"Actor: Robert Be"

• Noir - Vol. 2 | DVD | (21/07/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The mysteries deepen as professional assassins Mireille Bouquet and Yuumura Kirika now working together under the code name 'Noir' ply their chosen trade even as they search for the mysterious link that connects them. Is there someone out there who already knows? And if so is it the same mysterious person (or people) who've been playing a deadly game of cat and mouse with them since they first met? Secrets wrap around secrets and the body count continues to rise!

• Jacknife | DVD | (27/08/2001) from £14.45   |  Saving you £-8.46 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Made in 1989 and set 15 years after the end of the Vietnam War, Jacknife tells the story of alcoholic trucker Dave (Ed Harris) who lives with his sister Martha (Kathy Baker). Robert De Niro is Megs, Dave's ex-'Nam sidekick who re-enters his life on the promise of a fishing trip. Megs and Martha embark on a tentative courtship to the seething fury of Dave, who considers Megs "bad news". However, through wartime flashbacks it soon becomes clear that his hitting the bottle is a means of bottling up his feelings about Vietnam, Megs and their mutual buddy Bobby, killed in action. Ruminative and romantic, Jacknife slow-burns its predictable though satisfying way to its resolution, the three main players carrying the burdens of their roles with admirable restraint, especially Ed Harris, whose rage is internalised at the expense of his liver. There are echoes of The Deerhunter but this is not a film of that order or scale, as its low-budget synthesiser soundtrack signifies, feeling at times like a superior made-for-TV affair. On the DVD: A full-screen version with a ratio of 4:3. Neither sound nor picture quality are exactly a showcase for DVD technology, both being a little fuzzy, while the dubbing goes noticeably awry on 42 minutes. Special features are decidedly un-special: the original, lugubrious trailer plus "talent profiles" which are merely lists of the main players' previous films. --David Stubbs

• Men Of Honour / Tigerland / The Thin Red Line | DVD | (15/09/2003) from £12.99   |  Saving you £7.00 (53.89%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Men Of Honour: One of those rare films that grabs you by the gut and never lets go 'Men Of Honour' was inspired by the life of Carl Brashear (Cuba Gooding Jr.) an African American who dared to dream of becoming a U.S. Navy Master Diver. Despite a bigoted training officer (Robert De Niro) and a tragic shipboard accident Carl never gives up and achieves the impossible in an incredible finish that will leave you cheering. Tigerland: Roland Bozz after being conscripted into the US army joins a platoon of other young soldiers preparing to fight in Vietnam. He has no interest in fighting for his country and tries to get sent home as a trouble maker but his superiors mistake his defiance as intelligence and he soon gets a chance to try his hand at leadership... The Thin Red Line: A powerful front line cast including Sean Penn Nick Nolte Woody Harrelson and George Clooney explodes into action in this hauntingly realistic view of military and moral chaos in the Pacific during World War II. Nominated for seven Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director (Terrence Malick) The Thin Red Line is an unparalleled cinematic masterpiece.

• Identity / Gothika / House Of Nine | DVD | (03/10/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Identity (Dir. James Mangold 2003): A daring new thriller from director James Mangold and producer Cathy Konrad featuring an all-star ensemble cast including John Cusack Ray Liotta Amanda Peet Alfred Molina Jake Busey Clea DuVall and Rebecca De Mornay. Caught in a savage rainstorm ten travellers are forced to seek refuge at a strange desert motel. They soon realize they've found anything but shelter. There is a killer among them and one by one they are murdered. As the storm rages on and the dead begin to outnumber the living one thing becomes clear: each of them was drawn to the motel not by accident or circumstance but by forces beyond imagination forces that promise anyone who survives a mind-bending and terrifying destiny. Gothika (Dir. Mathieu Kassovitz 2003): Halle Berry stars as Dr. Miranda Grey a psychiatrist who becomes a patient in her own mental hospital after she is accused of murdering her husband (Charles S. Dutton). Grey's only initial memory of the incident involves a chilling encounter with a distraught girl (Kathleen Mackey) on a rain-soaked road. The incarcerated and medicated Grey is now haunted by the same apparition and she must convince her former colleague Pete Graham (Robert Downey Jr.) that she is not insane or guilty of murder. Meanwhile the seemingly mad ramblings of Chloe (Penelope Cruz) one of Grey's former patients now make more sense and Grey must throw aside clinical logic to solve the supernatural murder mystery. House Of Nine (Dir. Steven R. Munroe 2005): Nine strangers with no apparent connection between them are abducted: drugged kidnapped and sealed in a house together. Doors are bolted shut windows are plugged with brick. No way out. Disoriented and angry they are greeted by a voice on an intercom system: they are to be watched as they 'compete' for a prize of five million dollars. And the winner will be the only one who gets out alive!

