"Actor: Jean Heather"

• You've Got Mail | DVD | (23/08/1999) from £4.99   |  Saving you £9.00 (180.36%)   |  RRP £13.99

  By now, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan have amassed such a fund of goodwill with moviegoers that any new onscreen pairing brings nearly reflexive smiles. In You've Got Mail, the quintessential boy and girl next door repeat the tentative romantic crescendo that made Sleepless in Seattle, writer-director Nora Ephron's previous excursion with the duo, a massive hit. The prospective couple do actually meet face to face early on but Mail otherwise repeats the earlier feature's gentle, extended tease of saving its romantic resolution until the final, gauzy shot. The underlying narrative is an even more old-fashioned romantic pas de deux that is casually hooked to a newfangled device. The script, cowritten by the director and her sister, Delia Ephron, updates and relocates the Ernst Lubitsch classic, The Shop Around the Corner, to contemporary Manhattan, where Joe Fox (Hanks) is a cheerfully rapacious merchant whose chain of book superstores is gobbling up smaller, more specialized shops such as the children's bookstore owned by Kathleen Kelly (Ryan). Their lives run in close parallel in the same idealized neighbourhood yet they first meet anonymously, online, where they gradually nurture a warm, even intimate correspondence. As they begin to wonder whether this e-mail flirtation might lead them to be soul mates, however, they meet and clash over their colliding business fortunes. It's no small testament to the two stars that we wind up liking and caring about them despite the inevitable (and highly manipulative) arc of the plot. Although their chemistry transcended the consciously improbable romantic premise of Sleepless, enabling director Ephron to attain a kind of amorous soufflé, this time around there's a slow leak that considerably deflates the affair. Less credulous viewers will challenge Joe's logic in prolonging the concealment of his online identity from Kathleen, and may shake their heads at Ephron's reinvention of Manhattan as a spotless, sun-dappled wonderland where everybody lives in million-dollar apartments and colour co-ordinates their wardrobes for cocktail parties. --Sam Sutherland

• Double Indemnity | Blu Ray | (25/06/2012) from £17.25   |  Saving you £4.00 (25.02%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Director Billy Wilder (Sunset Boulevard) and writer Raymond Chandler (The Big Sleep) adapted James M. Cain's hard-boiled novel into this wildly thrilling story of insurance man Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray), who schemes the perfect murder with the beautiful dame Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck: kill Dietrichson's husband and make off with the insurance money. But, of course, in these plots things never quite go as planned, and Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson) is the wily insurance investigator who must sort things out. From the opening scene you know Neff is doomed, as the story is told in flashback; yet, to the film's credit, this doesn't diminish any of the tension of the movie. This early film noir flick is wonderfully campy by today's standards, and the dialogue is snappy ("I thought you were smarter than the rest, Walter. But I was wrong. You're not smarter, just a little taller"), filled with lots of "dame"s and "baby"s. Stanwyck is the ultimate femme fatale, and MacMurray, despite a career largely defined by roles as a softy (notably in the TV series My Three Sons and the movie The Shaggy Dog), is convincingly cast against type as the hapless, love-struck sap. --Jenny Brown

• Going My Way | DVD | (21/02/2005) from £3.00   |  Saving you £6.99 (70.00%)   |  RRP £9.99

  When an old and fading St. Dominic's church gets a young new priest (Crosby) things are bound to change. For starters young Father O'Malley meets the crusty old Father Fitzgibbons (Barry Fitzgerald) who doesn't think much of him or his ideas. The two have their differences but O'Malley is able to inspire some neighbourhood roughnecks to open their hearts and minds in a way the old priest simply could not do. Once the change has begun the church starts to find its way back into the

