"Actor: Clyde Hayes"

• The Gingerbread Man | DVD | (11/10/1999) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  When released in 1997, The Gingerbread Man was the only John Grisham movie that did not use one of the popular novelist's bestsellers as its inspiration. Rather, it's based on an original screenplay by Grisham that displays the author's familiar flair for Southern characters and settings within a labyrinthine plot propelled by his trademark narrative twists and turns. Sporting a spot-on Georgian accent, Kenneth Branagh plays a Savannah attorney who comes to the assistance of a troubled woman (Embeth Davidtz) and finds himself enmeshed in a scenario involving the woman's father (Robert Duvall) that grows increasingly complex and dangerous, where nothing, of course, is really as it seems. It's a totally absorbing movie made in the modern film noir tradition; what's most interesting here (and most underrated by critics at the time) is the combination of Grisham's mainstream mystery and the offbeat style of maverick director Robert Altman. Despite a battle with executives that nearly caused Altman to disown the film, The Gingerbread Man demonstrates the director's skill in bringing a fresh, characteristically offbeat approach to conventional material, especially in the use of a threatening hurricane to hold the plot in a state of dangerous urgency. Unfortunately overlooked during its theatrical release, this intelligent thriller provides a fine double bill with Francis Coppola's film of Grisham's The Rainmaker. --Jeff Shannon

• 3 Classics Of The Silver Screen - Vol. 10 - Road To Bali / Basin Street Revue / Forbidden Music | DVD | (07/02/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £4.99

  Road To Bali: Bob Hope Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour team up in their sixth ""Road"" picture Road To Bali which was the only film in the series to be shot in color. Hope and Crosby star as two out-of-work vaudeville performers who are on the lam. The two are hired by a South Seas prince as deep-sea divers in order to recover a buried treasure. They meet beautiful Princess Lala (Lamour) and vie for her affections. Of course the boys run into the usual perils such as cannibals