"Actor: Robert Burr"

• Fur - An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £4.23   |  Saving you £15.76 (372.58%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Nicole Kidman stars as legendary photographer Diane Arbus.

• Airplane II - The Sequel | DVD | (05/03/2001) from £5.50   |  Saving you £10.49 (190.73%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Though most of the stars got back together for Airplane II: The Sequel, the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker team passed the torch to new writer-director Ken Finkleman, who manages to reprise the style of the original quite well but is, as perhaps expected, more or less one-third as funny. The premise, alarmingly similar to the dead-straight contemporary Starflight One, is that the first commercial passenger shuttle to the moon has 2001-style computer hassles en route and finds itself headed straight through an asteroid belt into the sun. Cracked-up test pilot Robert Hays and promoted-from-stewardess technical expert Julie Hagerty have to save the day, despite panicking passengers, inept ground staff, complicated trauma flashbacks, deadpan one-liners and deliberately dodgy special effects. Leslie Nielsen is glimpsed only in footage from Airplane that sets up an extended slapping-the-hysterical-passenger gag redone (into the ground) here, but Lloyd Bridges and Stephen Stucker return as the overly-intense airport crisis controller and his happy-go-lucky gay sidekick. There are sterling cameos in the patented agonisingly serious mode from Raymond Burr (a judge), Chuck Connors (cigar-tossing fire chief), William Shatner (who gets the best sight gag) and Sonny Bono (impotent mad bomber). Back in the early 80s, it was still possible to do mild gags about paedophilia (not only Graves's chumminess with the cute kid who visits the cockpit, but also the priest looking at the centrefold of Altar Boy magazine) but aside from some incidental naked breasts, the humour is a touch cleaner than in the first film. Hays and Hagerty are better than the material, and it's all over swiftly enough--the film clocks in at 75 minutes before the slow, padded end credits--to avoid wearing out your patience. The end title promises an Airplane III, but we're still waiting. The 1.78:1 widescreen ratio of the DVD allows you to see gags in the corners of the frame that would be cropped in a full-screen transfer. --Kim Newman

• Network | DVD | (17/03/2003) from £17.11   |  Saving you £-1.12 (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Media madness reigns supreme in screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky's scathing satire about the uses and abuses of network television. But while Chayefsky's and director Sidney Lumet's take on television may seem quaint in the age of "reality TV" and Jerry Springer's talk-show fisticuffs, Network is every bit as potent now as it was when the film was released in 1976. And because Chayefsky was one of the greatest of all dramatists, his Oscar-winning script about the ratings frenzy at the cost of cultural integrity is a showcase for powerhouse acting by Peter Finch, Faye Dunaway and Beatrice Straight (who each won Oscars), and Oscar nominee William Holden in one of his finest roles. Finch plays a veteran network anchorman who's been fired because of low ratings. His character's response is to announce he'll kill himself on live television two weeks hence. What follows, along with skyrocketing ratings, is the anchorman's descent into insanity, during which he fervently rages against the medium that made him a celebrity. Dunaway plays the frigid, ratings-obsessed producer who pursues success with cold-blooded zeal; Holden is the married executive who tries to thaw her out during his own seething midlife crisis. Through it all, Chayefsky (via Finch) urges the viewer to repeat the now-famous mantra "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore!" to reclaim our humanity from the medium that threatens to steal it away. --Jeff Shannon

• Passionada | DVD | (01/11/2004) from £6.99   |  Saving you £13.00 (185.98%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Young and beautiful Sally still mourning the loss of her deceased husband has resigned herself to work in the textile mill care for her elderly mother and worry about her beautiful rebellious teenage daughter Vicky. However when British charmer Charlie comes to town he woos Sally until he sweeps her off her feet; that is until she finds out that Charlie is not the person he claimed to be when they met...

• Road To Avonlea - The Journey Begins | DVD | (20/08/2001) from £13.68   |  Saving you £4.31 (31.51%)   |  RRP £17.99

  After her father is accused of embezzlement wealthy Sara Stanley is sent to live with relatives in Prince Edward Island. While there she must cope with her infamous aunts Hetty and Olivia and with the mischievous antics of her jealous cousins. Soon Sara must make a heartwrenching decision: whether to stay in Avonlea or return to her father. Based on the children's classic 'Anne' by Lucy Maud Montgomery about the adventures of Sara Stanley and her cousins. Features three episodes plus a bonus 'The Materialising Of Duncan McTavish'.

