Drama

• The Falcon And The Snowman | DVD | (08/01/2001) from £9.43   |  Saving you £3.56 (27.40%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Academy Award Winner Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn deliver 'superb performances' Variety in a true-story spy thriller that is 'scathing arresting' (The New York Times) and laced with white-knuckle excitement. From Oscar winning director John Schlesinger and writer Steven Zaillian the film blows the lid off the modern-day American dream with its riveting story of two young men of privilege money and ambition who end up selling out their country ruining their families and destroyi

• Pi | DVD | (19/07/2004) from £7.92   |  Saving you £5.07 (64.02%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Patterns exist everywhere: in nature, in science, in religion, in business. Max Cohen (played hauntingly by Sean Gullette) is a mathematician searching for these patterns in everything. Yet, he's not the only one, and everyone from Wall Street investors, looking to break the market, to Hasidic Jews, searching for the 216-digit number that reveals the true name of God, are trying to get their hands on Max. This dark, low-budget film was shot in black and white by director Darren Aronofsky. With eerie music, voice-overs, and overt symbolism enhancing the somber mood, Aronofsky has created a disturbing look at the world. Max is deeply paranoid, holed up in his apartment with his computer Euclid, obsessively studying chaos theory. Blinding headaches and hallucinogenic visions only feed his paranoia as he attempts to remain aloof from the world, venturing out only to meet his mentor, Sol Robeson (Mark Margolis), who for some mysterious reason feels Max should take a break from his research. Pi is complex--occasionally toocomplex--but the psychological drama and the loose sci-fi elements make this a worthwhile, albeit consuming, watch. Pi won the Director's Award at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. --Jenny Brown

• The Firm 4K UHD | Blu Ray | (19/06/2023) from £19.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Tom Cruise delivers an electrifying performance in the box office hit stunningly remastered in 4K Ultra HD™ with HDR-10 and Dolby Vision. Mitch McDeere is a brilliant and ambitious Harvard Law grad driven to bury his working-class past. When he joins a small, prosperous Memphis firm, it's a dream come true for Mitch and his wife (Jeanne Tripplehorn). But when he's confronted with evidence of corruption and murder within the firm, he's caught in a deadly crossfire between the Feds, the Mob, and a force that will stop at nothing to protect its interests. Based on the global bestselling novel by John Grisham and directed by Oscar® winner* Sydney Pollack, THE FIRM is a thrilling mystery with tense twists and turns.

• Better Than Chocolate | DVD | (21/01/2002) from £14.98   |  Saving you £5.01 (33.44%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Many lesbian movies are long on charm and short on production values; Better Than Chocolate has a solid dose of both and steamy sex scenes to boot. Our heroine Maggie (Karyn Dwyer), a clerk at a lesbian bookshop, meets footloose butch Kim (Christina Cox) and, after Kim's van is towed away, they move in together. Unfortunately for their romantic bliss, Maggie's mother, Lila (Wendy Crewson), and teenage brother move in that very evening thanks to Lila's impending divorce. But what really complicates matters is that Maggie can't bring herself to come out to her mother. Even when she tries, Lila steamrollers through the conversation, as if she knows what's coming and doesn't want to hear it. Interwoven with this is the struggle of Judy (Peter Outerbridge), a male-to-female transsexual who's in love with the bookshop's owner, Frances (Ann-Marie MacDonald), who's freaking out because customs officers are holding a list of books at the border that they claim are obscene. The overlapping plots are deftly juggled, the personal and political are compellingly interwoven, and, most satisfying of all, the characters have problems that aren't going to be easily resolved. A handful of candy-coloured lip-synching musical numbers give the movie some flash and the sex scenes give it some heat, but it's the elements of sorrow and ambiguity that really make the joy in Better Than Chocolate something to savour. --Bret Fetzer, Amazon.com

• It Happened Here | DVD | (30/01/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The Story of Hitler's England ""The German invasion of England took place in July 1940 after the British retreat from Dunkirk. Strongly resisted at first the German army took many months to restore order. But the resistance movement lacking outside support was finally crushed. Then in 1944 the resistance movement reappeared."" In Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo's brilliant and chilling re-write of history Germany has won World War II and Nazi troops occupy England. Paulin

• Mystic River | Blu Ray | (08/02/2010) from £11.89   |  Saving you £6.10 (51.30%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Clint Eastwood's story of three men whose dark, interwoven history forces them to come to terms with a brutal murder on the mean streets of Boston.

• Countryman | DVD | (06/02/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  A young woman smuggling marijuana crash-lands her plane in Jamaica. A local named Countryman rescues her and leads her away from the authorities who have been pursuing the plane. Features a fantastic soundtrack with the likes of Bob Marley 'Natural Mystic' Wally Badarou 'Obeah Man Dub' and Human Cargo with 'Carry Us Beyond'.

