"Actor: Michelle Hurst"

• Can't Hardly Wait | DVD | (22/11/1999) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  This underrated teen comedy from 1998 is guilty of being a proud underachiever, and it doesn't bring anything new to the genre, but look closely and you'll find the makings of a much better movie buried under all the keg-party antics. The basic story is typical for this kind of comedy. A young, aspiring writer named Preston (Ethan Embry) has been lusting after class beauty Amanda (Jennifer Love Hewitt, from TV's Party of Five) for four years of high school, but he's never had the nerve to tell her. Now that they're about to graduate he has finally worked up the courage to write her a soul-baring love letter. At the raucous graduation keg party that takes up most of the movie's 98 minutes, Preston agonises while Amanda's selfish jock ex-boyfriend tries to win her back, and delivering his love letter turns out to be more difficult than he ever imagined. What's interesting about Can't Hardly Wait has little to do with its attractive leads, however. The most engagingly real and entertaining characters are the misfits who show up in the sub-plots, including a geek (Charlie Korsmo) who turns into the life of the party and a pair of old friends (Seth Green, Lauren Ambrose) who confront each other about their mutual needs and insecurities. There are some really good scenes between these two and this modest movie has a few other pleasant surprises up its sleeve. That doesn't make it particularly good but it does make it an agreeable waste of time. --Jeff Shannon

• Smoke | DVD | (07/03/2005) from £6.73   |  Saving you £8.26 (55.10%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Departing from the conventions of Hollywood story-telling 'Smoke' is constructed like an emotional jigsaw puzzle: pieces interweave and interconnect to form an intricate whole. Unrelated characters - a cigar store manager (Harvey Keitel) who has taken photographs in front of his store at the same hour every day for 14 years; a novelist (William Hurt) unable to go on writing after his wife is killed in a random act of street violence; a man (Forest Whitaker) who ran away from his past

• The Night We Never Met | DVD | (01/03/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Sam Lester is looking for an apartment in a city where affordable accomodation is hard to find. One advert leads him to the ideal place but there is a catch; he must share with two other tenants who are already using the apartment on alternate days...

• Smoke / Blue In The Face | DVD | (02/10/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Smoke (Dir. Wayne Wang 1995): Departing from the conventions of Hollywood story-telling Smoke is constructed like an emotional jigsaw puzzle: pieces interweave and interconnect to form an intricate whole. Unrelated characters - a cigar store manager (Harvey Keitel) who has taken photographs in front of his store at the same hour every day for 14 years; a novelist (William Hurt) unable to go on writing after his wife is killed in a random act of street violence; a man (Forest Whitaker) who ran away from his past and tries to start over after accidentally killing his wife. These characters amongst others making their way through the lonely urban landscape might seem to have little in common. But in the couse of this motion picture they cross paths by chance and end up changing each other's lives in indelible ways. Blue in the Face (Dir. Wayne Wang & Paul Auster 1995): The companion film to Smoke Blue In The Face is about a motley crew of characters whose lives intersect and collide at a corner cigar shop in Brooklyn managed by Augie Wren (Harvey Keitel). More of a neighbourhood institution then a money-making proposition the shop may soon be a memory as the owner is thinking of selling it to a health food chain. The neighbourhood is on hand to give their say - in a series of hilarious situations they talk until they are blue in the face in this movie about relationships the city and sex.