"Actor: Michael Empson"

• Out Of Africa | DVD | (21/01/2002) from £6.90   |  Saving you £9.09 (131.74%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Winner of seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Out of Africa seems to have slipped more readily from public memory than other comparably lauded films. Yet Sidney Pollack's panoramic treatment of Karen Blixen's novel has retained its atmosphere and slow-burning emotion, and deserves reassessment. Meryl Streep is in her possibly most involving starring role as Baroness Karen Blixen, Danish free spirit whose ill-fated venture at the beginning of World War One to run a coffee plantation in Kenya is overlaid by her intimate yet distant relationship with adventurer and idealist Denys Finch Hatton, unselfconsciously portrayed by Robert Redford. Klaus Maria Brandauer puts in a rare and convincing English-language appearance as the amoral but charming womaniser Baron Bror Blixen. The film is tellingly held together by Kurt Luedke's finely honed screenplay, and John Barry's sumptuously expressive score. On the DVD: The anamorphic 1.85:1 widescreen format reproduces superbly, as does the 4.1 discrete audio. 18 access points are provided, with printed and aural subtitles in English only. Pollack's feature commentary is amusing enough on a single run-through, but an on-location documentary would have been preferable. Production notes and biographies are very adequate, though the theatrical trailer reproduction is notably inferior. No matter, this is a major film, well worth the transfer to DVD.--Richard Whitehouse

• Out Of Africa (Special Edition) | DVD | (21/02/2005) from £7.94   |  Saving you £13.04 (263.43%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Sydney Pollack's 1985 multiple-Oscar winner is a sumptuous and emotionally satisfying film about the life of Danish writer Karen Blixen (Meryl Streep), better known as Isak Dinesen, who travels to Kenya to be with her German husband (Klaus Maria Brandauer) but falls for an English adventurer (Robert Redford). The film is slow in developing the relationship, but it is rich in beautiful images of Africa and in the romantic tone surrounding Blixen's gradual discovery of her life and voice. One downside: while we may all love Redford, he is as convincingly British as Kevin Costner is in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. --Tom Keogh

• Long Time Dead | DVD | (02/05/2005) from £6.73   |  Saving you £-0.74 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  A young Londoner and his friends use a Ouija board to hold a seance, triggering a chain of mysterious deaths that may be caused by an otherwordly force.

• Dockers | DVD | (29/03/2004) from £4.98   |  Saving you £1.01 (20.28%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Dockers is a landmark one-off drama suspended somewhere between Ken Loach and Alan Bleasdale's Boys from the Blackstuff. A striking Channel Four production Dockers dramatises the infamous struggle that developed when five Merseyside dockworkers were fired for refusing to work overtime with no pay, and gained the support of co-workers who wouldn't cross their picket line. As a result, those who stood in solidarity with the original five were sacked as well--500 in total--leading to a two-year stand-off. Co-written by award-winning screenwriters Jimmy McGovern (Cracker) and Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting), the two-year ordeal is brought home with startling reality, not least because of the contribution of the real-life Liverpool dockers who helped develop the script in extensive writing workshops, lending the film an authenticity it might have otherwise lacked. While the narrative hangs around the moving central story of one family in which both father and son are caught up in the strike, dramatic conflicts develop on multiple levels: between father and son; between the families of the sacked workers (this is particularly well realised as one long-time friend, played by The Royle Family's Ricky Tomlinson, turns scab); and between the workers and the union that betrays them. Ken Stott and Crissy Rock (Ladybird, Ladybird) are outstanding as the central working-class couple, old before their time at 47, and if nothing else, the film reveals one further reason why Liverpool loved Robbie Fowler quite so ferociously: during post-goal celebrations, Fowler lifts his jersey to reveal a T-shirt emblazoned with a message of support for the wronged dockers, ensuring national attention for the action at a time when all hope seemed lost. --Tricia Tuttle

• Dockers | DVD | (01/08/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Dockers is a landmark one-off drama suspended somewhere between Ken Loach and Alan Bleasdale's Boys from the Blackstuff. A striking Channel Four production Dockers dramatises the infamous struggle that developed when five Merseyside dockworkers were fired for refusing to work overtime with no pay, and gained the support of co-workers who wouldn't cross their picket line. As a result, those who stood in solidarity with the original five were sacked as well--500 in total--leading to a two-year stand-off. Co-written by award-winning screenwriters Jimmy McGovern (Cracker) and Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting), the two-year ordeal is brought home with startling reality, not least because of the contribution of the real-life Liverpool dockers who helped develop the script in extensive writing workshops, lending the film an authenticity it might have otherwise lacked. While the narrative hangs around the moving central story of one family in which both father and son are caught up in the strike, dramatic conflicts develop on multiple levels: between father and son; between the families of the sacked workers (this is particularly well realised as one long-time friend, played by The Royle Family's Ricky Tomlinson, turns scab); and between the workers and the union that betrays them. Ken Stott and Crissy Rock (Ladybird, Ladybird) are outstanding as the central working-class couple, old before their time at 47, and if nothing else, the film reveals one further reason why Liverpool loved Robbie Fowler quite so ferociously: during post-goal celebrations, Fowler lifts his jersey to reveal a T-shirt emblazoned with a message of support for the wronged dockers, ensuring national attention for the action at a time when all hope seemed lost. --Tricia Tuttle

