"Actor: Michael W"

• Monty Python's Life Of Brian | DVD | (03/12/2001) from £7.23   |  Saving you £12.76 (176.49%)   |  RRP £19.99

  That rarest of rare treasures, Monty Python's Life of Brian is both achingly funny and seriously satirical without ever allowing one to overbalance the other. There is not a single joke, sight gag or one-liner that will not forever burn itself into the viewer's memory as being just as funny as it is possible to be, but, extraordinarily, almost every line and every indestructibly hilarious scene also serves a dual purpose, making this one of the most consistently sustained film satires ever made. Like all great satire, the Pythons not only attack and vilify their targets (the bigotry and hypocrisy of organised religion and politics) supremely well, they also propose an alternative: be an individual, think for yourself, don't be led by others. "You've all got to work it out for yourselves", cries Brian in a key moment. "Yes, we've all got to work it our for ourselves", the crowd reply en masse, "Tell us more". Two thousand years later, in a world still blighted by religious zealots, Brian's is still a lone voice crying in the wilderness. Aside from being a neat spoof on the Hollywood epic, it's also almost incidentally one of the most realistic on-screen depictions of the ancient world--instead of treating their characters as posturing historical stereotypes, the Pythons realised what no sword 'n' sandal epic ever has: that people are all the same, no matter what period of history they live in. People always have and always will bicker, lie, cheat, swear, conceal cowardice with bravado (like Reg, leader of the People's Front of Judea), abuse power (like Pontius Pilate), blindly follow the latest fads and giggle at silly things ("Biggus Dickus"). In the end, Life of Brian teaches us that the only way for a despairing individual to cope in a world of idiocy and hypocrisy is to always look on the bright side of life. --Mark Walker

• A Clockwork Orange Titans of Cult Steelbook | Blu Ray | (01/11/2021) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Stomping, whomping, stealing, singing, tap dancing, violating. Derby-topped hooligan Alex (Malcolm McDowell) has a good time - at the tragic expense of others. His journey from amoral dynamic arc of Stanley Kubrick's future-shock vision of Anothony Burgess' novel. Controversial when first released, A Clockwork Orange won New York Film Critics Best Picture and Director awards and earned four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. Its power still entices, shocks and holds us in its grasp. This Collector's Set includes: A Clockwork Orange on 4K Ultra HD & Blu-ray Collectable Steelbook case with new artwork Two unique pins Special Features Commentary by Malcolm McDowell and Historian Nick Redman Channel Four Documentary Still Tickin': The Return of Clockwork Orange New Featurette Great Bolshy Yarblockos!: Making A Clockwork Orange Career Profile O Lucky Malcolm! [in High Definition] Theatrical Trailer

• Father Of The Bride / Father Of The Bride 2 | DVD | (04/10/2004) from £14.98   |  Saving you £5.01 (33.44%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Father Of The Bride: the feel-good smash-hit comedy about the outrageous trials and tribulations of a well-intentioned father going through the - mental and physical - preparations for his only daughter's wedding. The prenuptial pandemonium begins when the bride-to-be announces her engagement setting off on an outrageous chain of events including a chaotic first meeting with the in-laws and a wedding day snowstorm. Starring Steve Martin Diane Keaton and Martin Short this

• The Cook, The Thief, His Wife And Her Lover | DVD | (10/11/2003) from £17.78   |  Saving you £-1.79 (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover is both adored and detested for its combination of sumptuous beauty and revolting decadence. Few directors polarise audiences in the same way as Peter Greenaway, a filmmaker as influenced by Jacobean revenge tragedy and 17th-century painting as by the French New Wave. A vile, gluttonous thief (Michael Gambon) spews hate and abuse at a restaurant run by a stoic French cook (Richard Bohringer), but under the thief's nose his wife (the ever-sensuous Helen Mirren) conducts an affair with a bookish lover (Alan Howard). Clothing (by avant-garde designer Jean-Paul Gaultier) changes colour as the characters move from room to room. Nudity, torture, rotting meat, and Tim Roth at his sleaziest all contribute the atmosphere of decay and excess. Not for everyone, but for some, essential. --Bret Fetzer

• Melinda And Melinda | DVD | (25/07/2005) from £4.05   |  Saving you £15.94 (393.58%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Chiwetel Ejiofor, Will Ferrell and Jonny Lee Miller star in this latest romcom from Woody Allen.

