"Actor: Michelle"

• Real Genius | Blu Ray | (13/09/2022) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• The Russia House | DVD | (29/04/2002) from £6.99   |  Saving you £6.00 (85.84%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Intelligent casting, strong performances and the persuasive chemistry between Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer prove the virtues in director Fred Schepisi's well-intended but problematic screen realization of this John Le Carré espionage thriller. At its best, The Russia House depicts the bittersweet nuances of the pivotal affair between a weary, alcoholic London publisher (Connery) and the mysterious Russian beauty (Pfeiffer) who sends him a fateful manuscript exposing the weaknesses beneath Soviet defence technology. Connery's Barley is a gritty, all-too-human figure who's palpably revived by his awakening feelings for Pfeiffer's wan, vulnerable Katya, whose own reciprocal emotions are equally convincing. Together, they weave a poignant romantic duet. The problems, meanwhile, emanate from the story line that brings these opposites together. Le Carré's novels are absorbing but typically internal odysseys that seldom offer the level of straightforward action or simple arcs of plot that the big screen thrives on. For The Russia House, written as glasnost eclipsed the cold war's overt rivalries, Le Carré means to measure how old adversaries must calibrate their battle to a more subtle, subdued match of wits. Barley himself becomes enmeshed in the mystery of the manuscript because British intelligence chooses to use him as cat's paw rather than become directly involved. Such subtlety may be a more realistic take on the spy games of the recent past but it makes for an often tedious, talky alternative to taut heroics that Connery codified in his most celebrated early espionage role. If the suspense thus suffers, we're still left with an affecting love story, as well as some convincing sniping between British and US intelligence operatives, beautifully cast with James Fox, Roy Scheider and John Mahoney. Veteran playwright Tom Stoppard brings considerable style to the dialogue, without solving the problem of giving us more than those verbal exchanges to sustain dramatic interest. --Sam Sutherland

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Complete Season 1-7 (New Packaging) | DVD | (03/10/2011) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £33.95

  From its charming and angst-ridden first season to the darker, apocalyptic final one, Buffy the Vampire Slayer succeeds on many levels, and in a fresher and more authentic way than the shows that came before or after it. How lucky, then, that with the release of its boxed set of seasons 1-7, you can have the estimable pleasure of watching a near-decade of Buffy in any order you choose. (And we have some ideas about how that should be done.) First: rest assured that there's no shame in coming to Buffy late, even if you initially turned your nose up at the winsome Sarah Michelle Gellar kicking the hell out of vampires (in Buffy-lingo, vamps), demons, and other evil-doers. Perhaps you did so because, well, it looked sort of science-fiction-like with all that monster latex. Start with season 3 and see that Buffy offers something for everyone, and the sooner you succumb to it, the quicker you'll appreciate how textured and riveting a drama it is. Why season 3? Because it offers you a winning cast of characters who have fallen from innocence: their hearts have been broken, their egos trampled in typically vicious high-school style, and as a result, they've begun to realise how fallible they are. As much as they try, there are always more monsters, or a bigger evil. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the core crew remains something of a unit--there's the smart girl, Willow (Alyson Hannigan) who dreams of saving the day by downloading the plans to City Hall's sewer tunnels and mapping a route to safety. There are the ne'r do wells--the vampire Spike (James Marsters), who both clashes with and aspires to love Buffy; the tortured and torturing Angel (David Boreanz); the pretty, popular girl with an empty heart (Charisma Carpenter); and the teenage everyman, Xander (Nicholas Brendon). Then there's Buffy herself, who in the course of seven seasons morphs from a sarcastic teenager in a minidress to a heroine whose tragic flaw is an abiding desire to be a "normal" girl. On a lesser note, with the boxed set you can watch the fashion transformation of Buffy from mall rat to Prada-wearing, kickboxing diva with enviable highlights. (There was the unfortunate bob of season 2, but it's a forgivable lapse.) At least the storyline merits the transformations: every time Buffy has to end a relationship she cuts her hair, shedding both the pain and her vulnerability. In addition to the well-wrought teenage emotional landscape, Buffy deftly takes on more universal themes--power, politics, death, morality--as the series matures in seasons 4-6. And apart from a few missteps that haven't aged particularly well ("I Robot" in season 1 comes to mind), most episodes feel as harrowing and as richly drawn as they did at first viewing. That's about as much as you can ask for any form of entertainment: that it offer an escape from the viewer's workaday world and entry into one in which the heroine (ideally one with leather pants) overcomes demons far more troubling than one's own. --Megan Halverson

• The Fabulous Baker Boys | DVD | (21/05/2007) from £4.35   |  Saving you £8.64 (198.62%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Steve Kloves' impressive highly entertaining directorial debut centres on the Baker Boys (played by real-life brothers Jeff and Beau Bridges) siblings who have a two-piano act that plays at Seattle's downbeat cocktail lounges. Jack (Jeff Bridges) is a bitter loner whose ambition is to be a jazz musician while Frank (Beau Bridges) is a family man content to spend his days giving piano lessons and playing pop tunes with his brother. Their act needs some new blood. Enter Susie Diamond (Michelle Pfeiffer) a tough cynical former hooker whose presence immediately revives the act. It also complicates matters when Jacks falls for her. Strong performances a great script wonderful music and Michelle Pfeiffer at her absolute sexiest.