• The Pacific - Complete HBO Series | DVD | (01/11/2010) from £29.39   |  Saving you £-12.39 (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.00

  Unsurprising attracting awards attention, The Pacific is a ten-part series set in the midst of World War II, that follows the actions of three US Marines In the Pacific Theatre Of War. It’s a series not a million miles away from its spiritual predecessor, Band Of Brothers, which is understandable given the crossover of creative talent. Yet The Pacific is still a show with an identity of its own. It boasts the same sky-high production values of Band Of Brothers, but it also has a broader canvas, and a slightly slower pace to it. It’s absorbing drama, though, and the standard of it is kept high right throughout the ten-episode run. During that time, it takes in many key events of the time, and presents them with staggering confidence and strength. All of this, of course, makes you hope that the high definition transfer can do all of this justice. Fortunately, the news here is good. Few television shows have been treated to anywhere near the love that The Pacific has been in its 1080p transfer, and matched by surround sound work that’d put many blockbuster movies to shame, Is it Band Of Brothers 2? Absolutely not. Instead, The Pacific is a wonderful drama series in its own right, and one well worth picking up. --Jon Foster

• Heartland - The Complete First Season | DVD | (26/04/2010) from £15.99   |  Saving you £14.00 (87.55%)   |  RRP £29.99

  A family ranch... A horse whisperer... A fight to save a dream... The hit family series based on the best-selling books by Lauren Brooke. The town of Hudson in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains is home to Heartland a family ranch dedicated to rescuing and rehabilitating troubled horses. After a tragedy puts the ranch in jeopardy fifteen-year-old Amy (Amber Marshall) must use her talents as a horse healer to save the family business. Her sister Lou (Michelle Morgan) reluctantly leaves city life behind to help Amy and their grandfather Jack (Shaun Johnston) run the ranch. With tough times ahead the family now must pull together to keep the dream of Heartland alive.

• Cheri | DVD | (21/09/2009) from £6.92   |  Saving you £9.07 (131.07%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Michelle Pfeiffer and Rupert Friend engage in a passionate love affair in this lush period piece directed by Stephen Frears

• The Bay - Series 4 | DVD | (17/04/2023) from £15.05   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• The Stepford Wives | DVD | (09/08/2004) from £23.97   |  Saving you £-10.98 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Ira Levin's scary novel about forced conformity in a small Connecticut town made the Stepford Wives a compelling 1975 thriller. Katharine Ross stars as a city woman who moves with her husband to Stepford and is startled by how perpetually happy many of the local women seem to be. Her search for an answer reveals a plot to replace troublesome real wives with more accommodating fake ones (not unlike the alien takeover in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers). The closer she gets to the truth, the more danger she faces--not to mention the likelihood that the men in town intend to replace her as well. Screenwriter William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) and director Bryan Forbes (King Rat) made this a taut, tense semi-classic with a healthy dose of satiric wit. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

• Vigil | Blu Ray | (11/06/2018) from £16.39   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Vincent Ward once described as the Antipodean Werner Herzog made his feature debut with Vigil, heralding his status as one of New Zealand's most distinctive filmmaking talents and paving the way for such equally remarkable and unclassifiable efforts as The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey and Map of the Human Heart. A stranger appears in a remote New Zealand farmland at the exact time a farmer accidentally falls to his death. The mysterious outsider grows close to some of the dead man's family, to the point where he and the widow become lovers. But her eleven-year-old daughter, Toss, struggling to come to terms with the death of her father as well as her impending womanhood, believes the intruder to be the devil and sets about protecting her family and their homestead. Propelled by Fiona Kay's outstanding performance by as Toss, she would earn a standing ovation when Vigil screened at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival the first time ever that a New Zealand feature played in the main competition. Features: High Definition (Blu-ray) presentation Original mono audio (uncompressed LPCM) Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing Brand-new appreciation by film critic Nick Roddick, recorded exclusively for this release On-set report from the long-running New Zealand television programme Country Calendar Extract from a 1987 Kaleidoscope television documentary on New Zealand cinema, focusing on Vigil and Vincent Ward Theatrical trailer FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collector's booklet featuring new writing on the film by critic Carmen Gray

• The Girl | DVD | (29/10/2008) from £5.79   |  Saving you £-0.80 (N/A%)   |  RRP £4.99

  In the middle of the 18th Century 18 year old Hannah Boyle and her sick mother are travelling from Newcastle; seeking shelter they hide in a stableyard...

