"Actor: John Tatum"

• The Champions - Vol. 3 - Survivors / To Trap A Rat / Iron Man / Ghost Plane | DVD | (14/05/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Craig Sterling (Damon) Sharron Macready (Bastedo) and Richard Barrett (Gaunt) are agents for an international intelligence organisation called NEMESIS. After a plane crash and being rescued by an unknown civilisation the trio make their way back Geneva to continue their work only to discover they have mysteriously developed super-human abilities like telepathy amazing memories and abnormal strengths. Instead of telling anyone about these developments they keep their secret quiet but use their new powers to help complete a range of dangerous assignments... The Survivors: While investigating the murders of three students in the Austrian Alps the Champions discover a map that leads them to a mine where a group of German soldiers were buried alive by the SS. To Trap a Rat: Drug addicts are becoming victims not only of their vice but the lethal effects of tainted dope which is being distributed in London. Scotland Yard cannot track down the dealers and the Nemesis organisation is asked to help. The Iron Man: Nemesis agents take on a very unusual role as domestic staff when asked to protect the life of a former dicator. Domestic duties give way to dangerous circumstances. The Ghost Plane: The Champions find themselves hot on the trail of a brooker when asked to investigate a man whose plans for a revolutionary aircraft have been shelved.

• Hoffman | DVD | (08/07/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Hoffman is an odd cross between There's a Girl in My Soup and The Collector and is clearly one of the few film projects Peter Sellers took seriously enough to work hard on, rather than one of the many he breezed through on a talent for funny voices and unleashed chaos. The set-up is that secretary Miss Smith (Sinead Cusack) is blackmailed by meek, middle-aged Mr Hoffman (Sellers) into spending a week of domesticity with him in his flat, while she tells her fiance (Jeremy "Boba Fett" Bulloch) that she's with her gran in Scarborough. At first, the tone is creepy as Cusack dreads the terrors of sharing a bed with Sellers and he mutters darkly about an absent wife in terms that recall Crippen and the brides-in-the-bath murderer, but it becomes more poignant as both characters learn to see each other as people. The worst Sellers does in bed is snore loudly, while the unattainably glamorous young woman suffers from minor ailments like a bruised heel and night-time constipation, and the at-first simple relationship between them deepens as the girl comes to understand the half-life Hoffman has been leading. The script gives Sellers a lot of funny business, acid lines and whimsical turns, but he plays Hoffman as a repressed soul half-ashamed of his attempts to be funny, telling genuinely good jokes as if he expects no one will laugh. Cusack, more interesting than the expected dolly bird, keeps up with her co-star, and almost makes the strangely upbeat last reel believable. On the DVD: Hoffman comes to disc in a nice widescreen print. Otherwise, nada. The film is also available as part of the four-disc Peter Sellers Collection.--Kim Newman

• Public Enemies | Blu Ray | (05/12/2011) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Since crime auteur Michael Mann, like his protagonists, plays by his own rules, Public Enemies eschews back story and motivation for a closely-observed, action-packed examination of men at work. FBI supremo J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup) kick-starts a nationwide manhunt when he proclaims John Dillinger (Johnny Depp, in top form) Public Enemy #1. Hoover taps Agent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) to bring the Tommy Gun-toting bank robber in by any means necessary (the agency also targets Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby Face Nelson). If Dillinger had split the scene then and there, he might have enjoyed a happier fate, but he falls for beautiful coat-check girl Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard, whose open-hearted performance makes her the most sympathetic character in the film). In the end, though, Dillinger is the captain of his own destiny: his loyalty to his girl and his gang overpowers his desire to live free. Though the director also set his first film, Thief, and third series, Crime Story, in his native Chicago, Public Enemies plays more like Heat in Depression-era garb. In that L.A. policier, Al Pacino's cop develops a grudging respect for Robert De Niro's criminal, but letting a lawbreaker go free isn't an option. In this case, however, the tight-lipped Purvis never develops the same sort of esteem for Dillinger--or Hoover--making him the more tragic figure. If Public Enemies is less overtly commercial than The Untouchables or Bugsy, it's still the best mainstream gangster epic in ages and ranks among Mann's finest works. --Kathleen C. Fennessy