"Actor: Ian Holm"

• Les Miserables | DVD | (13/06/2022) from £12.02   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Jean Valjean (Richard Jordan), convicted of stealing bread, is hounded for several decades by the relentless and cruel Policeman Javert (Anthony Perkins).

• Lord Of War | DVD | (06/03/2006) from £2.49   |  Saving you £15.50 (86.20%)   |  RRP £17.99

  An arms dealer on the run from an Interpol agent re-evaluates the morality of his work.

• Beatrix Potter - Peter Rabbit | DVD | (13/11/2006) from £9.05   |  Saving you £-3.06 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  The escapades of Peter Rabbit and Mrs. Tittlemouse and other favourite characters come to life on screen in these stunning animated stories. Features the following stories: 1. The Tale of Peter Rabbit & Benjamin Bunny 2. The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies and Mrs. Tittlemouse 3. The Tale of Tom Kitten & Jemima Puddle-Duck

• Lord Of War | DVD | (03/04/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  An arms dealer on the run from an Interpol agent re-evaluates the morality of his work.

• Time Bandits | DVD | (30/09/2002) from £9.07   |  Saving you £13.91 (228.78%)   |  RRP £19.99

  With Time Bandits, only his second movie as director, Terry Gilliam's barbed humour and hyperactive visual imagination got themselves gloriously into full gear. Sketched out in a matter of weeks over Michael Palin's kitchen table while Gilliam struggled to get his dream project Brazil off the ground, this is a children's film made by a director who "hates kid films" and all the "mawkish sentimental crap" that goes with them. The 11-year-old hero, Kevin, finds himself lugged out of his suburban bedroom and off through a series of wormholes in time and space by a gang of rapacious, bickering midgets in search of loot, en route encountering (and casually despoiling) a gallery of eminent historical figures that include Agamemnon, Napoleon and Robin Hood, along with assorted ogres, giants and monsters. As co-screenwriters, Gilliam and Palin cheerfully filch ideas from everyone from Homer and Jonathan Swift to Lewis Carroll and Walt Disney, while the sets--as always with Gilliam--ingeniously work towering miracles on puny budgets. "The whole point of fairy tales", according to Gilliam, "is to frighten the kids" and Time Bandits taps into some archetypal nightmare imagery. But the whole farrago is much too good-humoured to be seriously scary. Not least of the movie's pleasures are a series of ripe cameos from the likes of Ian Holm as an irascible Bonaparte, Sean Connery good-humouredly spoofing his own image as Agamemnon, John Cleese's version of Robin Hood as inanely condescending minor royalty ("So you're a robber too! Jolly good!"), David Warner hamming it up gleefully as the Evil Genius, and the great Ralph Richardson playing the Supreme Being as a tetchy public-school headmaster. On the DVD: Time Bandits on disc comes with a generous wealth of extras. Along with the expected trailer--sent up Python-style by a disaffected voice-over--we get excerpts from Gilliam's storyboard and notated script, filmographies for Gilliam, Palin, Connery and David Rappaport (the leader of the vertically challenged gang), stills, production shots, a scrapbook with cast photos and drawings, notes on the film and plenty more background data, plus a cheerfully relaxed 27-minute interview with Gilliam and Palin. There's also an informative and appealingly unpretentious full-length commentary shared between Gilliam, Palin, Cleese, Warner and Craig Warnock, who played Kevin. The transfer, clean and crisp, is in the original full-width ratio, and there's a choice of Dolby Stereo or Dolby 5.1 sound. --Philip Kemp

• Alice Through The Looking Glass | DVD | (07/11/2011) from £8.98   |  Saving you £7.00 (116.86%)   |  RRP £12.99

  This magical live-action adaptation of Lewis Carrol's classic tale features an all-star cast headed by Kate Beckinsale Steve Coogan Ian Holm and Geoffrey Palmer. Alice returns to the strange world of Wonderland where she joins the Red Queen in a giant game of chess and once again encounters all the weird and wonderful characters: the odd-ball twins Tweedledum and Tweedledee the White Queen the Red and White Knights Humpty Dumpty and the scary Jabberwocky. As she continues her adventure things become curiouser and curiouser.

