"Actor: Michael Bowen"

• Out Of Africa | DVD | (21/01/2002) from £6.90   |  Saving you £9.09 (131.74%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Winner of seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Out of Africa seems to have slipped more readily from public memory than other comparably lauded films. Yet Sidney Pollack's panoramic treatment of Karen Blixen's novel has retained its atmosphere and slow-burning emotion, and deserves reassessment. Meryl Streep is in her possibly most involving starring role as Baroness Karen Blixen, Danish free spirit whose ill-fated venture at the beginning of World War One to run a coffee plantation in Kenya is overlaid by her intimate yet distant relationship with adventurer and idealist Denys Finch Hatton, unselfconsciously portrayed by Robert Redford. Klaus Maria Brandauer puts in a rare and convincing English-language appearance as the amoral but charming womaniser Baron Bror Blixen. The film is tellingly held together by Kurt Luedke's finely honed screenplay, and John Barry's sumptuously expressive score. On the DVD: The anamorphic 1.85:1 widescreen format reproduces superbly, as does the 4.1 discrete audio. 18 access points are provided, with printed and aural subtitles in English only. Pollack's feature commentary is amusing enough on a single run-through, but an on-location documentary would have been preferable. Production notes and biographies are very adequate, though the theatrical trailer reproduction is notably inferior. No matter, this is a major film, well worth the transfer to DVD.--Richard Whitehouse

• Kill Bill, Volume 1 | DVD | (19/04/2004) from £4.99   |  Saving you £13.00 (260.52%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Uma Thurman stars as a pregnant assassin who is shot by her boss, Bill, on her wedding day. After being in a coma for five years, she wakes to seek revenge on her co-workers and boss who had attacked her.

• Excess Baggage | DVD | (08/03/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Alicia Silverstone was so hot after the success of Clueless that she formed her own production company at the age of 19, and Excess Baggage was the first movie she chose as a starring vehicle. Silverstone plays Emily, a spoiled rich girl who has everything but her father's affection, so she decides to stage her own kidnapping to see if dad will come to his senses and appreciate the daughter he so blindly disregards. But when Emily locks herself in the trunk of her own car, she's surprised when the car is stolen by Vincent (Benicio Del Toro, from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), a professional car thief whose partner (Harry Connick Jr.) has misplaced 200,000 dollars of the Mob's money. Christopher Walken stars as Emily's "Uncle Ray," who's hot on her trail as she goes on the lam with Vincent. It's not the meandering plot that matters so much as the funny dialogue between Silverstone and Del Toro, who steals his scenes with a smoky mumble and easygoing charm. Excess Baggage is mostly for Alicia fans, but the film has got enough good laughs and low-key appeal to make it a home-video sleeper. --Jeff Shannon

• 50 Years Of BBC News | DVD | (05/07/2004) from £8.96   |  Saving you £1.03 (10.30%)   |  RRP £9.99

  To commemorate the 50th anniversary of BBC News on television this is a fascinating series of programmes that look back on the past five decades. Each programme is a 30-minute segment covering a decade beginning with the 1950s. Providing insight into how BBC News is reported each segment is narrated by one of the following key news figures: Charles Wheeler Michael Buerk Kate Adie John Simpson and Jeremy Bowen. Also includes three extra programmes from 1953 1963 and 2004 about h

• Iron Eagle | DVD | (08/12/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Iron Eagles (short of Top Gun) is close to being the definitive boys' movie of the 1980s. An 18-year-old (Jason Gedrick) gets instruction from an old vet (Louis Gossett Jr) in how to fly an F-16 jet and kick butt in the Middle East, all while listening to his Walkman and--oh, yeah--saving his father from terrorist clutches. Gossett wears his tough-love face while the kids run rampant. Speaking of children, young guys must have like this comic-book movie, as its success spawned three sequels. But watch out for the Reagan-era jingoism and political reductiveness. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

• Trial By Fire | DVD | (20/05/2013) from £4.98   |  Saving you £2.00 (66.89%)   |  RRP £4.99

  Known for her special rapport with troubled students,Paulette seems just the person to help Kip Bauchmoyer through various issues when he joins her literature class. But rumours soon start circulating that the bond between Kip and the good-looking,sympathetic Paulette goes far beyond any acceptable pupil teacher relationship. Following Kip's suicide,the wealthy community to which he belongs closes ranks against Paulette and she finds herself on trial amid a blaze of intrusive media attention...

