"Actor: Billy Clarke"

• Armageddon | DVD | (20/08/2001) from £4.99   |  Saving you £13.00 (260.52%)   |  RRP £17.99

  This 1998 testosterone-saturated blow-'em-up from producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Michael Bay (The Rock, Bad Boys) continued Hollywood's millennium-fuelled fascination with the destruction of our planet. There's no arguing that the successful duo understand what mainstream audiences want in their blockbuster movies--loads of loud, eye-popping special effects, rapid-fire pacing, and patriotic flag waving. Bay's protagonists--the eight crude, lewd, oversexed (but, of course, lovable) oil drillers summoned to save the world from a Texas-sized meteor hurling toward the earth--are not flawless heroes, but common men with whom all can relate. In this huge Western-in-space soap opera, they're American cowboys turned astronauts. Sci-fi buffs will appreciate Bay's fetishising of technology, even though it's apparent he doesn't understand it as anything more than flashing lights and shiny gadgets. Smartly, the duo also try to lure the art-house crowd, raiding the local indie acting stable to populate the film with guys like Steve Buscemi, Billy Bob Thornton, Owen Wilson, and Michael Duncan, all adding needed touches of humour and charisma. When Bay applies his sledgehammer aesthetics to the action portions of the film, it's mindless fun; it's only when Armageddon tackles humanity that it becomes truly offensive. Not since Mississippi Burning have racial and cultural stereotypes been substituted for characters so blatantly--African Americans, Japanese, Chinese, Scottish, Samoans, Muslims, French ... if it's not white and American, Bay simplifies it. Or, make that white male America; the film features only three notable female characters--four if you count the meteor, who's constantly referred to as a "bitch that needs drillin'". Sadly, she's a hell of a lot more developed and unpredictable than all the other women characters combined. Sure, Bay's film creates some tension and contains some visceral moments, but if he can't create any redeemable characters outside of those in space, what's the point of saving the planet? --Dave McCoy

• The Devil's Business | DVD | (10/09/2012) from £6.75   |  Saving you £9.24 (136.89%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Two hit men are sent to murder an old associate of their underworld boss. But things are not all what they seem in their quarry's house and the discovery of a make-shift black magic altar and its shocking sacrifice sends the uncomprehending duo into the shadowy darkness of their own tortured souls. They are then faced with terrifying confrontations with their worst primal fears in this spine chilling horror.

• School For Scoundrels | DVD | (25/06/2007) from £4.59   |  Saving you £11.40 (248.37%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Billy Bob Thornton stars in this comedy as an evil confidence-trainer who takes on a group of timid students.