• Shout At The Devil | DVD | (01/09/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Shout at the Devil was Roger Moore's second starring role in an adaptation of one Wilbur Smith's bestselling African adventures (the first being 1974's Gold, also directed by Peter Hunt). Taking its mixture of comedy and drama, and part of its plot, from The African Queen the movie finds Moore's decent, upright Englishman teamed with Lee Marvin--in a variation on his Cat Ballou drunken brawler comedy persona--fighting the Germans in colonial East Africa at the beginning of the Great War. Moore plays it straight and makes a most heroic and handsome matinee idol hero. Produced between Moore's second and third outings as Bond, Shout at the Devil was staffed with various 007 regulars, including Hunt who was had edited the first three and directed On Her Majesty's Secret Service, title designer Maurice Binder and director John Glen. It even has a ticking clock-gigantic explosion finale. This is an exciting, beautifully shot escapade which deserves to be much better known. On the DVD: The original Panavision 2.35:1 image is incorrectly letterboxed at around 2:1, cropping so much picture information that the credits disappear at either side of the screen. The print used is of very variable quality, with some scenes looking fine, others washed out and lacking detail, with long shots often being slightly out of focus. Adding to the problems is the abysmal digital encoding which, despite anamorphic enhancement, has left many scenes swarming with compression artefacts. The sound is adequate mono. Unfortunately this disc uses a heavily re-edited and shortened version of the film--cut from 147 to 119 minutes following poor reviews--and the losses in continuity, especially in the early part of the film are very noticeable. The extras are the original trailer, which reveals the entire plot right up to and including the ending, comprehensive filmographies of Marvin, Moore and Hunt, and a seven-minute compilation of posters and publicity stills set to the main themes from Maurice Jarre's score. --Gary S Dalkin

• Suspicion | DVD | (21/04/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Repeated viewings can't dispel the shock of the final scene of Suspicion, Hitchcock's classic 1941 romantic mystery--a brief but disorientating confrontation that suddenly inverts the heroine's mounting conviction that she's married a murderer, forcing us to reconsider virtually every scene and line of dialogue that's preceded it. It's a masterful coup de grâce for the director, who has built a puzzle around the corrosive power of suspicion, threaded with deft ambiguities that toy with dramatic conventions and character archetypes in nearly every frame. As embodied by Joan Fontaine, who nabbed an Oscar in this second outing with the director, Lina McLaidlaw is a buttoned-up, bookish heiress whose prim exterior conceals longings for a more engaged emotional life. Her solution materialises in the darkly handsome Johnnie Aysgarth, a gambler, womaniser and spendthrift who flirts, then pursues, and soon marries her. As Aysgarth, Cary Grant is both irresistible and sinister, capable of deceit and petty theft, as well as grander designs on his bride's impending fortune. Lina's passion for Johnnie is clouded by each new revelation about his apparent dishonesty, from clandestine gambling to real-estate development schemes; more troubling are clues implicating him in the death of his best friend, and the prospect that Johnnie may be slowly poisoning Lina herself. By the time we see him ascending a darkened staircase with a suspicious glass of milk, an image made all the more indelible through the spectral glow the director captures in the glass, the evidence seems damning indeed. In fact, even as Hitchcock stacks the deck against Johnnie, and takes full advantage of Grant's skill at conveying such menace, the director also dots his landscape with visual clues to Lina's own neurotic (and erotic) obsessions. The final scene forces us to re-evaluate her behaviour while leaving enough of a cloud over Johnnie to rob him, and us, of a complete exoneration. It's a wicked, unsettling payoff to a brilliantly executed thriller. --Sam Sutherland

• Barbara Stanwyck | DVD | (13/03/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £49.99

  A bumper box set of classic films featuring 'The Queen' Barbara Stanwyck! Double Indemnity (Dir. Billy Wilder 1944): Director Billy Wilder and writer Raymond Chandler ('The Big Sleep') adapted James M. Cain's hard-boiled novel into this wildly thrilling story of insurance man Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) who schemes the perfect murder with the beautiful dame Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck): kill Dietrichson's husband and make off with the insurance money. But of cou

• You've Got Mail / City Of Angels / Addicted To Love | DVD | (29/09/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £22.99

  You've Got Mail - Delivers all the wit charm and warmth you'd expect from a reunion of the stars (Tom Hanks Meg Ryan) and director (Nora Ephron) of 'Sleepless In Seattle'. Greg Kinnear Parker Posey Jean Stapleton and more talented co-stars add perfect support to this valentine to modern - to modem - romance in which superstore book chain magnate Hanks and cosy children's bookshop owner Ryan are anonymous e-mail cyberpals who fall head-over-laptops in love unaware they are combative business rivals. You've got rare Hollywood magic when You've Got Mail.City Of Angels - What if angels walked among us and one of them fell in love with one of us?Two of the brightest stars in the Hollywood constellation spark the biggest romance under the heavens in City Of Angels a 'lyrical unabashedly romantic film [that] earns its wings' (David Ansen Newsweek). Nicholas Cage is Seth an angel who must decide if he'll forsake his immortality and become human - on the chance that the woman of his dreams might love him. That woman is Maggie (Meg Ryan) a pragmatic heart surgeon who doesn't believe in angels... until she meets Seth. Will love be their mutual destiny? Will they take the risks that shape that destiny? The choice is theirs to make. The movie is yours to see share and sweep you away.Addicted To Love - Meg Ryan and Matthew Broderick take a funny look at love's obsessive side as Maggie and Sam teaming for revenge when their exes (Kelly Preston and Tcheky Karyo) team for romance. Sam simply wants his girlfriend back. Maggie wants to get back at her old flame. So all over New York's Soho they unleash their diabolical plot. If successful the two who spurned them will be hapless hopeless loveless. And if Cupid has his way Maggie and Sam just might go from a jilted Who's Through to a romantic Who's Who.

