"Actor: John M"

• Carry On Follow That Camel | DVD | (17/02/2003) from £6.37   |  Saving you £6.62 (103.92%)   |  RRP £12.99

  In Carry On Follow That Camel, Sergeant Bilko himself, Phil Silvers, lends lustre and trademark spectacles to this 1967 desert spectacle following the adventures of a group of foreign legionnaires who find themselves besieged by a bloodthirsty band of Bedouins. Silvers plays Sergeant Nocker, a rogue cast firmly in the Bilko mould, who takes a dislike to new recruit Jim Dale, a young upper class gent forced to join the legion following disgrace at a cricket match. He's accompanied, naturally, by his faithful manservant (Peter Butterworth), with the pair showing a fine disregard for the austere requirements of the Foreign Legion. However, once they reach an agreement with Sergeant Nocker, they can join forces to repel the Bedouins, led, not unpredictably, by Bernard Bresslaw. This is vintage Carry On, in spite of Sid James' absence. Kenneth Williams' performance is subdued by having to deliver the usual puns ("zere are a couple of points I still need to go over", he informs busty Joan Sims) in a mangled French accent but Silvers gets into the right mode of delivering broad comedy with subtle inflections. Peter Butterworth draws the short straw this time and must feature in the obligatory cross-dressing scene, while Charles Hawtrey is a splendidly unconvincing hardened legionnaire. As for Bresslaw, can any other British actor, with the exception of Sir Alec Guinness, have distinguished himself in such a variety of multi-ethnic roles? On the DVD: Sadly, there are no extra features except scene selection. The picture ratio is 4:3. --David Stubbs

• Playing with Fire (DVD) | DVD | (04/05/2020) from £5.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  When straight-laced fire superintendent Jake Carson (John Cena) and his elite team of expert firefighters (Keegan-Michael Key, John Leguizamo and Tyler Mane) come to the rescue of three siblings (Brianna Hildebrand, Christian Convery and Finley Rose Slater) in the path of an encroaching wildfire, they quickly realize that no amount of training could prepare them for their most challenging job yet babysitters. Unable to locate the children's parents, the firefighters have their lives, jobs and even their fire depot turned upside down and quickly learn that kids much like fires are wild and unpredictable. Bonus Features Storytime With John Cena What it Means to Be A Family The Real Smokejumpers: This Is Their Story

• Lost Highway | DVD | (17/06/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  David Lynch's Lost Highway is one of the most puzzled over movies of the 1990s. After Twin Peaks and Wild at Heart audiences were prepared for more questions than answers. But this mystery is without doubt the most sinister and disturbing of all his work, which is to say it's arguably the most worthy of puzzling out. Bill Pullman goes to jail for murdering his wife Patricia Arquette the Brunette. He metamorphoses into Balthazar Getty who falls for Patricia Arquette the Blonde. They're involved in many bad things. Getty morphs back to Pullman who's left with neither girl, but a lot of explaining to do about how Robert Loggia was involved with both and who/what on earth Robert Blake is. There are no straight answers. It might just be possible to twist the film into a Moebius strip and work out half the chronology, but that would be missing the point. Lynch makes paintings that move and if they happen to tell a tale (thank you The Straight Story), that's just a happy by-product. This film is "about" a lot of things: obsession, the impossible notion of owning a partner, why tailgating is wrong. Beyond that, it's about nothing more than enjoying just how sensually delicious everything looks and sounds on Lynch's Highway. On the DVD: Lost Highway is presented on disc in Lynch's preferred 2.35:1 ratio (anamorphically enhanced), even if it isn't the cleanest of transfers. Sound however, is only two channel stereo, whereas 5.1 mixes do exist elsewhere. The teaser trailer is hardly worth the effort. --Paul Tonks

• Doctor Who - Fury From The Deep | Blu Ray | (14/09/2020) from £8.49   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Fury From the Deep is the missing sixth serial of the fifth season of Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in six weekly parts from March to April 1968. Starring Patrick Troughton as the Doctor, the story concerns a colony of sentient, parasitic seaweed, last seen in the eighteenth century, returning to attack a number of gas instillations in the North Sea in an attempt to take over humanity. No full episodes of this story exist within the BBC archives, and only snippets of footage and still images are around to represent the story. However, off-air recordings of the soundtrack do exist, thus making the animation of a complete serial possible once again. The six new animated episodes are being made in full colour and high definition. The DVD/Blu-ray release will also include those surviving clips from the original 1968 production.

