"Actor: Ian Ho"

• Simon Birch | DVD | (19/07/2004) from £29.00   |  Saving you £-14.01 (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Simon is the smallest kid in town but has always known that he was born to do something big while at the same time his best friend Joe is searching for the identity of his father. Together these two share the ups and downs that will forever bind them together.

• The Fifth Element - Limited Edition Steelbook | Blu Ray | (04/11/2013) from £17.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Bruce Willis plays Korben Dallas a New York cabbie who picks up the type of fare that only comes along once every 5 000 years. Leeloo (Milla Jovovich) isn't just the perfect beauty; she's also the perfect weapon. As planet Earth is about to be wiped out the pair set off on a deadly mission to find a set of stones that represent the four elements and unite them with the fifth. But what is the fifth? From Luc Besson the acclaimed director of 'Leon' and 'Nikita' comes a film that reinvents the sci-fi genre. The Fifth Element takes you on an adrenaline-filled journey to a new dimension of sumptuous visuals and spectacular explosions.

• Il Ritorno D'Ulisse In Patria - Monteverdi | DVD | (28/11/2005) from £8.92   |  Saving you £6.07 (40.50%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Il Ritorno D'Ulisse In Patria - Recorded At The Glyndebourne Festival Opera 1973.

• Ulterior Motives | DVD | (17/09/2001) from £6.55   |  Saving you £-0.56 (-9.30%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Ambitious and beautiful New York journalist Erica (Keller) has the scoop of her career: a Japanese businessman suspected of selling American secrets to Japan. When private investigator Jack Blaylock (Griffith) is hired to help her he finds himself entangled in a web of violence and corruption with a deadline whose fatal consequences leave no margin for error...

• Once Upon A Time In China II | DVD | (02/02/2003) from £7.06   |  Saving you £12.93 (64.70%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Like its predecessor, Once Upon a Time in China 2 stars Jet Li as Wong Fei Hung, this time pitched against the xenophobic White Lotus cult, which is violently trying to rid China of foreigners (the period is the early 20th century). To complicate matters, he also finds himself fighting against the reactionary Chinese government. The martial arts battles, in particular one against co-star Donnie Yen as the government's strongman, are everything connoisseurs could wish for. Jet Li is not only acrobatic; he has a powerful screen presence that makes him a convincing hero. Production values, including sets and costumes, are excellent. The only flaw, at least to Western eyes, is the comedy, which has corny jokes about eating dog meat and so forth. On the DVD: the DVD is in widescreen format, with high-quality picture and sound and well-produced subtitles. The extras are well worth having, and include a lengthy scroll-down text biography of Jet Li, interviews with the star and with Donnie Yen, and a very informative audio commentary by Hong Kong cinema expert Bey Logan. --Ed Buscombe

• Hamlet | DVD | (10/08/2015) from £7.75   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Franco Zeffirelli's stripped-down, two-hour version of Shakespeare's play stars Mel Gibson as a rather robust version of the ambivalent Danish prince. Gibson is much better in the part than many critics have admitted, his powers of clarity doing much to make this particular Hamlet more accessible than several other filmed versions. The supporting cast is outstanding, including Glenn Close as Gertrude, Alan Bates as Claudius, Ian Holm as Polonius, and Helena Bonham Carter as Ophelia. Zeffirelli's vigorous direction employs a lively camera style that nicely alters the viewer's preconceptions about the way Hamlet should look. --Tom Keogh

• The Book Group - The Complete First Series | DVD | (24/03/2003) from £12.65   |  Saving you £7.34 (58.02%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The Book Group, the creation of writer-director Annie Griffin, is a superb, Glasgow-based comedy-drama. Annie Dudek stars as Claire, the prissy and neurotic American expatriate who initiates the titular group with a view to meeting high-minded types like herself. Instead, she gets Dirka, Fist and Janice, three Scottish footballers' wives, the wheelchair-bound Kenny, a leisure-centre worker with ambitions to be a writer despite his apparent inarticulacy, the stubbly-faced football-mad Rab and the insufferable Barney, a post-grad student and heroin addict at whom Claire makes one of the most embarrassingly disastrous passes in TV history in the opening episode. The Book Group is a magnificent device for bringing an unlikely cast of characters together, supposedly out of a love of literature but in fact because each of them in their own way has pretensions or ambitions to make something different out of their lives. Waves of sexual longing between the group members are among the many things that interfere with the discussions of the texts, with Kenny in particular an object of fascination for both Dirka and Fist. With each episode cleverly themed around the chosen book of the week, The Book Group is hilarious yet wise, understated and often painfully melancholic, based on detailed character study rather than contrived situations or eye-catching melodrama. It is indispensable viewing. On the DVD: The Book Group's main extra is a poorly edited but absorbing sequence of interviews with all of the cast members except James Lance, who plays Barney. Rory McGann (Kenny), who comes from a non-acting background, is particularly interesting. --David Stubbs

• Strangers With Candy | DVD | (10/09/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  A dark satire of the moralistic after-school specials starring Amy Sedaris as Jerri Blank a 47-year old former ""user boozer and loser"" who returns to high school after three decades of hard living. The film also includes co-creators Paul Dinello as Mr. Jellineck a narcissistic yet fragile art teacher and Stephen Colbert as Mr. Noblet a strict history teacher with a predilection for Hummel figurines.

