"Actor: Jansen"

• The X Files : Series 7 | DVD | (22/09/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  With the original conspiracy plot arc fallen into a muddle of loose ends no-one could possibly fathom, once-hungry lead actors on the verge of big screen careers and making demands for more time off or shots at writing and directing, and the initial wish list of monsters-of-the-week long exhausted, it's a miracle The X Files is still making its airdates, let alone managing something pretty good every other show and something outstanding at least once every four episodes. Season seven opens with a dreary two-parter ("Sixth Extinction" and "Amor Fati") and winds up with the traditional incomprehensible cliffhanger ("Requiem"), but along the way includes a clutch of shows that may not match the originality of earlier seasons but still effortlessly equal any other fantasy-horror-sf on American television. Highlights in this clutch: "Hungry", a brain-eating mutant story told from the point of view of a monster who tries to control his appetite by going to eating disorder self-help groups; "The Goldberg Variation", a crime comedy about a weaselly little man who has the gift of incredible good luck, which means Wile E Coyote-style doom for anyone who crosses him; "The Amazing Maleeni", guest-starring Ricky Jay in a rare non-fantastic crime story about a feud between stage magicians that turns out to be a cover for a heist; "X-Cops", a brilliant skit on the US TV docusoap Cops with Mulder and Scully caught on camera as they track an apparent werewolf in Los Angeles (season-best acting from David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson); "Theef", a complex revenge drama with gaunt Billy Drago as a hillbilly medicine man stalking a slick doctor; "Brand X", a horror comic tale of corruption in the tobacco industry; "Hollywood AD" (written and directed by Duchovny), in which Tea Leoni and Garry Shandling are cast as Scully and Mulder in a crass movie version of a real-life X file; and "Je Souhaite", a deadpan comedy about a wry, cynical genie at the mercy of trailer trash masters who haven't an idea what to wish for. Among the disasters are: "Fight Club", a grossly laboured comedy; "All Things", Gillian Anderson's riotously pretentious religious-themed writing-directing debut; "En Ami", written and understood by William B Davis, the cigarette-smoking villain; and the very silly "First Person Shooter", the lamest killer video-game plot imaginable courtesy of distinguished guest writer William Gibson. Still essential, despite the occasional pits, but yet again you go away thinking that the next season had better come up with some answers. --Kim Newman

• The Lost Medallion | DVD | (11/08/2014) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Billy Unger and Sammi Hanratty star in this fantasy adventure from writer and director Bill Muir. As Billy Stone (Unger) prepares to take over the family business of searching for a lost medallion, he and his friend Allie (Hanratty) manage to transport themselves back 200 years to a time when all there was to do was jump off waterfalls, explore caves and avoid animal traps. As they search for a way back home, Billy must try to find the key to utilising the medallion's true powers.

• Predestination | DVD | (01/06/2015) from £13.48   |  Saving you £11.51 (85.39%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Calling All Designers! Create The Artwork For Predestination's Steelbook! Empire Magazine are giving you the chance to design the cover for the Predestination Steelbook Blu-ray. Your artwork will be immortalised in steel - and available to buy from major retailers if you impress the judge Ethan Hawke himself. CLICK HERE TO ENTER From the directors of Daybreakers PREDESTINATION chronicles the life of a Temporal Agent sent on an intricate series of time-travel journeys designed to stop crimes before they are committed. Now on his final assignment he must pursue the one criminal that has eluded him throughout time.

• The X Files: Nothing Important Happened Today | DVD | (10/06/2002) from £3.80   |  Saving you £12.19 (320.79%)   |  RRP £15.99

  It has become traditional for The X-Files to kick off each new season with a humourless conspiracy two-parter, and Season 9 is no exception: in The X Files: Nothing Important Happened Today David Duchovny’s Mulder is gone, along with everything in his apartment, and Gillian Anderson’s Scully is mostly at home with her perhaps-telekinetic baby, which leaves the bulk of the investigation to promising new characters Doggett (Robert Patrick) and Reyes (Annabeth Gish).The A-plot features Lucy Lawless as a water-breathing terminatrix who could be an alien, a government experiment or a mermaid without it making any difference, but too much time is spent on impossible-to-follow subplots about internal FBI politics and everyone’s intricate backstory (if ever a release needed a "previously..." prologue, this is it). Usually, the series gets over these heart-sinking openers and livens up a bit, but this time there’s a feeling that this is the end of the line for a thoroughly battered premise.Chris Carter joins Gene Roddenberry in the exclusive category of producer-creators who turn in the worst scripts for their own shows, and all the strengths of The X-Files (shivers, wit, provocative ideas) are missing in action here as the engine grinds on empty.On the DVD: The X-Files: Nothing Important Happened Today on disc arrives with two three-minute filler featurettes, focusing on Gish’s character and the making of this show. The good news is that this anamorphic widescreen release is the best The X-Files has ever looked in a television format, showing that however dramatically exhausted it might be, the show remains technically impressive. --Kim Newman