• Love For Lydia - Episodes 6 To 9 | DVD | (10/05/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Set in the late 1920's Lydia Aspen is a provincial heiress who develops from a bashful teenager to a wild flapper while toying with the affections of the men who are around her.

• Curse Of The Fly | DVD | (03/07/2006) from £11.30   |  Saving you £1.69 (13.00%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The conclusion to the terrifying story of the Delambre family in which three descendants of the original teleportation scientist (the son and two grandsons) continue the experiments in an effort to perfect the machine...

• Zombie Apocalypse - Special Edition | DVD | (07/06/2010) from £7.40   |  Saving you £7.59 (102.57%)   |  RRP £14.99

  When college roommates Mark and Tom go out for a night at the bar the last thing they expected to find was a machete wielding stranger and a horde of the undead. With the help of amateur photographer and video store clerk Raven the unlikely party fights their way into an epic conflict between the living... and the dead. Zombie Apocalypse is a feature-length over-the-top action/adventure/horror movie. Its roots are in the style of the blockbusters of the 1980's John Carpenter films and the energy of video games. Zombie Apocalypse has scenes of exciting action and intense drama but it never takes itself too seriously for too long. It focuses on four main characters and their adventures after a zombie outbreak spreads throughout the country. Miller: the mysterious stranger searching the country for his long-lost wife who herself has ties to the creation of the zombies; Mark a bullheaded college student with a chip on his shoulder and an axe in his hand; Tom Mark's video game playing medical student roommate; and Raven a rebellious video store clerk and amateur photographer who goes from depressed to overjoyed once the zombies hit. Throughout the movie they meet a host of other characters including a mob of survivors who call themselves The Marauders shadowy agents an Illuminati-style organization and nemesis from the past.

• Love For Lydia - Episodes 1 To 5 | DVD | (19/04/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The first five episodes of the lavish ITV costume drama series set in the late 1920s as Lydia Aspen a provincial heiress who develops from an awkward teenager into a wild flapper toys with the affections of the men around her...

• Love For Lydia - Episodes 10 To 13 | DVD | (14/06/2004) from £14.74   |  Saving you £5.25 (26.30%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Set in the late 1920's Lydia Aspen is a provincial heiress who develops from a bashful teenager to a wild flapper while toying with the affections of the men who are around her. Originally broadcast on ITV this double DVD presents the final four episodes of the lavish costume drama.

• Out Of Africa | DVD | (20/02/2006) from £27.99   |  Saving you £-12.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Sydney Pollack directs this sweeping romantic drama based on the memoirs of Danish writer Isak Dinesen. Meryl Streep stars as Karen Blixen the restless wife of European aristocrat and plantation owner Baron Bror Blixen (Brandauer). When Bror departs to hunt big game and chase women the running of their East African coffee plantation falls to Karen. She throws herself into this task with the same determination and spirit she brings to her passionate but sporadic affair with free-sp

• Out Of Africa (Limited Collector's Edition) | DVD | (28/02/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £34.99

  Sydney Pollack directs this sweeping romantic drama based on the memoirs of Danish writer Isak Dinesen. Meryl Streep stars as Karen Blixen the restless wife of European aristocrat and plantation owner Baron Bror Blixen (Brandauer). When Bror departs to hunt big game and chase women the running of their East African coffee plantation falls to Karen. She throws herself into this task with the same determination and spirit she brings to her passionate but sporadic affair with free-spirited British hunter Denys Finch Hatton (Robert Redford). While enduring her husband's infidelities and the eventual destruction of their beloved land she entertains Denys and befriends the workers. Hatton shares Karen's profound love for the African landscape but is unwilling to sacrifice his independence for their relationship...

• Out Of Africa | DVD | (06/02/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Sydney Pollack directs this sweeping romantic drama based on the memoirs of Danish writer Isak Dinesen. Meryl Streep stars as Karen Blixen the restless wife of European aristocrat and plantation owner Baron Bror Blixen (Brandauer). When Bror departs to hunt big game and chase women the running of their East African coffee plantation falls to Karen. She throws herself into this task with the same determination and spirit she brings to her passionate but sporadic affair with free-s