"Actor: Ruth"

• All Or Nothing | DVD | (28/04/2003) from £6.85   |  Saving you £13.14 (191.82%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A 2002 Mike Leigh drama, All or Nothing is at times almost unbearably bleak and poignant, yet funny, truthful and richly rewarding. The film's revolves around Timothy Spall's mini-cab driver, his family and the various characters and acquaintances on the South-east London estate where he lives. It's perhaps even better than Secrets and Lies, in which Spall also starred, which was marred a little by some of the tearful excesses of Brenda Blethyn's bravura performance. It's evidence that Leigh has matured and improved with age, rather than mellowed and softened. He's developed into a highly distinctive but rounded and humane filmmaker. Spall's cabbie is too gentle and thoughtful to be described as a slob, but his lack of even the most basic ambition and stoic non-resistance to life has created an unspoken rift between him and wife Penny (Lesley Manville). Working on a supermarket checkout, she must cook dinner and fend off insults from her fat, frustrated, obnoxious 18-year-old son Rory. She receives only passive sympathy from her older daughter Rachel. Only when Rory is taken ill is Phil snapped out of his torpor as the family pull together. A host of minor characters also feature; fatuous cabbie Ron (Paul Jesson) his alcoholic wife and sluttish daughter, as well as the wonderfully good-humoured and resilient Maureen, Penny's best friend, concerned at her daughter's relationship with a violent boyfriend. Once accused of caricaturing his "lower class" characters, here Leigh (with the collaborative assistance of his actors) exhibits them in all their authentic complexity, neither idealising nor sentimentalising them. On the DVD: All or Nothing's extras include the original trailer, as well as interviews with several members of the cast. Timothy Spall is interesting on the unnerving process of collaboration favoured by Leigh, whereby characters are "built from zero" by the actors. The smart and rather posh Lesley Manville strikes quite a contrast in real life with her mousey, put-upon character. There's also a meticulous and absorbing commentary from Mike Leigh, who talks about filming in Greenwich and how he has moved away from some of the more dogmatic ideas about filmmaking of his earlier, avant-garde days. --David Stubbs

• Luther: Series 1 | Blu Ray | (08/06/2015) from £6.99   |  Saving you £13.00 (185.98%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Idris Elba is the magnetic star of the thrilling BBC police series Luther, a gritty, captivating drama that will impress fans of police procedurals and knotty character studies. Elba (The Wire, The Big C, The Office, 28 Days Later) is a nuanced, tortured presence as DCI John Luther, a detective focused on understanding the most horrifying criminal mind. Luther also has sacrificed a normal personal life for his work, and Luther focuses on his back-story as much as on the plot at hand. The supporting cast is as brilliant as Elba, especially Indira Varma as his estranged wife, Zoe, and Ruth Wilson as the fragile-seeming but only marginally sane Alice, with whom Luther has been having a secret affair. The episodes are fairly straightforward police procedurals, including serial killers and other creepy bad guys. But what keeps Luther extra engaging is the superior writing, direction, and production design--making watching Luther an immersive experience for the viewer. And it's not always a comfortable one--this is not the cleaned-up New York of Law & Order, where most bad things happen off screen. Luther's bad guys (and gals) commit their evil deeds on camera and sometimes in slow motion--which only heightens the suspense and deep feeling of immersion. Luther and its focus on its leading character's personal life owes a lot to Helen Mirren's Prime Suspect, but Elba and the supporting cast of Luther do even more to make the viewer feel a part of the imperfect British law-enforcement system. The boxed set includes an excellent documentary with interviews with series creator Neil Cross and the directors and cast members discussing how they deliberately designed the series to be more "impressionistic" than "realistic" in terms of plot. (The interviews would have more impact if they weren't streamed onto a computer screen, but that's a small quibble.) Catch Luther while he tries to catch the bad blokes, and enjoy every twisted step of the journey. --A.T. Hurley. Amazon.com

• Mine All Mine | DVD | (22/05/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  From the magnificent mind of Russell T. Davies comes Mine All Mine one of the finest original programmes of 2004. Max Vivaldi has a dream. According to an ancient will from 1710 his family owns the whole of Swansea. But everyone laughs at Max just as they laughed as his father before him and he's a running joke on the South Wales coast. Until it all turns out to be true... The most ordinary family in the world suddenly becomes lord and master of all they survey. The road

• We Are Mongrels - Series 1 | Blu Ray | (16/08/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  We Are Mongrels BBC Three's first urban multi-species adult puppet comedy tells the tale of four urban animals who hang out together in the bin yard of an inner-city pub. Scratch the furry surface and Nelson the metrosexual fox; Destiny the pretentious pedigree It-bitch; Marion the abandoned street cat; and Kali the deeply cynical pigeon are kidults struggling with the everyday drama of life in the back-alleys of the urban jungle. We Are Mongrels is bold mischievous upbeat surprising and colourful. It encompasses all human life love and its contradictions - relationships sex aspirations desperations and shattered dreams.

