"Actor: Marianne"

• Secrets & Lies | Blu Ray | (02/03/2015) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  If a film fan had never heard of director Mike Leigh, one might explain him as a British Woody Allen. Not that Leigh's films are whimsical or neurotic; they are tough-love examinations of British life--funny, outlandish and biting. His films share a real immediacy with Allen's work: they feel as if they are happening now. Leigh works with actors--real actors--on ideas and language. There is no script at the start (and sometimes not at the end). Secrets and Lies involves Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), an elegant black woman wanting to learn her birth mother's identity. She will find it's Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn), who is one of the saddest creatures we've seen in film. She's also one of the most real and, ultimately, one of the most loveable. Timothy Spall is Cynthia's brother, a giant man full of love who is being slowly defeated by his fastidious wife (Phyllis Logan). There is a great exuberance of life in Secrets & Lies, winner of the Palme D'Or and best actress (Blethyn) at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival--not Zorba-type life but the little battles fought and won every day. Leigh's honest interpretation of daily life is usually found only on the stage. Secrets & Lies is more realistic than a stage production, however, especially when Leigh shows us uninterrupted scenes. Critic David Denby states that Leigh has "made an Ingmar Bergman film without an instant of heaviness or pretension." If that sounds like your cup of tea, see Secrets & Lies. --Doug Thomas

• Clint Eastwood Red Tag Boxset | DVD | (15/09/2008) from £13.00   |  Saving you £-0.89 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.11

  A Fistful of DollarsThe First of the Spaghetti Westerns, A Fistful of Dollars became an instant cult hit. It also launched the film careers of Italian Writer/Director Sergio Leone, and a little known American television actor named Clint Eastwood. As the lean, cold-eyed cobra-quick gunfighter - Clint became the first of the 'anti heroes'. The cynical, enigmatic loner with a clouded past is the same character Eastwood fans have been savouring ever since. A fistful of Dollars is the western taken to the extreme - with unremitting violence, gritty realism and tongue-in-check humour. Leone's direction is taut and stylish, and the visuals are striking - from the breathtaking panoramas (in Spain) to the extreme close-ups of quivering lips and darting eyes before the shoot-out begins. And all are accented by renowned film composer Ennio morricone's quickly, haunting score. For a Few Dollars MoreClient Eastwood had proven so successful in his first foray into European Westerns with A Fistful of Dollars that a follow up sequel was inevitable. Superbly scripted by Luciano Vincenzoni, featuring an unforgettable alliance between ruthless gun-slingers Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef, For a Few Dollars More tells the tale of a ruthless quest to track down the notorious bandit El Indio played by Gian Maria Volonte. The film is also noted for its array of weaponry, a veritable arsenal of rifles that become so startlingly influential in future westerns. Sergio Leone's direction is both violent and operatic and Ennio Morricone's atmospheric score keeps the tension taut as the action moves from jail breaks and holds up to spectacular gun battles. The Good, The Bad and The UglyThe Good, The Bad and The Ugly, written by Age-Scarpelli, Luciano Vincenzoni and Sergio Leone is the third and last Western in Clint Eastwood's spaghetti trilogy. Director Sergio Leone subtitles for the upright puritan Protestant ethos, so familiar in Hollywood westerns, a seedy cynical standpoint towards death and morality, as a team of brutal bandits battle to unearth a fortune buried beneath an unmarked grave. Joining Clint War, filmed to resemble to the French battlefields of World War One, to end in the climatic Dance of death. Arguably the quintessential Italian Western, this 1966 film boasts a fine Ennio Morricoe score featuring a main theme that reached No.1 in the worlds pop charts. Hang 'em HighThey riddled him with bullets. They strung him up. They left him to die. But they made two fatal mistakes, they hung the wrong man... and they didn't finish the job. In his first American-made western, Clint Eastwood indelibly carves his niche as the quintessential tough guy - cool-headed, iron-willed and unrelenting in the pursuit of revenge. Oklahoma, 1873. Jed Cooper (Eastwood), mistaken for a rustler and killer, is lynched on the spot by crooked lawman Captain Wilson and a rampaging band of vigilantes. But as Wilson and his gang flee the scene, there's one very important detail they've overlooked: Cooper is still alive! Out for justice - and vengeance - Cooper takes on the job of deputy marshal... and, one by one, tracks down the nine men who 'done him wrong'.