• The Asphyx | DVD | (23/02/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Early 1970s cult British horror starring Robert Stephens and Robert Powell. The Asphyx - the spirit of death - enters the body at the precise moment the soul is released. Each person has their own asphyx and if it can be captured the person can theoretically live forever. Sir Hugo (stephens) through his interest in photography and metaphysics captures the asphyx on film. when his son dies in a boating accident Sir Hugo becomes obsessed with immortal life with terrible consequences.

• The Crossing | DVD | (25/06/2007) from £7.20   |  Saving you £-3.21 (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  Sam returns home after a lengthy absence to find his girlfriend is having an affair with his best friend. The two friends then end up in a drunken race where the question of who gets the girl will be decided at a train crossing...

• High Wall | DVD | (24/11/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• The Outsider - A Film About James Toback | DVD | (30/03/2009) from £6.93   |  Saving you £3.06 (44.16%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Featuring an all-star cast including Woody Allen Robert Downey Jr. Mike Tyson Harvey Keitel Neve Campbell and Woody Harrelson The Outsider is an intriguingly dark look at the obsessive world of filmmaking. Shot over 8 months the film follows legendary filmmaker James Toback during the making of his critically acclaimed film When Will I Be Loved starring Neve Campbell.

• Hide And Seek | DVD | (07/09/2006) from £3.66   |  Saving you £1.33 (36.34%)   |  RRP £4.99

  A young girl tries to cope with her mother's suicide in her own way in this chiller - but things soon turn nasty.

• Black Sunday - Imprint Limited Edition Blu-Ray | Blu Ray | (05/03/2021) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• In A Stranger's Hand | DVD | (25/11/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £2.99

  Wealthy Jack Bauer (Urich) comes to the aid of a mother Laura McKillin whose daughter has been abducted. Together to their horror they discover a dedicated ring of professional child snatchers...

• Whatever Happened To Aunt Alice? | DVD | (02/07/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? sees a change of direction for Robert Aldrich's unofficial trilogy which all involve "ageing actresses" in macabre thrillers (What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte). The busy Aldrich only produced What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice?, calling in TV director Lee H Katzin (a Mission: Impossible regular) to handle the megaphone. Aldrich also opted to shoot the film in pastel colours appropriate to the unusual Arizona desert setting rather than the gothic black and white of the earlier films. The film cast the less iconic Geraldine Page as the genteelly unpleasant Mrs Clare Marrable. Left apparently penniless by her departed husband, Mrs M opts to keep up appearances by hiring a succession of timid elderly housekeepers, bossing them around with well-spoken nastiness, duping them out of their life savings and, on the pretence of getting help with a midnight tree-planting program, lures them into their own graves, batters them to death and plants lovely pines over them. Page gets her own way with the meek likes of Mildred Dunnock, until the feistier, red-wigged R!uth Gordon applies for the job and gets down to amateur sleuthing. While Bette Davis and her partners went wildly over the top in previous films, Page and Gordon play more subtly, finding odd pathetic moments in between the monstrous, irony-laced horror stuff. The supporting cast of pretty or handsome young things, mostly putty in the hands of the manipulative Page, contribute striking little cameos (Rosemary Forsyth sports a pleasing 1969 hairdo as the kindly but intimidated neighbour), but the film belongs to its leading ladies, delivering a fine line in twist-packed cat-and-mouse theatrics. The video is handsomely letterboxed, as befits a film made before widescreen films were shot with all the action in the middle of the frame to facilitate television sales. --Kim Newman

• Winston Churchill - The Wilderness Years | DVD | (03/12/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £34.99