• Purple Storm | DVD | (21/05/2001) from £11.46   |  Saving you £-5.47 (-91.30%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Terrorist Soong Chow's son Todd sustains a serious head injury but wakes from his coma to find he's been given a new life... Produced by action movie legend Jackie Chan this is one of the most acclaimed films in Hong Kong movie making history and winner of 10 awards at the year 2000 Hong Kong Critics Awards & Golden Horse Film Festival!

• The Hound Of The Baskervilles | DVD | (25/04/2016) from £5.99   |  Saving you £10.00 (166.95%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Of all the Sherlock Holmes tales written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles (one of the four novels) remains the best-known. Adding a dash of the supernatural to the Great Detective's adventures, it is certainly one of the most dramatic and an obvious target for screen interpretation. Prior to Jeremy Brett indelibly making the role his own to modern TV audiences, Ian Richardson made for a suitably incisive and enthusiastic Holmes in this enjoyable 1983 adaptation. The much-filmed tale finds Holmes and Watson drawn in to the mysterious curse afflicting the well-heeled Baskerville dynasty. Is a monster stalking the heir to the Baskerville fortune, or is the culprit a far from demonic force? As Holmes, Ian Richardson is blessed with the avian features that, like Basil Rathbone or Peter Cushing, effectively capture Sidney Paget's original likeness. Though Holmes' more anti-social facets are dispensed with, Richardson is engaging in such a well-explored role, recalling the razor-sharp wit and intelligence of Rathbone. Attracting a distinguished British cast (Brian Blessed, Denholm Elliot, Martin Shaw) and decent production values (though with a few Hammer Horror moments), this will not disappoint fans of Victorian literature's finest detective, nor those in search of a classic, chilling thriller. --Danny Graydon

• Dance With A Stranger | DVD | (30/04/2001) from £44.99   |  Saving you £-35.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Based on the true story of the last woman ever executed in Britain Ruth Ellis starts down the road of romantic self-destruction when she meets and starts a love affair with wealthy gentlemen David Blakely who felt it was impossible to uphold the relationship with the single mother due to the pressure of his upper-class peers.

• American Pie: The Threesome (Trilogy Box Set) | DVD | (26/01/2004) from £6.77   |  Saving you £13.22 (195.27%)   |  RRP £19.99

  American Pie: You'll never look at warm apple pie the same way again! American Pie takes a hysterical look at the goal of four unlucky in love high school friends who make the ultimate pact: lose their virginity by prom night. As they try to manipulate their way into the hearts of some of their classmates their plans often backfire with hilarity. One fails to score with the sexy foreign exchange student and then makes a last ditch effort with a band member who has an interesting way with her flute while another is so desperate he actually hires someone to give him a reputation. Follow the raging hormones of four teenage boys and their girls as they gear up for the most important night of their lives; the prom! American Pie 2: After their first year apart at college the guys (Kevin Jim Oz Finch and Stifler) rent a beach house vowing to celebrate their friendship and make this the best summer ever. But as always whether their dreams come true or not is ultimately up to the girls (Vicky Michelle Nadia Heather and Jessica). Through one boisterous summer of ear-splitting parties side-splitting mishaps - and yes a trip to band camp - the gang discovers that times change and people change but friendship lasts a lifetime. American Wedding: Jim (Jason Biggs) and Michelle (Alyson Hannigan) have finally decided to tie the knot but with their friends (including Stifler) returning from college the chances of their big day going off without a hilarious hitch or two are very small indeed!

• Criterion Collection: Repulsion | Blu Ray | (28/07/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Chariots of Fire (30th Anniversary Limited Edition) | Blu Ray | (16/07/2012) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The come-from-behind winner of the 1981 Oscar for Best Picture, Chariots of Fire either strikes you as either a cold exercise in mechanical manipulation or as a tale of true determination and inspiration. The heroes are an unlikely pair of young athletes who ran for Great Britain in the 1924 Paris Olympics: devout Protestant Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson), a divinity student whose running makes him feel closer to God, and Jewish Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross), a highly competitive Cambridge student who has to surmount the institutional hurdles of class prejudice and anti-Semitism. There's delicious support from Ian Holm (as Abrahams's coach) and John Gielgud and Lindsay Anderson as a couple of Cambridge fogies. Vangelis's soaring synthesised score, which seemed to be everywhere in the early 1980s, also won an Oscar. Chariots of Fire was the debut film of British television commercial director Hugh Hudson (Greystoke) and was produced by David Puttnam. --Jim Emerson

