"Actor: Brandon Charles"

• Space Jam | DVD | (23/11/1998) from £7.19   |  Saving you £6.80 (94.58%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Although at first glance it looks like a movie dreamed up by a marketing committee (and in some respects it probably was), Space Jam actually defies the odds against it to become a dazzling display of family entertainment. There's a kind of demented genius to the idea of casting NBA superstar Michael Jordan in a live-action and animated movie co-starring the beloved characters from Warner Bros' Looney Tunes cartoons. They play off each other like seasoned veterans of vaudeville, and Jordan never falls into the kind of awkward, amateurish showmanship that you might expect from a sports idol. He's comfortable in the cartoon land of his co-stars, who include Bugs Bunny and sexy newcomer Lola Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd, Sylvester & Tweety, Speedy Gonzalez, the Tazmanian Devil, Foghorn Leghorn, and Yosemite Sam. They've all been hijacked to an outer-space amusement park run by the Nerdlucks, who strike a Faustian bargain with the Warners' heroes: if Bugs and Co. can defeat the Nerdluck "Monstars" in a basketball game, they'll win back their freedom; if they lose, they'll be doomed to stay there forever as enslaved entertainers. So they kidnap Jordan as their coach and "secret weapon" while the nefarious Nerdlucks suck out the basketball skills from such stellar victims as Charles Barkley and Patrick Ewing. It all leads to reckless abandon on the basketball court, and Bill Murray pops in for some hilarious support. Combining traditional animation and computer-generated Nerdlucks with its live-action cast, Space Jam was made in the anarchic spirit of the original cartoons, where anything goes as long as it's funny and off-the-wall (or the ceiling, or the door, or the floor...). Technically astounding, it's also witty enough to entertain adults and kids alike. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

• The Fan | DVD | (25/10/1999) from £8.95   |  Saving you £11.04 (123.35%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Denzel Washington is a disillisioned soldier of fortune who grows close to a child he is paid to protect. When she is abducted, his fiery rage is unleashed on those he feels responsible, and he stops at nothing to save her.

• Finding The Way Back | DVD | (12/10/2020) from £6.59   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Jack Cunningham (Ben Affleck) once had a life filled with promise. In high school, he was a basketball phenom with a full ride to college, when suddenly, for reasons unknown, he walked away from the game, forfeiting his future. Now years later, Jack is stuck in a meaningless job and drowning in the alcoholism that cost him his marriage and any hope for a better life. When he is asked to coach the basketball team at his alma mater, which has fallen far since his glory days, he reluctantly accepts, surprising no one more than himself. As the boy starts to come together as a team and win, Jack may have finally found a reason to confront the demons that have derailed him. But will it be enough to fill the void, heal the deep wounds of his past, and set him on the road to redemption? Extras: Every Loss Is Another Fight: The Road to Redemption-A revealing look into The character of Jack Cunningham with Ben Affleck and Director Gavin O'Connor. The WAY BACK: This Sporting Life

• Finding The Way Back | Blu Ray | (12/10/2020) from £24.89   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Jack Cunningham (Ben Affleck) once had a life filled with promise. In high school, he was a basketball phenom with a full ride to college, when suddenly, for reasons unknown, he walked away from the game, forfeiting his future. Now years later, Jack is stuck in a meaningless job and drowning in the alcoholism that cost him his marriage and any hope for a better life. When he is asked to coach the basketball team at his alma mater, which has fallen far since his glory days, he reluctantly accepts, surprising no one more than himself. As the boy starts to come together as a team and win, Jack may have finally found a reason to confront the demons that have derailed him. But will it be enough to fill the void, heal the deep wounds of his past, and set him on the road to redemption? Extras: Every Loss Is Another Fight: The Road to Redemption-A revealing look into The character of Jack Cunningham with Ben Affleck and Director Gavin O'Connor. The WAY BACK: This Sporting Life