• Black Fist | DVD | (12/02/2007) from £5.49   |  Saving you £-0.50 (N/A%)   |  RRP £4.99

  Street fighter Leroy Fisk finds himself working for the Mafia taking part in illegal street fights in order to make a living. He plans to save up enough to buy a nightclub but he will have to deal with a crooked cop and find who ordered the murder of his wife and brother in law.

• DW Griffith Collection | DVD | (20/03/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The Avenging Conscience:Nightmarish visions of ghouls and devils highlight this D.W. Griffith silent feature based around Edgar Allen Poe's The Telltale Heart and Annabelle Lee. A young man (Henry B. Walthall) finds himself prevented from wooing the girl he loves (Blanche Sweet) due to the tyrannical edicts of his mean old uncle (Spottiswoode Aitken). The poor lad becomes haunted by a series of visions that convince him to murder this interfering relative. After the murder has been planned and executed the man finds himself haunted by still more visions this time of the fire and brimstone variety. An inquiring detective (Ralph Lewis) adds to the ever-mounting paranoia. Birth Of A Nation: The first part of the film chronicles the Civil War as experienced through the eyes of two families; the Stonemans from the North and the Camerons of the South. Lifelong friends they become divided by the Mason-Dixon line with tragic results. Large-scale battle sequences and meticulous historical details culminate with a staged re-creation of Lincoln's assassination. The second half of the film chronicles the Reconstruction as Congressman Austin Stoneman (Ralph Lewis) puts evil Silas Lynch (George Siegmann) in charge of the liberated slaves at the Cameron hometown of Piedmont. Armed with the right to vote the freed slaves cause all sorts of trouble until Ben Cameron (Henry B. Walthall) founds the Ku Klux Klan and restores order and decency to the troubled land. While The Birth Of A Nation was a major step forward in the history of filmmaking it must be noted that the film supports a racist worldview. Broken Blossoms: This strangely beautiful silent film from D.W. Griffith is also one of his more grim efforts; an indictment of child abuse and the violence of western society. An idealistic Asian (Richard Barthelemess) travels to the west in hopes of spreading the Buddha's message of peace to the round-eyed sons of turmoil and strife. Instead he winds up a disillusioned opium-smoking shopkeeper in London's squalid Limehouse District. Down the street a poor waif (Lillian Gish) suffers horrific abuse at the hands of her boxer father (Donald Crisp). When fortune delivers the battered girl into the Asian's tender care a strange and beautiful love blossoms between them a love far too fragile to survive their brutal environment. Intolerance: D.W. Griffith's biggest most ambitious spectacle uses stories from different times and places to illustrate humanity's intolerance of religious differences throughout the ages. The most visually impressive of these chronicles is the fall of Babylon for which Griffith built the largest sets in Hollywood and filled them with thousands of extras; there's also Christ's crucifixion and the massacre of the Heugenots in 15th century France. The most emotionally involving tale is the modern one about a poor girl (Mae Marsh) whose life is repeatedly ruined by the zealotry of social reformers. The image of a mother (Lillian Gish) rocking her child in a cradle links the stories. At one point angels reach down from heaven to stop soldiers in midbattle making it clear that Griffith intended this follow-up to The Birth Of A Nation as a message of global peace and love Way Down East: Innocent Anna is sent by her poverty-stricken mother to visit rich relations in Boston where she is seduced into a sham marriage by a smooth-talking scoundrel. When she becomes pregnant he abandons her; later the baby dies. Now a social outcast she changes her name and eventually finds shelter at the estate of the sternly religious Squire Bartlett. She falls in love with his handsome son but cannot divulge to him her terrible secret for fear of his father's righteous

• White Zombie | DVD | (14/07/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The tale is set in a smouldering descimated post World War II world in the town of Meridian which has the Halperin brothers made White Zombie in just 11 days back in 1932 with $50 000 and sets left behind from Universal's Dracula and Frankenstein. Keeping dialogue to a minimum they wisely let the cameraman cut loose on this odd fairy tale avoiding the stagey static feel that pervades most early makes. White Zombie doesn't tell us a story when it can show us one. One of the most visua