"Actor: John Ho"

• Inspector Morse - The Complete Series (33 Disc Box Set) | DVD | (07/10/2002) from £79.99   |  Saving you £120.00 (150.02%)   |  RRP £199.99

  When Inspector Morse first appeared on television in 1987, nobody could have predicted that it would run into the next century, maintaining throughout a quality of scripts and storylines that raised the genre of the detective series to a new level. Much of its success can be attributed to John Thaw's total immersion in the role. Morse is a prickly character and not obviously easy to like. As a detective in Oxford with unfulfilled academic propensities, he is permanently excluded from a world of which he would dearly love to be a part. He is at odds with that world--and with his colleagues in the police force--most of the time. Passionate about opera and "proper beer", he is a cultural snob for whom vulgarity causes almost physical pain. As a result, he lives from one disillusionment to another. And he is scarred--more deeply than he would ever admit--by past relationships. But he also has a naïve streak and, deep down, sensitivity, which makes him a fascinating challenge for women. At the heart of Morse's professional life is his awkward partnership with Detective Sergeant Lewis, the resolutely ordinary, worldly sidekick who manages to keep his boss in an almost permanent state of exasperation while retaining his grudging respect. It's a testament to Kevin Whately's consistently excellent performance that from such unpromising material, Lewis becomes as indispensable to the series as Barrington Pheloung's hypnotic, classic theme music. Morse's investigations do occasionally take him abroad to more exotic locations, but throughout 14 successful years of often gruesome murders, the city of Oxford itself became a central character in these brooding two-hour dramas: creator Colin Dexter said he finally had to kill Morse off because he was giving Oxford a bad reputation as a dangerous place! --Piers Ford

• Red Dwarf: Series 6 | DVD | (21/02/2005) from £7.35   |  Saving you £12.64 (171.97%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Series 6 is possibly the most eagerly awaited of the Red Dwarf DVD sets, due to its acclaimed third episode, "Gunmen of the Apocalypse", which earned the program an International Emmy Award in 1994. However, the five other episodes in the series have their own share of absurd laughs, and the two-disc set features enough supplemental features to keep even the most demanding RD fan happy. The crux of series 6 is that the Red Dwarf has been stolen (no thanks to Lister, who can't remember where he left it), and the crew must recover it; their pursuit brings them in contact with brain-consuming aliens ("Psirens", with guest star Jenny Agutter), a polymorph that turns Rimmer and Cat into their alternate identities from Series V ("Emohawk--Polymorph II"), the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse tricked out as gunslingers ("Gunmen of the Apocalypse"), an army of Rimmer clones ("Rimmerworld"), and finally, their own future selves, who turn out to be particularly awful (worse than the present-day ones, that is), and cause a cliffhanger ending that just might spell the end for the Red Dwarf crew.... In short, series 6 more than earns its popular status among Red Dwarf's fanbase, thanks to its sharp writing (sadly, it would be the last series to feature scripts by co-creator Rob Grant) and energetic performances. And the double-disc set matches the quality of the programs with some terrific extras, including commentaries by the RD crew and fans (the latter on "Gunmen of the Apocalypse" only), and featurettes on composer Howard Goodall and series director Andy de Emmony; these are rounded out by the usual collections of "smeg-ups" (bloopers), deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes footage, and another episode of the "Dave Hollins, Space Cadet" radio sketch that inspired the show. And again, the most patient of viewers will find Easter eggs on the menus (happy hunting). --Paul Gaita

• Shiloh Season | DVD | (02/09/2002) from £15.99   |  Saving you £-2.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  The big-hearted little beagle and his resourceful master return in Shiloh 2: Shiloh Season the second movie in the trilogy based on Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's Newberry Award-winning novels. Zachary Browne plays seventh-grader Marty whose run-ins with a neighbor (Scott Wilson) who mistreats his dog put Marty on a problem-filled path called growing up. Marty's caring father (Michael Moriarty) and genial Doc Wallace (Rod Steiger) help him confront his troubles responsibly. But Shiloh te

• Bombay Waterfront - Paul Temple Returns | DVD | (22/03/2010) from £6.98   |  Saving you £6.01 (86.10%)   |  RRP £12.99

  John Bentley - Playing Paul Temple for the third time aids the police in solving a series of gruesome murders. Murder mystery based on Francis Durbridge's amateur sleuth. While holidaying in New York, English novelist and amateur detective Paul Temple (John Bentley) learns of a series of murders terrorising his homeland. Warned by the culprit, the notorious 'Marquis' not to get involved, Temple nevertheless wastes no time in setting after his quarry.