• The Deep End Of The Ocean | DVD | (28/02/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Beth Cappadora (Michelle Pfeiffer) is at her high school reunion when her three-year-old son disappears from his brother's care. The little boy never turns up, and the family has to deal with the devastating guilt and grief that goes along with it. Nine years later, the family has relocated to Chicago. By a sheer fluke, the kid turns up, living no more than two blocks away. The authorities swoop down and return the kid to his biological parents, but things are far from being that simple. The boy grew up around what he has called his father, while his new family are strangers to him; the older son, now a teenager, has brushes with the law and behavioural problems. His adjustment to his lost brother is complicated by normal teenage churlishness, and the dad (Treat Williams) seems to expect everything to fall into place as though the family had been intact all along. It's a tightrope routine for actors in a story like this, being careful not to chew the scenery while at the same time not being too flaccid or understated. For the most part, the members of the cast deal well with the emotional complexity of their roles. Though the story stretches credulity, weirder things do happen in the real world. The family's pain for the first half of the film is certainly credible, though the second half almost seems like a different movie. Whoopi Goldberg plays the detective assigned to the case; casting her is a bit of a stretch, but she makes it work. All in all, a decent three-hanky movie in the vein of Ordinary People. --Jerry Renshaw, Amazon.com

• Midnight In St. Petersburg | DVD | (20/04/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Having lost his intelligence job at the end of the Cold War former British secret agent Harry Palmer (Michael Caine) now travels East to find new outlets for his skills. Harry sets up a Private Investigation company in Russia and soon finds himself charged with rescuing his young assistant Nikolai's girlfriend Tatiana who has been kidnapped. The trail leads to St. Petersburg which Harry finds to be a city held in the iron grip of the violent Russian Mafia. The mafia does its best to stop Harry in his tracks but it may be easier said than done!

• Sex, Chips And Rock 'n' Roll | DVD | (08/08/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Sex, Chips and Rock 'n' Roll spins a complex web of secret loves and twisted ambitions against the backdrop of the early British music scene. It's a rock n' roll soap opera, but it's smartly written and engagingly acted, full of subtle commentary on the cultural changes cutting across British society. Manchester in 1965 seems like a dead end to two sisters, flirty Arden (Emma Cooke) and bookish Ellie Brookes (Gillian Kearney). They ache to get out from under the thumb of their domineering grandmother (Sue Johnston), and when their cousin Norman (David Threlfall) proposes to Ellie, she accepts. But just then the sisters meet a struggling band called the Ice Cubes, who grudgingly play back-up for a smarmy singer named Larry B Cool (Phil Daniels) while trying to land a record deal. Arden throws herself at the group's leader, Dallas (Joseph McFadden), but Dallas finds himself drawn more to Ellie, who's also an aspiring songwriter. From there the multi-dimensional characters take unexpected turns, and you'll quickly find yourself drawn into their lives. --Bret Fetzer, Amazon.com

• Ladyhawke | Blu Ray | (17/03/2014) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  This lushly produced fantasy has gained a loyal following since its release in 1985, and it gave a welcome boost to the careers of Matthew Broderick, Michelle Pfeiffer and Rutger Hauer. You have to ignore the overly aggressive music score by Andrew Powell, music director of the Alan Parsons Project (critic Pauline Kael aptly dubbed it "disco-medieval") and director Richard Donner's reckless allowance of anachronistic dialogue and uninspired storytelling, but there's a certain charm to the movie's combination of romance and heroism. Broderick plays a young thief who comes to the aid of tragic lovers Isabeau (Pfeiffer), who is cursed to become a hawk every day at sunrise and Navarre (Hauer) who turns into a wolf at sunset. The curse was cast by an evil sorcerer-bishop (John Wood), and as Broderick eludes the bishop's henchmen, Navarre struggles to conquer the villain, lift the curse and be reunited with his love in human form. The tragedy of this lovers' dilemma keeps the movie going, and Broderick is well cast as a young, medieval variation of Woody Allen. --Jeff Shannon

