"Actor: Richardson"

• Alice In Wonderland | DVD | (27/07/2015) from £9.69   |  Saving you £3.30 (34.06%)   |  RRP £12.99

  This is an impressive-looking version of Lewis Carroll's story originally produced for American television. Dreading a singing recital at her parents' lavish home, Alice falls into a strange world in pursuit of a large White Rabbit. The talented child actor Tina Majorino (Corrina, Corrina) plays Alice with all the good graces but mostly wanders through the story unquestioningly. Carroll's tale of whimsical, illogical adventures is a field day for designers Roger Hall and Alan Tomkins, costumer Charles Knode, Jim Henson's Creature Shop and director Nick Willing (Photographing Fairies). Influenced by Time Bandits and Labyrinth (the latter also designed by the Henson company), the film has a splendid array of effects, many dealing with multiple perspectives as Alice constantly changes sizes. The highlight is Whoopi Goldberg as the Cheshire Cat, a seamless mix of cat and comic. Martin Short as the Hatter and Mirandra Richardson as the Queen of Hearts seem to be having the times of their lives. This is not the definitive version of Carroll's tale, and, like the popular Disney animated version, combines some elements of Carroll's sequel, Through the Looking Glass. It is perhaps better viewing for the fan that has seen another version of the tale or read the book. --Doug Thomas, Amazon.com

• The Sound Barrier (Restored) | DVD | (11/04/2016) from £7.99   |  Saving you £10.00 (125.16%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Directed by DAVID LEAN and written by TERENCE RATTIGAN, THE SOUND BARRIER is about the men who challenged the speed of sound, told from the viewpoint of central character, Sir John Ridgefield (RALPH RICHARDSON). The oil tycoon and aircraft constructor is determined to manufacture a supersonic jet that will travel faster than the speed of sound. Ridgefield's desire to reach this goal has already led to the death of his test pilot son (DENHOLM ELLIOTT), and his daughter Susan's (ANN TODD) fighter-pilot husband (NIGEL PATRICK). Shocked at the death of her husband and her father's disregard of human life in his single-minded determination to achieve his goal, Susan walks out on him. Unperturbed, Ridgefield approaches another pilot with the challenge of piloting his test craft. The film marked a departure from the domestic or literary concerns which had characterized the director David Lean's choice of subject matter to date. Its heroics pre-empted his later films Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962).

• Eyeball 4K UHD | Blu Ray | (02/12/2024) from £18.74   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Umberto Lenzi delivers a completely unhinged, and totally torrid tale of terror mixing copious amounts of gore and nudity in this peeper-popping experience known as Eyeball. Part slasher part giallo, Lenzi commands a high body count and plenty of ocular destruction as this murder mystery unfolds in stunning Spanish locations where a bus load of American tourists are picked off one-by-one by a figure sporting a red cape and hood. Exploitation at its juiciest, this is prime giallo from a true master of the genre.

• The Crying Game | DVD | (16/09/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  An IRA film with a difference, Neil Jordan's The Crying Game takes the Anglo-Irish conflict as the starting point for a thoughtful, often poignant and sometimes humorous examination of gender and identity. Stephen Rea is the IRA volunteer who befriends a kidnapped British soldier (the gauche but likeable Forest Whitaker), then takes the questions of loyalty and instinct (the "frog and scorpion" fable) with him to London, where he falls for the dead man's girlfriend (the appealing Jaye Davidson). Love and terrorism are fused in a violent and suspenseful denouement, where truth manifests itself in an unexpected yet meaningful way. Miranda Richardson and Adrian Dunbar are persuasive as the IRA agents, and there are excellent cameos from Jim Broadbent as an East End barman and Tony Slattery as a property shark, all making the most of Jordan's stylish, Academy Award-winning script. Anne (Art of Noise) Dudley contributes a moodily atmospheric score, with three versions of "When a Man Loves a Woman" to point up the gender issue. On the DVD: The Crying Game comes to disc with a widescreen picture that reproduces adequately for an early 90s film. The soundtrack, though, has real presence. There are subtitles in English and Russian(!), though the theatrical trailer is hardly a major bonus. An interview or a commentary with Jordan, discussing the motivation behind the project, would really have benefited a film which cuts across genres so successfully as this. --Richard Whitehouse

• Tiger Warsaw | DVD | (01/09/2001) from £5.00   |  Saving you £-3.01 (N/A%)   |  RRP £1.99

  Chuck 'Tiger' Warsaw returns to his home town after an absence of 15 years precipitated by an act of irresponsibility which destroyed his sister's wedding and left his father mentally unstable. His home-coming is shunned by his family but he tries desperately to overcome the problems and gain forgiveness.

