"Actor: Moya Brady"

• Life Is Sweet | DVD | (11/02/2002) from £19.93   |  Saving you £-6.95 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Life is Sweet, Mike Leigh's 1990 snapshot of the suburban family condition at the tail end of the Thatcher era, is often depressing and occasionally harrowing. It is also ultimately joyous, not just for the sharpness of Leigh's satire--the script was improvised with and by the cast--but also for the real affection that binds the family together. Through a series of minor crises, channels of communication silted up by the daily grind and terminal self-absorption are gradually eased open and the film ends on a note of genuine hope. As parents Wendy and Andy, Alison Steadman and Jim Broadbent give virtuoso performances: two adults who use fantasy, mundane work and a stream of banal chatter to keep reality at bay before a freak kitchen accident forces them to stop and take stock. They have two daughters to perplex them: one a plumber (Claire Skinner) and the other an angry anorexic (Jane Horrocks, unsparing in a gut-wrenching bulimic scene). Timothy Spall is hilarious as family friend Aubrey, a would-be restaurateur whose efforts to establish a gourmet eatery in Enfield collapse in hopeless, drunken farce. This is not an overtly political film, but the sense of a stake being driven through the heart of the 1980s enterprise culture is unmistakeable. Inspiring. --Piers Ford

• Secrets And Lies / Life Is Sweet | DVD | (03/05/2004) from £29.95   |  Saving you £-11.96 (-66.50%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Secrets And Lies Nominated for 5 Oscars and winner of 3 BAFTA Awards Secrets and Lies is a hilarious bittersweet comedy and moving slice of real life. Life Is Sweet A remarkable story of an unremarkable family and their interactions and conflictions in every day life.

• Middleton's Changeling | DVD | (09/02/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  A young man is in love with a woman but she is pledged to another. She tries to get her manservant to murder her pledged but the manservant blackmails her into sleeping with him. It all goes badly wrong when the woman substitutes her maid in her bed...

• My Son The Fanatic | DVD | (16/06/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Farid (Akbar Kurtha) is a seething and disillusioned twenty-something Asian man living in northern England. Looking for inspiration after a disastrous falling out with his white fiancee's family he turns to religion. His father Parvez (Om Puri) a good-natured taxi driver is becoming increasingly estranged from his wife Minoo (Gopi Desai) and finds affection with the local prostitute Bettina (Rachel Griffiths). Islamic fundamentalism is caught head on with western hedonism over the kitchen table of this Asian family as father and son realise the extremity of their differences. Farid and his fanatical friends begin an aggressive campaign to rid the streets of prostitutes just as Parvez realises he could be falling in love with Bettina. Meanwhile visiting German businessman Schitz (Stellan Skarsgard) has his own plans for the girl and her colleagues in his search for pleasure. My Son The Fanatic is a heartwarming story of love against the odds set against a comic clash of generations and culture.