• Walking Tall | DVD | (17/01/2005) from £5.59   |  Saving you £10.40 (186.05%)   |  RRP £15.99

  When a former member of the U.S. Army Special Forces (The Rock) returns to his small hometown and finds it besieged by drugs and violence, he becomes the sheriff to put things right.

• Last House On The Left | DVD | (19/10/2009) from £5.87   |  Saving you £14.12 (240.55%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Masters of horror Wes Craven and Sean Cunningham revisit their landmark film that launched Craven's directing career and influenced decades of horror films to follow: The Last House On The Left.

• Out Of Africa | Blu Ray | (03/02/2014) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Sydney Pollack's 1985 multiple-Oscar winner is a sumptuous and emotionally satisfying film about the life of Danish writer Karen Blixen (Meryl Streep), better known as Isak Dinesen, who travels to Kenya to be with her German husband (Klaus Maria Brandauer) but falls for an English adventurer (Robert Redford). The film is slow in developing the relationship, but it is rich in beautiful images of Africa and in the romantic tone surrounding Blixen's gradual discovery of her life and voice. One downside: while we may all love Redford, he is as convincingly British as Kevin Costner is in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. --Tom Keogh

• Jackie Brown - 2 Disc Collector's Edition | DVD | (16/09/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  The curiosity of Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown is Robert Forster's worldly wise bail bondsman Max Cherry, the most alive character in this adaptation of Elmore Leonard's Rum Punch. The film is more "rum" than "punch", though, with a slow, decaffeinated story of six characters glued to a half million dollars brought illegally into the country. The money belongs to Ordell (Samuel L Jackson), a gunrunner just bright enough to control his universe and do his own dirty work. His just-paroled friend Louis (Robert De Niro) is just taking up space and could be interested in the money. However, his loyalties are in question between his old partner and Ordell's doped-up girl (Bridget Fonda). Certainly Federal Agent Ray Nicolette (Michael Keaton) wants to arrest Ordell with the illegal money. The key is the title character, a late-40-ish flight-attendant (Pam Grier) who can pull her own weight and soon has both sides believing she's working for them. Tarantino changed the race of Jackie and Ordell, a move that means little except that it allows him to heap on black culture and language, something he has a gift and passion for, though the film is not a salute to Grier's blaxploitation films beyond the soundtrack. Unexpectedly the most fascinating scenes are between Grier and Forster: glowing in the limelight of their first major Hollywood film after decades of work. --Doug Thomas

• Out Of Africa (Special Edition) | DVD | (21/02/2005) from £7.94   |  Saving you £13.04 (263.43%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Sydney Pollack's 1985 multiple-Oscar winner is a sumptuous and emotionally satisfying film about the life of Danish writer Karen Blixen (Meryl Streep), better known as Isak Dinesen, who travels to Kenya to be with her German husband (Klaus Maria Brandauer) but falls for an English adventurer (Robert Redford). The film is slow in developing the relationship, but it is rich in beautiful images of Africa and in the romantic tone surrounding Blixen's gradual discovery of her life and voice. One downside: while we may all love Redford, he is as convincingly British as Kevin Costner is in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. --Tom Keogh

• The Shell Seekers | DVD | (24/02/2003) from £8.93   |  Saving you £-2.94 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Penelope Keeling is reaching her early seventies and has suffered a mild heart attack. She decides it is time to reflect on her life and to mend the troubled relationships she has with her three children. But she has not counted on the revealing power of her beloved painting 'The Shell Seekers'. When her children discover that the family portrait is a valuable commodity Penelope begins to see a new and ugly side to their personalities. Do they really care about her? Or are they too wrapped up in themselves? Penelope is forced to make some difficult decisions about what is important to her and what is best for her children.

• Magnolia - Two Disc Set (1999) | DVD | (02/10/2000) from £9.16   |  Saving you £1.83 (19.98%)   |  RRP £10.99

  24 hours in L.A.; it's raining cats and dogs. Two parallel and intercut stories dramatize a man about to die: both men are estranged from a grown child, both want to make contact, and neither child wants anything to do with dad.