• Buffy The Vampire Slayer - Season 6 | DVD | (08/05/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £34.99

  Season six of Buffy's exciting vampire vanquishing adventures. Episodes Comprise: 1. Bargaining - Part 1 2. Bargaining - Part 2 3. After Life 4. Flooded 5. Life Serial 6. All The Way 7. Once More With Feeling 8. Tabula Rasa 9. Smashed 10. Wrecked 11. Gone 12. Doublemeat Palace 13. Dead Things 14. Older And Far Away 15. As You Were 16. Hell's Bells 17. Normal Again 18. Entropy 19. Seeing Red 20. Villains 21. Two To Go 22. Grave

• The Bionic Woman - Series 1 - Complete | DVD | (12/05/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  After a near-death car accident, Jamie Sommers is rebuilt using state-of-the-art technology. She is the ultimate weapon in the fight against crime. Stronger, better, faster...

• Florizel Street | DVD | (14/02/2011) from £9.97   |  Saving you £6.02 (60.38%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Drama about birth of Coronation Street.

• Bad Education - Series 1-3 | DVD | (31/08/2015) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £32.99

  Bad Education – written by and starring Jack Whitehall – follows Alfie Wickers the worst teacher ever to (dis)grace the British Education system. SERIES ONE Abbey Grove School is populated by some of the weirdest teachers ever: Fraser (Mathew Horne) the hair-brained Headmaster Miss Gulliver (Sarah Solemani) the biology teacher with a heart of gold and Deputy Headmistress Miss Pickwell (Michelle Gomez) who displays all the charm and sensitivity of a Third Reich dominatrix. Alfie’s class have been written off by the rest of the school - but Alfie’s determined to take them under his wing. From disastrous parents’ evenings to cringe-worthy sex-education lessons from life-threatening self-defence classes to school elections full of dirty tricks... Bad Education is school life as you’ve never seen it before. SERIES TWO Alfie Wickers (Jack Whitehall) returns as the self-styled maverick of Abbey Grove attempting to teach his class something - anything - that requires zero effort. The staff room politics are tricky: Miss Gulliver (Sarah Solemani) is now seeing one of their female ex-students Miss Pickwell (Michelle Gomez) is giving President Putin a run for his money and Fraser (Mathew Horne) mistakenly gives all of the school’s funds to ‘The Nigerian Minister of Finance’. This term sees a furiously fought swimming gala a drugs awareness day that ends in Alfie’s utter humiliation and Fraser staging Abbey Grove’s own Take Me Out. SERIES THREE Exams are looming so it’s time for Alfie to actually start teaching his class but the path to A*s never did run smooth. Adding to Alfie’s stress levels is the appointment of his dad Martin Wickers (Harry Enfield) as the new deputy head and his increasingly disastrous love with his girlfriend Miss Gulliver (Sarah Solemani). Fraser (Mathew Horne) starts the summer term with a strike on his hands after badly investing the school’s money. Thrown into the mix is an evening of after school clubs a competitive sports day Alfie and his class sitting a Biology exam and the end of term Prom.

• Tad the Lost Explorer and the Curse of the Mummy | DVD | (26/12/2022) from £7.05   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Tad accidentally unleashes an ancient spell endangering the lives of his friends: Mummy, Jeff and Belzoni. With everyone against him and only helped by Sara, he sets off on an adventure, in order to put an end to the curse of the Mummy.

• The Legend Of Fong Sai Yuk 1 & 2 - Deluxe Limited Edition | Blu Ray | (25/11/2024) from £34.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  This limited edition Jet Li double feature includes two breathtaking martial arts action films directed by Corey Yuen (The Transporter). In The Legend of Fong Sai Yuk Jet Li stars as a carefree young martial arts expert who gets involved with a government official's daughter just as he discovers his family is part of a rebel resistance movement. While his fighting ability and charm made him a local champion, his epic battle for freedom would make him a legendary hero. Acclaimed choreographer Corey Yuen directs Li at his jaw-dropping best, including an unbelievable sequence fought entirely atop the heads of stunned onlookers. In The Legend of Fong Sai Yuk 2 Martial arts sensation Jet Li kicks back into action as the heroic Fong Sai Yuk in this explosive follow-up to the powerfully entertaining original. Having fought to save his father from the wrath of the Chinese government, Fong Sai Yuk joins his father's underground revolutionary organization, the Red Flower Society! But in the camp of rebels, a traitor lurks! Now, at a time when few can be trusted, Fong Sai Yuk must utilise his every skill in the fight to overthrow his nation's brutally powerful empire!

