DVD Find the Perfect Gift    Send a Gift Certificate
Search 
Home › Drama
Review Universal Pictures Video FCD 040 / The Wanderers [1979]
Actors & Directors
  • Alan Rosenberg
  • Toni Kalem
  • John Friedrich
  • Philip Kaufman
  • Ken Wahl
  • Karen Allen
Release date: 2004-07-26
Run time: 112 min.
Creator: Rose Kaufman
RRP: £9.99
Price: £44.99

Review The Wanderers [1979] / Universal Pictures Video FCD 040:


Review MGM Entertainment / Last Tango In Paris [1973]
Actors & Directors
  • Giovanna Galletti
  • Bernardo Bertolucci
  • Maria Schneider
  • Gitt Magrini
  • Marlon Brando
  • Maria Michi
Release date: 2000-04-24
Run time: 124 min.
Creator: Agnès Varda
RRP: £15.99
Price: £3.58

Review Last Tango In Paris [1973] / MGM Entertainment:


Review Metrodome Distribution / Wild Style - 25th Anniversary Special Edition [1982]
Actors & Directors
  • Busy Bee
  • Charlie Ahearn
  • Tony Tone
  • Grandmaster Flash
  • Grandmaster Caz
  • Fab Five Freddy
Release date: 2007-09-10
Run time: 82 min.
RRP: £17.99
Price: £5.00

Review Wild Style - 25th Anniversary Special Edition [1982] / Metrodome Distribution:


Review MGM Entertainment / The Best Years Of Our Lives [1946]
Actors & Directors
  • Myrna Loy
  • William Wyler
  • Virginia Mayo
  • Dana Andrews
  • Fredric March
  • Teresa Wright
Release date: 2004-07-05
Run time: 163 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £6.86

Review The Best Years Of Our Lives [1946] / MGM Entertainment:


Review 2 Entertain Video / Doctor Who - Remembrance Of The Daleks [1987]
Actors & Directors
  • Peter Purves
  • Sophie Aldred
  • Sylvester McCoy
Release date: 2001-02-26
Run time: 98 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £5.98

Review Doctor Who - Remembrance Of The Daleks [1987] / 2 Entertain Video:

"Remembrance of the Daleks" was the final Doctor Who story to feature the titular mutant cyborgs, and is a particularly notable adventure for the way it ties the plot into the very first story, "An Unearthly Child" made 25 years before. It is 1963, and the Seventh Doctor, Sylvester McCoy arrives in London with new companion Ace (Sophie Aldred), where two Dalek factions are engaged in a deadly search for the Hand of Omega. Ace quickly proves herself a dab-hand with high explosives, and while there are references to the history of the show, including some nice in-jokes, the drama is played much straighter than in McCoy's first season as the time traveller. This is Doctor Who with a decent budget; the period setting is surprisingly lavish and there are some fairly intense action sequences. The Daleks remain as menacing as ever, the plotting has an intriguing air of mystery, and McCoy injects some steel into his characterisation. Aldred serves an ace as a heroine with attitude, (very much post-Sarah Connor from The Terminator), and if this really does prove to be the Dalek's swansong, at least they go out with a bang. On the DVD: Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred provide a warm and friendly commentary track, which also offers optional subtitles. The audio possibilities continue with an isolated music track, though the sound is Pro-Logic stereo, not the stated Dolby Digital. There are trailers for two episodes, a collection of out-takes, 13 deleted or extended scenes, and the raw footage from two different camera angles for two major scenes. Optional on-screen production notes complete a package which, with animated menus and very good 4:3 picture quality puts many Hollywood releases to shame. [+]
-Gary S. Dalkin.

Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / Murder One - Season 1 [1996]
Actors & Directors
  • Mary McCormack
  • John Fleck
  • Lesli Linka Glatter
  • Joe Napolitano
  • Barbara Bosson
  • Elodie Keene
  • Adam Nimoy
  • Michael Hayden
  • James Hayman
  • J.C. MacKenzie
Release date: 2004-09-06
Run time: 999 min.
Creator: Alfonso H. Moreno
RRP: £39.99
Price: £13.44

Review Murder One - Season 1 [1996] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:


