"Actor: Chris Nelson"

• Much Ado About Nothing | DVD | (01/10/1999) from £6.89   |  Saving you £9.10 (132.08%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Kenneth Branagh's 1993 production of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing is a vigorous and imaginative work, cheerful and accessible for everyone. Largely the story of Benedick (Branagh) and Beatrice (Emma Thompson)--adversaries who come to believe each is trying to woo the other--the film veers from arched wit to ironic romps, and the two leads don't mind looking a little silly at times. But the plot is also layered with darker matters that concern the ease with which men and women fall into mutual distrust. Branagh has rounded up a mixed cast of stage vets and Hollywood stars, among the latter Denzel Washington and Michael Keaton, the latter playing a rather seedy, Beetlejuice-like version of Dogberry, king of malapropisms.--Tom Keogh

• The Abyss | DVD | (05/07/2004) from £8.25   |  Saving you £9.74 (118.06%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Academy Award winning director and master storyteller James Cameron journeys back to the site of his greatest inspiration -- the legendary wreck of the Titanic.

• Money Train | DVD | (08/11/2004) from £5.94   |  Saving you £0.05 (0.84%)   |  RRP £5.99

  This attempt to reunite the stars of White Men Can't Jump will most likely be remembered as the movie that allegedly inspired a number of copycat arsons in the New York subway system. In other words, the movie itself is too perfunctory to be remembered for any other reason. Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes share their established chemistry as a pair of stepbrothers who work the subway detail as undercover detectives in the NYPD. Woody's a compulsive gambler with a huge debt problem to contend with, and he's also competing with his brother for the attentions of their new and beautiful partner (Jennifer Lopez), who's been assigned to join their investigation of the subway crimes. They're also supposed to guard the daily money train (so named because it contains each day's worth of subway fares), but Woody gets the bright idea that it might be the solution to his money woes. What follows is standard-issue action fare for the mid-1990s--lots of violence, excessive profanity, and attempts at witty banter between the co-stars to make it all seem more entertaining than it really is. You'd need to be a serious Harrelson, Snipes, or Lopez fan to add this movie to your collection. For anyone else, one viewing ought to be enough. --Jeff Shannon

• Life As A House | DVD | (30/09/2002) from £13.85   |  Saving you £9.13 (84.07%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Confronted with life-changing news a middle-aged architect seizes the opportunity to begin living life on his own terms as he builds the house of his dreams and winds up rebuilding the world around him in the process...

• The Abyss | DVD | (26/02/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  James Cameron's 1989 aquatic epic The Abyss was, quite literally, a watershed in the annals of filmmaking: not only was it the first (and only) movie to be shot almost entirely underwater, in the largest tank ever used for a movie set, and to use live dialogue from specially designed headsets, it also pushed forward the boundaries of computer animation in one gigantic leap. The famous water tentacle sequence is now regarded as the defining moment when CGI came of age; ironically perhaps, its very success has ensured that the punishing realism of the setting, which is the best thing about the movie, is likely never to be attempted again. But the impressive technical aspects aside, is the movie any good? Granted it contains any number of striking moments, from forcing a rat to breathe liquid (it really works, apparently) to resurrecting a drowned Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. But the story is a slim one for the running time, especially in the extended Special Edition version which plays almost half an hour longer than the theatrical cut and contains a completely excised subplot featuring much too much heavy-handed moralising: "How all the world can stop fighting and learn to get along with each other", by James Cameron esq. All you need is love, apparently. Here is one rare example of the theatrical cut being preferable to the director's. Now, if only he had cut the love story from Titanic too On the DVD: The Abyss Special Edition two-disc set has plenty of neat extra features, but is let down a little by the non-anamorphic 2.35:1 letterboxed picture. Sound, on the other hand, is vivid THX mastered Dolby 5.1. Happily, the first disc contains both the original theatrical cut and the extended special-edition version. There's a reasonably informative though inevitably rather dry text-only commentary. The principal extra on Disc 2 is a 60-minute documentary, "Under Pressure", with retrospective interviews in which cast and crew detail the extraordinary challenges involved in making the film, and more than one near-death experience. In addition there's the complete screenplay, various different pieces on the effects sequences, storyboards, artwork, DVD-ROM features--in short, plenty to keep even jaded DVD enthusiasts amused for hours. The menu interfaces for both discs are a treat and the set comes with a good 12-page booklet. --Mark Walker

