Drama

• THE BLUE ANGEL | Blu Ray | (28/01/2013) from £13.35   |  Saving you £6.64 (49.74%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The Blue Angel is one of the first German language sound films (filmed simultaneously in an English-language version), and the picture that represents the initial collaboration between Josef von Sternberg and his immortal muse, Marlene Dietrich. Following up his role in Sternberg's great silent The Last Command, Emil Jannings portrays a schoolteacher named Immanuel Rath, whose fateful expedition to catch his students frequenting the cabaret known as The Blue Angel leads to his own rapture with the establishment's main attraction Lola (Dietrich) - and, as a result, triggers the downward spiral of his life and fortune. Directed by Sternberg while on loan from America to the pioneering German producer Erich Pommer, The Blue Angel is at once captivating, devastating, and powerfully erotic, laced-through with Sternberg's masterful cinematography. From here, the director and Dietrich would go on to make six more films together in the span of five years, and leave a legacy of some of the most indelible iconography in the cinema of glamour and obsession. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present The Blue Angel in a new Dual Format presentation that incorporates both versions of the film in 1080p HD for the first time in the UK. Special Features: 1080p HD Presentation of both the German-language and English-language versions of the film, with progressive encodes on the DVD Newly translated optional subtitles on the German-language version, and SDH on the English-language version New and exclusive video essay on the films by critic and scholar Tag Gallagher New and exclusive feature-length audio commentary by critic and scholar Tony Rayns on the German-langauage version Original screen test with Marlene Dietrich Archival interview clips with Marlene Dietrich Substantial booklet containing writing on the film, vintage excerpts, and rare archival imagery

• Once Upon A Time In America | DVD | (25/07/2006) from £11.77   |  Saving you £2.22 (18.86%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Once Upon a Time in America has a chequered history, having been chopped from its original 229-minute director's cut to 139 minutes for its theatrical release. The longer edition presented here benefits from having the complete story (the short version has huge gaps) about turn-of-the-century Jewish immigrants in America finding their way into lives of crime, as told in flashback by an ageing Jewish gangster named Noodles (Robert De Niro). On the other hand, it's almost four hours long, and this sometimes-indulgent Sergio Leone film is no Godfather. Still, it is notable for the contrast between Leone's elegiac take on the gangster film and his occasional explosive action, as well as for the mix of the stoic, inexpressive De Niro and the hyperactive James Woods as his lifelong friend and rival. --Marshall Fine

• Trainspotting: The Definitive Edition | DVD | (16/06/2003) from £4.84   |  Saving you £15.15 (313.02%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The film that effectively launched the star careers of Robert Carlyle, Ewan McGregor and Jonny Lee Miller, Trainspotting is a hard, barbed picaresque, culled from the bestseller by Irvine Welsh and thrown down against the heroin hinterlands of Edinburgh. Directed with abandon by Danny Boyle, it conspires to be at once a hip youth flick and a grim cautionary fable. McGregor, Lee Miller and Ewen Bremner play a slouching trio of Scottish junkies, Carlyle their narcotic-eschewing but hard-drinking and generally psychotic mate Begbie. In Boyle's hands, their lives unfold in a rush of euphoric highs, blow-out overdoses and agonising withdrawals (all cued to a vogueish pop soundtrack). Throughout it all, John Hodge's screenplay strikes a delicate balance between acknowledging the inherent pleasures of drug use and spotlighting its eventual consequences. In Trainspotting's world view, it all comes down to a choice between the dangerous Day-Glo highs of the addict and the grey, grinding consumerism of the everyday Joe. "Choose life", quips the film's narrator (McGregor) in a monologue that was to become a mantra. "Choose a job, choose a starter home... But why would anyone want to do a thing like that?" Ultimately, Trainspotting's wised-up, dead-beat inhabitants reject mainstream society in favour of a headlong rush to destruction. It makes for an exhilarating, energised and frequently terrifying trip that blazes with more energy and passion than a thousand more ostensibly life-embracing movies. --Xan Brooks

• Nowhere Boy | DVD | (10/05/2010) from £4.97   |  Saving you £13.02 (261.97%)   |  RRP £17.99

  The highly anticipated feature debut from artist Sam Taylor-Wood, "Nowhere Boy" is a sensitive and sprightly look at the formative years of one of Britain's cultural icons.

• Falling In Love | Blu Ray | (18/08/2025) from £12.49   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  FALLING IN LOVE is a shining example of the magic that's created when two of Hollywood's biggest and brightest stars join forces in one special film. Multiple Academy Award® winners Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep are together again for the first time since The Deer Hunter. In FALLING IN LOVE they play Frank Raftis and Molly Gilmore, two everyday people who meet first by chance, and later by choice. There's just one thing standing between Frank and Molly's intense, newfound love - both are already married. It's a genuine modern dilemma, and De Niro, Streep, and a fine supporting cast bring the story to life with flair and sensitivity.