• Hitchcock DVD Collection | DVD | (08/11/2004) from £29.95   |  Saving you £32.04 (106.98%)   |  RRP £61.99

  The incomparable Alfred Hitchcock presents a collection of his finest suspenseful thrillers! Includes: 1. Strangers On A Train (1951) 2. Stage Fright (1950) 3. I Confess (1953) 4. Dial M For Murder (1954) 5. The Wrong Man (1956) 6. North By Northwest (1959)

• The Devil's Whore | DVD | (16/03/2009) from £11.01   |  Saving you £15.24 (156.31%)   |  RRP £24.99

  The Devil's Whore (2 Discs)

• A Taste Of Honey | DVD | (21/10/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Shelagh Delaney's play 'A Taste of Honey' had already played in the West End and on Broadway when Tony Richardson made his film adaptation shot on location in Salford and Blackpool. Rita Tushingham made her indelible screen debut as Jo a young girl who falls pregnant after leaving home and her floozie of a mother - a revelatory performance by Dora Bryan. Jo befriends Geoff (Murray Melvin) a gentle kind-hearted gay man and they move in together like two children playing house for a while finding an innocent but fragile happiness. Richardson always skilled with actors draws fine performances from his entire cast and 'A Taste of Honey' remains an outstanding example of the British New Wave shot by its star cinematographer Walter Lassally.

• Paranormal Entity 2 | DVD | (21/02/2011) from £5.63   |  Saving you £4.36 (77.44%)   |  RRP £9.99

  John Wayne Gacy murdered 33 young men and boys between 1972 and 1978 in suburban Chicago. 26 bodies were found in a crawl space beneath his house and 3 others were buried in the backyard. Although the house was completely demolished during the exhumation of the bodies on May 15 2004 a group of paranormal investigators wired the home that was built in its place with paranormal detection and surveillance equipment. The outcome of the investigation was grisly terrifying and disturbing.

• Salome | DVD | (03/03/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £16.99

  A performance of Strauss's biblical 'Salome' at the Royal Opera House.

• Private's Progress | DVD | (16/02/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  With a remarkable cast headlined by Ian Carmichael, Richard Attenborough, Dennis Price and Terry Thomas, WWII army comedy Private's Progress was one of the major British hits of 1956. Carmichael is Stanley Windrush, a naïve young soldier who during training falls in with the streetwise Private Cox (Attenborough). Windrush's uncle is the even more ambitiously corrupt Colonel Tracepurcel (Price), who plans to divert the war effort to liberate art treasures already looted by the Germans. The first half of the film is quite pedestrian, though the pace picks up considerably once the heist gets underway, and the cheery tone masks a really rather dark and cynical heart. Carmichael's innocent abroad quickly wears thin, but Attenborough and Price steal the film, as well as the paintings, with typically excellent turns. With a nod in the direction of Ealing's The Ladykillers (1955) the film also anticipates the attitudes of both The League of Gentlemen (1959) and Joseph Heller's novel Catch 22 (1961), though lacks the latter's greater sophistication. The cast also contains such British stalwarts as William Hartnell, Peter Jones, Ian Bannen, John Le Mesurier, Christopher Lee and David Lodge, and was sufficiently popular to reunite all the major players for the superior sequel, I'm Alright Jack (1959). On the DVD: Private's Progress is presented in black and white at 4:3 Academy ratio, though the film appears to have been shot full frame and then unmasked for home viewing so there is more top and bottom to the images than at the cinema. The print used shows constant minor damage and is quite grainy, though no more than expected for a low-budget film of the time. The mono sound is average and unremarkable, and there are no special features. --Gary S Dalkin