• Boxing Day | DVD | (28/11/2022) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Melvin, a British author living in America, returns home to London for the holidays to introduce his American fiancé (Lisa) to his eccentric British-Caribbean family. Their relationship is put to the test, as she discovers the world Melvin left behind revolves around his ex-girlfriend (Georgia), who is now an international pop star!

• Halloween VI: The Curse of Michael Myers | DVD | (27/10/2003) from £9.87   |  Saving you £5.12 (51.87%)   |  RRP £14.99

  For pulse pounding suspense and relentless thrills nothing can match this DVD one of the most frightening chapters in the chilling 'Halloween' series! In one single horrifying night Michael Myers' masked reign of terror changed Halloween forever! Now six years after he was presumed dead in a fire Myers has returned to kill again and this time there's no escape! As the homicidal fury builds to a spine-tingling climax the long hidden secrets of the screen's most maniacal murderer

• Dust Devil | DVD | (26/06/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  He's not a serial killer. He's much worse. A shape-shifter comes from the desert in search of victims a spirit the locals call the Dust Devil. He prays on the lonely and the unloved those that have already lost everything but life itself... Wendy has broken up with her husband and wanders aimlessly in her car. She picks up a stranger and begins having misgivings about picking him up when strange things begin to occur. Meanwhile a local police officer tracks the killer. Aide

• The Escapees (Limited Edition 4K UHD) | Blu Ray | (09/12/2024) from £24.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Between the dystopian paranoia of The Night of the Hunted and the visceral excesses of The Living Dead Girl, director Jean Rollin takes a surreal detour into the Parisian demi-monde with The Escapees (Les Echappées, also known as Les Paumées du petit matin). When two young women, the wayward Michelle (Laurence Dubas) and the withdrawn Marie (Christiane Coppé), escape from an asylum, they find themselves drifting through a nightmarish world of burlesque troupes, lascivious sailors, and hardened criminals. After a violent confrontation, the police close in... With its supporting cast of key collaborators, including actors Brigitte Lahaie (Fascination), Louise Dhor (Requiem for a Vampire), Bernard Papineau (The Night of the Hunted), Jean-Loup Philippe (Lips of Blood), Natalie Perry (The Nude Vampire) and composer Philippe D'Aram (Two Orphan Vampires), The Escapees is at once atypical, yet unmistakeably Rollin. INDICATOR LIMITED EDITION 4K UHD SPECIAL FEATURESNew 4K HDR restoration from the original negative by Powerhouse Films4K (2160p) UHD presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)Two presentations of the film: Les Échappées, Jean Rollin's original version; and Les Paumées du petit matin, the alternative version with re-ordered scenesOriginal mono audioAudio commentary with film expert Tim Lucas (2024)One Day in Paris (2008): far-reaching interview with Rollin in which he discusses The Escapees and his other filmsQuant à Louise (2024): regular Rollin collaborators Natalie Perrey and Jean-Pierre Bouyxou remember actress Louise Dhour Previously unseen interview with actor Jean-Loup Phillipe (2024)Critical appreciation by author and musician Stephen Thrower (2024)Image gallery: promotional and publicity material, and behind the scenesNew and improved English translation subtitlesLimited edition exclusive 80-page book with a new essay by Lucas Balbo, archival writing on the film by Jean Rollin, an archival interview with the director, an archival interview with composer Philippe D'Aram, a tribute to Rollin by fantastique cinema expert Nicolas Stanzick, and full film creditsWorld premiere on 4K UHDLimited edition of 10,000 individually numbered units (6,000 4K UHDs and 4,000 Blu-rays) for the UK and US

• Prison | DVD | (26/06/2006) from £9.00   |  Saving you £10.99 (122.11%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A maths teacher approaches a former pupil now a film director with an idea for a film: the Devil declares that the Earth is hell. Upon considering the idea for his next project the director shares his memories with a journalist while filming an ill-fated passage from his past... Based in and around a movie studio this experimental and intriguing film is essentially a film within a film and is notable for being the first Bergman film in which Death a key leitmotif makes an appea