• The Grand Budapest Hotel | DVD | (07/07/2014) from £8.25   |  Saving you £11.74 (142.30%)   |  RRP £19.99

  THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL recounts the adventures of Gustave H, a legendary concierge at a famous European hotel between the wars, and Zero Moustafa, the lobby boy who becomes his most trusted friend.

• For Whom The Bell Tolls | DVD | (10/11/2003) from £5.85   |  Saving you £4.14 (70.77%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Based on the best-selling controversial novel by Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning author Ernest Hemingway 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' graces the screen with legendary stars Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman. The story follows expatriate American demolition expert Robert Jordan who aides anti-fascist freedom fighters of Spain. Assisting him is a band of warriors including the strong-willed Pilar (Katina Paxinou in an Oscar winning performance) the dangerously undependable Pablo and th

• The Godfather 4K UHD | Blu Ray | (31/10/2022) from £19.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  No movie changed Hollywood more than THE GODFATHER. From the best-sellingvnovel by Mario Puzo to box office blockbuster, its influential legacy endures to this day. Starring Marlon Brando in his Oscar®-winning performance as the patriarch of the Corleone family, this first installment in the three-movie saga paints a dramatic portrait of the Sicilian clan's rise and near fall from power in America. Balanced between the Corleone's commitment to family and the ugly crime business in which they are engaged, it features career-making performances by Al Pacino, James Caan, Talia Shire, Diane Keaton and Robert Duvall. This searing and brilliant masterpiece garnered ten Oscar® nominations and won three, including Best Picture. Product Features Introduction From Francis Ford Coppola Commentary By Francis Ford Coppola

• Silent Witness - Series 5 and 6 | DVD | (07/06/2010) from £10.89   |  Saving you £14.10 (129.48%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Series 5: Sam's cases involve a series of revenge killings by a former Auschwitz prisoner; the mysterious deaths of teenage girls killed 15 years apart in Norway; a suspicious suicide and a beautiful Nun in a convent by the sea - very different stories all employing Sam's expertise to the maximum. Series 6: Sam Ryan is in constant demand. Dedicated and driven she wants to know about the person behind the dead body and how and why they died. Now she has two dynamic new colleagues to assist her: Dr Leo Dalton and junior pathologist Harry Cunningham. Mysteries facing the team include a severed arm which exposes a police cover-up and prostitution ring; a seven-year-old corpse linked to a violent armed robbery; and the mass murder of a family the investigation of which reunites Sam with a former love.

• The French Love | Blu Ray | (07/07/2025) from £13.04   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  They do say that Paris is the city of love and that's certainly true for American TV reporter Bryan Deal: he's barely out of the airport when he's picked up by a pair of beautiful bisexual air-hostesses and whisked back for a spot of le nookie. But can his conservative Anglo-Saxon upbringing allow him to embrace these new freedoms? More ambitious than most seventies soft-core, The French Love captures the mood of fashionable French youth of the time, with sexual liberation linked to political transformation. 88 Films are proud to present this explicit manifesto to a new generation completely uncut. HIGH-DEFINITION BLU-RAY PRESENTATION IN 1.66:1 ASPECT RATIO ORIGINAL FRENCH MONO 2.0 AUDIO ENGLISH SUBTITLES

• The Man Who Invented Christmas | DVD | (12/11/2018) from £7.05   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Starring Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey, Beauty and the Beast) as Charles Dickens, The Man Who Invented Christmas tells the true story of how the iconic author came to write the seminal yuletide novel A Christmas Carol in only six weeks. Set in 1840s London, Dickens had been struggling to come up with fresh ideas after the failure of his last three works. However, when he's inspired by the vision of a story that would fire the hearts of humanity, he set out to write and self-publish a book that would reignite his career. As the likes of Ebenezer Scrooge (played by Academy Award-winner Christopher Plummer) and The Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present and Future start coming to life in his head, Dickens began creating a masterpiece that gave birth to the Christmas we know and love today.

• Priscilla | DVD | (08/04/2024) from £7.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• August Rush | DVD | (31/03/2008) from £7.99   |  Saving you £12.00 (150.19%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A drama with fairy tale elements as an orphaned musical prodigy uses his gift as a clue to finding his birth parents.

• The Apartment | DVD | (26/11/2001) from £7.48   |  Saving you £8.51 (113.77%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Romance at its most anti-romantic--that is the Billy Wilder stamp of genius, and this Best Picture Academy Award winner from 1960 is no exception. Set in a decidedly unsavoury world of corporate climbing and philandering, the great filmmaker's trenchant, witty satire-melodrama takes the office politics of a corporation and plays them out in the apartment of lonely clerk CC Baxter (Jack Lemmon). By lending out his digs to the higher-ups for nightly extramarital flings with their secretaries, Baxter has managed to ascend the business ladder faster than even he imagined. The story turns even uglier, though, when Baxter's crush on the building's melancholy elevator operator (Shirley MacLaine) runs up against her long-standing affair with the big boss (a superbly smarmy Fred MacMurray). The situation comes to a head when she tries to commit suicide in Baxter's apartment. Not the happiest or cleanest of scenarios, and one that earned the famously caustic and cynically humoured Wilder his share of outraged responses, but looking at it now, it is a funny, startlingly clear-eyed vision of urban emptiness and is unfailingly understanding of the crazy decisions our hearts sometimes make. Lemmon and MacLaine are ideally matched and while everyone cites Wilder's Some Like It Hot closing line "Nobody's perfect" as his best, MacLaine's no-nonsense final words--"Shut up and deal"--are every bit as memorable. Wilder won three Oscars for The Apartment, for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay (cowritten with long-time collaborator I A L Diamond). --Robert Abele