• Robin And Marian | DVD | (12/08/2002) from £12.63   |  Saving you £0.36 (2.85%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Robin Hood (Connery) is an old man when he returns with his best friend Little John to England after the Crusades. Maid Marian (Hepburn) has entered a nunnery King Richard is a raving lunatic his Brother John a moron and the age of great adventure has seemed to have passed Robin by. But when The Sheriff of Nottingham (Shaw) once again threatens Sherwood Robin gathers his faithful men and band of peasants to fight oppression in this high-spirited adventure in which Robin Hood and Maid Marian rediscover their love...

• Alien Quadrilogy | DVD | (08/12/2003) from £20.99   |  Saving you £39.00 (185.80%)   |  RRP £59.99

  The Alien Quadrilogy is a nine-disc box set devoted to the four Alien films. Although previously available on DVD as the Alien Legacy, here the films have been repackaged with vastly more extras and with upgraded sound and vision. For anyone who hasn't been in hypersleep for the last 25 years this series needs no introduction, though for the first time each film now comes in both original and "Special Edition" form. Alien (1979) was so perfect it didn't need fixing, and Ridley Scott's 2003 Director's Cut is fiddling for the sake of it. Watch once then return to the majestic, perfectly paced original. Conversely the Special Edition of James Cameron's Aliens (1986) is the definitive version, though it's nice finally to have the theatrical cut on DVD for comparison. Most interesting is the alternative Alien3 (1992). This isn't a "director's cut"--David Fincher refused to have any involvement with this release--but a 1991 work-print that runs 29 minutes longer than the theatrical version, and has now been restored, remastered and finished-off with (unfortunately) cheap new CGI. Still, it's truly fascinating, offering a different insight into a flawed masterpiece. The expanded opening is visually breathtaking, the central firestorm is much longer, and a subplot involving Paul McGann's character adds considerable depth to the story. The ending is also subtly but significantly different. Alien Resurrection (1997) was always a mess with a handful of brilliant scenes, and the Special Edition just makes it eight minutes longer. On the DVD: Alien Quadrilogy offers all films except Alien3 with DTS soundtracks, the latter having still fine Dolby Digital 5.1 presentation. All four films sound fantastic, with much low-level detail revealed for the first time. Each is anamorphically enhanced at the correct original aspect ratio, and the prints and transfers are superlative. Every film offers a commentary that lends insight into the creative process--though the Scott-only commentary and isolated music score from the first Alien DVD release are missing here--and there are subtitles for hard of hearing both for the films and the commentaries. Each movie is complemented by a separate disc packed with hours of seriously detailed documentaries (all presented at 4:3 with clips letterboxed), thousands of photos, production stills and storyboards, giving a level of inside information for the dedicated buff only surpassed by the Lord of the Rings extended DVD sets. A ninth DVD compiles miscellaneous material, including a Channel 4 hour-long documentary and even all the extras from the old Alien laserdisc. Exhaustive hardly beings to describe the Alien Quadrilogy, a set which establishes the new DVD benchmark for retrospective releases and which looks unlikely to be surpassed for some time. --Gary S Dalkin

• Brazil | Blu Ray | (05/12/2011) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Acclaimed story of an unambitious civil servant who escapes the harsh realities of a totalitarian future with frequent daydreams. Jonathan Pryce and Robert De Niro star with Michael Palin and Bob Hoskins in this chilling black comedy directed by former Monty Python member Terry Gilliam.

• Too Late The Hero | DVD | (08/04/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Set on a Pacific island in 1942, Too Late the Hero is a hard-as-nails "men on a mission" war movie: a group of British soldiers have to traverse the New Hebrides to destroy a Japanese radio transmitter, then get back to safety while being hunted all the way. Inevitably everything goes wrong, but director Robert (The Dirty Dozen) Aldrich turns the book of WWII movie clichés on its head and springs some unnerving surprises. Even the token American star, Cliff Robertson--echoing William Holden's grafted-on role in The Bridge on the River Kwai--proves less than obviously heroic, while an outstanding Michael Caine brings considerable depth to his usual cynical cockney. Henry Fonda gets heavily billed for a brief guest appearance, but there are star performances such fine British character actors as Denholm Elliot, Ian Bannen, Ronald Fraser and Lance Percival. This portrait of battle-worn men offers greater complexity than Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, while the jungle trek was more recently paralleled in Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line. Only the attitudes--more 1970 than 1942--detract from Aldrich's tellingly realistic vision, which with a thoughtfully ironic script and a succession of tense set pieces and brutal firefights, builds to a harrowing climax. On the DVD: The picture is presented at approximately 1.7:1, reformatted from the original 2.2:1 70mm theatrical presentation. Despite approximately 25 per cent of the original image being missing, this loss is only really noticeable in a few scenes. Apart from the occasional fleck, the print is in superb condition, and despite the lack of anamorphic enhancement the picture is sharp, detailed and has excellent colour. The surround sound (not mono as listed on the packaging) is highly effective, with the tension being increased by a considerable amount of the music coming from the rear speakers. The special features are simply a few static pages of biographical and production notes. --Gary S. Dalkin

