"Actor: Rob Ward"

• The Big Red One - The Reconstruction | DVD | (06/02/2012) from £16.89   |  Saving you £-3.90 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  In Saving Private Ryan, Steven Spielberg depicts the D-day landings with a realism lauded by veterans. The Big Red One depicts the D-day landings, too, and it was made by a veteran. Writer-director Samuel Fuller, who served in the First Infantry Division from North Africa to Czechoslovakia (including the Normandy landings), made a career out of swift, punchy B movies, such as Pickup on South Street and The Naked Kiss. The Big Red One became Fuller's nod to A-movie filmmaking, yet it has the solid, matter-of-fact perspective of the ground-level infantryman. The episodic action ranges all over Europe, as a tough squad of American GIs (including Mark Hamill and Robert Carradine) follow their hard-bitten sergeant (Lee Marvin, at his best) and try to stay alive. Filmed mostly in Israel, the film delivers on the requisite war-movie conventions and tough-guy humour but also introduces notes of poetry. Fuller's D-day doesn't match the pyrotechnics of Spielberg's version, but it creates power from the simple image of a dead soldier's watch, ticking away in blood-soaked surf. A fine and memorable picture, The Big Red One might have been even greater had it been released in Fuller's full-length cut--someday perhaps a restoration will allow the director's vision to be seen for the first time. --Robert Horton

• A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge | DVD | (25/06/2001) from £20.00   |  Saving you £-0.01 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge was a quick follow-up no one was exactly happy with. However this deserves some credit for trying to extend rather than repeat the original storyline. As opposed to the resourceful heroines of all the other Elm Street films, this is the one about the troubled male teenager worried that Freddy is out to possess his body and make his way back to reality. It's shot through with a heavy handed gay subtext, with male bodies ogled and sliced (for a change), stuck with a few truly ridiculous moments (the exploding budgie) and lapses into incoherence, but it opens with a great school bus sequence and makes the most of the infernal boiler room of Freddy's soul. With Clu Gulager and Hope Lange. Directed by Jack Sholder (The Hidden). -- Kim Newman

• The Long Gray Line | DVD | (07/10/2013) from £19.99   |  Saving you £-7.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  An inspiring drama directed by the great John Ford (Stagecoach, The Searchers) starring Tyrone Power (The Mark Of Zorro, The Razor's Edge) as Marty Maher, a humble Irish man from a poor background who joins the US Army to make a career for himself. after a difficult beginning he attains the rank of cadet instructor at famed West Point Military Academy. Co-starring Maureen O'Hara (The Quiet Man, Only The Lonely), this is superb, and little known or seen, military drama.

• China Moon | DVD | (23/06/2003) from £4.99   |  Saving you £8.00 (61.60%)   |  RRP £12.99

  China Moon (1991) is a pleasing entertainment that assembles the dependable elements of film noir in the tradition of Body Heat (1981), The Last Seduction (1994) and, of course, the mother of all such films, Double Indemnity (1944). There's a femme fatale (the beautiful and talented Madeleine Stowe) and an honest cop (reliable Ed Harris) who soon becomes smitten. Her husband (Charles Dance) is a brute who beats her, so she murders him and inveigles Harris into helping her dispose of the body. That's when the complications begin, and Harris starts to sweat when his fellow cop keeps asking awkward questions. The acting is uniformly good, with Harris' partner played by Benicio Del Toro (Traffic) offering an excellent performance. Harris and Stowe strike sparks off each other, to the point where you almost believe he is being sucked into her schemes. On the DVD: The disc contains a theatrical trailer and several TV ads, with scroll-down filmographies of the major talents involved which are incomplete for some unknown reason. There's a brief and unenlightening five-minute documentary, with the principal cast plus the director, John Bailey, commenting on the film. Both image and sound are excellent quality, sound in Dolby Digital, picture in anamorphic widescreen ratio of 2.35:1 --Ed Buscombe

• The Player | DVD | (04/02/2008) from £20.00   |  Saving you £-10.01 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  When callous movie studio executive Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins) starts receiving anonymous death threats from a rejected screenwriter his already shaky career begins to crumble. Finally his desperation drives him to kill...but did he rub out the wrong writer? Relentlessly hounded by a street-wise detective (Whoopi Goldberg) Griffin falls in love with the dead man's girlfriend (Greta Scacchi). Then the mysterious threats begin again - and Griffin is plunged into a plot more outrageous than any movie.

