"Actor: Robert Lesser"

• Deadly Pursuit | DVD | (24/06/2002) from £4.99   |  Saving you £10.00 (200.40%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Deadly Pursuit is the polished chase thriller which marked Sidney Poitier's return to the big screen 11 years after A Piece of the Action (1977). Poitier, already 61 but not looking a day over 45, is an FBI agent hunting a killer who takes mountain guide Tom Berenger's girlfriend hostage and heads into the wilds of Washington State. Inevitably Poitier and Berenger reluctantly join forces, going through the usual mismatched buddy arguments with commendably straight faces and lending a quality of acting which elevates the movie above its routine screenplay. The girlfriend meanwhile is Kirstie Alley in one of her first major feature roles, providing little more than eye candy and enduring her ordeal with hardly a beautifully flowing tress out of place. Director Roger Spottiswoode maintains the suspense well and mounts the action set-pieces with a taut, lean style, though the film lacks the sharp edge of his Under Fire (1983) or the sheer scale of his Bond outing, Tomorrow Never Dies (1997). One major asset is Michael Chapman's gorgeous mountains-and-rivers cinematography, actually filmed in British Columbia. Without the star cast and strong production values Deadly Pursuit could be any of a thousand straight-to-video action flicks, but as it stands is a superior formula adventure. The film was also released with the title Shoot to Kill. On the DVD: Deadly Pursuit comes to disc with no extras bar numerous subtitle options and a choice of a Spanish dubbed version. The original Dolby SR soundtrack has been given a Dolby Digital 5.1 remix and is effectively atmospheric, clean and clear, if lacking the firepower of a more recent equivalent. The anamorphically enhanced picture is a little soft in places and somewhat grainy, but otherwise good. The film was presented theatrically at 2.35:1 and has been reformated for DVD at 1.78:1. As the movie was shot in Super-35, a format designed to allow widescreen theatrical films to be more easily recomposed for television and video, the result here is visually quite different to the cinema original, with some shots losing information to the sides while others gain additional material at the top and bottom of the frame. Mostly the compositions look fine, as if the film had been shot at 1.85:1, though the mountain landscapes inevitably lack the sheer visual sweep and majesty of the big screen original version.--Gary S Dalkin

• The Presidio | DVD | (22/01/2001) from £8.60   |  Saving you £4.39 (51.05%)   |  RRP £12.99

  In The Presidio the titular piece of real estate is the San Francisco military base that starts at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge and sprawls back into the city itself, co-existing uneasily with Baghdad by the Bay. The two cultures clash when a murder at the Presidio is assigned to civilian police detective Mark Harmon. Harmon has an uncomfortable history with the base commander, Sean Connery--and this relationship doesn't get any less tense when he also becomes romantically entangled with Connery's daughter, Meg Ryan. Unfortunately, the script by Larry Ferguson is a stiff, which suits Harmon's acting style. Director Peter Hyams knows how to choreograph an action sequence, but he has to keep stopping so that Harmon can actually speak. Thankfully, Harmon has the always-interesting Connery and Ryan to interact with, but that's only a small saving grace. --Marshall Fine, Amazon.com

• David Holzman's Diary | DVD | (30/01/2006) from £14.49   |  Saving you £-1.50 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  A young filmmaker attempts to understand his life by recording it on film only to have his experiment turn into an alienating voyeuristic obsession. One of the neglected milestones in contemporary film history this legendary independent classic captures the state of mind and the state of the art in late 1960s America.

• The Relic | DVD | (25/02/2002) from £10.33   |  Saving you £2.65 (36.10%)   |  RRP £9.99

  The Relic is the story of a monster that runs amok in a Chicago museum on the very day the institution is holding a glitzy reception. Naturally, the museum bosses want to go ahead with their public relations even as the creature is decapitating victims. Penelope Ann Miller plays a scientist on the run from the critter (which is at times computer generated and reminiscent of the raptors in Jurassic Park), and Tom Sizemore is a cop looking for his cold-blooded (in every sense) killer. Peter Hyams (Timecop) directs, and as always he excels at managing the plastic action at the cost of real feeling and logic. (Much of the story is pretty laughable.) --Tom Keogh

• Eroica | DVD | (02/05/2005) from £29.93   |  Saving you £-4.94 (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  By the time the first public performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 (Eroica) took place in Vienna in 1805 a privileged few had already heard the work at a private play-through at the Lobkowitz Palace. Nick Dear's award-winning period drama starring Ian Hart as Beethoven brings to life the momentous day that prompted Haydn to remark 'everything is different from today'.

• Hunt For Red October, The / The Untouchables / The Presidio | DVD | (11/10/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The Sean Connery Collection. The Untouchables: Brian De Palma's 'The Untouchables' is a must-see masterpiece: set to a classic Ennio Morricone score this is the glorious and fierce depiction of the larger than life mob warlord who ruled Prohibition-era Chicago - and the law enforcer who vowed to bring him down. This classic confrontation between good and evil stars Kevin Costner as federal agent Eliot Ness Robert De Niro as gangland kingpin Al Capone and Sean Connery

• Class Of 76 | DVD | (21/05/2007) from £11.22   |  Saving you £4.76 (57.84%)   |  RRP £12.99

  In almost every school photograph there looms a face in the pack that no-one seems to remember. Detective Inspector Tom Monroe is assigned to investigate the apparent suicide of Pat Fisher and discovers that he was obsessed with the murder of school friend Amy unsolved since 1976. Compelled to take up where the dead man left off he soon finds himself open to attack from the same faces that have preyed on the class of '76 for almost 3 decades.