"Actor: Patrick McTavish"

• The Wedding Singer | DVD | (01/10/1999) from £4.90   |  Saving you £15.09 (307.96%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Don't just think of The Wedding Singer as an Adam Sandler comedy--though it most certainly is that. But also think of it as the tip of the wave of the 1980s nostalgia craze that followed on the heels of the 1970s nostalgia craze. Set in the post-disco, new wave era, the film tells the story of Robbie Hart (Sandler), the king of small-town wedding-band singers, who once dreamt of being a rock star. But his contentment with life shatters when his fiancée stands him up at the altar. After wallowing in self-pity (by musically attacking the next wedding couple he serenades) and swearing off women, he helps a new friend, Julia (Drew Barrymore), get ready for her impending nuptials--only to find himself falling in love with her. If you're a Sandler fan, you'll enjoy him as an actual adult, though a wise-cracking one. And dig all those kooky 80s reference jokes and that greatest-hits-of-early-MTV soundtrack. --Marshall Fine

• Wicked | DVD | (26/11/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  A teen-themed entry in the long-established Psycho-Bitch-from-Hell sub-genre of Hollywood thriller, Wicked affords current high school princess Julia Stiles an opportunity to stop smiling and play a manipulative, disturbed, alienated girl who is also the number one suspect in the “did she or didn't she batter Mum to death with a heavy tragedy mask” mystery.Set in one of those hideous American "gated communities", a pastel suburban enclave with round-the-clock security and enough adulteries to keep a soap going for a year, the film is subtler than stablemates like The Crush and Teacher's Pet, with a more convoluted plot and enough suspects to put the outcome in doubt. However it's still a by-the-numbers mix of soap and suspense. Stiles crosses her eyes and pouts a lot, making tastefully incestuous moves on her weakling father (an aptly hollow William R Moses), but she's not really well cast in a role Christina Ricci could have played in her sleep a few years ago. The best supporting performance comes from Michael Parks as a drawling cop brought into the community by the killing of the strident mother (Chelsea Field), who lingers to watch the fall-out as Stiles replaces Mum as the homemaker only to be sidelined in favour of the au pair who needs a green-card marriage. When the battering and stabbing starts, the film is surprisingly explicit, splattering several distinct types of stage blood around the designer living caricature home.On the DVD: the picture is an anamorphic 1.85:1 print, with Dolby Digital surround-sound. The minimal extras include trailers, filmographies for very few of the principals, and a neat menu. --Kim Newman