• The Legacy (Standard Edition) | Blu Ray | (16/11/2020) from £14.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Written by the late, great Jimmy Sangster (The Revenge of Frankenstein, Taste of Fear), this supernatural riff on Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None is a gruesome, hugely entertaining chiller. Two American architects (real-life couple Katharine Ross and Sam Elliott, who met on the set of this film) are holidaying in England and find themselves trapped at a country mansion where the various guests become victims in a series of unexplained and increasingly violent deaths. Director Richard Marquand (Return of the Jedi, Jagged Edge), making his feature-film directing debut, deftly balances horror and grisly black humour. The film also boasts sumptuous photography by the great Dick Bush and Alan Hume, a wonderfully eccentric score by Michael J Lewis and a superb supporting cast which includes Charles Gray, Margaret Tyzack, Ian Hogg, John Standing and The Who's Roger Daltrey. Extras: Two presentations of the film: the US theatrical cut, presented in widescreen from a High Definition master (100 mins); the UK theatrical cut, presented open matte from a Standard Definition master (102 mins) Original stereo audio New and exclusive audio commentary with Kevin Lyons, editor of The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Film and Television An Editing Legacy (2015, 14 mins): award-winning editor and second unit director Anne V Coates recalls her work on the film The Make-up Effects of ˜The Legacy' (2015, 11 mins): Robin Grantham discusses his specialist make-up creations for the film Ashes and Crashes (2019, 4 mins): interview with second unit director Joe Marks An Extended Legacy (2019, 11 mins): an analysis of the differences between the US and UK cuts Between the Anvil and the Hammer (1973, 27 mins): The Legacy director Richard Marquand's acclaimed documentary short film, made for the Central Office of Information, about the Liverpool police force Original theatrical trailer Image gallery: promotional and publicity material

• A Fistful of Dollars | Blu Ray | (31/05/2022) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Pumping Iron | Blu Ray | (17/03/2023) from £15.90   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Without A Trace - Series 4 | DVD | (14/07/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £49.99

  Without a Trace is a fast-paced procedural drama about the Missing Persons Squad of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The sole responsibility of the special task force is to find missing persons by applying advanced psychological profiling techniques to peel back the layers of the victims' lives and trace their whereabouts in an effort to discover whether they have been abducted been murdered committed suicide or simply run away. The team reconstructs a ""Day of Disappearance"" timeline that details every minute of the 24 hours prior to the disappearance following one simple rule: learn who the victim is in order to learn where the victim is. Episodes Comprise: 1. Showdown 2. Safe 3. From The Ashes 4. Lost Time 5. Honour Bound 6. Viuda Negra 7. The Innocents 8. A Day In The Life 9. Freefall 10. When Darkness Falls 11. Blood Out 12. Patient X 13. Rage 14. Odds Or Evens 15. The Stranger 16. The Little Things 17. Check Your Head 18. The Road Home 19. Expectations 20. More Than This 21. Shattered 22. Reqiuem 23. White Balance 24. Crossroads

• Ghost Story | Blu Ray | (28/10/2019) from £10.75   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Stephen Weeks's dreamlike chiller is the perfect definition of a cult British Horror film. Reunited in a country mansion in 1930s England, former public schoolmates Larry Dann (The Bill), Murray Melvin (The Devils) and Vivian MacKerrell (the inspiration for Bruce Robinson's creation Withnail in his only major screen role) are visited by the spirit of former resident Marianne Faithfull (The Girl on a Motorcycle). who was wrongly incarcerated in a local asylum. Via her demonic doll, we are transported to a surreal and sinister world of incest and murder, and her revenge on the corrupt asylum s sadistic doctor. Featuring Barbara Shelley (Dracula, Prince of Darkness), Leigh Lawson (Hammer House of Horror), Anthony Bate (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Beasts) and Penelope Keith (The Good Life, To The Manor Born) with a soundtrack by Pink Floyd collaborator Ron Geesin, Ghost Story Now beautifully restored and packed with bonus features, Ghost Story successfully combines 1970s horror with 1930s charm in this high definition premiere!