  It's easy to forget that, though fronting the British war effort through most of World War Two, Winston Churchill had spent the previous decade isolated in Parliament and in an internal opposition to the Conservative party. Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years dramatises this period, in which the growing menace of Nazism in Germany was met with indifference, even fear by governments of the day who were more concerned with their survival than in serving those who had elected them. Churchill is perceptively played by Robert Hardy who confirms the image without falling into caricature. Visionary and obstinate by turns, he galvanises his supporters and enrages his enemies with a passion borne of conviction. A seasoned British cast includes Peter Barkworth as the amiable but ineffectual Stanley Baldwin, Eric Porter as the truly "out of time" Neville Chamberlain, Edward Woodward as the scheming Samuel Hoare, and Nigel Havers as the tragically flawed Randolph Churchill. Martin Gilbert has done a persuasive job transforming his novel into a TV script, the scenes in the House of Commons having a gritty reality that makes compulsive viewing. On the DVD: It's a pity that the Southern Pictures production first screened in 1981 has emerged so dimly in this incarnation. Has the master tape eroded so badly, or was it simply not available? However, it's worth putting up with the technical defects to enjoy this historically informed and grippingly dramatic serial. --Richard Whitehouse

• Air America | Blu Ray | (25/08/2015) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• A Farewell To Arms | DVD | (01/07/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  The 1932 version of A Farewell to Arms owes as much to the shimmering house style of Paramount Pictures as it does the novel by Ernest Hemingway. If Hemingway purists can get past the romanticising of the book, however, this film offers its own glossy appeal. On the Italian front in World War I an American ambulance driver (Gary Cooper) falls in love with a nurse (Helen Hayes). Cooper was a Hemingway friend in real life, and later played the hero of Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls; his boyish simplicity is just right for director Frank Borzage's heartfelt approach. The Oscar-winning cinematography of ace cameraman Charles Lang is the kind of lush black and white that can capture the glow from a cigarette as it plays across Cooper's darkened face--a breathtaking touch. The jaded battle scenes show the influence of the hit film version of All Quiet on the Western Front, especially in a gripping montage depicting Cooper's progress alone through the war zone. Hemingway would have none of it, of course; he once disdainfully wrote that "in the first picture version Lt. Henry deserted because he didn't get any mail and then the whole Italian Army went along, it seems, to keep him company". This is first and foremost a love story, however, and as such it succeeds beautifully, right through to the remarkably intense ending. --Robert Horton, Amazon.com

• Raiders Of The Living Dead | DVD | (14/07/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  A newspaper reporter hears of strange goings-on on a remote island. He travels there and finds a mad scientist creating zombies...

• Hornblower Vol.1 | DVD | (15/07/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

• The Hollywood Collection - Walter Matthau | DVD | (29/09/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Walter Matthau was barely three when his father deserted the family. Poverty and New York street smarts produced a self-deprecating humor that never left. The G.I. Bill let him study acting and by 1951 he earned a New York Drama Critics Award. Television dramas followed and then came Hollywood. When director Billy Wilder cast him opposite Jack Lemmon a classic partnership was created. In Lemmon Matthau found an enduring friend and frequent co-star. Matthau's real-life combination of cynicism and gruff sentimentality was reflected in the performances that brought him to major stardom.

• Taggart - Vol. 31 - Berserker | DVD | (10/03/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  A new amphetamine-type drug Berserker appears on the streets of Glasgow and is particularly popular with bodybuilders. But why are people dying from being associated with it? The police investigation leads to an unlikely source responsible for its development.

• Crazy In Alabama | DVD | (17/08/2009) from £7.79   |  Saving you £5.20 (40.00%)   |  RRP £12.99

  It's clear why Melanie Griffith saw Mark Childress's bestselling book Crazy in Alabama, as the perfect vehicle for herself. The role of Lucille, a beautiful, battered wife in rural Alabama who dreams of glamorous movie stardom, is tailor-made for her. Griffith's husband, Antonio Banderas, has done quite a respectable job guiding her in this, his directorial debut; her performance--compelling, funny, and warm--is her best since Something Wild. (She also looks simply smashing.) Otherwise, the film is a curious amalgam of genres: an antic, surreal Southern Gothic comedy combined with a deadly serious civil-rights parable. As the movie opens, in the summer of 1965, Lucille (Griffith) has just murdered her abusive husband and is blowing town for Hollywood with his head in a Tupperware container. Scenes of her wacky cross-country road trip are interspersed with incidents back in Alabama involving clashes between protesting blacks and murderously intolerant whites. One can't imagine how these two seemingly disparate narrative lines will come together, but they do, in a surprisingly effective manner. The moral of both stories turns out to be: "You can bury freedom, but you can't kill it". Stand-out performances by Robert Wagner, as Lucille's Hollywood agent; Rod Steiger, as a quirky Southern judge; Lucas Black (Sling Blade) as Lucille's highly principled young nephew; and, believe it or not, Meat Loaf, as a brutal, bigoted Southern sheriff give the film an additional boost. --Laura Mirsky