• The Offence | DVD | (04/10/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Detective Sergeant Johnson (CONNERY) has been with the British police force for 20 years. In that time the countless murders rapes and other serious crimes he has had to investigate has left a terrible mark on him. His anger and aggression that had been suppressed for years finally surfaces when interviewing a suspect Baxter whom Johnson is convinced is the man that has been carrying out a series of brutal attacks on young girls. An amazing look at the human psyche THE OFFENCE

• A Family At War - The Facts Of Life | DVD | (12/01/2004) from £3.99   |  Saving you £16.00 (401.00%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The classic television series which tells the powerful story of the Ashton family during the Second World War. Living in Liverpool during the Second World War they struggle to deal with the harsh realities of life as their sons are sent abroad to fight children are evacuated and those who remain at home live in constant fear - either of the War Office telegram or the Luftwaffe.

• Like It Is | DVD | (11/09/2000) from £12.70   |  Saving you £2.29 (18.03%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Like It Is is much like watching a train wreck--the very idea of it is repellent and yet you perversely can't avert your eyes. While its urban grittiness and sooty veneer entranced some critics who mistook its violent, netherworld neorealism for art, Like It Is offers little in the way of redemption, positive gay imaging or even particularly good narrative. Paul Oremland directed this venture about a young, gay Blackpool tough named Craig (Steve Bell) who bare-knuckle boxes for money. He ultimately moves to London in search of a better life and falls in with the trendy London gay-club scene, meeting and falling for a handsome record producer named Matt (Ian Rose) and his wealthy boss (played by the Who's lead singer Roger Daltrey). The better life is quickly tainted by disillusion and misery, much as is the viewing experience. Steve Bell is, in real life, a featherweight boxing champion in Britain and therefore brings an urgent and raw vitality to the lead, but the characters as a whole are either irritating or unsympathetic, and it's ultimately difficult to find anyone to care for, or a story worth empathising with. --Paula Nechak, Amazon.com

• Blackpool FC Season Review 2010/11 | DVD | (27/06/2011) from £18.75   |  Saving you £1.24 (6.61%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The complete story of Blackpool's incredible rollercoaster ride in the Premier League during the 2010/11 season

• CLEOPATRA (Masters of Cinema) (DVD) | DVD | (24/09/2012) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £16.99

  A pre-code film that sneaked onto screens just as the censorious Hays Office began cracking down on Hollywood's racier propositions, Cleopatra is a libertine paean to decadence and depravity that can still send a viewer's mind reeling and pulse thumping - all courtesy of the Golden Age's swampiest psychosexual auteur, Cecil B. DeMille (The Ten Commandments; The Greatest Show on Earth; The King of Kings).Claudette Colbert (It Happened One Night; The Palm Beach Story; Drums Along the Mohawk) presides over the most outrageous spectacle this side of The Scarlet Empress as the eponymous pharaoh queen who speeds from Julius Caesar (Warren William) to Marc Antony (Henry Wilcoxon), from Egypt to Rome, from war-room to bedroom... The whiff of incense permeates every scene, with each connected to the next in a veritable matrix of whips, blindfolds, and bindings - the crazed arrangement laying bare all the fetish inklings of the moving-picture dream.Lavishly produced with some of the most inspired waxing-moon photography and unwholesome set-design to come out of the studio system, DeMille's film is an erotic tour-de-force that obliges us to re-examine the appeal of this most popular of Hollywood directors. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Cleopatra on DVD.

• Naked Lunch | Blu Ray | (17/08/2015) from £31.03   |  Saving you £-8.04 (N/A%)   |  RRP £22.99

  You are now entering Interzone, William S Burroughs' phantasmagorical land of junk, paranoia and crawly things. Best travel advice: "Exterminate all rational thought". In David Cronenberg's superbly shot, unnerving warp on the Burroughs novel, Naked Lunch, the novelist himself becomes a main character (played in an implacable monotone by Peter Weller), with elements from Burroughs' life--including the shooting of his wife during a "William Tell" game, and bohemian friends Kerouac and Ginsberg--added to frame the book's wild visions. This is, ironically, a somewhat rational approach to an unfilmable book (and it makes a hair-curling double bill with Barton Fink, another look at writerly madness, with both films sharing Judy Davis). Cronenberg is a natural for oozing mugwumps and typewriters that turn into giant bugs, of course. But in the end, this is really his own vision of the artistic process, rather than Burroughs' hallucinatory descent into hell. --Robert Horton, Amazon.com