Review Paramount Home Entertainment / The Godfather I [1972]
Actors & Directors
  • Richard S. Castellano
  • Marlon Brando
  • James Caan
  • Al Pacino
  • Robert Duvall
  • Francis Ford Coppola
Release date: 2004-09-13
Run time: 167 min.
Creator: Mario Puzo
RRP: £17.99
Price: £2.67

Review The Godfather I [1972] / Paramount Home Entertainment:

Generally acknowledged as a bona fide classic, this Francis Ford Coppola film is one of those rare experiences that feels perfectly right from beginning to end-almost as if everyone involved had been born to participate in it. Based on Mario Puzo's bestselling novel about a Mafia dynasty, Coppola's Godfather extracted and enhanced the most universal themes of immigrant experience in America: the plotting-out of hopes and dreams for one's successors, the raising of children to carry on the good work, etc. In the midst of generational strife during the Vietnam years, the film somehow struck a chord with a nation fascinated by the metamorphosis of a rebellious son (Al Pacino) into the keeper of his father's dream. Marlon Brando played against Puzo's own conception of patriarch Vito Corleone, and time has certainly proven the actor correct. The rest of the cast, particularly James Caan, John Cazale, and Robert Duvall as the rest of Vito's male brood-all coping with how to take the mantle of responsibility from their father-is seamless and wonderful. -Tom Keogh.

Review Acorn Media / Aristocrats
Actors & Directors
  • Serena Gordon
  • Anne-Marie Duff
  • Geraldine Somerville
  • Jodhi May
  • David Caffrey
Release date: 2009-01-30
Run time: 292 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £11.98

Review Aristocrats / Acorn Media:


Review Paramount Home Entertainment / The Warriors [Blu-ray] [1979]
Actors & Directors
  • Dorsey Wright
  • James Remar
  • Michael Beck
  • Walter Hill
Release date: 2008-10-13
Run time: 90 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £13.89

Review The Warriors [Blu-ray] [1979] / Paramount Home Entertainment:

The Warriors combines pure pulp storytelling and surprisingly poetic images into a thoroughly enjoyable cult classic. The plot is mythically pure (and inspired by a legendary bit of Greek history): When a charismatic gang leader is shot at a conclave in the Bronx meant to unite all the gangs in New York City, a troupe from Coney Island called the Warriors get blamed and have to fight all the way back to their own turf-which means an escalating series of battles with colorful and improbable gangs like the Baseball Furies, who wear baseball uniforms and KISS-inspired face make-up. Pop existentialism, performances that are somehow both wooden and overwrought, and zesty, kinetic filmmaking from director Walter Hill (Southern Comfort, 48 Hrs. ) result in a delicious and unexpectedly resonant operatic cheesiness. -Bret Fetzer Michael Beck, James Remar, Dorsey Wright.

Review Network / King Lear
Actors & Directors
  • John Hurt
  • Laurence Olivier
  • Michael Elliott
  • Robert Lindsay
  • Diana Rigg
  • Leo McKern
Release date: 2007-05-21
Run time: 160 min.
RRP: £14.99
Price: £6.50

Review King Lear / Network:


Review Peccadillo Pictures / Cockles And Muscles
Actors & Directors
  • Olivier Ducastel & Jacques Martineau
  • Gilbert Melki; Valeria Bruni Tedeschi; Jean-Marc Barr; Jacques Bonnaffe
Release date: 2006-09-25
Run time: 90 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £7.69

Review Cockles And Muscles / Peccadillo Pictures:


Review 2 Entertain Video / Hotel Babylon: Complete BBC Series 1 [2006]
Actors & Directors
  • Natalie Mendoza
  • Max Beesley
  • Dexter Fletcher
  • Alrick Riley
  • Emma Pierson
  • Tamzin Outhwaite
Release date: 2007-03-19
Run time: 471 min.
RRP: £29.99
Price: £7.99

Review Hotel Babylon: Complete BBC Series 1 [2006] / 2 Entertain Video:


Review Warner Home Video / We Are Marshall [2006]
Actors & Directors
  • David Strathairn
  • Matthew Fox
  • Ian McShane
  • Anthony Mackie
  • McG
  • Matthew McConaughey
Release date: 2007-10-22
Run time: 126 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £4.62

Review We Are Marshall [2006] / Warner Home Video:

