of an underworld nuclear facility and begin a desperate race to avert catastrophe with mysterious wisdom of GAIA.

• The Ice Storm | DVD | (12/02/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Asian American director Ang Lee sums up America in the early 1970s by focusing on the arrival of the sexual revolution in the 'burbs. Isolationism within a family, consumerism, and selfishness are personified by a cast that captures the self-obsession within two New England families. As the children struggle awkwardly with adolescence, their parents stumble through sexual experimentation. In the days of Watergate and Vietnam, society is breaking boundaries and ignoring convention. Following suit, these families are eschewing polite barriers and social taboos, with disastrous results. The Ice Storm of the title refers not only to a natural phenomenon but is a (rather heavy-handed) metaphor for a pervasive emotional temperament. The entire cast delivers textured, finely nuanced performances. This movie lingers in the psyche not only for the scope of the tragedy at its conclusion, but for Lee's often humorous and stingingly accurate assessment of pop culture. Based on Rick Moody's novel, this won the best-screenplay award at Cannes in 1997. --Rochelle O'Gorman

• The Haunting In Connecticut | Blu Ray | (09/05/2018) from £8.99   |  Saving you £16.00 (177.98%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Based on a true story. The Haunting in Connecticut charts one family’s real-life encounter with the dark forces of the supernatural. When the Campbell family moves to upstate Connecticut, they soon learn that their charming Victorian home has a disturbing history: not only was the house a transformed funeral parlour where inconceivable acts occurred, but the owner’s clairvoyant son Jonah served as a demonic messenger, providing a gateway for spiritual entities to crossover. Now unspeakable terror awaits when Jonah, the boy who communicated with the dead, returns to unleash horror on the innocent and unsuspecting family.

• That 70s Show - Season 2 | DVD | (19/09/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Climb into the Vista Cruiser for another trip back to the groovy '70s with the show that proves flashbacks can be more fun than a plateful of Hyde's ""special brownies."" As the gang continues their way toward adulthood their childhood friendships suddenly get a bit more complicated: Kelso begins dating both Jackie and Laurie; Eric and Donna attempt to take their relationship to a new level; Fez keeps trying to get a girl (any girl); while Hyde is so cool that girls are asking him out. And while their parents try to keep everything on the straight and narrow the gang keeps on truckin' with full speed hilarity. Episodes comprise: 1. Garage Sale 2. Red's Last Day 3. The Velvet Rope 4. Laurie and the Professor 5. Halloween 6. Vanstock 7. I Love Cake 8. Sleepover 9. Eric Gets Suspended 10. Red's Birthday 11. Laurie Moves Out 12. Eric's Stash 13. Hunting 14. Red Gets A Job 15. Burning Down The House 16. The First Time 17. Afterglow 18. Kitty and Eric's Night Out 19. Parents Find Out 20. Kiss Of Death 21. Kelso's Serenade 22. Jackie Moves On 23. Holy Crap! 24. Red Fired Up 25. Cat Fight Club 26. Moon Over Point Place (Part 1)