• Vera Cruz | DVD | (11/06/2001) from £12.94   |  Saving you £3.04 (30.55%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Vera Cruz was only director Robert Aldrich's second Western (his first, made a few months earlier, was the revisionist, pro-Native-American Apache), but it's such an assured, stylish affair that he might have been roaming the sagebrush for decades. In the aftermath of the American Civil War two lone adventurers make their way south of the border, where Mexico is fighting a civil war of its own to rid the country of the French-imposed Emperor Maximilian. Neither the dour Benjamin Trane (Gary Cooper) nor the grinning, devil-may-care Joe Erin (Burt Lancaster) has much in the way of idealism, but Trane still retains a thin bitter edge of integrity, a quality quite alien to the cheerfully amoral Erin. In uneasy alliance, constantly looking to outwit or double-cross each other, the two find themselves escorting a beautiful French countess (Denise Darcel) and a shipment of gold across country. Cooper and Lancaster create a superb double-act, using their contrasted screen personas to point up the humour and the cynicism of the two mercenaries' relationship. Darcel makes less than she might of the femme fatale role, but there are relishable cameos from Cesar Romero as a suavely duplicitous aristo and Ernest Borgnine as another gringo with an exceptionally vicious streak. The script, according to Aldrich, was written on the run, "always finished about five minutes before we shot it", but you wouldn't guess it from the laconic wit of the dialogue. It looks great, too--Ernest Laszlo's widescreen photography makes the most of the handsome Mexican locations. With its irreverent take on the accepted moral conventions of the genre, Vera Cruz ushered in a new kind of Western, and its central love-hate relationship would be replayed in Sam Peckinpah's Ride the High Country (1962) and Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). On the DVD: Not much in the way of extras but the mono sound has been expertly remastered to the benefit of Hugo Friedhofer's spirited score. Above all, the film's presented in its full Superscope ratio (16:9), a blessed relief after all those years when it showed up panned-and-scanned on BBC1. If ever a movie needed widescreen, it's this one--if only to fit in all Burt's teeth. You can see why they called him "Crockery Joe". --Philip Kemp

• Operation Condor | DVD | (19/11/2001) from £6.81   |  Saving you £6.18 (90.75%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Jackie Chan appears as Condor an adventurer hired to track down a lost hoard of gold buried in the North African desert during the Second World War. Our hero is joined by three women in a race to get to the gold and outwit their evil pursuers.

• Doctor Jekyll And Mr Hyde | DVD | (23/07/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  In this 1920 silent version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, John Barrymore is dignified and virtuous as Dr Henry Jekyll, and transforms into Id incarnate as the lascivious Mr. Hyde with almost no make-up beyond his gnarled, knobby fingers and greasy hair, relying almost solely on a bug-eyed grimace, a spidery body language and pure theatrical flourish. He tends to be hammy as the leering beast of a thug but brings a tortured struggle to the repressed doctor, horrified at the demon he's unleashed, guilty that he enjoys Hyde's unrestrained life of drinking and whoring and terrified that he can no longer control the transformations. Martha Mansfield co-stars as his pure and innocent sweetheart, and Nita Naldi (the vamp of Blood and Sand) has a small but memorable role as the world-weary dance-hall darling who first "wakens" Jekyll's "baser nature". --Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com

• Space Jam | DVD | (05/04/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £20.99

  His Airness and His Hareness; what a team! Michael Jordon slams Bugs Bunny jams and a cavalcade of Looney Tunes and NBA stars hoop it up in the rim-rattlin out of this world roundball romp: Space Jam.

• Defiance | DVD | (26/07/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £22.99

  In the great tradition of American Westerns Defiance tells a sweeping tale of revenge hatred and justice. When a law-abiding rancher is slain by the town's most powerful man because he's not willing to pay his dues his youngest son who witnesses his father's brutal murder devotes his life to avenging his father's death. Years later he returns to the town of Defiance and kills the man's son. But now his brother becomes swept up in this cycle of revenge...

• Dr. Jekyll und Mr. Hyde: Kolorierte Fassung + SW-Fassung | DVD | (01/12/2020) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A