• Uncommon Valour | DVD | (23/09/2002) from £15.15   |  Saving you £-2.16 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  For over ten years Rhodes has been living a nightmare searching for his son who is listed as ""missing in action"" in Vietnam. After useless appeals to the government for information Rhodes takes matters into his own hands. With the financial backing of a Texas oil tycoon (Robert Stack) and the help of his son's five Marine buddies Rhodes prepares to carry out a daring mission. After weeks of grueling training the courageous veterans leave for Laos. The final battle of the Vietnam c

• The Benchwarmers | DVD | (25/09/2006) from £6.48   |  Saving you £9.51 (59.50%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Three guys try to make up for their un-athletic youth in this new comedy.

• The Player | DVD | (30/04/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Robert Altman's a biting satire on the Hollywood industry, The Player, has always been acknowledged by insiders as too close to the truth for comfort. Opening with a self-referential nine-minute tracking shot around the studio lot where producer Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins) works, the story's intrigue begins with the first of several postcard death threats from a writer he's angered. After accidentally killing the wrong man, Mill moves from one star-studded lunch table to another. All the while he's hounded by the real writer and an obsession with "Ice Queen" artist June Gudmundsdotter (Greta Scacchi) who'd been the deceased's girlfriend. Altman's tradition of improvised dialogue makes each of the dozens of cameos a fascinating treat for movie fans. Blink and you'll miss Angelica Houston, John Cusack, Rod Steiger, or Bruce Willis and Julia Roberts who appear in the hilarious movie-within-a-movie finale. There's an endless list of terrific support from the likes of dry-witted Fred Ward, fly-swatting Lyle Lovett, or tampon-twirling Whoopi Goldberg. Aside from the star-spotting and a script that crackles with sharp dialogue, this also warrants acknowledgement for being the movie to set off an explosion of independent film in the Nineties. On the DVD: there's a commentary track (which leaves the film's soundtrack playing a little too loud) from director Altman who talks at length about the poor state of today's industry, and writer Michael Tolkin who contributes about ten minutes of veiled displeasure about the treatment of a writer's work. There are five grainy deleted scenes featuring lost cameos from Tim Curry, Jeff Daniels, and Patrick Swayze. Then in a 16-minute featurette a lot of the deleted footage is repeated around an interview with Altman. A trailer rounds out the package. --Paul Tonks

• The Boy In The Plastic Bubble | DVD | (01/09/2001) from £6.94   |  Saving you £-5.95 (-601.00%)   |  RRP £0.99

  A boy with no immunity lives in an isolation bubble. A girl brings brightness into his closet world and forces him to choose between life or love & death. From the Director of 'Grease'.

• Murder In Mind | DVD | (01/04/2001) from £6.52   |  Saving you £-0.53 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  A psychologist is recruited to interview a young wife found at the scene of a double murder. Through hypnosis he unravels a sinister and disturbed mind...

• The Emperor's Club | DVD | (21/03/2005) from £14.98   |  Saving you £5.01 (33.44%)   |  RRP £19.99

  In everyone's life there's that one person who makes all the difference. William Hundert a retired 'old-school' classics teacher is passionate about his subject. Moreover he strongly believes in moulding his students by using principles. However his methods are put to the test by a new student Sedgewick Bell who shakes Hundert's controlled world and threatens to undermine all that he stands for. Hundert's challenge is to change this young man while maintaining his integrity. Les

• Decay | DVD | (20/03/2017) from £5.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner | DVD | (14/04/2003) from £39.99   |  Saving you £-20.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Following the success of Karel Reisz's 'Saturday Night and Sunday Morning' Alan Sillitoe adapted another of his works for the screen this time a short story of a disillusioned teenager rebelling against the system to make Tony Richardson's 'The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner' one of the great British films of the 1960s. Newcomer Tom Courtenay is compelling as the sullen defiant Colin refusing to follow his dying father into a factory job railing against the capitalist bosses and preferring to make a living from petty thieving. Arrested for burglary and sent to borstal Colin discovers a talent for cross-country running earning him special treatment from the governor (Michael Redgrave) and the chance to redeem himself from anti-social tearaway to sports day hero. With Colin a favourite to win against a local public school tensions build as the day approaches...

