"Actor: Charlie Angel"

• Aladdin (Special Edition) | DVD | (04/10/2004) from £5.88   |  Saving you £-4.89 (N/A%)   |  RRP £0.99

  Disney's 1992 animated feature Aladdin is a triumph of wit and skill. The high-tech artwork and graphics look great, the characters are strong, the familiar story is nicely augmented with an interesting villain (Jafar, voiced by Jonathan Freeman), and there's an incredible hook atop the whole thing: Robin Williams's frantically hilarious vocal performance as Aladdin's genie. Even if one isn't particularly moved by the love story between the title character (Scott Weinger) and his girlfriend Jasmine (Linda Larkin), you can easily get lost in Williams's improvisational energy and the equally entertaining performances of Freeman and Gilbert Gottfried (as Jafar's parrot). --Tom Keogh

• Hidden Assets | DVD | (07/03/2022) from £12.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• The Navigators | DVD | (22/04/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Ken Loach does for the railways in The Navigators what he did for the construction industry in Riff-Raff (1990). As ever, his sympathies lie firmly with the ordinary working blokes, not above of bit of banter and skiving, but essentially trying to do a decent job and stay loyal to their mates in the face of managerial double-talk and corporate devotion to the bottom line. It's 1995, and the Tories have just carried out their disastrous, pea-brained scheme to break up the railways. We follow the fortunes of a gang of track workers in South Yorkshire as they find themselves confronted with all the fallout of privatisation--redundancies, cost-cutting, corner-cutting and the wholesale junking of any concern with safety or quality of work. Accidental deaths, one hapless time-server explains, "have got to be kept to an acceptable level". Two scenes encapsulate the tragic-comic tone of the film. At one point the disbelieving workers are ordered by managers to smash up a load of new equipment; it's surplus to requirements, but can't possibly be sold to "the competition", their former British Rail workmates at the depot down the line. Later, called to a derailment, the track workers pass a whole series of hard-hat wearing managers, each paying no attention to what needs doing but muttering fiercely into a mobile phone trying to pass the buck for the accident to another company. Loach cast the film using local actors and comics, and there's a strong sense of authenticity in the flat accents and dry Yorkshire humour. But ultimately this is a lament for the destruction, not only of what was once a great rail network, but of the pride and camaraderie of those who worked on it. The film's ending is fittingly bleak. --Philip Kemp

• G.I Joe, the Movie | DVD | (02/06/2003) from £4.99   |  Saving you £-2.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £2.99

  A 40 000-year-old race of snake people resurface and with help of Serpentor Desto Baroness and Dr. Mindbender plan to eliminate all of mankind and rebuild Cobrala. Once rulers of Earth the Snake people were driven underground by ice-age temperatures. While in exile they developed a plant whose spores turn ordinary men into mindless weak animals. The key to their plan is G.I. Joe's secret project -- the Broadcast Energy Emitter (B.E.T.). Only this device generates enough heat so that the spores can mature. Humankind's very existence depends on G.I. Joe but are they strong enough smart enough cunning enough to fight a warrior race with 40 000 years of experience? Don Johnson Burgess Meredith Sgt. Slaughter and others lend their amazing voice talents to this exciting animated feature.

• Killer Barbys | DVD | (10/03/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

• Snoop Dogg's Doggystyle | DVD | (01/10/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  If nothing else, Doggystyle indicates a remarkable, if not exactly commendable, honesty in the relationship between Snoop Dogg and his fans. Snoop recognises that his absurdly wealthy, sexually indulged, permanently stoned persona is admired chiefly by priapic 14-year-old boys who don't understand why girls won't speak to them, and young men who think a booming car stereo is a signifier of awesome masculinity. He has delivered to these constituencies precisely the kind of video they would want. Doggystyle does not trouble itself with any actual promotional clips or artist interviews. Though Snoop occasionally deigns to wander in front of the camera and mime half-heartedly along to one of his songs, this is essentially a porn film, which is appropriate given that most of what Snoop has recorded in the last few years resembles uncannily the glutinous muzak that usually serves as a soundtrack for such things. It is not without amusement value, wholly inadvertent though this is--the editing of this "Soft" version of Doggystyle, intended to make it saleable in shops which are not patronised exclusively by men in overcoats, occasionally lends the joyless copulations of Snoop's mates a certain comedic appeal. --Andrew Mueller