• Alien | Blu Ray | (17/04/2019) from £13.08   |  Saving you £2.91 (22.25%)   |  RRP £15.99

  By transplanting the classic haunted house scenario into space, Ridley Scott, together with screenwriters Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett, produced a work of genuinely original cinematic sci-fi with Alien that, despite the passage of years and countless inferior imitations, remains shockingly fresh even after repeated viewing. Scott's legendary obsession with detail ensures that the setting is thoroughly conceived, while the Gothic production design and Jerry Goldsmith's wonderfully unsettling score produce a sense of disquiet from the outset: everything about the spaceship Nostromo--from Tupperware to toolboxes-seems oddly familiar yet disconcertingly ... well, alien.Nothing much to speak of happens for at least the first 30 minutes, and that in a way is the secret of the film's success: the audience has been nervously peering round every corner for so long that by the time the eponymous beast claims its first victim, the release of pent-up anxiety is all the more effective. Although Sigourney Weaver ultimately takes centre-stage, the ensemble cast is uniformly excellent. The remarkably low-tech effects still look good (better in many places than the CGI of the sequels), while the nightmarish quality of H.R. Giger's bio-mechanical creature and set design is enhanced by camerawork that tantalises by what it doesn't reveal.On the DVD: The director, audibly pausing to puff on his cigar at regular intervals, provides an insightful commentary which, in tandem with superior sound and picture, sheds light into some previously unexplored dark recesses of this much-analysed, much-discussed movie (why the crew eat muesli, for example, or where the "rain" in the engine room is coming from). Deleted scenes include the famous "cocoon" sequence, the completion of the creature's insect-like life-cycle for which cinema audiences had to wait until 1986 and James Cameron's Aliens. Isolated audio tracks, a picture gallery of production artwork and a "making of" documentary complete a highly attractive DVD package. --Mark Walker

• The Fifth Element | UMD | (05/12/2005) from £8.08   |  Saving you £7.91 (97.90%)   |  RRP £15.99

  In the year 2257 a planet-sized sphere of supreme evil is approaching the earth at relentless speed threatening to exterminate every living organism unless four ancient stones representing the elements of earth wind fire and water are united with the mysterious fifth element.From Luc Besson the acclaimed director of 'Leon' and 'Nikita' comes a film that turns science fiction inside out.

• A Severed Head (Standard Edition) | Blu Ray | (22/04/2024) from £9.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Dick Clement followed the success of his first feature Otley with this wry adaptation of Iris Murdoch's celebrated 1961 satirical novel, a harbinger of the sexual liberation that was to blossom in the mid-sixties. A Severed Head chronicles the sexual and amoral escapades of a group of middle-class, middle-aged London couples, portrayed by a wonderful cast which includes Ian Holm (Alien, The Lord of the Rings), Lee Remick (Days of Wine and Roses, The Omen), Claire Bloom (The Haunting, The King's Speech) and Richard Attenborough (10 Rillington Place, Young Winston). Absurdist and delightfully funny, A Severed Head is a dark satire staged with wit and intelligence. Product Features High Definition remaster Original mono audio Audio commentary with director Dick Clement and film historian Sam Dunn (2018) Guise and Dolls (2019, 8 mins): artist and sculptor Saskia de Boer discusses the figurines she created for the film's arresting title sequence Slightly Saucy (2019, 7 mins): production manager Timothy Burrill recalls the making of A Severed Head What Happened Just Then? (2019, 19 mins): an appreciation by comedian, musician, and writer Rob Deering Original theatrical trailer Image gallery: original promotional materials New and improved English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