• New Jack City | DVD | (01/06/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Some pundits called it a flawed, exploitative action film that glamorised drug dealing and the luxury of a lucrative criminal lifestyle, spawning a trend of films that attracted youth gangs and provoked violence in cinemas. Others hailed it as a breakthrough movie that depicted drug dealers as ruthless, corrupt, and evil, leading dead-end lives that no rational youth would want to emulate. However you interpret it, New Jack City is still one of the first and best films of the 1990s to crack open the underworld of cocaine and peer inside with its eyes wide open. It's also the film that established Wesley Snipes as an actor to watch, with enough charisma to bring an insidious quality of seduction to his role as coke-lord Nino Brown, and enough intelligence to portray a character deluded by his own sense of indestructible power. Director Mario Van Peebles stretched his otherwise-limited talent to bring vivid authenticity and urgency to this crime story, and subplots involving a pair of tenacious cops (Ice-T, Judd Nelson) and a recovering coke addict (Chris Rock) provide additional dramatic tension. Although some critics may hesitate to admit it, New Jack City deserves mention in any serious discussion about African American filmmakers and influential films. --Jeff Shannon

• Brat Pack Collection - Breakfast Club / About Last Night / St Elmo's Fire | DVD | (27/02/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The Breakfast Club (Dir. John Hughes 1985): Without doubt John Hughes' The Breakfast Club is one of the greatest teen movies of all-time if not the best. Without it we might not have witnessed the phenomenal rise of the 'Brat Pack'; the group of actors synonymous with the teen films of the '80s. They were five teenage students with nothing in common faced with spending a Saturday detention together in their High School library. At 7am they had nothing to say but

• Picnic At Hanging Rock - The Director's Cut | Blu Ray | (26/07/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  On Saturday 14th February 1900 a party of schoolgirls from Appleyard College took a trip to Hanging Rock near Mt. Macedon in the state of Victoria. During the idyllic sun-drenched afternoon some of the party left the rest of the group and having climbed higher stopped to rest and fell asleep. They awoke as though still in a dream and silently ventured further through a passage in the imposing rock face. Some of the girls were never seen again. The film that established Peter Weir as a major filmmaker is a critically acclaimed classic of Australian cinema. With BAFTA-winning photography and a memorably haunting score Picnic at Hanging Rock remains one of the most chillingly atmospheric and beautifully enigmatic films ever made.

• The Skulls | DVD | (05/10/2009) from £6.73   |  Saving you £3.26 (32.60%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Two new students at Harvard join an elite secret fraternity, but when they begin to realise the true nature of the organisation things become dangerous for them.

• The Abyss (Special Edition) | DVD | (08/02/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Academy Award winning director and master storyteller James Cameron journeys back to the site of his greatest inspiration -- the legendary wreck of the Titanic.

• Airheads | DVD | (06/10/2003) from £5.77   |  Saving you £1.48 (32.82%)   |  RRP £5.99

  The amps are on but nobody's home. In this hilarious spoof of the music industry three intelligently challenged rock 'n' rollers (Brendan Fraser Steve Buscemi Adam Sandler) decide to take drastic action after their music continually falls on deaf ears. They break into a radio station hoping to get their demo played on the air. But when the deejay (Joe Mantegna) and station manager (Michael McKean) refuse to play their song the boys have no choice but to take the entire r

• The Other | DVD | (17/04/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Touted as the next great family drama, "Brothers And Sisters" explores the highs and lows of The Walkers - a postmodern American family and their delicate relationships.

• Rock A Doodle | DVD | (07/01/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The Rousing Rollicking Adventure Of The World's First Rockin' Rooster. Edmond's mother is reading him a bedtime story of a rooster who sings to make the sun shine while outside their farm is being flooded by a terrible storm. Hoping to save the family farm from flooding Edmond calls on his story's rooster Chanticleer to come save them but the evil owl Grand Duke has tricked the rooster into leaving the farm for the big city. To save him Edmond enters the animated storybook world transformed into a fluffy white kitten. Joining his new farm friends he sets off towards the big city in search of the rock & roll rooster.

• Picnic At Hanging Rock | DVD | (30/06/2003) from £15.24   |  Saving you £-7.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Supposedly based on an actual event which remains unsolved to this day 'Picnic At Hanging Rock' is suffused with menace mysticism and languorous adolescent sensuality. In the year 1900 a group of schoolgirls set out on a St. Valentine's Day picnic from which two never returned. With this hauntingly beautiful film director Peter Weir marked the dawn of a new age in Australian cinema.