There seems to be no end to "beating-the-odds" American football movies these days, but We Are Marshall, based on a true story, is in the top tier of that clutch of movies. Matthew McConaughey plays Jack Lengyel, who becomes head coach-more or less by default-of Marshall University's rebuilding varsity American football team in Huntington, West Virginia, after the school's 37-member team and coaches (and a number of others) die in a plane crash in the Appalachian Mountains on November 14, 1970. Facing an indifferent college president (David Strathairn) ready to shut the football program down, a morose assistant coach (Matthew Fox of Lost fame), and a charged-up player (Anthony Mackie) who missed the doomed flight due to an injury, Lengyel is faced with fielding a new team and putting the players through their paces. There are the usual, perhaps too-familiar, training montages and field action, but screenwriter Jamie Linden and director McG (Charlie's Angels) also draw some very good performances from the likes of Kate Mara and Ian McShane, contributing to an emotional tapestry conveying a powerful sense of how such a sizable loss affects a small community. -Sally Giles.

Review Lions Gate Home Ent. UK Ltd / It's All Gone Pete Tong
Actors & Directors
  • Steve Oram
  • Michael Dowse
  • Lol Hammond
  • Mike Wilmot
  • Kate Magowan
  • Paul Van Dyk
Release date: 2007-09-10
Run time: 88 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £4.87

Review It's All Gone Pete Tong / Lions Gate Home Ent. UK Ltd:


Review Network / Sapphire and Steel: The Complete Series (Repackaged) [1979]
Actors & Directors
  • Joanna Lumley
  • Steven O'Shea
  • David McCallum
  • Tamasin Bridge
Release date: 2008-05-26
Run time: 850 min.
RRP: £39.99
Price: £35.14

Review Sapphire and Steel: The Complete Series (Repackaged) [1979] / Network:


Review Fremantle Home Entertainment / Straw Dogs [1971]
Actors & Directors
  • Susan George
  • Del Henney
  • T.P. McKenna
  • Sam Peckinpah
  • Dustin Hoffman
  • Peter Vaughan
Release date: 2002-10-07
Run time: 113 min.
Creator: Gordon Williams
RRP: £19.99
Price: £5.42

Review Straw Dogs [1971] / Fremantle Home Entertainment:

According to critic Pauline Kael Straw Dogs was "the first American film that is a fascist work of art". Sam Peckinpah's only film shot in Britain is adapted from a novel by Gordon M Williams called The Siege of Trencher's Farm which Peckinpah described as a "lousy book with one good action-adventure sequence". The setting is Cornwall, where mild-mannered US academic David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman) has bought a house with his young English wife Amy (Susan George) in the village where she grew up. David is mocked by the locals (one of whom is Amy's ex-boyfriend) and treated with growing contempt by his frustrated wife, but when his house comes under violent siege he finds unexpected reserves of resourcefulness and aggression. The movie, Peckinpah noted, was much influenced by Robert Ardrey's macho-anthropological tract, The Territorial Imperative. Its take on Cornish village life is fairly bizarre-this is a Western in all but name-and many critics balked at the transposition of Peckinpah's trademark blood-and-guts to the supposed peace of the British countryside. A scene where Amy is raped caused particular outrage, not least since it's hinted she consents to it. Not for the first time in Peckinpah's movies there are disquieting elements of misogyny, and it doesn't help that the chemistry between Hoffman and George is non-existent. (Impossible to believe these two would ever have clicked, let alone married. ) But taken as a vision of irrational violence irrupting into a civilised way of life Straw Dogs is powerful and unsettling, and the action sequences are executed with all Peckinpah's unfailing flair and venom. [+]
Oh, and that title? A quote from Chinese sage Lao-Tze, it seems, "The wise man is ruthless and treats the people as straw dogs. " The film was long withheld from home viewing in Britain by nervous censors, but this release presents it complete and uncut. -Philip KempOn the DVD: Straw Dogs is as jam-packed a disc as is possible for a film made before the days of obligatory "making of" features. Both the sound and visuals have transferred well, and, like the script, have aged well. There's a bumbling original interview in the style of Harry Enfield's Mr. Cholmondley-Warner, along with stills and original trailers. The new material includes a feature on the history of the film's censorship and commentaries by Peckinpah's biographers musing over interesting fan-facts (though none of the speakers have any first-hand experience of the making of the film). However, Katy Haber's commentary, and interviews with Susan George and Dan Melnick, offer a much more in-depth and intimate portrayal of the man and the making of the film. -Nikki Disney.