• Don't Go in the House | DVD | (26/03/2012) from £25.95   |  Saving you £-15.96 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  In a Steel Room built for Revenge they die burning... In ChainsMost horror killers like to slash and slice their victims but little Donny prefers setting them alight in Don’t Go In The House, a sleazy reminder of just how shocking horror movies could get in the video nasty era. Donny is a disturbed kid... A mother’s boy if you will. That is until mother expires and Donny’s world crumbles in on itself. Now, lonely, adrift and enslaved to dark voices in his head, Donny seeks female companionship but drinks and dancing are the last thing on his mind. Mother’s telling him he’s a bad boy and the voices won’t let him rest. Maybe if he just gets a girl home and into his steel lined burning chamber, the chatter might quiet down...Now see Don’t Go In The House – complete and uncut – and revel in the surreal sleaze, low rent Hitchcock melodrama, off Broadway acting and extreme, heat-seared violence of an independent horror classic that still retains its ability drop jaws, rattle cages and offend sensibilities over 30 years later.

• Threads | DVD | (10/07/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Hideously plausible when first broadcast in 1984, this BBC TV docu-drama now seems like a terrifying might-have-been, although a great deal of what it says about the probable aftermath of a nuclear attack remains horribly pertinent. Scripted by Barry Hines (author of the novel on which Ken Loach's Kes was based) and directed by Mick Jackson (who later went to Hollywood with The Bodyguard and Volcano), at the time Threads seemed like a response to the American TV movie The Day After although it stands nobly on its own. Showing the after-effects of World War III on the United Kingdom by concentrating on two Sheffield families linked by an unplanned pregnancy, it illustrates the scientific, political, medical and social consequences of the severing of the many vital connective "threads" that support a Western society. Grim in a particularly 1980s way, this is a compulsive if uncomfortable watch and accomplishes a great deal without the distraction of spectacle, picking through all the melted milk bottles and firing squad traffic wardens to find the human horror at the heart of it all. --Kim Newman

• Out Of Towners | DVD | (08/12/2003) from £20.00   |  Saving you £-4.01 (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Neil Simon's curious comedy The Out-of-Towners concerns a pair of non-New Yorkers (Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis) having a hellish visit to the Big Apple on the eve of a job interview for Lemmon's character. Made in 1970 and directed by Arthur (Love Story) Hiller, this hectic film almost seems ahead of its time when compared to more recent misery-piled-on-misery comedies such as Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. The couple in this film endure everything that can go wrong on a trip, including being forced to spend the night in a mugger-happy Central Park. The strange element in Simon's script, though, is that Lemmon's character is so unpleasant. A middle-class, uptight guy who can't believe that New Yorkers in the service profession don't perform their jobs slavishly, he's kind of a one-note joke that quickly wears thin. It was remade with Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn in 1999. --Tom Keogh

• The Sheik | DVD | (19/04/2004) from £5.85   |  Saving you £4.14 (70.77%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Desperate to woo English socialite Diana Sheik Ahmed kidnaps her and whisks her away to his luxurious desert tent. At first she resists his advances but when she is kidnapped by ruthless desert bandits she begins to realise that she has true feelings for her sultry lover. But will the Sheik arrive in time to rescue her from the clutches of the bandits...

• The Reivers | DVD | (04/07/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Boon is a reiver (that's a cheat a liar a brawler and womaniser) and he has just four days to teach young Lucius the facts of life (like cheating lying brawling and womanizing)! Based on the novel by William Faulkner THE REIVERS tells the story of a young boy who leaves home and sets out on a journey with his best friend and Boon Hogganbeck (McQueen) his family's handyman. During the trip from Jefferson to Memphis the trio learns some valuable life lessons.

• Vital Signs | DVD | (15/01/2007) from £39.99   |  Saving you £-20.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  More and more people are coming to medicine later on in life. At 34 Rhoda Bradley (Tamzin Outhwaite) is one of those people. Rhoda decides she wants to train to become a doctor. Her husband Tony and her three kids support her - but they've got their own concerns about how it might change their world. It's going to be tough; mentally financially emotionally. And they'll have a lot less time together. This is her dream and she has to go for it...

• Hunters Walk | DVD | (03/09/2012) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Devised by Dixon of Dock Green creator Ted Willis, Hunters Walk shared several similarities with the classic 1950s police drama - in particular a small-town setting, and storylines encompassing the more human aspects of police work. This release contains all the existing episodes of Hunters Walk that remain in the archive.