• The Lost City Of Z | Blu Ray | (24/07/2017) from £8.95   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Based on the international bestseller, The Lost City of Z tells the incredible true story of British explorer Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam, Pacific Rim, Sons of Anarchy), who journeys into the Amazon at the dawn of the 20th century and discovers evidence of a previously unknown, advanced civilisation . Despite being ridiculed by the scientific establishment, the determined Fawcett supported by his devoted wife (Sienna Miller, High-Rise, American Sniper), son (Tom Holland) and aide-de-camp (Robert Pattinson, The Twilight Saga) returns to his beloved jungle in an attempt to prove his case, culminating in his mysterious disappearance in 1925. An epic tale of courage and passion, The Lost City of Z is a stirring tribute to the exploratory spirit and a conflicted adventurer driven to the verge of obsession.

• Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues: A Musical Journey | DVD | (12/12/2008) from £19.99   |  Saving you £3.00 (15.01%)   |  RRP £22.99

  It may have been underrated when first broadcast, but executive producer Martin Scorsese's homage to the blues is a truly significant, if imperfect, achievement. "Musical journey" is an apt description, as Scorsese and the six other directors responsible for these seven approximately 90-minute films follow the blues--the foundation of jazz, soul, R&B, and rock & roll--from its African roots to its Mississippi Delta origins, up the river to Memphis and Chicago, then to New York, the United Kingdom, and beyond. Some of the films (like Wim Wenders's The Soul of a Man and Charles Burnett's Warming by the Devil's Fire) use extensive fictional film sequences, generally to good effect. There's also plenty of documentary footage, interviews, and contemporary studio performances recorded especially for these films. The last are among the best aspects of the DVDs, as the bonus material features the set's only complete tunes. Lou Reed's "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean" and the ElektriK Mud Kats' (with Chuck D. of Public Enemy) hip-hop-cum-traditional updating of Muddy Waters's "Mannish Boy" are among the best of them; on the other hand, a rendition of "Cry Me a River" by Lulu (?!) is a curious choice, even with Jeff Beck on hand. The absence of lengthier vintage clips, meanwhile, is the principal drawback. For that reason alone, Clint Eastwood's Piano Blues is the best of the lot; a musician himself, Eastwood simply lets the players play, which means we get extensive file footage of the likes of Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson, and Nat "King" Cole, as well as new performances by Ray Charles, Dr. John, and others. Overall, this is a set to savor, a worthwhile investment guaranteed to grow on you over the course of repeated viewings. --Sam Graham

• In The Line Of Fire | DVD | (18/02/2002) from £7.84   |  Saving you £5.15 (65.69%)   |  RRP £12.99

  This smart, tautly directed thriller from Wolfgang Petersen is about the cat-and-mouse games between a Secret Service agent named Horrigan (Clint Eastwood) and the brilliant, psychopathic assassin (John Malkovich) who's itching to get the President in his cross hairs. In the Line of Fire's back-story--Horrigan is haunted by his inability to prevent John Kennedy's assassination (Eastwood is computer-generated into archival footage)--is more than a little hokey, but the plotting itself is smartly, even ingeniously, constructed. Petersen manages a vice-like grip on the tension and Eastwood even gets to deliver an ever-more-timely lecture on the diminished nature of the office of President. Eastwood's as gruff and as infuriating to the by-the-book Powers That Be as ever and Malkovich oozes delightful menace. Rene Russo capably co-stars as a colleague with whom Horrigan gets friendly. --David Kronke

• Great Expectations | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £6.99   |  Saving you £6.00 (85.84%)   |  RRP £12.99

  David Lean's masterpiece based on Charles Dickins' timeless novel about Pip, a blacksmith's apprentice who suddenly comes into great fortunes.