Review Paramount Home Entertainment / Regarding Henry [1991]
Actors & Directors
  • Michael Haley
  • Julie Follansbhee
  • Annette Bening
  • Harrison Ford
  • Stanley Swerdlow
  • Mike Nichols
Release date: 2003-10-06
Run time: 102 min.
Creator: Susan MacNair
RRP: £15.99
Price: £3.00

Review Regarding Henry [1991] / Paramount Home Entertainment:


Review Sony Pictures Home Entertainment / The Taming Of The Shrew [1967]
Actors & Directors
  • Alfred Lynch
  • Elizabeth Taylor
  • Franco Zeffirelli
  • Cyril Cusack
  • Richard Burton
  • Michael Hordern
Release date: 2001-03-19
Run time: 117 min.
Creator: William Shakespeare
RRP: £19.99
Price: £3.78

Review The Taming Of The Shrew [1967] / Sony Pictures Home Entertainment:

The 1967 Franco Zeffirelli film of The Taming of the Shrew had all the ingredients to make it a high point in Shakespearian cinema. In Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor it starred the most bankable couple in Hollywood history as the sparring leads in the Bard's quick-firing comic battle of the sexes; and in Zeffirelli, it had a director with a Shakespearian pedigree second to none. But the reality is that this is Burton's picture all the way. His Petruchio is a weighty performance of such intelligence that the whole film is thrown off-kilter whenever he is on screen and the other performers just can't keep up. Apart from Michael Hordern's wonderfully distracted Baptista, Burton is the only actor in total, effortless command of the language. Taylor's bosomy glamour and fiery spirit are ample compensations for her occasionally murderous treatment of Katharina's verse. Whether or not she is really tamed by the end is another matter: those legendary violet eyes suggest otherwise. Ultimately it's a rich, bawdy and colourful romp, with Burton at the peak of his powers. The DVD includes the theatrical trailer, a "making-of" featurette and filmographies. -Piers Ford.

Review Pathe Distribution / Blink [1993]
Actors & Directors
  • Michael Apted
  • James Remar
  • Bruce A. Young
  • Aidan Quinn
  • Peter Friedman
  • Madeline Stowe
Release date: 2004-04-19
Run time: 101 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £3.97

Review Blink [1993] / Pathe Distribution:


Review Paramount Home Entertainment / Sleuth [1972]
Actors & Directors
  • Alec Cawthorne
  • Laurence Olivier
  • Michael Caine
  • Joseph L. Mankiewicz
  • Ted Martin
Release date: 2008-04-28
Run time: 133 min.
RRP: £7.99
Price: £5.07

Review Sleuth [1972] / Paramount Home Entertainment:

Wicked, nasty, delicious fun. Laurence Olivier is a wealthy English mystery writer. He invites Michael Caine to his elaborate country house, in order to settle some rather unpleasant business between them: Caine is having an affair with Olivier's wife and she is about to divorce the older man. Olivier, smooth as brandy, suggests that there might be a way the two men can help each other but what appears to be an intriguing proposition escalates into a deadly cat-and-mouse game. Sleuth boasts a twisty script by Anthony Shaffer, calculated to drive an audience to distraction and director Joseph L. Mankiewicz (All About Eve) shows a keen eye for the telling detail. But the real fun is watching Olivier and Caine go at each other hammer and tongs, a virtuoso wrestling match between two splendid actors (both were Oscar-nominated, but lost to Marlon Brando in The Godfather). Alec Cawthorne is also quite good as the inquisitive inspector on the case. -Robert Horton.

Browse Drama:

Models & Brands:
The Wanderers [1979], Last Tango In Paris [1973], Wild Style - 25th Anniversary Special Edition [1982], The Best Years Of Our Lives [1946], Doctor Who - Remembrance Of The Daleks [1987], Murder One - Season 1 [1996], The Godfather I [1972], Aristocrats, The Warriors [Blu-ray] [1979], King Lear, Cockles And Muscles, Hotel Babylon: Complete BBC Series 1 [2006], We Are Marshall [2006], It's All Gone Pete Tong, Sapphire and Steel: The Complete Series (Repackaged) [1979], Straw Dogs [1971], Regarding Henry [1991], The Taming Of The Shrew [1967], Blink [1993], Sleuth [1972]

Top headlines:
Search 
DVD Rental: try it for free