• Pacific Rim Uprising (4KUHD and Blu-Ray Plus Digital Download) | 4K UHD | (30/07/2018) from £19.03   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  The globe-spanning conflict between otherworldly monsters of mass destruction and the human-piloted super-machines built to vanquish them was only a prelude to the all-out assault on humanity in Pacific Rim Uprising. John Boyega (Star Wars: The Force Awakens) stars as the rebellious Jake Pentecost, a once-promising Jaeger pilot whose legendary father gave his life to secure humanity's victory against the monstrous Kaiju. Jake has since abandoned his training only to become caught up in a criminal underworld. But when an even more unstoppable threat is unleashed to tear through our cities and bring the world to its knees, he is given one last chance to live up to his father's legacy by his estranged sister, Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi)who is leading a brave new generation of pilots that have grown up in the shadow of war. As they seek justice for the fallen, their only hope is to unite together in a global uprising against the forces of extinction. Jake is joined by gifted rival pilot Lambert (The Fate of the Furious' Scott Eastwood) and 15-year-old Jaeger hacker Amara (newcomer Cailee Spaeny), as the heroes of the PPDC become the only family he has left. Rising up to become the most powerful defense force to ever walk the earth, they will set course for a spectacular all-new adventure on a towering scale.

• Midsomer Murders: The Eighth Collection - Limited Edition | DVD | (04/07/2011) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £99.99

  Beneath the tranquil surface of sleepy village life in the idyllic English county of Midsomer, exist dark secrets, scandals and downright evil. John Nettles stars as the humorous, thoughtful and methodical Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby. This special collection contains a further ten investigations including the final episode starring John Nettles. Barnaby and Jones continue to investigate the numerous murders that continue to be perpetrated in the dangerous county of Midsomer. Investigations Included: The Creeper The Great and the Good The Made-To-Measure Murders The Sword of Guillaume Blood on the Saddle The Silent Land Master Class The Noble Art Not In My Back Yard Fit For Murder Special Features: Biography of the Writer Fascinating Facts Cast Filmographies Production Notes

• Scrooge | DVD | (23/11/2015) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Hud | DVD | (07/06/2004) from £8.99   |  Saving you £7.00 (77.86%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Paul Newman is Hud a man at odds with his father tradition and himself. Hud's only interests are fighting drinking hot-rodding his Cadillac and womanising. Melvyn Douglas is the father an old-line cattle rancher and Patricia Neal is the understanding and appealing housekeeper. Academy Awards went to Patricia Neal Melvyn Douglas and James Wong Howe's brilliant cinematography.

• In The Earth | DVD | (25/10/2021) from £3.95   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  As the world searches for a cure to a disastrous virus, a scientist and park scout venture deep in the forest for a routine equipment run.

• Face/Off | DVD | (11/06/2001) from £4.96   |  Saving you £11.03 (222.38%)   |  RRP £15.99

  At his best, director John Woo turns action movies into ballets of blood and bullets grounded in character drama. Face/Off marks Woo's first American film to reach the pitched level of his best Hong Kong work (Hard-Boiled). He takes a patently absurd premise--hero and villain exchange identities by literally swapping faces in science-fiction plastic surgery--and creates a double-barrelled revenge film driven by the split psyches of its newly redefined characters. FBI agent Sean Archer (John Travolta) must play the villain to move through the underworld while psychotic terrorist Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage) becomes a perversely paternal family man, while using every tool at his disposal to destroy his nemesis. Travolta vamps Cage's tics and flamboyant excess with the grace of a dancer after his transformation from cop to criminal, while Cage plays the sullen, bottled-up agent excruciatingly trapped behind the face of the man who killed his son. His attempts to live up to the terrorist's reputation become cathartic explosions of violence that both thrill and terrify him. This is merely icing on the cake for action fans, the dramatic backbone for some of the most visceral action thrills ever. Woo fills the screen with one show-stopping set-piece after another, bringing a poetic grace to the action freakout with sweeping camerawork and sophisticated editing. This marriage of melodrama and mayhem ups the ante from cops-and-robbers clichés to a conflict of near-mythic levels. --Sean Axmaker

• Loch Ness | DVD | (14/03/2005) from £19.99   |  Saving you £-7.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Doctor Jonathan Dempsey is sent to Scotland to destroy the myth surrounding the Loch Ness monster. The daughter of his new girlfriend said to possess special mystic powers changes his life forever....

• Mutant X: The Complete Seasons 1-3 | Blu Ray | (31/10/2016) from £48.98   |  Saving you £83.00 (176.63%)   |  RRP £129.99

  As a result of genetic engineering gone wrong in a covert government experiment, a team of new mutants possessing extraordinary powers is spinning out of control and the organisation that created them must hunt them down in an urgent product recall. It is now the job of Mutant X to seek out and protect their fellow mutants whilst helping them to understand their astonishing abilities. Will they manage to stay one step ahead of Genomex?