• Less Than Zero | DVD | (25/08/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Less Than Zero is adapted from the dreary, pointless late-80s novel by literary poseur Bret Easton Ellis, which focused on listless, shiftless, drug-sniffing, sex-swapping, dead-end California teens with too much money and time on their hands--though the movie is not nearly as interesting as that. This is mostly due to the ridiculously cleaned-up script and lifeless direction, which whitewashes the baser depravity and replaces it with perversion-lite and fashion shows. It doesn't help that director Marek Kanievska is saddled with Brat Pack lesser (make that least) lights Andrew McCarthy and Jami Gertz. The only things that lift this film above the muck are the performances by James Spader as a particularly heinous drug dealer and Robert Downey Jr as a rich-kid addict with no self-control. --Marshall Fine

• The Kumars At Number 42 | DVD | (11/11/2002) from £4.99   |  Saving you £15.00 (300.60%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Meet the Kumars at No. 42. A fictional immigrant family who have bulldozed their back garden so they can build a studio on the back of their house and indulge their spoilt son Sanjeev who fancies himself as a celebrity chat show host. Each week the celebrity guests are invited onto the show to partake in the unique Kumar experience -a thorough interrogation by the entire family. Dad is keen to get down to business literally; Mum just wants what every Asian mother wants a wedding

• True Crime | DVD | (28/01/2002) from £11.96   |  Saving you £1.02 (11.37%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Once in a while, studio heads actually make sensible decisions. Kudos to whoever at Trimark screened the embarrassing True Crime, an overwrought, under thought, "mystery" and decided, "You know, we really don't need to let the American public see this," and immediately sent it straight to video. Probably the one most pleased by the decision was Alicia Silverstone, who didn't need this type of thing getting a theatrical distribution and hurting her blossoming career. As for Kevin Dillon? Well, he was probably happy just to get paid. Silverstone plays the teen Nancy-Drew-meets-Encyclopedia-Brown protagonist who teams up with fresh-faced police cadet Dillon to try to bag a serial killer who's been butchering teenage girls at travelling carnivals in various cities. Writer-director Pat Verducci packs his thriller with implausible detective work and numerous plot twists, all visible 20 minutes away. The "shock" ending can pretty much be worked out within the first act, leaving viewers another hour to watch Verducci concoct several amateur dream sequences, and explore a disgusting sexual relationship between Silverstone and Dillon. By the end, the question isn't so much "Whodunit?" as "Who cares?" --Dave McCoy, Amazon.com

• Dead Girl | DVD | (15/03/2010) from £9.96   |  Saving you £-0.98 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Daring, original and utterly genre-busting, "Dead Girl" is a terrifying journey to the dark heart of the American high school generation.

• Last House On The Left | Blu Ray | (19/10/2009) from £13.22   |  Saving you £11.77 (89.03%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Masters of horror Wes Craven and Sean Cunningham revisit their landmark film that launched Craven's directing career and influenced decades of horror films to follow: The Last House On The Left.

• Deadgirl | DVD | (08/06/2009) from £15.33   |  Saving you £4.66 (30.40%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Deadgirl

• Jackie Brown | DVD | (22/01/2001) from £7.95   |  Saving you £10.04 (55.80%)   |  RRP £17.99

  The curiosity of Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown is Robert Forster's worldly wise bail bondsman Max Cherry, the most alive character in this adaptation of Elmore Leonard's Rum Punch. The Academy Awards saw it the same way, giving Forster the film's only nomination. The film is more "rum" than "punch" and will certainly disappoint those who are looking for Tarantino's trademark style. This movie is a slow, decaffeinated story of six characters glued to a half million dollars brought illegally into the country. The money belongs to Ordell (Samuel L Jackson), a gunrunner just bright enough to control his universe and do his own dirty work. His just-paroled friend--a loose term with Ordell--Louis (Robert De Niro) is just taking up space and could be interested in the money. However, his loyalties are in question between his old partner and Ordell's doped-up girl (Bridget Fonda). Certainly Fed Ray Nicolette (Michael Keaton) wants to arrest Ordell with the illegal money. The key is the title character, a late-40-ish flight-attendant (Pam Grier) who can pull her own weight and soon has both sides believing she's working for them. The end result is rarely in doubt, and what is left is two hours of Tarantino's expert dialogue as he moves his characters around town. Tarantino changed the race of Jackie and Ordell, a move that means little except that it allows Tarantino to heap on black culture and language, something he has a gift and passion for. He said this film is for an older audience although the language and drug use may put them off. The film is not a salute to Grier's blaxploitation films beyond the musical score. Unexpectedly the most fascinating scenes are between Grier and Forster: glowing in the limelight of their first major Hollywood film after decades of work. --Doug Thomas