"Actor: Edna Dor"

• Nil By Mouth | DVD | (19/04/2004) from £11.22   |  Saving you £0.77 (6.86%)   |  RRP £11.99

  Gary Oldman took a break from acting to write and direct this unflinching family drama out of the kitchen-sink British school. Oldman doesn't appear in the film, instead handing the heavy lifting to the remarkable Ray Winstone (Sexy Beast, Cold Mountain) and Kathy Burke, who won a prize at the Cannes Film Festival for her work. The scummy drug trade of lower-class London is Oldman's turf, but he puts special focus on the miserable cycles of violence that fuel a family's struggle within this world. The results are not always easy to watch, but they are devastating (and the final sequence is chilling). Oldman may be guilty of indulging his actors a bit, but it's forgivable, given the big, roaring performances. --Robert Horton

• High Hopes | DVD | (13/04/2015) from £10.98   |  Saving you £7.00 (77.86%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Mike Leigh writes and directs this class struggle comedy drama which portrays the intertwined lives of an extended working class family in London during the Thatcher years. The story follows left-wing bike messenger Cyril Bender (Philip Davis), his girlfriend Shirley (Ruth Sheen) and Cyril's conservative mother (Edna Dore), who lives in the last council house on her street next to the appallingly upper class Boothe-Braines (Lesley Manville and David Bamber). Cyril's consumerist sister Valerie (Heather Tobias) and her car salesman husband Martin (Philip Jackson) join the family to throw a surprise 70th birthday party for Mrs. Bender but, despite their best intentions, the event descends into disaster.

• High Hope | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £8.08   |  Saving you £6.91 (85.52%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Wayne left home because of an argument about pies. Cyril would like to machine gun the Royal family. Rupert and Laetitia Boothe-Brain play yuppie sex games while deep in suburbia Valerie fails to arouse her husband Martin with a suggestion that he be Michael Douglas and she a virgin. Mrs Bender gets locked out of her house and is criticised by her neighbour for selfishly occupying a whole house in an increasingly fashionable area. And Cyril's girlfriend Shirley wants to start a family but gets no encouragement from Cyril who feels that the world should be spared more babies until everyone already here has a job a place to live and enough to eat.

• High Hopes | Blu Ray | (13/04/2015) from £14.83   |  Saving you £5.16 (34.79%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Mike Leigh writes and directs this class struggle comedy drama which portrays the intertwined lives of an extended working class family in London during the Thatcher years. The story follows left-wing bike messenger Cyril Bender (Philip Davis), his girlfriend Shirley (Ruth Sheen) and Cyril's conservative mother (Edna Dore), who lives in the last council house on her street next to the appallingly upper class Boothe-Braines (Lesley Manville and David Bamber). Cyril's consumerist sister Valerie (Heather Tobias) and her car salesman husband Martin (Philip Jackson) join the family to throw a surprise 70th birthday party for Mrs. Bender but, despite their best intentions, the event descends into disaster.

• Les Miserables | DVD | (27/09/1999) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  In this adaptation of Victor Hugo's evergreen classic, Liam Neeson is Jean Valjean, imprisoned for stealing bread then paroled after nearly two decades of hard labour. A gift of silver candlesticks from a kindly priest helps him begin anew. Forging a decent and profitable existence, he finds success as a businessman and as the mayor of a small town. He even takes in a pregnant young woman (Uma Thurman) and raises her daughter as his own. But when a former prison guard (Geoffrey Rush) recognises Valjean, his past catches up to him. Director Bille August culls mesmerising performances from his cast, but loses us with an ending that panders to teen audiences. The focus shifts dramatically, and uncomfortably, from the haunted Neeson and his hawk-like pursuer, to his daughter (Claire Danes) and her romance with a handsome revolutionary. After this narrative shift, the script leaves behind Hugo themes of revenge and redemption to focus improbably on teen angst--hardly what the author had on his mind. --Rochelle O'Gorman