• Duel At Diablo | DVD | (01/03/2004) from £7.68   |  Saving you £5.31 (69.14%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Sidney Poitier and James Garner put in excellent performances as men on either side of the colour divide forced to fight side by side against the might of the Apache Indians...

• Paradise | DVD | (27/04/2004) from £11.95   |  Saving you £3.04 (25.44%)   |  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.

• Key Largo | DVD | (01/06/2006) from £7.00   |  Saving you £10.99 (157.00%)   |  RRP £17.99

  John Huston (The Maltese Falcon) directed this smart thriller about a gangster (Edward G. Robinson) who holds a number of people hostage in a hotel on the Florida keys during a tropical storm. Humphrey Bogart is the returning war veteran who takes on the villains, and Lauren Bacall is on hand as one of the people on the wrong end of Robinson's gun. Somewhat similar in tone to Howard Hawks's To Have and Have Not (which also featured Bogart and Bacall), Key Largo is a moody movie which captures a certain despair offset by the bond between individuals united by common purpose. Claire Trevor won an Academy Award for her part as Robinson's alcoholic girlfriend. --Tom Keogh

• The Lakes 2 | DVD | (06/10/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The original series of the The Lakes brought writer Jimmy McGovern and actor John Simm a great deal of critical praise in 1997. Following a particularly dry period for British TV drama, the show's realistic characterisations and their painfully honest decisions hit audiences hard. Simm is a twentysomething trapped in a life of compulsive gambling, theft and being on the dole in Liverpool. On a whim he heads north to the Lake District. He expects to find the countryside quietude where his hidden poetical leanings might find a home, but instead gets caught up in a community like any other. Lies, temptation and tragedy beset every household just as much as the big city. In the second series, far longer than the first, an exploration of Danny's tortured soul might have been the obvious continuation to the story; instead an almost Hitchcockian murder scenario occupies far more screen time. But by stretching things out, this second series does not have the same self-contained impact of the original. Additional writers only served to drag out Danny's boy-to-man journey. Ultimately, lessons are learned, including the realistic conclusion that life is without a poetical status quo. Despite the tail-off in overall quality, you'd be hard pressed to identify a better British drama in the years since. --Paul Tonks

• Die Hard 2: Die Harder | DVD | (10/01/2000) from £5.95   |  Saving you £15.30 (326.23%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Director Renny Harlin (Cutthroat Island) took the reins of this 1990 sequel, which places Bruce Willis's New York City cop character in harm's way again with a gaggle of terrorists. This time, Willis awaits his wife's arrival at Dulles Airport in Washington, DC, when he gets wind of a plot to blow up the facility. Noisy, overbearing and forgettable, the film has none of the purity of its predecessor's simple story; and it makes a huge miscalculation in allowing a terrible tragedy to occur rather than stretch out the tension. Where Die Hard set new precedents in action movies, Die Hard 2 is just an anything-goes spectacle. -- Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

• Children Of A Lesser God | DVD | (18/11/2002) from £8.98   |  Saving you £7.01 (78.06%)   |  RRP £15.99

  One of the most critically-acclaimed films of the 80s Children Of A Lesser God garnered four Academy Award nominations and a Best Actress Oscar for Marlee Matlin. Based on the hit Broadway play it's the uplifting love story of John Leeds (William Hurt) an idealistic special education teacher and a headstrong deaf girl named Sarah (Marlee Matlin). At first Leeds sees Sarah as a teaching challenge. But soon their teacher/student relationship blossoms into a love so passionate it sh

• Snake Eyes | DVD | (05/02/2001) from £9.98   |  Saving you £6.01 (60.22%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Brian De Palma's 1998 thriller is largely an exercise in airing out his orchestral, oversized visual style (think of his Blowout, Body Double or Raising Cain) for the heck of it. The far-fetched story featuresNicolasCage as a crooked police detective attending a championship boxing match at which the Secretary of Defence is assassinated. The unfortunate Secretary's right-hand man (Gary Sinise) happens to be Cage's old friend, a fact that complicates the cop's efforts to reconstruct the crime from conflicting accounts--a directorial strategy bearing similarities to Kurosawa's Rashomon. The outrageousness of the scenario essentially gives DePalma permission to construct a baroque cathedral of spectacular camera stunts, which (he well knows) are inevitably more interesting than the hoary conspiracy plot. (The opening scene alone, which runs on for a number of minutes and consists of one, unbroken shot that moves in from the street, following Cage up and down stairs and in and out of rooms until finally ending ringside at the match, is breathtaking.) The shifting points of view--based on the contradictory statements of witnesses--also give De Palma licence to get creative with camera angles and scene rearrangements. The script bogs down in the third act but De Palma is just revving up for a big, operatic finish that is absolutely gratuitous but undeniably impressive. Yes, it's style over substance in Snake Eyes but what style you're talking about.--Tom Keogh