• The Secrets Of Jonathan Sperry | DVD | (30/08/2010) from £16.52   |  Saving you £4.73 (31.00%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Dustin and his two best friends are twelve year olds just looking forward to a summer of fun in 1970. When Dustin mows the lawn of seventy-five-year-old Jonathan Sperry a local man he has seen at church a unique friendship develops. Plagued by a bully Dustin and his pals experience a lesson in faith endure the pain of losing their dear friend and witness incredible forgiveness deeper than any of them could ever have imagined.

• The X Files: Providence | DVD | (16/09/2002) from £7.86   |  Saving you £8.13 (103.44%)   |  RRP £15.99

  As with earlier releases, The X-Files: Providence splices together two episodes, "Provenance" and "Providence", into a pseudo-movie. Again, the results fall way below the series average as the long-dead alien conspiracy business is flogged, with a lot of running around and ominous rumbling still not adding up to anything like an actual story. FBI agent Neal McDonaugh (of Minority Report) inexplicably survives a flaming motorcycle crash, leaving behind brass rubbings taken from an alien spaceship, then shows up and tries to murder Scully's psychokinetic baby, who is promptly kidnapped by a UFO cult. In Part 2, Scully (Gillian Anderson) and Reyes (Annabeth Gish) fend off enemies and friends within the bureau as they track down the cultists, who are having trouble with a spaceship they've dug up, and a typical pointless climax has things happen without the characters doing anything to contribute. Even at this late, post-Duchovny stage in the game, The X-Files has turned out some fine stand-alone episodes, but these dreary wallowings go a long way towards explaining why only diehards are still watching. After the child says "I made this" at the end of the credits, it's becoming very hard not to shout "well, clean it up then". On the DVD: The X-Files: Providence, as with Nothing Important Happened Today, arrives in a great-looking anamorphic widescreen transfer. There are two slight promotional "featurettes"--three-minute clips/talking heads promos focusing on the episode "Providence" and actor Cary Elwes' character. --Kim Newman

• The X Files: Season 6 | DVD | (17/03/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £34.99

  The sixth series of The X-Files picks up after the events of the big-screen movie. So it is that "The Beginning" attempts to fit the film into the TV chronology before moving on to tackle plot points left dangling from series five's "The End" (note the guard asleep at the nuclear power plant console is named Homer!). Between story arc threads are several pleasing one-off excursions: time travel to a Bermuda Triangle boatload of Nazis ("Triangle"); further temporal escapades akin to Groundhog Day ("Monday"); a demonic baby case featuring genre stalwart Bruce Campbell ("Terms of Endearment"); and "The Dreamland, Parts 1 and 2", in which David Duchovny gets to play someone else via personality switching. Back in the conspiracy scheme of things, Mulder chases "S.R. 819", a Senate resolution tying conspiracies together; "Two Fathers" and "One Son" indicates that the abductee experiments are intended to cure the black oil disease; and the year finishes with "BioGenesis", in which a beach-buried UFO has Scully and the audience wondering if we are from Mars. --Paul Tonks

• Suite 16 | DVD | (12/04/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Glover (Pete Postlethwaite) is a shadow of the man he was. Once a handsome playboy he is now confined to the luxurious prison of his hotel suite trapped in a useless body tormented by the memory of how it used to be. Chris (Antoine Kamerling) is an irresistible young hustler with a sideline in casual violence. On the run from the latest crime he stumbles into Glover's suite to take refuge. Both men realise the other has something to offer but slowly the balance shifts as Glover manipulates Chris into acting out his long-held sexual fantasies. What begins as a game soon becomes a dangerous battle as Glover pushes Chris into ever more bizarre challenges culminating in a murder attempt on a young woman (Geraldine Pailhas) who has plans to turn the tables on both of them. 'Suite 16' is a dark and erotic thriller about manipulation and deceit the first film from writer Charlie 'The Fast Show' Higson.