• High Hopes | DVD | (06/04/2020) from £12.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  High Hopes by award-winning Writer and Director, Mike Leigh (Mr Turner, Secrets Lies) depicts a slice of the lives of Shirley (Ruth Sheen) and Cyril (Philip Davis), a working-class couple in London. Cyril finds it hard to cope with his family; especially when his elderly Mum (Edna Dore) locks herself out and must ask her yuppie neighbours for help, and his social-climbing sister Valerie and her crass husband decide to throw a surprise party for their mum's 70th Birthday which has disaster written all over it. On top of all of this, Shirley wants a baby but how does this fit in with Cyril's Marxist ideals of a perfect world?

• High Hopes | Blu Ray | (06/04/2020) from £14.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  High Hopes by award-winning Writer and Director, Mike Leigh (Mr Turner, Secrets Lies) depicts a slice of the lives of Shirley (Ruth Sheen) and Cyril (Philip Davis), a working-class couple in London. Cyril finds it hard to cope with his family; especially when his elderly Mum (Edna Dore) locks herself out and must ask her yuppie neighbours for help, and his social-climbing sister Valerie and her crass husband decide to throw a surprise party for their mum's 70th Birthday which has disaster written all over it. On top of all of this, Shirley wants a baby but how does this fit in with Cyril's Marxist ideals of a perfect world?

• Drums Along The Mohawk | DVD | (07/11/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  One of John Ford's less-seen but equally memorable features shot in gorgeous Technicolour detailing the struggle of a newlywed couple to build their homestead before the Revolutionary War in America...

• All Or Nothing | DVD | (28/04/2003) from £6.85   |  Saving you £13.14 (191.82%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A 2002 Mike Leigh drama, All or Nothing is at times almost unbearably bleak and poignant, yet funny, truthful and richly rewarding. The film's revolves around Timothy Spall's mini-cab driver, his family and the various characters and acquaintances on the South-east London estate where he lives. It's perhaps even better than Secrets and Lies, in which Spall also starred, which was marred a little by some of the tearful excesses of Brenda Blethyn's bravura performance. It's evidence that Leigh has matured and improved with age, rather than mellowed and softened. He's developed into a highly distinctive but rounded and humane filmmaker. Spall's cabbie is too gentle and thoughtful to be described as a slob, but his lack of even the most basic ambition and stoic non-resistance to life has created an unspoken rift between him and wife Penny (Lesley Manville). Working on a supermarket checkout, she must cook dinner and fend off insults from her fat, frustrated, obnoxious 18-year-old son Rory. She receives only passive sympathy from her older daughter Rachel. Only when Rory is taken ill is Phil snapped out of his torpor as the family pull together. A host of minor characters also feature; fatuous cabbie Ron (Paul Jesson) his alcoholic wife and sluttish daughter, as well as the wonderfully good-humoured and resilient Maureen, Penny's best friend, concerned at her daughter's relationship with a violent boyfriend. Once accused of caricaturing his "lower class" characters, here Leigh (with the collaborative assistance of his actors) exhibits them in all their authentic complexity, neither idealising nor sentimentalising them. On the DVD: All or Nothing's extras include the original trailer, as well as interviews with several members of the cast. Timothy Spall is interesting on the unnerving process of collaboration favoured by Leigh, whereby characters are "built from zero" by the actors. The smart and rather posh Lesley Manville strikes quite a contrast in real life with her mousey, put-upon character. There's also a meticulous and absorbing commentary from Mike Leigh, who talks about filming in Greenwich and how he has moved away from some of the more dogmatic ideas about filmmaking of his earlier, avant-garde days. --David Stubbs

• Midsomer Murders - Death in the Slow Lane | DVD | (20/06/2011) from £11.98   |  Saving you £9.00 (100.11%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Britain's best-loved detective series enters a new era as DCI John Barnaby a cousin of the original detective moves in to fight crime in the beautiful but deadly villages of Midsomer. New DCI John Barnaby arrives in Midsomer and is bemused by the quaint villages and their quirky residents. But when a local DJ is crushed to death at a traditional girls' boarding school he soon discovers that murder and deception are never far away. As the death toll rises could Barnaby's first case also be his last? Neil Dudgeon makes his debut as John Barnaby alongside established sidekick DI Ben Jones played by Jason Hughes.