• Sudden Impact | DVD | (21/01/2002) from £19.99   |  Saving you £-6.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Clint Eastwood is Detective Harry Callahan in SUDDEN IMPACT the third sequel to DIRTY HARRY. This is probably the most violent film of the series. Here the brutal but effective Callahan is looking for a killer who shoots her male victims in the genitals. Jennifer Spencer (Sondra Locke) is tracking down the people responsible for raping her and her sister 10 years earlier killing them one by one. Callahan is on the case but will he stop her from meting out her own brand of jus

• Split Second | Blu Ray | (20/07/2015) from £12.09   |  Saving you £3.90 (32.26%)   |  RRP £15.99

  In the year 2008 heavy rainfall has flooded large areas of London. Rookie police officer Dick Durkin (Alastair Duncan) is assigned to partner wisecracking maverick Harley Stone (Rutger Hauer) a burnt-out and highly cynical homicide detective who was unable to prevent the murder of his partner by a serial killer several years previously. Now however the murders have begun again and Stone and Durkin are assigned the case. After investigating the scenes of several killings they appear no closer to identifying the killer with their only clues being that the murders seem to be linked to the lunar cycle and that the killer has multiple DNA strands having absorbed the DNA of the victims. Finally after Stone's girlfriend Michelle (Kim Cattrall) is kidnapped the detectives track the killer deep into the flooded and disused London Underground system and discover the truth: the killer is not human. It's a horrific and possibly demonic form of life that is fast savage bloodthirsty and fixated upon killing Stone just as it previously killed his partner. As each killing and appearance of the monster is an attempt to lure them closer and closer can Stone and Durkin rescue Michelle and save London and themselves from true evil!?

• X-Men: Beginnings Trilogy | Blu Ray | (10/07/2017) from £5.98   |  Saving you £7.36 (184.46%)   |  RRP £11.35

  Although the superhero comic book has been a duopoly since the early 1960s, only DC's flagship characters, Superman and Batman (who originated in the late 1930s) have established themselves as big-screen franchises. Until now--this is the first runaway hit film version of the alternative superhero X-Men universe created for Marvel Comics by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and others. It's a rare comic-book movie that doesn't fall over its cape introducing all the characters, and this is the exception. X-Men drops us into a world that is closer to our own than Batman's Gotham City, but it's still home to super-powered goodies and baddies. Opening in high seriousness with paranormal activity in a WW2 concentration camp and a senatorial inquiry into the growing "mutant problem", Bryan Singer's film sets up a complex background with economy and establishes vivid, strange characters well before we get to the fun. There's Halle Berry flying and summoning snowstorms, James Marsden zapping people with his "optic beams", Rebecca Romijn-Stamos shape-shifting her blue naked form, and Ray Park lashing out with his Toad-tongue. The big conflict is between Patrick Stewart's Professor X and Ian McKellen's Magneto, super-powerful mutants who disagree about their relationship with ordinary humans, but the characters we're meant to identify with are Hugh Jackman's Wolverine (who has retractable claws and amnesia), and Anna Paquin's Rogue (who sucks the life and superpowers out of anyone she touches). The plot has to do with a big gizmo that will wreak havoc at a gathering of world leaders, but the film is more interested in setting up a tangle of bizarre relationships between even more bizarre people, with solid pros such as Stewart and McKellen relishing their sly dialogue and the newcomers strutting their stuff in cool leather outfits. There are in-jokes enough to keep comics' fans engaged, but it feels more like a science fiction movie than a superhero picture. --Kim Newman

• One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (2 Disc Special Edition) | DVD | (07/08/2006) from £16.50   |  Saving you £-2.51 (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  A nice rest in a state mental hospital beats a stretch in the pen right? Randle P. McMurphy (Nicholson) a free-spirited con with lightning in his veins and glib on his tongue fakes insanity and moves in with what he calls the ""nuts"". Immediately his contagious sense of disorder runs up against numbing routine. No way should guys pickled on sedatives shuffled around in bathrobes when the World Series is on. This means war! On one side is McMurphy. On the other is soft-spoken Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher) among the most coldly monstrous villains in film history. At stake is the fate of every patient on the ward...