• Chiller Theatre Features | DVD | (03/02/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  It's difficult sometimes to fathom how compilers think. This Chiller Theatre threesome consists of two classic silent horror films, plus a low-budget B-movie from the early 1960s. The connection? You decide! Yet these are films that belong in any self-respecting collection, and this package is a good way of acquiring them. Of those featuring Lon Chaney, it's the original 1923 The Hunchback of Notre Dame that comes across best. Chaney's grotesquerie is shot-through with pathos, and Patsy Ruth Miller's Esmeralda has enduring freshness. Wallace Worsley handles crowd scenes and cathedral stunts with aplomb, and there's an atmospheric "posthumous" soundtrack, though anyone looking for accuracy in the depiction of medieval French society is in for a shock. 1925's The Phantom of the Opera is slow-moving and uneventful by comparison, with Rupert Julian's direction never escaping the narrow Gothic trappings of the novel. Chaney cranks (or is that camps?) up his range of gestures to the limit, and Mary Philbin is an eye-catching heroine, but the denouement in the Paris sewers seems endless--with looped extracts of Schubert and Brahms as a hardly appropriate soundtrack. Cut to 1962, and The Carnival of Souls--made in Kansas for under $100,000--is an undeniable cult classic. Herk Harvey sustains the increasingly surreal narrative with ease, Candace Hilligoss is striking (if a tad gauche) as the young organist caught on the cusp of this world and the next, and Gene Moore's organ soundtrack is a masterly backdrop for the motley assemblage of ghouls who pursue her around the seaside pier in a memorable closing sequence. On the DVD: Chiller Theatre is very acceptably remastered--with 1.33:1 aspect ratio and 12 chapter headings per film--and decently if minimally packaged. --Richard Whitehouse

• Angela | DVD | (05/07/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  Angela is the haunting story of the secret spritual lives of a ten year old girl and her six year old sister Ellie. Angela leads Ellie through various regimens of 'purification' in an attempt to rid themselves of their evil which she believes is the cause of their mothers mental illness. Their family moves home in an attempt to cope with their mother's manic depression....

• Preacher: Season 1 | Blu Ray | (17/10/2016) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £44.99

  When Texas preacher Jesse Custer is inhabited by the renegade spawn of an angel and a demon, he gains the power to control people with just a word. Now Jesse, his badass ex Tulip, and his friend Cassidy (who happens to be a vampire) are thrust into a twisted battle spanning Heaven, Hell and everywhere in between.

• Midsomer Murders: Series 17 - Vintage Murder | DVD | (02/03/2015) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Britain’s best-loved detective series starring Neil Dudgeon as DCI John Barnaby who continues to fight crime in the beautiful but deadly villages of Midsomer. The launch of Midsomer Vinae’s newest sparkling wine falls flat when renowned wine critic Nadia Simons gives it a dreadful review and the guests sampling the vintage start to collapse. When Kate discovers the wine glasses were laced with slug pellets it appears that the wine’s unveiling has been deliberately sabotaged. Barnaby and Nelson learn there is hostility between the villagers and the vineyard. The villagers hold the owners of the winery responsible for the death of a young girl killed in a hit and run accident following a previous wine launch. Can Barnaby discover who is targeting the winery and what it has to do with the accident?

• The Closer You Get | DVD | (06/10/2003) from £7.98   |  Saving you £1.00 (20.04%)   |  RRP £5.99

  The wedding bells in this Donegal village haven't rung for years and with so few eligible women left, the single men have little choice but to give up and leave.

• Joey | DVD | (07/04/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  A young boy's friendship with a playful kangaroo leads him on the ultimate adventure in this fun-filled story for all ages. 12 year-old Billy McGregor lives on a ranch in the wild rugged Australian Outback with a loving mom and lots and lots of great animal friends - especially a baby kangaroo named ""Joey"". But when Joey's parents are kidnapped by poachers Billy knows he must do whatever it takes to help them and reunite Joey with his rightful family. Boarding a train for the big

• Prince And The Pauper | DVD | (06/01/2003) from £6.99   |  Saving you £-4.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £2.99

  Mark Twain's classic story of the Pauper who dreams of riches and the prince who just wants to behave like a normal boy. After a chance meeting the two boys become friends and are amazed to discover that they are identical and can easily pass for each other- an opportunity to get what they have both always wanted! But both learn that no life is as it seems: the Prince has to overcome an alcoholic father's wrath and a spell in prison while the Pauper is trapped in a palace rampant with political intrigue and in-fighting when the old king dies.

• Luther: Series 2 | Blu Ray | (08/06/2015) from £13.05   |  Saving you £6.94 (53.18%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Afflicted by the brutal murder of his wife DCI Luther has to continue policing in a very different world fighting for his job and his freedom in two distinctive two-part stories.

• Mae West - Screen Goddess Boxset | DVD | (03/10/2005) from £44.95   |  Saving you £5.04 (10.10%)   |  RRP £49.99