"Actor: Kathleen Miller"

• Peggy Sue Got Married | DVD | (05/05/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Francis Ford Coppola's passable 1986 comedy stars Kathleen Turner as an unhappy, middle-aged woman who goes back in time to her high school years and meets her future husband (Nicolas Cage) all over again. A lightweight entry from Coppola, the film has some clever, backward-looking jokes; and the lead actress does bring intelligence and searching emotions to her role. Cage (Coppola's nephew)--who specialised in these dumb-guy roles back then (see Raising Arizona)--is in sharp, raw form. Worth a visit, but don't expect to be bowled over this time by the legendary director.--Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

• The Last Detail | DVD | (05/08/2002) from £19.99   |  Saving you £-7.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The Last Detail nearly didn't get a release. Columbia, for whom it was made, was alarmed by the movie's barrage of profanity and resented the unorthodox working style of its director, Hal Ashby, who loathed producers and made no secret of it. Only when the film picked up a Best Actor Award for Jack Nicholson at Cannes did the studio reluctantly grant it a release--with minimal promotion--to widespread critical acclaim. Nicholson, in one of his best roles, plays "Bad-ass" Buddusky, a naval petty officer detailed, along with his black colleague "Mule" Mulhall (Otis Young), to escort an offender from Virginia to the harsh naval prison at Portsmouth, NH. The miscreant is a naïve youngster, Meadows (Randy Quaid), who's been given eight years for stealing $40 from his CO's wife's favourite charity. The escorts, at first cynically detached, soon start feeling sorry for Meadows and decide to show him a good time in his last few days of freedom. Ashby, a true son of 60s counterculture, avidly abets the anti-authoritarian tone of Robert Towne's script. Meadows is a sad victim of the system--but so too are Buddusky and Mulhall, as they gradually come to realise. A lot of the film is very funny. Nicholson gets to do one of his classic psychotic outbursts--"I am the fucking shore patrol!"--and there are some pungent scenes of male bonding pushed to the verge of desperation. But the overall tone is melancholy, pointed up by the jaunty military marches on the soundtrack. Shot amid bleak, wintry landscapes, in buses and trains and grey urban streets, The Last Detail is a film of constant, compulsive movement going nowhere--a powerful, finely acted study of institutional claustrophobia. On the DVD: The Last Detail disc doesn't have much in the way of extras. There are abbreviated filmographies for Ashby, Nicholson and Quaid (though not for Young) and a trailer for A Few Good Men (1992). The mono sound comes up well in Dolby Digital, and the transfer preserves DoP Michael Chapman's subtle, subfusc palette and the 1.85:1 ratio of the original. --Philip Kemp

• The Bell Keeper | DVD | (29/04/2024) from £7.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Undercover Blues | DVD | (14/07/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Jeff and Jane Blue are former FBI and CIA spies on maternity leave and vacationing in New Orleans with their adorable 6-month-old daughter. Despite their desire to enjoy a sabbatical they get drawn into a case against an old nemesis...

• Rudolph And The Island of The Misfit Toys | DVD | (12/11/2001) from £14.39   |  Saving you £-0.40 (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  A sharp-looking computer-animated feature, Rudolph and the Island of the Misfit Toys, sees the return of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer 37 years after his television debut. Using excellent voice casting with actors that sound like the originals, this new Rudolph looks and sounds grand. There's a mysterious Toy Taker gobbling up toys around the world. Rudolph and his team (including deer-friend Clarice, elf-turned-dentist Hermey and the abominable snowman) try to track the toys down and save Christmas again. While the setup and songs hold no candle to the original and the lessons learned are borrowed from Toy Story 2, the final third succeeds--it's always good to have a flying reindeer when you are chasing a blimp. Children aged three to nine who have seen the original will certainly want to see the sequel--however, their parents might be less enthusiastic. --Doug Thomas, Amazon.com

• Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer / Rudolph And The Island Of The Misfit Toys | DVD | (11/11/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer: (WS Anamorphic / English Subtitles / English Stereo) The exciting adventures of Rudolph the most famous reindeer of all come magically to life in this feature-length animated musical full of loveable characters and voiced by an all-star cast. Ridiculed because of his nose Rudolph runs away to the North Pole where he befriends Slyly the fox (Eric Idle) and Leonard the polar bear (Bob Newhart). When his friend Zoey a young doe is captured b