"Actor: Leonard L. Thomas"

• Dangerous Game | DVD | (30/04/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Abel Ferrara's taste for the sensational is on display in the flawed but interesting Dangerous Games, even though its subject matter is a long way from the genre material in which he has mostly specialised. The film is a psychological drama in which the Method manipulations of director Eddie (Harvey Keitel) prey on the weaknesses of coke-head actor Burns (James Russo) and insecure soap star Sarah (Madonna) to a point where reality breaks down for all three of them--and, in the film's last moments, the audience too; we are left traumatically hanging by a profound ambiguity in what we have just seen. Ferrara moves backwards and forwards between naturalistic and staged shots: we see scenes in hand-held verité and as rushes on a video. The over-wrought drama of consumerism, decadence and possible redemption that is being shot in the film is clearly intended to be directly relevant to their lives and is only marginally more melodramatic; at one point, Eddie's wife arrives unexpectedly at his hotel room moments after Sarah has left his bed. Keitel gives his usual authoritative performance as a weak man breaking under the weight of his pretensions; as Sarah, Madonna gives one of her less bad performances, attractively underplaying amid a storm of hamminess. On the DVD: the DVD only gives us subtitles and the trailer as extras. --Roz Kaveney

• King Of New York | DVD | (14/04/2003) from £11.40   |  Saving you £-1.41 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  King of New York is a low-budget crime thriller has the feel of a major blockbuster and owes its roots to the hard-edged crime movies of the 1930s. Christopher Walken stars as a drug kingpin who is released from prison and vows to use his position and influence--and criminal enterprise--for charitable means. But a core group of New York cops are all over him and his gang, determined to go to war, whatever the cost, to bring him down. Eventually his empire--headquartered at, of all places, Donald Trump's Plaza Hotel--crumbles under the weight of double-crossing and a body count of open warfare with the cops. This is one of the most stylish films of the last decade, with a strong supporting cast (including Lawrence Fishburne, Wesley Snipes, and David Caruso) and some truly enthralling set pieces, including a stunning car chase and gunfight across a rain-soaked Queensboro Bridge. The film's tongue-in-cheek, over-the-top style offsets its nihilism; and its riveting visuals will have audiences hooked from beginning to end. --Robert Lane

• Bad Lieutenant | DVD | (26/08/2003) from £13.49   |  Saving you £-0.50 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Gambler. Thief. Junkie. Killer. Cop... He's the kind of cop who steals drugs off a dead man's body the kind of father who'd rather feed his drug habit than his family... His badge means nothing to him other than the right to act like the very criminals he's supposed to be chasing and the fierce anger beneath his personality is only fuelled by his addiction to heroin crack and alcohol. But when a beautiful young nun (Frankie Thorn) is raped on the altar of a local church the 'Bad