"Actor: Rick Macy"

• Little Secrets | DVD | (13/01/2003) from £7.80   |  Saving you £12.19 (156.28%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Little Secrets is a delightful cautionary tale about modern childhood. Blair Treu's film manages to be reassuring about the reality of a world in which kids are perceived to grow up too quickly, without patronising them about the scale and scope of the problems that preoccupy them. At 14, Emily (Evan Rachel Wood) has it all mapped out. Wise beyond her years, she is a musical prodigy who also runs a neat sideline keeping the secrets of the neighbourhood children for a small fee: broken china, kittens hidden in the bedroom, money stolen from dad's wallet to buy his own birthday present. These enjoyable scenes owe a huge debt to Peanuts. But Emily has a secret of her own, and over one cataclysmic summer the burden of this and all the others she is keeping on behalf of her friends becomes insupportable. Moralising is kept to a minimum as events resolve themselves in a dramatic way and saccharine levels are modest thanks to the determinedly unsentimental performances of Wood, David Gallagher and Michael Angarano. All told this is a pleasing family film of some quality. On the DVD: Little Secrets might be a small film, but it has a big picture feel, enhanced by the anamorphic widescreen presentation and a super-clear Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. Extras include a good director's commentary in which Treu stresses the childish truths that make the story so touching, a short making-of documentary and a not particularly funny blooper reel. --Piers Ford

• House Of Games | DVD | (02/02/2004) from £9.43   |  Saving you £3.56 (37.75%)   |  RRP £12.99

  David Mamet's 1987 directorial debut House of Games is mesmerising study of control and seduction between two kinds of detached observers: a gambler who is also a con artist and a psychotherapist who is also an emerging pop-psych guru in the book market. The latter (played by Lindsay Crouse) meets the former (Joe Mantegna) when one of her clients is driven to despair from his debts to the card shark. Mantegna's character agrees to drop the IOUs in exchange for Crouse's attention at the seedy House of Games in Seattle, a mecca for conmen to talk shop and hustle unsuspecting customers. The shrink gets so caught up in the arcane rules and world view of her guide over subsequent days that she observes--with no false rapture--various stings in progress inside and outside the club. Mamet's story finally becomes a fascinating study of two people protecting and extending their respective cosmologies the way rival predators fight for the same piece of turf. The psychological challenge is compelling; so is the stylised dialogue, with its pattern of pauses and hiccups and humming meter. Mostly shooting at night, Mamet also gave Seattle a different look from previous filmmakers, turning its familiar puddles into concentrations of liquid neon and poisonous noir. --Tom Keogh

• Shot in the Heart | DVD | (03/02/2003) from £19.99   |  Saving you £-10.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  January 1977. Utah State Prison. Double-murderer Gary Gilmore is about to become the first convicted killer in a decade to be executed on U.S. soil. Awaiting his fate on death row Gilmore agrees to a one-time only visit from Mikal the younger he barely remembers. Piecing together fragments of their shared past- born of a brutal father raised in a family haunted by death religion and superstition- Mikal searches for a reason to appeal against the execution or to accept that the moment of blood atonement has arrived. Meanwhile the killer's twisted celebrity fuelled by a media frenzy has the eyes of the world looking on. Based on Mikal Gilmore's award winning book 'Shot In The Heart' is the harrowing expose of a cold-blooded killer: A journey to the darkside of a mind tortured by the sins and secrets of his past.

• The Tale Of Despereaux with Limited Edition 3D Lenticular Sleeve | DVD | (12/03/2012) from £9.43   |  Saving you £-1.44 (N/A%)   |  RRP £7.99

  All hope was lost in a land where sunlight disappeared and the world became dreary grey. Until Despereaux Tilling was born that is!