"Actor: Irving Metzman"

• The Purple Rose Of Cairo | DVD | (11/03/2002) from £11.16   |  Saving you £4.83 (43.28%)   |  RRP £15.99

  I've just met a wonderful new man. He's fictional but you can't have everything." So says Cecilia (Mia Farrow), the central figure in Woody Allen's lyrically humorous Purple Rose of Cairo. The era is the Great Depression, and she is the bullied wife who finds escape in romantic movies, falling in love with the explorer hero, Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels), of the eponymous film. So far, nothing remarkable. But Allen has Baxter spot her in the audience, fall in love with her, and desert the picture, much to the irritation of the other characters. The surreal quality of the situation develops further when Gil Shepherd--the actor who played Baxter (Daniels again)--seeks out his fictional alter ego to persuade him back into the film and thus save both their reputations. Naturally Shepherd, too, falls in love with Cecilia, and she's left to choose between fiction and reality, chooses the latter and is then cruelly jilted. The message seems clear: fairytales are just that, make-believe. There's no such thing as a happy ending. Dating from 1985 (after Broadway Danny Rose and immediately before Hannah and her Sisters), this is one of the few movies in which Allen doesn't actually appear, though he's recognisable in every line of Farrow's character. It's also a nostalgic tribute to the era that defined movie glamour, the close-up of Cecilia's face at the end a moment of pure Hollywood. At 81 minutes, this is a small but brilliant gem. On the DVD: Aside from the technological improvement of DVD over video, the new format adds little by way of features: you can view the original trailer, scan the film scene by scene, and there's a choice of subtitles in eight languages.--Harriet Smith

• Wargames | DVD | (24/07/2000) from £11.86   |  Saving you £1.13 (9.53%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Cute but silly, this 1983 cautionary fantasy stars Matthew Broderick as a teenage computer genius who hacks into the Pentagon's defence system and sets World War III into motion. All the fun is in the film's set-up, as Broderick befriends Ally Sheedy and starts the international crisis by pretending while online to be the Soviet Union. After that, it's not hard to predict what's going to happen: government agents swoop in, but the story ends up in the "hands" of machines talking to one another. Thus we're stuck with flashing lights, etc. John Badham (Saturday Night Fever) directs in strict potboiler mode. Children still like this movie, though. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

• The Man With One Red Shoe | DVD | (05/04/2004) from £12.90   |  Saving you £0.09 (0.70%)   |  RRP £12.99

  An innocent man is targeted for surveillance by the CIA. However the intelligence agency finds it increasingly difficult to liquidate the musician as he continues to be oblivious of the attempts to kill him...