• Herostratus (DVD + Blu-ray) | Blu Ray | (24/10/2011) from £15.99   |  Saving you £4.00 (25.02%)   |  RRP £19.99

  When Max, a young poet (played by the iconic Michael Gothard) hires a marketing company to turn his suicide-by-jumping into a mass-media spectacle, he finds that his subversive intentions are quickly diluted into a reactionary gesture, and his motivations are revealed as a desperate attempt to seek attention through celebrity. Unseen since its limited release in 1967, this audacious and prescient - yet criminally overlooked - work by experimental filmmaker Don Levy left a profound mark on the landscape of late-1960s British cinema, with echoes of its visual style evident in the more celebrated work of such notable directors as Stanley Kubrick, Nicolas Roeg and Michael Winner.

• Simon Schama - A History of Britain : The Complete Series | DVD | (18/11/2002) from £59.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £59.99

  Stretching from the Stone Age to the year 2000, Simon Schama's Complete History of Britain does not pretend to be a definitive chronicle of the turbulent events which buffeted and shaped the British Isles. What Schama does do, however, is tell the story in vivid and gripping narrative terms, free of the fustiness of traditional academe, personalising key historical events by examining the major characters at the centre of them. Not all historians would approve of the history depicted here as shaped principally by the actions of great men and women rather than by more abstract developments, but Schama's way of telling it is a good deal more enthralling as a result. Schama successfully gives lie to the idea that the history of Britain has been moderate and temperate, passing down the generations as stately as a galleon, taking on board sensible ideas but steering clear of sillier, revolutionary ones. Nonsense. Schama retells British history the way it was--as bloody, convulsive, precarious, hot-blooded and several times within an inch of haring off onto an entirely different course. Schama seems almost to delight in the goriness of history. Themes returned to repeatedly include the wars between the Scots and the Irish and the Catholic/Protestant conflicts--only the Irish question remains unresolved by the new millennium. As Britain becomes a constitutional monarchy, Schama talks less of Kings and Queens but of poets and idea-makers like Orwell. Still, with his pungent, direct manner and against an evocative visual and aural backdrop, Schama makes history seem as though it happened yesterday, the bloodstains not yet dry. On the DVD: The Complete History of Britain extras are generously packaged on a separate disc and include the original score and a Simon Schama biography. There's an interesting "promotional message" to camera in which Schama explains the role of a cab driver, Wally, in inspiring the series, along with an interview with Mark Lawson in which Schama stresses the deliberate subjectivity of these programmes and an inaugural BBC History lecture in which he defends TV's ability to transpose history to camera. --David Stubbs

• A Private Function | DVD | (24/03/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  The story's setting is 1947 England where hard-hit Brits won't let mandatory food rationing keep them from celebrating the wedding of the future queen to Lt. Phillip Mountbatten. But there may be no public banquet for citizens in a Yorkshire town. The contraband guest of honour they've pampered and fattened has been pignapped!

• Butterflies - Series 3 - Complete | DVD | (07/03/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Wendy Craig stars as Ria in the third series of this classic BBC comedy. A seemingly happily married mother of two teenage sons she is married to the lugubrious dentist Ben (Geoffrey Palmer). Ben's hobby is collecting butterflies although he seems to spend most of his time arguing with their sons; the thoughtful Russell and the ever cynical Adam.

• Miracle | DVD | (28/02/2005) from £8.08   |  Saving you £6.91 (85.52%)   |  RRP £14.99

  If you believe in yourself anything can happen. In 1980 amidst the tense political climate of the Cold War Herb Brooks (Kurt Russell) took over as coach of the U.S. Olympic hockey team. With the help of affable assistant coach Craig Patrick (Noah Emmerich) Brooks selected a group of twenty amateur hockey players who faced the daunting task of bringing respectability to their country's floundering program. While Brooks was well aware that his team lacked the talent and expe