• Shergar | DVD | (21/10/2002) from £13.93   |  Saving you £-9.94 (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  Kevin Doherty (Tom Walsh) the orphaned son of a jockey dreams of racing horses like his father but instead finds himself in the middle of a terrorist plot to kidnap Shergar Ireland's greatest racehorse. Terrorist Gavin O'Rourke (Mickey Rourke) and his second-in-command Dermot Concannon steal Shergar away to a remote farm owned by Eamonn Garrity (David Warner). Unknown to the kidnappers teenage runaway Kevin lies in the hayloft of the Garrity farm and is aware of Shergar's identity. Though initially elated at being charged with the horse's keep Kevin is horrified when he hears of Shergar's impending execution and resolved to ride the horse to freedom. Staying only steps ahead of the kidnappers and the authorities Kevin alters the appearance of the instantly recognisable horse...

• Juggernaut | DVD | (23/05/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  A terrorist threat. A captain in panic. And only one man who can end the danger.... Some unknown maniac is threatening a navigation company to blow up one of its luxury transatlantics the 'Britannic' now in high sea with 1200 passengers. He is asking for a 500 000 ransom otherwise 7 bombs aboard will explode. An experienced anti-bomb squad is sent to the 'Britannic' but although all the bombs are located a very high skill level will be necessary to dismantle them. perhap

• Alien 40th Anniversary | DVD | (01/04/2019) from £4.52   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Alien is the first movie of one of the most popular sagas in science fiction history, and introduces Sigourney Weaver as Ripley, the iron-willed woman destined to battle the galaxy's ultimate creature. The terror begin when the crew of the spaceship Nostromo investigates a transmission from a desolate planet and makes a horrifying discovery - a life form that breeds within a human host. Now the crew must fight now only for its survival, but for the survival of all mankind.

• The Last of The Blonde Bombshells | DVD | (07/02/2011) from £12.26   |  Saving you £-7.27 (N/A%)   |  RRP £4.99

  Perennial Oscar nominee Judi Dench shakes off the dust of period pieces to play a sassy widow looking to recapture a little of the excitement of her youth: she was the star saxophone player of a World War II-era all-girl dance band. Yanking her instrument from mothballs, she starts blowing the old standards as a street musician, much to the horror of her cultured children (they prefer symphonies to swing classics), and then hatches a plan to track down her band mates for a gala reunion at her granddaughter's school dance. The script carries little suspense and few surprises, but the cast is a delight. Ian Holm costars as the band's womanising drummer (in a dress and a platinum blonde wig), a rascally old rogue who seduced almost every member during their brief wartime run and married half of them in the intervening years. Olympia Dukakis (Moonstruck) is their trombonist, a hard-drinking American widow living it up in a Scottish castle; jazz great Cleo Laine is a trumpeter turned torch singer; and Leslie Caron cameos as their brassy bass player. Joan Sims (a fixture of the Carry On movies), Billie Whitelaw (Quills), and June Whitfield (the mother on Absolutely Fabulous) are among the great British character actors who join the fun. The old broads bring sass to the sentimentality in this fluffy, feel-good, made-for-cable comedy, insisting there is not only life after 60, but that it swings sweetly if only you let it. --Sean Axmaker

• Day After Tomorrow, The / Independence Day | DVD | (31/05/2005) from £8.47   |  Saving you £7.52 (88.78%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The Day After Tomorrow: Extremely concerned by the Earth's extremely rapid rate of climate change paleoclimatologist Adrian Hall (Quaid) races northward to a freezing New York to rescue his son as the rest of humanity streams south to escape the impending ice age... Independence Day: One of the biggest box office hits of all time delivers the ultimate encounter when mysterious and powerful aliens launch an all-out invasion against the human race. The spectacle begins when massive spaceships appear in Earth's skies. But wonder turns to terror as the ships blast destructive beams of fire down on cities all over the planet. Now the world's only hope lies with a determined band of survivors uniting for one last strike against the invaders - before it's the end of mankind.

• The Borrowers | DVD | (04/10/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  This boxset contains both series of The Borrowers based on the novel by Mary Norton. The Borrowers are a family of tiny humans who live under the stairs in an old house populated by the larger version of the human being.

• Alien Quadrilogy | DVD | (10/09/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A