"Actor: Mel Brown"

• Charlie Chaplin Marathon - Vol. 2 - A Dog's Life / The Kid / Behind The Screen | DVD | (09/02/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Featuring 'A Dogs Life' and 'The Kid' and 'Behind The Screen'.

• Risk | DVD | (16/07/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The world of insurance hasn't exactly inspired a wealth of memorable cinema, but Australian film Risk is a feisty, funny, clever and, yes, insurance-related movie. Drawing on a range of cinematic themes (good cop/bad cop, the young newcomer and his guiding light, a love triangle) the film offers a fresh insight by virtue of its unusual setting. Ben Madigen (Tom Long) finds himself working in the business by default and is soon taken under the wing of the charismatic John Kreisky (Brown). While trying to undertake his job without compromising his principles, Madigen is unwittingly lured into a scam by Kreisky and his girlfriend, lawyer Louise Roncaldi (Claudia Karvan). The burgeoning and later unravelling relationship between the three is the film's key story, as Long finds himself torn between the other two. Brown is excellent as the scheming Kreisky, once again proving that his failure to move into a more major acting league is little short of baffling--but then, this type of imaginative film offers him more scope than Cocktail or FX ever could and serves as a welcome advertisement for the growing Australian movie industry. This is a highly intelligent film that keeps its plot-cards closely to its chest, keeping the viewer guessing throughout. On the DVD: the usual scene selection is coupled with the trailer, which presents the film (slightly misleadingly) in pulsating, high-action tones. The "making of" featurette offers the viewer an insight into not very much happening (look, there's a man pushing something) and gives the cast an opportunity to take themselves a little too seriously. --Phil Udell

• Alice In Wonderland Special Edition DVD | DVD | (30/03/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Carnage Road | DVD | (09/06/2003) from £21.58   |  Saving you £-1.59 (-8.00%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The legend of Quiltface is true and the stories of his murders are legendary. Anyone foolish enough to incite his wrath will learn that every path leads to Carnage! Four students on a class photography project collide head on with terror as they are tormented one by one. There is no way out! No one is spared! No one is safe! And no one is left!

• The Informant! | UMD | (29/03/2010) from £7.98   |  Saving you £4.00 (66.78%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Steven Soderbergh's The Informant!, like the director's one-two Oscar® punch Erin Brockovich and Traffic, is an energetic exposé of corporate/criminal chicanery with wide-ranging implications for life in these United States. Not so much like those movies, it plays as hyper-caffeinated comedy. At its center is Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon), a biochemist and junior executive at agri-giant Archer Daniels Midland who, in 1992, began feeding the FBI evidence of ADM's involvement in price fixing. Mark's motive for doing so is elusive, sometimes self-contradictory, and subject to mutation at any moment. To describe him as bipolar would be akin to finding the Marx Brothers somewhat zany. His Fed handlers, along with the audience, start thinking of him as a hapless goofball. Then they and we get blind-sided with the revelation of further dimensions of Mark's life at ADM, and the nature of the investigation, and the movie, changes. That will happen again. And again. It's Soderbergh's ingenious strategy to make us fellow travelers on Mark's crazy ride, virtually infecting us with a short-term version of his dysfunctional being. Props to screenwriter Scott Z. Burns for boiling down Kurt Eichenwald's 600-page book The Informant: A True Story without sacrificing coherence. And Matt Damon, bulked up by two stones and spluttering his manic lines from under a caterpillar mustache, reconfirms his virtuosity and his willingness to dive deep into such a dodgy personality. On the downside, despite a small army of comedians in cameo roles, The Informant! has nothing like the rich field of subsidiary characters encountered in Erin Brockovich and Traffic. That lack of vibrancy is aggravated by the dominance of prairie-flat Midwest speech patterns and cadences (most of the film unreels in Illinois), and the razzmatazz score by veteran tunesmith Marvin Hamlisch sounds like pep-rally music on an industrial film. Soderbergh also photographed the movie (under his pseudonym Peter Andrews), and his decision to show everything through a corn-mush filter turns it into a big-screen YouTube experience. --Richard T. Jameson

• The Bounty | UMD | (01/01/1980) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

• The Tales of Hoffmann (Criterion Collection) | Blu Ray | (07/06/2022) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Ladder 49/The Guardian | DVD | (05/11/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Ladder 49: (Dir. Jay Russell) (2004): What does it take for a man to run into a burning building when everyone else is running out? Why do firemen leave their families each morning to risk their lives for strangers? The film chronicles Baltimore firefighter Jack Morrison (Joaquin Phoenix) as he makes the transition from inexperienced rookie to seasoned veteran. As he struggles to cope with a risky demanding job that often shortchanges his wife and kids he relies on the support of his mentor and chief Mike Kennedy (John Travolta) and his second family - the brotherly bond between the men of the firehouse. But when Jack becomes trapped in the worst blaze of his career his life and the things he holds important - family dignity courage - come into focus. As his fellow firemen of Ladder 49 do all they can to rescue him Jack's life hangs in the balance. Guardian: (Dir. Andrew Davis) (2006): In an effort to find his place in life a troubled young man enlists in the Coast Guard where he's taken in by a renowned rescue swimmer who's hardened by the loss of his team from an accident years back. Unfortunately for the pair the past is about to re-incarnate itself...

• Taking Care Of Business | DVD | (12/04/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Jack Hill's SWITCHBLADE SISTERS is the outlandish action-packed story of a tough gang of teenage girls -- the all-female Dagger Debs -- who are looking for love and fighting for turf on the mean streets of the city! Bad girls to the core these impossibly outrageous high school hoodlums go where they want ... and create mayhem wherever they go! A riotously entertaining mix of sex jealousy and massive firepower that critics loved -- don't miss your chance to see one of the wildest films ever made!

• Scream (2022) | Blu Ray | (05/04/2022) from £17.01   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A