• Romeo And Juliet | DVD | (07/02/2000) from £5.02   |  Saving you £7.97 (158.76%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Baz Luhrmann (Strictly Ballroom) takes a shot at reinventing Shakespeare's story of star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet as a visual pastiche inspired by MTV imagery, Hong Kong action-picture clichés, and Luhrmann's own taste for deliberate, gaudy excess. The result is explosive chaos, both in terms of bullets and visual sensibility, which some may find impossible to stick with for more than a few minutes. Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes play the leads, though not with much distinction, while Pete Postlethwaite makes a huge impression as this movie's version of Friar Laurence. The film is successful in spots, but overall its fever-dream game plan is difficult to ride out. --Tom Keogh

• Red Dwarf - Series 1 | DVD | (04/11/2002) from £6.16   |  Saving you £13.83 (224.51%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Notoriously, and entirely appropriately, the original outline for Doug Naylor and Rob Grant's comedy SF series Red Dwarf was sketched on the back of a beer mat. When it finally appeared on our television screens in 1988 the show had clearly stayed true to its roots, mixing jokes about excessive curry consumption with affectionate parodies of classic SF. Indeed, one of the show's most endearing and enduring features is its obvious respect for the conventions of SF, even as it gleefully subverts them. The scenario owes something to Douglas Adams's satirical Hitch-Hiker's Guide, something to The Odd Couple and a lot more to the slacker SF of John Carpenter's Dark Star. Behind the crew's constant bickering there lurks an impending sense that life, the universe and everything are all someone's idea of a terrible joke. Later series broadened the show's horizons until at last its premise was so diluted as to be unrecognisable, but in the six episodes of the first series the comedy is witty and intimate, focusing on characters and not special effects. Slob Dave Lister (Craig Charles) is the last human alive after a radiation leak wipes out the crew of the vast mining vessel Red Dwarf (episode 1, "The End"). He bums around the spaceship with the perpetually uptight and annoyed hologram of his dead bunkmate, Arnold Rimmer (Chris Barrie, the show's greatest comedy asset) and a creature evolved from a cat (dapper Danny John Jules). They are guided rather haphazardly by Holly, the worryingly thick ship's computer (lugubrious Norman Lovett). On the DVD: Red Dwarf I arrives in a two-disc set, with all six episodes on the first disc accompanied by an excellent group commentary from Craig Charles, Chris Barrie, Danny John Jules and Norman Lovett. (There's also a bonus commentary on "The End" with the two writers and director Ed Bye.) The 4:3 picture is unimpressive, but sound is decent stereo. The second disc has an entertaining 25-minute documentary on the genesis of the series with contributions from the cast, writer Doug Naylor and producer Paul Jackson. Navigate the animated menus to find a gallery of extra features, including isolated music cues, deleted scenes, outtakes ("Smeg Ups"), a fun "Drunk" music montage, model effects shots, Web links, audiobook clips, the original BBC trailer and even the entire first episode in Japanese. --Mark Walker

• The Adventures of Mark Twain (1986) | DVD | (31/10/2011) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The Adventures Of Mark Twain is an amazing journey of imagination humour and heart and a must for fans of Aardman Studios. The film features a series of vignettes extracted from several of Mark Twain's works built around a plot that features Twain's attempts to keep his appointment with Halley's Comet. Tom Sawyer Becky Thatcher and Huck Finn stow away with Mark Twain on an incredible journey in Twain's airship. The journey introduces the three friends to a variety of the author's characters from; The Diary of Adam and Eve Huckleberry Finn The Mysterious Stranger The Famous Jumping Frog of Caliverous County and Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven. The sequence based on The Mysterious Stranger reportedly received over ten million views upon being posted on YouTube. The sequence was allegedly banned from TV due to its disturbing content

• The Missouri Breaks | DVD | (05/07/2004) from £7.55   |  Saving you £5.44 (72.05%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Montana Badlands rancher David Braxton is a self-made man. Through years of tireless effort and determination he has transformed his vast and rugged land into a thriving prosperous empire. So when his livestock his fortune are threatened by a ruthless horse thief Braxton takes matters into his own hands. Hiring a sadistic 'regulator' to track down the outlaw Braxton intends to liberate the territory from crime but what he initiates instead is a complex series of events that re

