"Actor: Res Fischer"

• Final Analysis | DVD | (22/11/1999) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  This film, which again pairs Richard Gere and Kim Basinger (who starred in 1986's No Mercy), offers up elements of classic noir: a hapless man becomes intimately involved with a beautiful blonde who may or may not be who or what she appears to be. Dedicated psychiatrist Isaac Barr (Gere) reluctantly, and then more obsessively, becomes involved with Heather Evans (Basinger), the sister of his patient, Diana Baylor (Uma Thurman). Evans is unhappily married to a gangster (appropriately played by a muscular and menacing Eric Roberts in a trademark role). Gere and Basinger make a credible, if dangerous couple, and Thurman delivers a subtle, understated performance and demonstrates her range and potential. The thriller is appropriately shot in gorgeous San Francisco, where the literal and figurative curving and hilly roads wind throughout. Credit legendary art director Dean Tavoularis for some amazing sets and scenes, notably the elegantly cavernous restaurant where Evans and her husband have a fateful dinner. This film is, in a way, glossy director Phil Joanou's Hitchcockian tribute--as a climactic lighthouse scene best demonstrates. Final Analysis doesn't offer an intimate look at its characters, but a beautifully stylized one, moody and gloomy. The intricate plot experiments with the device of "pathological intoxication," in which the subject completely loses control after drinking alcohol. And this doesn't mean a conventional ugly drunk; it means a frightening psychotic. Good and evil, hope and despair, beauty and repulsion are often juxtaposed in the film's complex world. --NF Mendoza

• Species | DVD | (01/02/2000) from £10.97   |  Saving you £5.02 (45.76%)   |  RRP £15.99

  There's a kind of perverse marketing genius at work in this cheesy sci-fi hit from 1995 in which scientists create a half-human, half-alien woman named Sil (Natasha Henstridge) who's capable of morphing from a slimy, tentacled creature into a blonde babe with the body of a Playboy centrefold. This makes it easy for Sil to lure gullible guys who are only too willing to indulge her voracious mating urge, realising too late that sex with Sil is anything but safe. As the body count rises, a handpicked team of specialists tracks the alien's killing spree, but their diverse expertise is barely a match for the ever-morphing Sil. Borrowing elements of the Alien movies (including bizarre alien designs by Swedish artist HR Giger) and spicing them up with some tantalising nudity, Species is a wet dream for creature-feature fans--kind of like watching a sci-fi vampire fantasy while browsing through the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

• Menotti: The Consul (Studio Production 1963) | DVD | (27/09/2010) from £18.41   |  Saving you £6.58 (35.74%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Konsul (Der)