"Actor: Toni Bertorelli"

• Silk | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £4.99   |  Saving you £15.00 (300.60%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The story of a married silkworm merchant-turned-smuggler in 19th century France traveling to Japan for his town's supply of silkworms after a disease wipes out their African supply.

• The Son's Room | DVD | (27/01/2003) from £9.27   |  Saving you £13.71 (218.31%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The Son's Room, which picked up the 2001 Palme d'Or at Cannes, marks a departure for writer-director Nanni Moretti. The films that made his name outside Italy, Dear Diary and Aprile, were both highly personal and politicised semi-documentaries, and a strong political sense underlies the half-dozen or so features he made before them. By contrast, The Son's Room is a subtle, intense study of a family cracking apart under the impact of grief, with no overt political element. For all that, it's the most moving film that Moretti's yet made. "It captured me" he says "more than any other [story] I'd worked on previously. It's a film in which the director shares his emotions with the audience, without imposing his own feelings." As usual, the director plays his own lead character. Here he's Giovanni, a successful psychiatrist in a provincial Italian city (Ancona on the Adriatic coast). He has a beautiful wife, happy in her own career, and two bright, good-looking teenage children, a son and a daughter. Then, out of nowhere, tragedy strikes and in its aftermath, the fissures begin to show in the idyllic façade. Giovanni in particular reveals the insecurities and neuroses lurking behind his tolerant, easy-going demeanour. Moretti homes in on his characters with clear-eyed compassion, never milking the tragedy for facile sentiment but sparing us nothing of the gut-wrenching grief they feel. Nor does he succumb to the temptation of a feel-good happy ending: we are left with a hint of hope for the future, but no more. This is intelligent, mature filmmaking that respects its audience. On the DVD: The Son's Room comes to disc with just the trailer--and the flabby US trailer at that. A commentary from Moretti would have been more than welcome. Still, the transfer, in the original 1.66:1 ratio, is impeccable, with Dolby Digital 2.0 sound to match. --Philip Kemp

• Silk/Safe Harbour/Laws Of Attraction | DVD | (20/10/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Silk (Dir. Fran''ois Girard) (2007): Based on Alessandro Baricco's novel Silk is the story of a silkworm smuggler and his adventures in Japan. When the p''brine epidemic - the spotted silkworm disease that ravaged eggs from European hatcheries in the 1860's - spreads overseas the entire European silk trade seemed doomed. In order to continue his lucrative trade Baldabiou (Molina) a roguish French silk trader decides to send a young military officer Herve Joncour (Pitt) on a perilous mission to Japan. Thus separating him for months on end from Helene (Knightley) his lovely and devoted schoolteacher wife. Japan the island that produced the finest silk in the world for thousands of years prior to the opening of the Suez Canal was considered a dominion forbidden to foreigners quite literally the opposite end of the world. It is here that Herve encounters the powerful and feared local baron Hara Jubei (Yakusho) with whom he will trade for the precious silkworm eggs. And it is here in a world unlike anything that Herve has experienced before that he becomes entranced by the baron's concubine a deeply mysterious girl of intoxicating beauty. Safe Harbour (Dir. Bill Corcoran) (2007): Escape to Safe Harbour the gripping story of love loss and the powerful bonds that can heal a wounded heart. Ofelia is a grieving young widow. Matt is a heartbroken artist. Both feel as though they have lost everything until on a remote fog-shrouded California beach they find each other. But as their passion grows into something far more than either dares to dream the darkness of their pasts will threaten to destroy what could be their last chance for true love. Laws Of Attraction (Dir. Peter Howitt) (2004): A romantic comedy in which two jaded New York divorce lawyers (Brosnan Moore) are often competing against each other in court actions. After romance blossoms between them they decide to get married. However once wed will they be able to avoid the same difficulties at home that provide them with business at work?

• Pinocchio | DVD | (20/10/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Pinocchio