• Jim Henson Collection: The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, The Storyteller | DVD | (10/10/2016) from £49.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Jim Henson's fantasy epic The Dark Crystal doesn't take place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, but like Star Wars it takes the audience to a place that exists only in the imagination and, for an hour and a half, on the screen. Recalling the worlds of JRR. Tolkien, Henson tells the story of a race of grotesque birdlike lizards called the Skeksis, gnomish dragons who rule their fantastic planet with an iron claw. A prophecy tells of a Gelfling (a small elfin being) who will topple their empire, so in their reign of terror they have exterminated the race, or so they think. The orphan Jen, raised in solitude by a race of peace-loving wizards called the Mystics, embarks on a quest to find the missing shard of the Dark Crystal (which gives the Skeksis their power) and restore the balance of the universe. Henson and codirector Frank Oz have pushed puppetry into a new direction: traditional puppets, marionettes, giant bodysuits, and mechanical constructions are mixed seamlessly in a fantasy world of towering castles, simple huts, dank caves, a giant clockwork observatory, and a magnificent landscape that seem to have leaped off the pages of a storybook. Muppet fans will recognise many of the voice actors--a few characters sound awfully close to familiar comic creations--but otherwise The Dark Crystal is a completely alien world made familiar by a mythic quest that resonates through stories over the ages. --Sean Axmaker

• I Am Legend | 4K UHD | (12/12/2016) from £19.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Will Smith stars in the third adaptation of Richard Matheson’s classic science-fiction novel about a lone human survivor in a post-apocalyptic world dominated by vampires. This new version somewhat alters Matheson’s central hook, i.e., the startling idea that an ordinary man, Robert Neville, spends his days roaming a desolated city and his nights in a house sealed off from longtime neighbours who have become bloodsucking fiends. In the new film, Smith’s Neville is a military scientist charged with finding a cure for a virus that turns people into crazed, hairless, flesh-eating zombies. Failing to complete his work in time, and after enduring a personal tragedy, Neville finds himself alone in Manhattan, his natural immunity to the virus keeping him alive. With an expressive German shepherd, his only companion, Neville is a hunter-gatherer in sunlight, hiding from the mutants at night in his Washington Square town house and methodically conducting experiments in his ceaseless quest to conquer the disease. The film’s first half almost suggests that I Am Legend could be one of the finest movies of 2007. Director Francis Lawrence’s extraordinary, computer-generated images of a decaying New York City reveal weeds growing through the cracks of familiar streets that are also overrun by deer and prowled by lions. It’s impossible not to be fascinated by such a realistically altered cityscape, reverting to a natural environment, through which Smith moves with a weirdly enviable freedom, offset by his wariness over whatever is lurking in the dark of bank vaults and parking garages. Lawrence and screenwriters Mark Protosevich and Akiva Goldsman wisely build suspense by withholding images of the monsters until a peak scene of horror well into the story. It must be said, however, that the computer-enhanced creatures don’t look half as interesting as they might have had the filmmakers adhered more to Matheson’s vampire-nightmare vision. I Am Legend is ultimately noteworthy for Smith’s remarkable performance as a man so lonely he talks to mannequins in the shops he frequents. The film’s latter half goes too far in portraying Smith’s Neville as a pitiable man with a messianic mission, but this lapse into pathos does nothing to take away from the visual and dramatic accomplishments of its first hour. --Tom Keogh

• Time Bandits | DVD | (30/09/2002) from £8.90   |  Saving you £11.09 (124.61%)   |  RRP £19.99

  With Time Bandits, only his second movie as director, Terry Gilliam's barbed humour and hyperactive visual imagination got themselves gloriously into full gear. Sketched out in a matter of weeks over Michael Palin's kitchen table while Gilliam struggled to get his dream project Brazil off the ground, this is a children's film made by a director who "hates kid films" and all the "mawkish sentimental crap" that goes with them. The 11-year-old hero, Kevin, finds himself lugged out of his suburban bedroom and off through a series of wormholes in time and space by a gang of rapacious, bickering midgets in search of loot, en route encountering (and casually despoiling) a gallery of eminent historical figures that include Agamemnon, Napoleon and Robin Hood, along with assorted ogres, giants and monsters. As co-screenwriters, Gilliam and Palin cheerfully filch ideas from everyone from Homer and Jonathan Swift to Lewis Carroll and Walt Disney, while the sets--as always with Gilliam--ingeniously work towering miracles on puny budgets. "The whole point of fairy tales", according to Gilliam, "is to frighten the kids" and Time Bandits taps into some archetypal nightmare imagery. But the whole farrago is much too good-humoured to be seriously scary. Not least of the movie's pleasures are a series of ripe cameos from the likes of Ian Holm as an irascible Bonaparte, Sean Connery good-humouredly spoofing his own image as Agamemnon, John Cleese's version of Robin Hood as inanely condescending minor royalty ("So you're a robber too! Jolly good!"), David Warner hamming it up gleefully as the Evil Genius, and the great Ralph Richardson playing the Supreme Being as a tetchy public-school headmaster. On the DVD: Time Bandits on disc comes with a generous wealth of extras. Along with the expected trailer--sent up Python-style by a disaffected voice-over--we get excerpts from Gilliam's storyboard and notated script, filmographies for Gilliam, Palin, Connery and David Rappaport (the leader of the vertically challenged gang), stills, production shots, a scrapbook with cast photos and drawings, notes on the film and plenty more background data, plus a cheerfully relaxed 27-minute interview with Gilliam and Palin. There's also an informative and appealingly unpretentious full-length commentary shared between Gilliam, Palin, Cleese, Warner and Craig Warnock, who played Kevin. The transfer, clean and crisp, is in the original full-width ratio, and there's a choice of Dolby Stereo or Dolby 5.1 sound. --Philip Kemp