• The Four Feathers | DVD | (14/06/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  What it lacks in grandeur, this 1978 TV version of The Four Feathers makes up for in fidelity to AEW Mason's classic novel. By cannibalising the superior 1939 production for epic shots and sequences, this modest adaptation draws attention to its meagre production values, relying heavily on casting and chemistry to compensate. That it succeeds, more or less, in capturing the essence of Mason's grand adventure is largely due to the appeal of Beau Bridges and Jane Seymour in the prime of their early careers. (Bridges' film career was gaining momentum; Seymour would rise from here to the similarly romantic Somewhere in Time.) Bridges is the shamed soldier Harry Faversham, transcending cowardice by rescuing his closest friends during Britain's bloody campaign in 1870s Sudan; Seymour is his beloved back home, torn between Harry and the seemingly braver Jack (Robert Powell). TV veteran Don Sharp provides tepid direction, while screenwriter Gerald DiPego would continue his prolific career for decades to come. --Jeff Shannon

• Sling Blade | DVD | (06/07/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Billy Bob Thornton wrote, directed, and starred in Sling Blade, a mesmerizing drama with haunting overtones of To Kill a Mockingbird. Thornton plays a mentally retarded man who has spent 20 years in a psychiatric hospital for killing his mother and her lover. Released into the community from which he came, he befriends and protects a lonely boy regularly harassed and abused by his mom's boyfriend (a terrific performance by Dwight Yoakam). The story is ultimately about sacrifice, but Thornton certainly doesn't get twinkly about it. Some of the best material concerns the hero's no-big-deal efforts to integrate into a "normal" life: working, eating fast food, earning admiration for his handyman skills, and attaining a semblance of community among other damaged souls. John Ritter has a great part as a gay shopkeeper who tries to assuage his own loneliness by spilling his guts out to Thornton's uncomprehending character. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

• By The Sword Divided | DVD | (13/09/2004) from £46.99   |  Saving you £3.00 (6.38%)   |  RRP £49.99

  Contains By The Sword Divided - parts one and two. This classic BBC period drama series follows the fortunes of the aristocratic Lacey family living peacefully in their Arnescote castle until the onset of the English Civil War in 1640. The head of the family Sir Martin Lacey is unswervingly loyal to the King. However the family is torn apart when his eldest daughter Anne weds John Fletcher son of a merchant family who support the forces of Cromwell. Episodes comprise: Gathe

• Music Man | Blu Ray | (02/02/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• The Founding of America (6 DVD Box Set) | DVD | (31/05/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Review for Founding Brothers:The political wrangles of a fledgling country may sound dull compared to the drama of a war, but the early history of the United States only gets more fascinating as the Revolutionary War is left behind. Founding Brothers, a documentary from the History Channel, examines the struggle to not only establish democracy, but to give it the economic strength and governmental structure that will allow it to survive and thrive. George Washington grappled not only with politics, but with questions of style and propriety--how should a president, as opposed to a king, behave? Understanding the conflicts between Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson will illuminate ideas that have shaped the government of the U.S. ever since. Founding Brothers provides a wealth of portraits and illustrations from the time, as well as discreet dramatizations, that bring the rise of party politics to life, humanizing these historical figures with tales of the scandals and squabbles they faced as well as their political achievements. An excellent introduction to the roots of the American experiment, and a bracing illustration of what Jefferson meant when he said of the presidency, "No man will bring out of that office the reputation which carried him into it." --Bret Fetzer

• Bob Roberts | DVD | (02/01/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Vote first. Ask questions later. Tim Robbins stars in his directorial debut as right-wing folksinger Bob Roberts in this satirical mockumentary. Bob Roberts is joined on his Pennsylvania senatorial campaign trail by a British documentary filmmaker who offers insight into Roberts his staff and his supporters. Roberts is the anti-Bob Dylan wowing his supporters with tunes such as ""Times Are Changin' Back"" and ""Wall Street Rap."" With his clean-cut good looks and squeaky-clean

• Elvis Meets Nixon | DVD | (26/12/2005) from £24.99   |  Saving you £-19.00 (-317.20%)   |  RRP £5.99

  The President lives in the White House. The King lives in Memphis! Elvis Meets Nixon is a 'mockumentary' about The King's - supposed - real-life trip to the White House to become a federal marshal under the DEA but meets 'Tricky Dicky' President Nixon instead. Along the way the film lampoons Elvis's humour; his resentment of The Beatles; his drug problems; and even reveals him pulling out a gun in a doughnut shop! Uh-huh.