• Wes Craven's New Nightmare | DVD | (10/09/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Halfway through A New Nightmare Heather Langenkamp goes to visit Wes Craven to discuss resurrecting the Freddy Krueger series for one last film. Craven's script focuses on a malevolent demon that has escaped from the stories in which he was trapped because they have lost their power to scare. Sound familiar? This script-within-a-film refers, of course, to the real-life fate of the Nightmare on Elm Street series, and is an idea typical of this intelligent movie which successfully blurs the line between this horror film and its real-life production context. Langenkamp plays herself, in virtually her own life: a D-list actress unable to match the success she found in the original Nightmare on Elm Street films. She, like the rest of the cast and crew of the original films (also played by themselves--most notably Craven and Robert Englund, camping himself up as an adored celebrity and part-time "artist"), is haunted by dreams of the Freddy Krueger character. Craven's script reveals that if Freddy is not trapped within a story more powerful than the Elm Street sequels--i.e. this film--he will become real.New Nightmare is an interesting precursor to the Scream series, and it attempts to capitalise on its self-reflexivity in a similar way. The idea is that, having openly revealed that the rest of the Elm Street series were "only films", New Nightmare can then set about scaring your pants off. The biggest hindrance, however, is the Freddy character himself. Despite the fact that we are told that this is the "real" Freddy, rather than the cinematic incarnation we've seen many times before it is still difficult to shake off a persistent sensation of déja-vu. Freddy just isn't scary any more: his face looks a lot less gnarled than it used to be and even the once-terrifying claw seems to have lost its edge. Similarly, having hammered home the fact that this movie is real, those elements of the film which require a little more imagination--such as Freddy's body-stretching, the surreal scare sequences and the Gothic-fantasy finale--appear absurd. Thus, if certainly not as good as the original, New Nightmare is at least an intelligent, fresh and occasionally scary film: which makes it head and shoulders above most of its genre and certainly better than most of this series. --Paul Philpott

• 28 Days | DVD | (12/04/2004) from £3.99   |  Saving you £2.00 (50.13%)   |  RRP £5.99

  28 DAYS, the story of Gwen Cummings (Sandra Bullock), a successful New York writer living in the fast lane and everyone's favorite party girl.

• Girl on a Motorcycle | DVD | (01/09/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £1.99

  Caught midway between 1970s soft-porn clunker The Story of O and Bunuel's sado-masochistic fantasy Belle de Jour, the 1968 erotic curio Girl on a Motorcycle is one of Marianne Faithfull's chief claims to notoriety. She stars as Rebecca, a leather-clad, former bookstore clerk in search of sexual fulfilment who flees her dependable schoolteacher husband for a dangerous liaison with Daniel (Alain Delon), a dashing Professor addicted to speed. The story is told entirely in flashbacks as Rebecca rockets along the road, having donned her leathers and walked out on her sleeping husband at the crack of dawn. It all must have seemed fairly daring and provocative in 1968, providing viewers with ample opportunities to view a naked Faithfull at the height of her allure. But today the existential musings of the lead character seem achingly pretentious, the erotic symbolism merely gawky and unintentionally amusing: the sight of Alain Delon with a phallic pipe dangling from his mouth is like something out of a Rene Magritte painting. The sex scenes between Delon and Faithfull are all swamped in a polarised visual effect that, while garish and psychedelic, is dated and distinctly unerotic. Director Jack Cardiff is better known as a cinematographer on classics such as The African Queen and Black Narcissus. Among Cardiff's other directorial credits is a worthy adaptation of DH Lawrence's Sons & Lovers, but Girl on a Motorcycle is a saucy road movie with no final destination. On the DVD: This DVD version is misleadingly presented as being the fully restored and uncut version of the film. Yet it was the US version not the European one that was heavily cut (and titillatingly re-titled "Naked Under Leather"). The restoration certainly does not refer to the print quality: although the colours are vivid and bright, the print used to master the DVD (in 16:9 anamorphic format) is extremely grainy and, at times, speckled with dirt and scratches. Included as one of the special features, a theatrical trailer loaded with innuendo shows just how much the film was marketed to a prurient audience. Director Jack Cardiff provides an audio commentary but has few revelatory things to say about his film beyond technical considerations, and even makes several clunking errors (recalling his casting decisions concerning a scene that takes place in a provincial German café, he raves about how he strove to find authentic French locals!). He does reveal that the film's use of a voice-over was inspired by the internal monologue that forms the basis of James Joyce's Ulysses. Given Cardiff's age and experience one feels that he must have more interesting anecdotes and insights, making this commentary feel like a wasted opportunity. --Chris Campion