• Wildest Dream | DVD | (12/09/2011) from £14.99   |  Saving you £3.00 (20.01%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Uses astonishing visuals to tell the intersecting stories of George Mallory, the first man to attempt a summit of Mount Everest, and Conrad Anker, the mountaineer who finds Mallory's frozen remains 75 years later.

• Nell | DVD | (23/06/2003) from £9.43   |  Saving you £3.56 (37.75%)   |  RRP £12.99

  A young woman (Foster) is found hiding in the rafters of her Blue Ridge Mountain home after the death of her mother. She has been totally cut off from the outside world and has developed her own impenetrable language. A local doctor (Neeson) attempts to hide her from the outside world's prying eyes but she may have to be locked up in an institution for her own safety from hostile locals...

• Tigerland | DVD | (01/04/2002) from £3.78   |  Saving you £14.21 (375.93%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Director Joel Schumacher's acclaimed story of a group of young US infantry men in 1971, in training for Viet Nam, at a time when not even many of the soldiers themselves believed in what they were doing.

• Curfew | Blu Ray | (13/05/2019) from £9.62   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  When day turns to night, ordinary people compete for freedom in the world's deadliest street race. When dusk falls, ordinary people compete for freedom in the world's deadliest street race. Over one long, crazy, unforgettable night they will compete for the ultimate prize liberation from the curfew that controls their lives. Get ready for Curfew an audacious and exhilarating new drama from the award-winning producers of Peaky Blinders. Starring an ensemble cast including Sean Bean, Billy Zane, Miranda Richardson, Adrian Lester, Adam Brody, Phoebe Fox and Malachi Kirby. Includes subtitles for the Hard Of Hearing

• The House | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £4.95   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  After Scott and Kate Johansen (Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler) lose their daughter Alex's college fund, they become desperate to earn it back so she can pursue her dream of attending a university. With the help of their neighbor Frank (Jason Mantzoukas), they decide to start an illegal casino in his house. Click Images to Enlarge

• Bulldog Drummond Double Bill | DVD | (26/08/2019) from £5.85   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Repo Man | DVD | (07/07/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Otto (Emilio Estevez) a young L.A. punk becomes the protege of Bud (Harry Dean Stanton) a crusty car repossessor. Otto soon comes to challenge his mentor for a 20 000 repo prize - a '64 Chevy Malibu driven by J. Frank Parnell (Fox Harris) a lobotomized nuclear scientist. The Malibu is being madly pursued by ruthless government agents UFO cultists and the infamous Rodriguez Brothers. In the trunk is an unthinkable glowing object that could change the course of our civilisation -

• Maybe Baby | DVD | (15/01/2001) from £6.28   |  Saving you £8.97 (178.69%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Ben Elton adapts his own novel for the big screen in this comedy about a couple (Hugh Laurie and Joely Richardson) who become more & more desperate as they try to conceive a child.

• The Harsh Light of Day | DVD | (01/10/2012) from £17.53   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Occult writer Daniel, suffers a brutal attack in which his wife is murdered and he is left paralyzed. When the Police fail to find his attackers, Daniel is offered a unique but terrifying chance of revenge when he encounters a mysterious stranger - but at a great cost. If Daniel wants to take revenge on his wife's murderers, he will have to leave behind his humanity and turn to the supernatural. Starring Dan Richardson and Giles Alderson (I Want Candy, The Damned United), THE HARSH LIGHT OF DAY is a revenge vampire film like no other, full of action, emotional conflict and tragedy, from the point of view of a heart-broken man forced to extreme action. Just 23-years-old when he began making THE HARSH LIGHT OF DAY, British writer/director OLIVER S. MILBURN is a new talent to watch.

• Girlfriends (ITV Drama) | DVD | (26/02/2018) from £15.76   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  'Girlfriends' follows Linda, Sue and Gail as they struggle with the changes and responsibilities that come with being a modern woman of a certain age.

• The Patriot | DVD | (17/04/2006) from £9.99   |  Saving you £3.00 (30.03%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Mel Gibson stars in this action packed tale of the Amercan war of independence.

• Sherlock Holmes - The Sign Of Four | DVD | (12/04/2005) from £14.23   |  Saving you £-5.25 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  This riveting mystery is a whodunit at its best. The legendary British sleuth Sherlock Holmes accompanied by his loyal sidekick Watson become wrapped up in yet another jewel-centered mystery when a beautiful young woman finds herself the surprised recipient of the world's second largest diamond. The master detective is summoned to figure out just who sent her the jewel and why.