• Double Indemnity | Blu Ray | (25/06/2012) from £49.99   |  Saving you £-20.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Director Billy Wilder (Sunset Boulevard) and writer Raymond Chandler (The Big Sleep) adapted James M. Cain's hard-boiled novel into this wildly thrilling story of insurance man Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray), who schemes the perfect murder with the beautiful dame Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck: kill Dietrichson's husband and make off with the insurance money. But, of course, in these plots things never quite go as planned, and Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson) is the wily insurance investigator who must sort things out. From the opening scene you know Neff is doomed, as the story is told in flashback; yet, to the film's credit, this doesn't diminish any of the tension of the movie. This early film noir flick is wonderfully campy by today's standards, and the dialogue is snappy ("I thought you were smarter than the rest, Walter. But I was wrong. You're not smarter, just a little taller"), filled with lots of "dame"s and "baby"s. Stanwyck is the ultimate femme fatale, and MacMurray, despite a career largely defined by roles as a softy (notably in the TV series My Three Sons and the movie The Shaggy Dog), is convincingly cast against type as the hapless, love-struck sap. --Jenny Brown

• Double Indemnity (1944) (Criterion Collection) UK Only | Blu Ray | (30/05/2022) from £32.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Has dialogue ever been more perfectly hard-boiled? Has a femme fatale ever been as deliciously evil as BARBARA STANWYCK (The Lady Eve)? And has 1940s Los Angeles ever looked so seductively sordid? Working with cowriter RAYMOND CHANDLER, director BILLY WILDER (Ace in the Hole) launched himself onto the Hollywood A-list with this paragon of film-noir fatalism from JAMES M. CAIN's pulp novel. When slick salesman Walter Neff (The Caine Mutiny's FRED MACMURRAY) walks into the swank home of dissatisfied housewife Phyllis Dietrichson (Stanwyck), he intends to sell her insurance, but he winds up becoming entangled with her in a far more sinister way. Featuring scene-stealing supporting work from EDWARD G. ROBINSON and the chiaroscuro of cinematographer JOHN F. SEITZ (Sunset Blvd.), Double Indemnity is one of the most wickedly perverse stories ever told and the cynical standard by which all noir must be measured. Product Features New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack Audio commentary featuring film critic Richard Schickel New interview with film scholar Noah Isenberg, editor of Billy Wilder on Assignment New conversation between film historians Eddie Muller and Imogen Sara Smith Billy, How Did You Do It?, a 1992 film by Volker Schlöndorff and Gisela Grischow featuring interviews with director Billy Wilder Shadows of Suspense, a 2006 documentary on the making of Double Indemnity Audio excerpts from 1971 and 1972 interviews with cinematographer John F. Seitz Radio adaptations from 1945 and 1950 Trailer English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

• Double Indemnity | DVD | (11/07/2005) from £9.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Director Billy Wilder and writer Raymond Chandler adapted James M. Cain's hard-boiled novel into this wildly thrilling story of insurance man Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray), who schemes the perfect murder with the beautiful dame Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck): kill Dietrichson's husband and make off with the insurance money. But, of course, in these plots things never quite go as planned, and Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson) is the wily insurance investigator who must sort things out. From the opening scene you know Neff is doomed, as the story is told in flashback; yet, to the film's credit, this doesn't diminish any of the tension of the movie. This early film noir flick is wonderfully campy by today's standards, and the dialogue is snappy ("I thought you were smarter than the rest, Walter. But I was wrong. You're not smarter, just a little taller"), filled with lots of "dame"s and "baby"s. Stanwyck is the ultimate femme fatale, and MacMurray, despite a career largely defined by roles as a softy, is convincingly cast against type as the hapless, love-struck sap. --Jenny Brown, Amazon.com