"Actor: G. Roy Levin"

• House Of Games | DVD | (02/02/2004) from £9.43   |  Saving you £3.56 (37.75%)   |  RRP £12.99

  David Mamet's 1987 directorial debut House of Games is mesmerising study of control and seduction between two kinds of detached observers: a gambler who is also a con artist and a psychotherapist who is also an emerging pop-psych guru in the book market. The latter (played by Lindsay Crouse) meets the former (Joe Mantegna) when one of her clients is driven to despair from his debts to the card shark. Mantegna's character agrees to drop the IOUs in exchange for Crouse's attention at the seedy House of Games in Seattle, a mecca for conmen to talk shop and hustle unsuspecting customers. The shrink gets so caught up in the arcane rules and world view of her guide over subsequent days that she observes--with no false rapture--various stings in progress inside and outside the club. Mamet's story finally becomes a fascinating study of two people protecting and extending their respective cosmologies the way rival predators fight for the same piece of turf. The psychological challenge is compelling; so is the stylised dialogue, with its pattern of pauses and hiccups and humming meter. Mostly shooting at night, Mamet also gave Seattle a different look from previous filmmakers, turning its familiar puddles into concentrations of liquid neon and poisonous noir. --Tom Keogh

• The Spanish Prisoner | DVD | (30/06/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Joe Ross (Campbell Scott) is a man on the brink of something big. He has designed a process that will make his company millions and him a very wealthy man. Unnerved by a lack of commitment from his boss a chance meeting with a weathly jetsetter Dell (Steve Martin) causes him to further suspect the true intentions of his colleagues. But with such a money-spinning opportunity at stake is there anyone he can trust? Writer/director David Mamet's 'The Spanish Prisoner' is a film that