• High Hopes | DVD | (25/05/2009) from £8.08   |  Saving you £-2.09 (-34.90%)   |  RRP £5.99

  The legendary Mike Leigh's slice-of-life look at a sweet working-class couple in London introduces us to Shirley and Cyril Cyril's mother who is in the grip of her declining years mother's ghastly upper-middle class neighbours and Cyril's pretentious sister and philandering husband. In due course Shirley wants a baby but Cyril who reads Marx and wants the world to be perfect is reluctant. Then Cyril's mother finds herself stranded forced to turn to her snooty neighbours for help. And when Cyril's sister Valerie stages a surprise party for her Mum's 70th birthday the stage is set for a disaster from start to finish. With Shirley barely holding it all together she may be able to put Cyril's protestations aside after all.

• A Matter of Choice/Jungle Street | DVD | (29/09/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Jungle Street: The voluptuous Jill Ireland stars as Sue a striptease artist in this tough British crime drama that sees her playing opposite to her real-life husband of the time David McCallum. Jungle Street has McCallum playing Terry Collins a small time thug constantly at war with his family employers and the world. Whilst his friend Johnny (Kenneth Cope) is in prison taking the rap for a robbery they both committed Terry tries to muscle in on his girlfriend Sue. But when Johnny is released and comes looking for Terry and the money from the robbery the two men are on a collision course that can only end in murder... A Matter of Choice: Five people are soon to find their lives inextricably entwined for the worse. Two youths (Malcolm Gerard and Michael Davis) have been searching for girls and end up in a fight with a policeman. The policeman falls and is hit by a car driven by Lisa (Jeanne Moody) and her secret lover John (Anthony Steel). When Lisa's husband Charles finds the police waiting to interview his wife the tangle of lies and deceit that the night started with begins to slowly unravel.

• High Hopes (Mike Leigh's) | Blu Ray | (28/02/2011) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  A film by one of Britain's most celebrated film makers and multi-award winning director of Life Is Sweet Naked Secrets and Lies Topsy Turvy and most recently Vera Drake. Fabulous Films presents for the first time on DVD this critically acclaimed slice of life dark comedy Mike Leigh's High Hopes. Wayne left home because of an argument about pies. Cyril would like to machine gun the Royal family. Rupert and Laetitia Boothe-Brain play yuppie sex games while deep in suburbia Valerie fails to arouse her husband Martin with a suggestion that he be Michael Douglas and she a virgin. Mrs Bender gets locked out of her house and is criticised by her neighbour for selfishly occupying a whole house in an increasingly fashionable area. And Cyril's girlfriend Shirley wants to start a family but gets no encouragement from Cyril who feels that the world should be spared more babies until everyone already here has a job a place to live and enough to eat. This disparate cast of characters swim in and out of each others lives against a background of London and its suburbs seamlessly orchestrated by director Mike Leigh.

• Charlie Chaplin Marathon - Vol. 2 - A Dog's Life / The Kid / Behind The Screen | DVD | (09/02/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Featuring 'A Dogs Life' and 'The Kid' and 'Behind The Screen'.

• Weak At Denise | DVD | (05/03/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  Poor old Colin desperately wants a girl-friend. But since no girl will touch him with a barge-pole he finds his consolation in building remote controlled models of World War Two classic aircraft. Then one day the gorgeous Denise appears on the scene and romance seems to bloom. His passions ablaze Colin thinks things are finally going his way. But Denise and her boyfriend Roy have evil plans for the hopeless Colin which draw him into a dark web of sexual intrigue life-threatening e