• And Justice For All | DVD | (05/02/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Al Pacino plays a Maryland lawyer who takes on a judicial system rife with deal making in And Justice for All, an awkward blend of satire and sentimentality. Topical director Norman Jewison can't seem to help Pacino get comfortable with the mismatched material, which pushes the film into outrageousness at some turns and mawkishness at others. The script by Barry Levinson and Valerie Curtin is more an accumulation of random ideas and moments than a congruent story. However, it's interesting to see the large cast of good actors, most of whom were unknowns at the time including Christine Lahti who made her film debut here. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

• New Jack City | DVD | (23/01/2006) from £19.77   |  Saving you £-2.78 (N/A%)   |  RRP £16.99

  There's a new kind of criminal on the streets - ruthless gangsters who have turned drug trafficking into highly lucrative inner-city corporations and who got a ""New Jack"" way of dress music and culture. There's a new kind of cop too. They're the tough young New Jack cops who grew up on the streets and who alone know how to bring these ruthless mobsters down...

• Dukes Of Hazzard - The Beginning | DVD | (06/08/2007) from £69.93   |  Saving you £-56.94 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  When mischievous teenaged cousins Bo Duke (Jonathan Bennett Mean Girls) and Luke Duke (Randy Wayne ABC's Sons And Daughters) are arrested both boys are paroled to the care of their Uncle Jesse (Willie Nelson) in Hazzard sentenced to a summer of hard work. It's not long before the Duke boys learn of Boss Hogg's (Chris McDonald) plans to foreclose on Uncle Jesse's farm. Together with help from their frumpy cousin Daisy (April Scott) Bo and Luke vow to save the family

• The Prophecy | DVD | (15/07/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  A prime candidate for cult status (it even spawned a sequel), The Prophecy is a 1995 apocalyptic horror flick that belongs in the darker corners of the comedy-horror sub genre alongside Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Mimic and Phantoms--and like those movies it's a mixed blessing with some highlights worth savouring. This one's got Christopher Walken in its favour, starring as the Angel Gabriel, who's really mad at God for allowing humans into heaven (because, you see, humans have souls and angels don't, and God plays favourites). Gabriel takes his anger out on the human race, coming to Earth to capture the soul of the most evil human alive in an effort to defeat the "good" angels that remain in God's good graces. One of the good angels is played by Eric Stoltz, who captures the evil soul before Walken does and transfers it into the body of a little girl. Are you with us so far? Don't worry if you're not, because writer-director Gregory Widen filled The Prophecy with so many wild ideas that he didn't bother to connect them to a coherent plot. Add Viggo Mortensen as the devil and Elias Koteas as a priest-turned detective who's tracking Walken and it's clear that Widen was attempting something ambitious here. He nearly succeeded, since The Prophecy jumpstarts its heaven-and-hell rivalry with enough action, humour, and intelligence to make the movie sufficiently entertaining. It was enjoyable enough to entice Walken back for the sequel, so if you're into this kind of thing, this one's a keeper. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

• Vampire Secrets | DVD | (31/05/2010) from £12.98   |  Saving you £2.01 (13.40%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Titles Comprise: Vampire Secrets: In this fascinating journey through time HISTORY uncovers the ancient folkloric origins of blood-craving creatures from beyond the grave. Bram Stoker: This fascinating programme introduces the man behind one of literature's most enduring creations. MonsterQuest: Movie Monsters Vampires in America: We investigate cases of people who thirst for blood. Can science separate the fact from the fiction surrounding these creatures of the night? Origins Of The Vampire: The fictional vampire is rooted in a grim reality the vampire legend grew out of actual incidents and horrifying encounters with death and the unknown. We investigate the vampire. History's Mysteries The Real Dracula: The exploits of the fictional vampires pale in comparison to the horrors committed by Vlad THE REAL DRACULA! We look at the truth behind the fiction. Cities of the Underworld: Dracula's Underground: We unearth the facts and myths of Bucharest's most famous figure Vlad the Impaler more commonly known as Dracula. Travelling underground to explore secret prisons caves and dungeons.

• Port Of Call | DVD | (06/12/2004) from £13.79   |  Saving you £6.20 (31.00%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Unable to live with her mother Berit (Nine-Christine Jnsson) is institutionalised for many years. When she is released from the institution she ends up on the streets of the harbour slums of Gothenburg and is forced to take a job. The job is conditional on her living with her mother and she is a young woman in deep suicidal despair. One night she escapes her mother's overbearing apartment to go to a dance and in an effort to lighten her spirits she meets a sailor and tells her new