• Dogtooth | DVD | (13/09/2010) from £15.29   |  Saving you £0.70 (4.58%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Winner of Un Certain regard at Cannes A mother and father desperate to shelter their three children from the outside world create a self styled utopia inside the walls of their secluded compound. The three children have never ventured outside and spend their days being educated and entertained within the limits of a strict and suppressive system concocted by their father. So far removed are they from the real world they have their own vocabulary and believe cats to be dangerous wild man eating predators aeroplanes flying overhead to be toys and small yellow flowers to be zombies. When the father invites a trusted outsider into their home to service his son's sexual urges the domestic balance is disturbed and the protective bubble surrounding their lives soon implodes.

• Goodnight Sweetheart - Series 1 | DVD | (04/02/2008) from £7.90   |  Saving you £-4.91 (N/A%)   |  RRP £2.99

  Available for the first time on DVD the BBC's massively successful primetime series: Goodnight Sweetheart. Starring Nicholas Lyndhurst Goodnight Sweetheart became an instant hit with TV viewers of all ages as it charts the life of Gary Sparrow a dealer in memorabilia and antiques of WW2 who has miraculously discovered a portal in time which allows him to travel between the present and wartime Britain. This handy little trick obviously adds to the success of his business but the co

• Ash Vs Evil Dead: The Complete Second Season | DVD | (23/10/2017) from £88.12   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  The second season roars back into action with Ash leaving his beloved Jacksonville and returning to his home town of Elk Grove, Michigan. There, he confronts Ruby. The former enemies have to form an uneasy alliance as Elk Grove soon becomes the nucleus of evil.

• Blue Valentine | DVD | (09/05/2011) from £7.55   |  Saving you £10.44 (138.28%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Ryan Gosling (The Notebook, Half Nelson) and Michelle Williams (Shutter Island, Brokeback Mountain) star in Blue Valentine, a honest portrait of a relationship on the rocks.

• Doctor Who - Planet Of The Dead | DVD | (29/06/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Bionic Woman and Merlin star Michelle Ryan plays the mysterious Lady Christina de Souza who joins the Doctor on a bus-trip which takes a very unexpected detour into danger. British comedy star Lee Evans also joins the cast playing a character called Malcolm whose life becomes connected to the Doctor's under extraordinary circumstances and Noma Dumezweni returns as Captain Erisa Magambo - last seen helping Rose and Donna save the world in Turn Left. Planet of the Dead is the first of four Doctor Who Specials which will air in 2009. Written by Russell T Davies and Gareth Roberts the episode will be screened on BBC One in Spring 2009.

• My Week with Marilyn | Blu Ray | (16/03/2012) from £8.99   |  Saving you £16.00 (177.98%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Anyone doubting the layered, nuanced, and heartbreaking acting abilities of Michelle Williams will find My Week with Marilyn a tremendous revelation. And Williams fans will enjoy it even more. In My Week with Marilyn Williams takes on the formidable challenge of playing Marilyn Monroe, and does so with depth and assuredness, and without resorting to caricature. Williams's Marilyn commands the screen with pain and delicacy, and doesn't let go until the final credits. My Week with Marilyn focuses on a small time frame in Monroe's life, right after her marriage to Arthur Miller. Monroe, already "the world's most famous woman," still feels the need for validation as an actress. What better way to achieve that, she believes, than committing to costarring with Laurence Olivier in The Prince and the Showgirl, a film she firmly believed would finally cement her reputation as a serious actress. My Week with Marilyn is based on the short memoir of Colin Clark, a crew member on The Prince and the Showgirl, who quickly became the confidant of the wildly insecure Monroe and watched a train wreck of egos--mostly Olivier's and Monroe's--collide in a fiery near-disaster. Kenneth Branagh gives an uncharacteristically restrained performance as the exasperated Olivier, resentful of the "new blood" in Hollywood that the young Monroe represents, and disdainful of her cult-like devotion to Method acting. (And of Monroe's chronic tardiness, which threatens to undermine the veddy, veddy strict British work schedule.) Eddie Redmayne plays Clark with a sweet, gentle veneer, someone who grows to care genuinely about the complex Monroe. Julia Ormond is clipped and proper as Olivier's then-wife, Vivien Leigh, and Emma Watson shows a lovely gravitas as Lucy, Monroe's acting coach. But it's Williams who gives the revelatory performance, capturing with painful intensity the insecurity that begins to seep out of Monroe like a fearful sweat. "Excuse my horrible face," she blurts out, while looking nothing less than her usual radiant self. Where does this tragic insecurity come from? My Week with Marilyn doesn't attempt to answer the unanswerable, but instead shines a light on the very real woman who became lost in the giant shadow of legend. --A.T. Hurley