• Beau Travail | DVD | (20/11/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  One of the very finest French films released in 2000, Claire Denis' resetting of Billy Budd among modern-day French Foreign Legionnaires welds near-experimental formal minimalism with a savage exposure of male aggression, jealousy and repressed homosexual desire, all set in an eye-peeling desert setting and choreographed to the grunts of men at work. Ravaged-featured Denis Lavant plays Galoup, who narrates his story in flashback, perhaps at the moment before his life ends. A sergeant in charge of a troop of Legionnaires, Galoup's position as the favourite of the Commander (Michel Subor) is threatened by the arrival of pretty-boy Sentain (Grégoire Colin, who played the spoiled wastrel in The Dream Life of Angels). Galloup plots to discredit his rival. As the drama unfolds through indirection and Galloup's unreliable disclosures, Denis dwells lovingly on the ballet of men at work as the soldiers run through their obstacle courses, practice combat pas de deux and disport like lean, khaki-clad dolphins by the Mediterranean shore. Sort of like Full Metal Jacket meets early Derek Jarman. It's a sensuous and exquisite film, as perceptive about relationships between men as it is about those between colonisers and the colonised. --Leslie Felperin

• Ghost Dog: The Way Of The Samurai 4K UHD SteelBook | Blu Ray | (23/10/2023) from £29.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Jim Jarmuschs 90s classic GHOST DOG: THE WAY OF THE SAMURAI, gloriously restored in 4K and making its UHD debut, is a superbly sharp, unique thriller featuring a magnificent lead performance from Forest Whitaker (Bird) in an iconoclastic mix of hip-hop, gangster movie and martial arts, with influences from Kurosawa, Suzuki and Melville. Forest Whitaker (Ghost Dog) lives above the world, alongside a flock of birds, in a homemade shack on the roof of an abandoned building. Guided by the words of an ancient samurai text, Ghost Dog is a professional killer able to dissolve into the night and move through the city unnoticed. When Ghost Dogs code is dangerously betrayed by the dysfunctional mafia family that occasionally employs him, he reacts strictly in accordance with the Way of the Samurai. Featuring moody cinematography by the great Robby Muller (Paris, Texas), a sublime score by the Wu-Tang Clans RZA, and a host of colourful character actors (including a memorably stone-faced Henry Silva), GHOST DOG: THE WAY OF THE SAMURAI plays like a pop-culture-sampling cinematic mixtape built around a one-of-a-kind tragic hero. Described by Time Out as very funny, insightful and highly original, the film was nominated for the Palme dOr at Cannes, and remains one of Jarmuschs best-loved films. Product Features Ghost Dog - The Odyssey: A Journey into the Life of a Samurai Deleted Scenes Original Trailer

• Cadfael - The Complete Collection - Series 1 To 4 | DVD | (16/08/2004) from £35.95   |  Saving you £19.04 (52.96%)   |  RRP £54.99

  Brother Cadfael, the medieval mystery-solving monk, is a fascinating detective, at once a man of God, of science, and even of action. Derek Jacobi stars as the former "soldier, sailor, sinner, and Crusader" who has his faith tested by crimes of royal intrigue and baffling murders that seem to plague 12th-century Shrewsbury. You'll find few Benedictine monks so skilled at using a quarterstaff, but beware never to tell him your theory of how a crime "must" have been committed. "We must always be wary of 'must'," he states. "Nothing is certain." And so attest these divine mysteries based on the books by Ellis Peters. Each feature-length episode is self-contained but plays against the backdrop of England's civil war between forces loyal to King Stephen and those to Empress Maud. Eoin McCarthy costars as local Under-Sheriff Hugh Beringar, who relies on Cadfael when murder subverts his efforts to keep the peace. --Donald Liebenson

• Akira Kurosawa's Dreams | Blu Ray | (21/11/2016) from £23.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Unfolding in a series of mythic vignettes, this late work by AKIRA KUROSAWA (Seven Samurai, Ran) brings eight of the beloved director's own night time visions, informed by tales from Japanese folklore, to cinematic life. In a visually sumptuous journey through the master's unconscious, tales of childlike wonder give way to apocalyptic visions: a young boy stumbles on a fox wedding in a forest; a soldier confronts the ghosts of the war dead; a power-plant meltdown smothers a seaside landscape in radioactive fumes. Interspersed with reflections on the redemptive power of art, including a richly textured tribute to Vincent van Gogh (played by MARTIN SCORSESE), Akira Kurosawa's Dreams is both a showcase for its maker's imagination at its most unbridled and a deeply personal lament for a world at the mercy of human ignorance.

• Distant Voices, Still Lives | DVD | (30/07/2007) from £18.75   |  Saving you £1.24 (6.61%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Set in 1940s England Distant Voices Still Lives is a compassionate look at a radically dysfunctional family. The son and his mother must endure the casual and overt cruelties of the bull-necked father. The ongoing abuse takes its toll in the form of failed marriages and misguided attempts at seeking security outside the family unit. As was the case with his earlier short subject trilogy director Terence Davies based much of the material on his own life combining rheumy-eyed cynicism with soft-edged nostalgia.

• Maria Full Of Grace | DVD | (22/08/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £18.99

  These pellets contain heroin. Each weighs 10 grams. Each is 4.2 cm long and 1.4 cm wide. And they're on their way to New York in the stomach of a 17-year-old girl.