• King Ralph | Blu Ray | (06/06/2016) from £9.69   |  Saving you £10.30 (106.30%)   |  RRP £19.99

  John Goodman (Roseanne, Raising Arizona) had his first starring role in this warm-hearted comedy from Oscar®-winning writer and director David S. Ward (The Sting, Major League, Sleepless in Seattle). When a freak accident wipes out the entire royal family, a surviving heir to the throne must be found, and turns up in the unlikely form of Ralph Jones (Goodman), a good-natured Las Vegas lounge singer. But even his private secretary (Peter O'Toole) can't prepare Ralph for the trouble he gets into when he runs afoul of the fiendish Lord Graves (John Hurt) and falls for a shy stripper (Camille Coduri). Based on the novel Headlong by Emlyn Williams (Night Must Fall, The Corn Is Green), this tailor made vehicle lets Goodman give his considerable comic talents free reign quite-literally for the first time.

• Dirty Deeds | DVD | (26/01/2004) from £14.98   |  Saving you £1.01 (6.74%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Australian crime caper set in 1969 Sydney. Local crime boss Barry Ryan's life is sweet but when two mobsters from America turn up to muscle in on his patch, he decides its time to teach them a lesson in outback hospitality.

• Jeeves And Wooster - The Complete 1st Series | DVD | (23/10/2000) from £26.98   |  Saving you £-1.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  PG Wodehouse's much-loved stories about Bertie Wooster and his brilliantly clever valet Jeeves were brought faithfully to life in Jeeves and Wooster, starring Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry as master and servant. Perfectly cast and with scripts that retain all the sparkling wit of Wodehouse's prose, it's hard to see how any future adaptation of his work could surpass this wonderfully funny series. This set contains the entire first season of Jeeves and Wooster. In "Jeeves Takes Charge" young man-about-town Bertie Wooster employs a new valet called Jeeves, and not a moment too soon. Thanks to his Aunt Agatha, Bertie faces the terrible prospect of marriage to the statuesque Honoria Glossop, and only Jeeves can save the day. "Tuppy and the Terrier" finds Bertie in trouble again when he loses Aunt Agatha's dog. Further aunt-related complications arise when Bertie's chum Tuppy falls for our hero's cousin Angela. Aunt Dahlia is not amused. An uncle in love with a waitress, a trip to the country, a speedy choirboy, and a secret betting syndicate all lead to trouble in "The Purity of the Turf". Jeeves, of course, is the only one who can put things right. Jeeves and Wooster really hits its stride in the final episodes of Series 1: "The Hunger Strike" and "Brinkley Manor". When Bertie visits Aunt Dahlia he is called upon to solve the romantic problems of his friends Tuppy Glossop (in love with Cousin Angela) and the delightful Gussy Fink-Nottle (in love with Madeleine Basset, a young lady who believes the stars to be God's daisy-chain.) Unwisely, Bertie decides to cook up his own plan and before long disaster strikes. Aunt Dahlia's superb chef Anatole gives his notice, and Bertram is to blame. Thank goodness for Jeeves. --Simon Leake, Amazon.com

• Without A Clue | DVD | (10/12/2001) from £3.99   |  Saving you £3.00 (75.19%)   |  RRP £6.99

  The basic joke of the would-be romp Without a Clue is that Dr Watson (Ben Kingsley) is a detecting genius who has had to hide his light under a bushel by hiring an alcoholic ham actor Reginald Kincaid (Michael Caine) to pose as his imaginary alter ego Sherlock Holmes. He is now frustrated because the blundering idiot is hailed as an infallible hero while he is forever being pushed out of the picture. To really work, the film should have cast a leading man who gives the impression that he might make a good serious Holmes, but Caine is all too credible in his idiot act. In one of the best jokes Watson covers up a faux pas by complementing Holmes on his convincing disguise as a drunken lout, and so the laughs that should come in a flow only manage to trickle. The actual plot is about forged bank-notes ruining the Empire but is constructed to allow for the usual excursion by picturesque steam train to a clue-ridden holiday destination and some dirty deeds down by the docks. The leads coast through their routines but the supporting cast has an appropriately rat-like and embittered Inspector Lestrade from Jeffrey Jones, a winsomely duplicitous Victorian heroine from Lysette Anthony and a rather good goateed sadist Professor Moriarty from Paul Freeman. It can't hold a magnifying glass to Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, but as a Holmesian footnote it edges a deerstalker or so ahead of Gene Wilder's The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother. It certainly beats the Peter Cook-Dudley Moore Hound of the Baskervilles and John Cleese in The Strange Case of the End of Civilisation as We Know It.--Kim Newman