• Primary Colors | DVD | (03/08/2009) from £6.98   |  Saving you £11.00 (220.44%)   |  RRP £15.99

  John Travolta stars as Jack Stanton a presidential hopeful whose campaign is challenged by dual dilemmas: how to squelch a scandal involving the candidate's alleged sex with an underage girl and how to handle information that could potentially ruin Stanton's opponent (superbly played by Larry Hagman). Stanton's wife (Emma Thompson) stands by her man despite awareness of his infidelities but his loyal campaign planners (played by Billy Bob Thornton Maura Tierney and promising newc

• One Night At McCool's | DVD | (22/10/2001) from £8.55   |  Saving you £11.44 (133.80%)   |  RRP £19.99

  It all started one night at McCool's: three unsuspecting men and one woman with a dream are brought together by lust, mayhem, DVDs, and the finer points of home decorating. Starring Liv TYler, Matt Dillon, John Goodman and Paul Reiser.

• 10 Rillington Place | DVD | (29/03/2004) from £16.98   |  Saving you £-3.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Based on Ludovic Kennedy's investigative book '10 Rillington Place' is the true and horrifying story of English mass murderer John Christie (chillingly played by Richard Attenborough). When Timothy Evans (John Hurt) his wife Beryl (Judy Geeson) and their young daughter movie into Christie's house they unknowingly sign their death warrants. Christie offers to help Beryl have an abortion and uses this opportunity as he has already done with previous victims to strangle and rape

• Inspector Morse - Disc 15 And 16 - Masonic Mysteries / Second Time Around | DVD | (15/07/2002) from £5.98   |  Saving you £9.01 (150.67%)   |  RRP £14.99

  When Inspector Morse first appeared on television in 1987, nobody could have predicted that it would run into the next century, maintaining throughout a quality of scripts and story lines that raised the genre of the detective series to a new level. Much of its success can be attributed to John Thaw's total immersion in the role. Morse is a prickly character and not obviously easy to like. As a detective in Oxford with unfulfilled academic propensities, he is permanently excluded from a world of which he would dearly love to be a part. He is at odds with that world--and with his colleagues in the police force--most of the time. Passionate about opera and "proper beer", he is a cultural snob for whom vulgarity causes almost physical pain. As a result, he lives from one disillusionment to another. And he is scarred--more deeply than he would ever admit--by past relationships. But he also has a naïve streak and, deep-down sensitivity, which makes him a fascinating challenge for women. At the heart of Morse's professional life is his awkward partnership with Detective Sergeant Lewis, the resolutely ordinary, worldly sidekick who manages to keep his boss in an almost permanent state of exasperation while retaining his grudging respect. It's a testament to Kevin Whateley's consistently excellent performance that from such unpromising material, Lewis becomes as indispensable to the series as Barrington Pheloung's hypnotic, classic theme music. Morse's investigations do occasionally take him abroad to more exotic locations, but throughout 14 successful years of often gruesome murders, the city of Oxford itself became a central character in these brooding two-hour dramas: creator Colin Dexter stating he finally had to kill Morse off because he was giving Oxford a bad reputation as a dangerous place! --Piers Ford

• The Littlest Rebel | DVD | (07/08/2006) from £5.38   |  Saving you £7.61 (58.60%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Shirley Temple's father a rebel officer sneaks back to his rundown plantation to see his family and is arrested. However a yankee takes pity upon him and sets up an escape; unfortunately for all concerned the escape is foiled and all the captured officers are sentenced to execution. Enter Shirley and ""Bojangles"" Robinson to beg President Lincoln to intercede.