• Charlie Chan | DVD | (01/11/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.24

  Though the Charlie Chan film franchise has earned brickbats for its casting of Caucasian actors as the Asian sleuth, the movies have retained popularity among aficionados of '40s-era B-crime pictures, and the six-disc Charlie Chan Chanthology, all featuring Sidney Toler as Chan, should please that crowd. The Missouri-born Toler starred in 11 Chan pictures for Fox before purchasing the rights to the character from creator Earl Derr Biggers's widow and bringing it to budget studio Monogram, where he starred in 11 more Chans before his death in 1947 (Roland Winters replaced him in six more features until 1949). At Monogram, Chan became a Secret Service Agent (a move calculated to cut down on exotic locations and sets), and comedy was integrated into the plots via Mantan Moreland's chauffeur Birmingham Brown; Benson Fong also joined the cast as Number Three Son Tommy, with occasional appearances by daughter Frances (Frances Chan) and son Eddie (Edwin Luke, brother of Keye Luke, who played Number One Son Lee in the Fox Chans). Other than that, the six films collected here (the first six Chans for Monogram, and all but five directed by Phil Rosen) are largely indistinguishable from one another save for the murder victims and their demises. In The Secret Service, Chan investigates the death of a wartime inventor; a San Francisco socialite expires in The Chinese Cat; daughter Frances is involved in the murder of a psychic in Meeting at Midnight (a.k.a. Black Magic); another government scientist is killed in The Jade Mask, and death by remote control is the focus of The Scarlet Clue. Director Phil Karlson (Kansas City Confidential) adds some noirish atmosphere to The Shanghai Cobra, which has bank employees dying from apparent snakebites. Dated and controversial as they may be, the Chan films are engaging diversions for vintage mystery fans. No extras are featured in the set. --Paul Gaita

• Wallander: Collected Films 14-20 | DVD | (23/06/2014) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Seven more feature-length episodes of the acclaimed Swedish crime drama based on the novels by Henning Mankell. Krister Henriksson stars as Kurt Wallander a jaded police detective ground down over the years by difficult events in his personal life. As he investigates a string of grisly crimes in the cheerless town of Ystad Wallander is accompanied in his work by his troubled daughter Linda (Johanna Sallstrom). Episodes are: 'The Revenge' 'The Guilt' 'The Courier' 'The Thief' 'The Cellist' 'The Priest' and 'The Leak'.

• Intimacy | DVD | (03/06/2002) from £7.44   |  Saving you £5.55 (74.60%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Adapted from the short stories of acclaimed writer Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy is an intelligent, thought provoking and frank adult drama about relationships, jealousy and the inability to love.

• Secrets and Lies | DVD | (22/07/2019) from £11.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) is a young, black optometrist whose adoptive parents have recently died. Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn) is a sad, unmarried mother who works in a factory and lives in a shabby terraced house with her confrontational daughter Roxanna (Claire Rushbrook). Cynthia's brother Maurice (Timothy Spall) is a successful photographer who lives comfortably in suburbia with his wife Monica (Phyllis Logan). In a misplaced effort to re-unite the family, Maurice & Monica throw a small barbecue party for Roxanne's 21st birthday. When Cynthia brings along her new friend Hortense, chaos ensues and some painful truths are revealed.

• Asterix And Obelix Take On Caesar (1999) | DVD | (30/06/2003) from £4.99   |  Saving you £1.00 (20.04%)   |  RRP £5.99

  'Asterix and Obelix Take On Caesar' is France's second most successful film of all time and stars internationally renowned actor Gerard Depardieu as Gaulish warrior Obelix alongside Oscar winning Roberto Benigni as the wicked Detritus. Journey back 2000 years as Ancient France is on the brink of complete Roman invasion well almost complete... except for one small village of indomitable Gauls that still holds out against the invaders. It is here that Asterix and his friends are con