• A History of Violence | DVD | (20/03/2006) from £4.96   |  Saving you £15.03 (303.02%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Viggo Mortensen stars in this stylized thriller from director David Cronenberg.

• Control | DVD | (11/02/2008) from £7.55   |  Saving you £12.44 (164.77%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The Joy Division's Ian Curtis is the subject of this tough and moving biopic which stars Sam Riley as the enigmatic musician.

• The West Wing - Complete Series 2 | DVD | (20/10/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £61.99

  The second season of The West Wing takes up literally where the first season left off and, after a few moments of patriotic sentimentalism, maintains the series' astonishingly high standards in depicting the everyday life of the White House staff of a Democratic administration. The two-part opener covers the immediate aftermath of the assassination attempt on President Bartlet (Martin Sheen), switching between the anxious wait on the injured and flashbacks to Bartlet's campaign for the Presidency. Other peaks in a series exceedingly short on lows include "Noel," the episode in which Alan Arkin's psychiatrist forces Josh Lynam to confront his post-traumatic stress disorder and the episodes in which President Bartlet, following a tragic car accident, rails angrily against God in Latin. Other new aspects include the introduction of Ainsley Hayes, a young Republican counsel hired after she beats communications deputy Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe) in a TV debate ("Sam's getting his ass kicked by a girl!" crow his colleagues), as well as the revelation that the President has been suffering from multiple sclerosis. Tensions grow between him and the First Lady (Stockard Channing) as she realizes, in the episode "Third State of the Union," that he intends to run for a second term in office. It becomes clear to Bartlet that he must go public with his MS, and his staff is forced to come to terms with this, as well as deal with the usual plethora of domestic and international incidents, which apparently preclude any of them from having any sort of private lives. These include crises in Haiti and Columbia, an obstinate filibuster, and a Surgeon General's excessively frank remarks about the drug situation. Thankfully, the splendid Lord John Marbury (Roger Rees) is on hand to make chief of staff Leo McGarry's life more of a misery in "The Drop-In." These episodes, though occasionally marred by a sentimental soundtrack and an earnest and wishfully high regard for the Presidential office, are master classes in drama and dialogue, ranging from the wittily staccato to the magnificently grave, capturing authentically the hectic pace of political intrigue and the often vain efforts of decent, brilliant people to do the right thing. The West Wing is one of the all-time great TV dramas. --David Stubbs

• House of Mirth | DVD | (17/09/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Gillian Anderson and Eric Stoltz star in this adaptation of Edith Wharton’s novel about the hypocrisy at the heart of New York society at the start of the last century.

• Raise Your Voice | DVD | (23/05/2005) from £5.98   |  Saving you £10.01 (167.39%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Perky teen starlet Hilary Duff wholeheartedly embraces the kind of earnest innocence all parents wish their daughters had. In Raise Your Voice, Terri Fletcher yearns to go to a prestigious music conservatory in Los Angeles. Her father won't let her because L.A. is a bad place, but her loving mom and kooky aunt sneak her away. Once there, she gets a sassy roommate-of-colour, geeky cool friends, a snooty rival, and a sexy British boyfriend. Of course, all conflicts with family and friends come to a head at a big competition at which Terri rediscovers herself. Formulaic? Yes. Bland? Yes. Will preteen girls enjoy it anyway? Maybe, because Duff plays it so sincere. --Bret Fetzer, amazon.com

• Desperate Housewives: Season 5 | DVD | (09/11/2009) from £9.99   |  Saving you £30.00 (300.30%)   |  RRP £39.99

  Years may pass but desperation is timeless. Experience the rare cultural phenomenon that is also a hit with the critics as the women of Wisteria Lane return in a sexy and stormy seven-disc DVD set that will have you begging for more. Bound by enduring friendships and shared secrets the Housewives are always there for each other. How will their alliances be challenged by the arrival of Edie's mysterious new husband and who will go head-tohead for Housewife Of The Year? It promises to be the most wonderfully wicked season yet for the sirens of suburbia. Wisteria Lane's neatly manicured lawns can no longer hide the dirt of television's hottest women. Dig deep into every provocative episode complete with never-before-seen bonus features and enjoy Desperate Housewives like never before on DVD.