• X Files Season 4 Boxset | DVD | (22/04/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £89.99

  In Season 4 of The X-Files, Scully is a bit upset by her on-off terminal cancer and Mulder is supposed to shoot himself in the season finale (did anyone believe that?), but in episode after episode the characters still plod dutifully around atrocity sites tossing off wry witticisms in that bland investigative demeanour out of fashion among TV cops since Dragnet. Perhaps the best achievement of this season is "Home", the most unpleasant horror story ever presented on prime-time US TV. It's not a comfortable show--confronted with this ghastly parade of incest, inbreeding, infanticide and mutilation, you'd think M & S would drop the jokes for once--but shows a willingness to expand the envelope. By contrast, ventures into golem, reincarnation, witchcraft and Invisible Man territory throw up run-of-the-mill body counts, spotlighting another recurrent problem. For heroes, M & S rarely do anything positive: they work out what is happening after all the killer's intended victims have been snuffed ("Kaddish"), let the monster get away ("Sanguinarium") and cause tragedies ("The Field Where I Died"). No wonder they're stuck in the FBI basement where they can do the least damage. The series has settled enough to play variations on earlier hits: following the liver vampire, we have a melanin vampire ("Teliko") and a cancer vampire ("Leonard Betts"), and return engagements for the oily contact lens aliens and the weasely ex-Agent Krycek ("Tunguska"/"Terma"). Occasional detours into send-up or post-modernism are indulged, yielding both the season's best episode ("Small Potatoes") and its most disappointing ("Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man"). "Small Potatoes", with the mimic mutant who tries out Mulder's life and realises what a loser he is (how many other pin-up series heroes get answerphone messages from their favourite phone-sex lines?), works as a genuine sci-fi mystery--for once featuring a mutant who doesn't have to kill people to live--and as character insight. --Kim Newman

• Supernova | DVD | (08/12/2014) from £7.98   |  Saving you £10.00 (166.94%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Meis is fifteen, lives in the back of beyond and aspires to a grand and stirring life, but all that happens is the passing of the time, waiting for the next car to run into the front of the house. She dreams of a young car driver called Brad whom she would like to take care of and maybe have sex with. Dad is waiting for the next driver to bring some heroism to his life again. Mom is waiting for the same moment, so they can permanently move to the city. Ever since dad was the first person that ran into the house, grandma cannot stop shaking. The shaking seems to worsen lately. Meis hopes this is a sign that something is bound to happen. The whole family is waiting in the bisected room, of wich three meters plus a thirty-centimetre safety margin have been declared unfit for habitation by grandpa after the last collision. Grandpa himself fell from the half-completed bridge years ago and drowned. They all wait for the next driver to crash their house. During one of Meis' forbidden, dangerous nocturnal visits to the half bridge, deliverance finally arrives. Part of a trunk sticks out from the cloud of dust blowing from the house front. In the car, the solution incarnate lies, all crumpled up. He is about 19 years old and his name could very well be Brad.

• Ultimate Thai Boxing | DVD | (24/01/2005) from £22.98   |  Saving you £2.01 (8.00%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Thai boxing - the most exciting sport in the world! Enjoy the very best international action with commentary by Sandy Holt.

• Generation Iron: Die Rich Piana Story | Blu Ray | (16/04/2020) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Suite 16 | DVD | (10/03/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Glover (Pete Postlethwaite) is a shadow of the man he was. Once a handsome playboy he is now confined to the luxurious prison of his hotel suite trapped in a useless body tormented by the memory of how it used to be. Chris (Antoine Kamerling) is an irresistible young hustler with a sideline in casual violence. On the run from the latest crime he stumbles into Glover's suite to take refuge. Both men realise the other has something to offer but slowly the balance shifts as Glover manipulates Chris into acting out his long-held sexual fantasies. What begins as a game soon becomes a dangerous battle as Glover pushes Chris into ever more bizarre challenges culminating in a murder attempt on a young woman (Geraldine Pailhas) who has plans to turn the tables on both of them. 'Suite 16' is a dark and erotic thriller about manipulation and deceit the first film from writer Charlie 'The Fast Show' Higson.