"Actor: Roy Cooper"

• Housesitter | DVD | (14/04/2003) from £9.43   |  Saving you £0.56 (5.94%)   |  RRP £9.99

  A slick, smart vehicle for Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn, Housesitter offers an acceptably daffy premise and enough inventive business to sustain it through to the, not unexpected, happy ending. Architect Martin builds a dream home for his childhood sweetheart (Dana Delaney) only to be rejected when he proposes marriage. After a one-night stand, Hawn--a daffy waitress with a gift for making up improbable but convincing lies--moves into Martin's house and tells his parents (Donald Moffatt, Julie Harris) and the whole community that she is his surprise new wife. When he sees how this impresses Delaney, Martin goes along with the charade, encouraging wilder and wilder fictions and doing his best to join in so that he can rush through to a divorce and move on to the woman he has always wanted. Hawn has to recruit a couple of winos to pose as her parents and impress Martin's boss into giving him a promotion, but we glimpse her real misery at his eventual intention to toss her out of the make-believe world she has created because her own real background is so grim. Its sit-com hi-jinx are manic enough not to be strangled by an inevitable dip in to sentiment towards the end, and Hawn, who always has to work hard, is better matched against the apparently effortless Martin than in their subsequent pairing in Out-of-Towners. Martin, often wasted in comparatively straight roles, has a few wild and crazy scenes as Hawn prompts him into joining her improvised fantasies. Director Frank Oz, a frequent Martin collaborator (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Little Shop of Horrors, Bowfinger), is the model of a proper, competent, professional craftsman when he sets out to put a comedy together--but the film misses streaks of lunacy or cruelty that might have made it funnier and more affecting. On the DVD: The disc offers a pristine widescreen non-anamorphic transfer, letterboxed to 1.85:1. There are no extra features to speak of, just text-based production notes, cast and director bios, plus a trailer and an assortment of language and subtitle options. --Kim Newman

• Dolores Claiborne | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £6.99   |  Saving you £7.00 (100.14%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Dark secrets, family torments and two murders swirl around the stoic, hardened figure of Dolores Claiborne (Kathy Bates), a housekeeper accused of murdering her employer of 22 years. Then there was that timely accident that took Dolores's husband (David Strathairn) during the solar eclipse of 1975. Yet with all the sombre suffering that follows Dolores like a miasma of pain, none of it compares with the heartache of a relationship she has with her grown daughter (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Although this flick is rife with horror, it is not of the supernatural kind, but rather of the torment only real people can impose on one another. The script is full of colourful language, and director Taylor Hackford successfully weaves several plot threads and psychological dilemmas throughout this engrossing tale without diminishing any of them. He not only culls intense performances from his cast, but he also brings to life the landscape around them. When Dolores Claiborne's best-kept secret is finally given up, it occurs under the surreal backdrop of a solar eclipse that is a truly sensational bit of cinematography. --Rochelle O'Gorman

• The Basketball Diaries | DVD | (05/08/2002) from £18.13   |  Saving you £-5.14 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The pre-Titanic Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Jim Carroll, the poet and musician who spent much of his adolescence addicted to heroin and shooting hoops with fellow Catholic high-school kids. As a biography, the film doesn't amount to more than the sum of its gritty scenes of smack use, violence, perversions (poor Bruno Kirby plays a lecherous coach who comes on to young Jim), and the usual scream-and-puke dramas that go along with a cold-turkey session. Director Scott Kalvert doesn't seem to realise that most people don't know who Carroll is and therefore can't possibly understand why they should care about his gutterball youth. DiCaprio, having nowhere to go with his performance but maintain Carroll's tailspin, is boring and redundant. Some kind of allusion to the literary and rock & roll life that follows the mess we're watching might have been helpful. The DVD release offers the choice of a full or widescreen (letterbox) picture, plus interviews. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

• Sez Les - Volume 4 | DVD | (28/05/2012) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Sez Les was the show that firmly established Les Dawson's reputation, running for over seven years and bringing his dour, miserablist humour to a wider viewing public. Now you can rejoin the gloomy king of comedy and an array of favourite comic characters in this fourth volume, comprising series nine to eleven, along with a best of compilation show first screened in 1974. Featuring a running guest spot for comedy legend John Cleese alongside stalwart sideman Roy Barraclough, these shows offer more world-weary humour and hilarious sketches, with death-defying stunts and sleight of hand by the likes of The Great Roberto, Superflop, The Great Magico and Man of Steel. Cosmo Smallpiece is on typically lecherous form, gossiping Lancashire housewives Cissie and Ada find plenty to natter about, and we meet the dismal Desponts TV's dullest family. Les s many guests include Dana, Henry Cooper, Clodagh Rogers, Freddie Trueman, Lynsey de Paul and Cyril Smith, MP.

• Boom Boom! - The Best Of The Original Basil Brush Show | DVD | (22/10/2001) from £29.99   |  Saving you £-20.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  The Terry Thomas of children's television returns to the screen in Boom, Boom! The Best Of The Original Basil Brush Show. The raffish star, with his distinctive laugh, trademark tweeds and enduring catchphrase, was created in 1963, diligently learning his trade before hitting the big time in the 1970s in his own show. The cheeky vulpine host went on to vex a succession of "Mr"s with his continual interrupting, ad-libbing and appalling jokes:Mr Roy: "Do you know about ethics?"Basil, lisping: "Yes, it's somewhere near Sussex, isn't it?"The show's guest list boasted the best of 1970s celebrity: Alvin Stardust, Cilla Black, John Inman and Demis Roussos to mention just a few--all treated to Basil's unique blend of charm and brusque wit in a series of excruciating sketches.The show was dropped in the 1980s but Boom, Boom! The Best Of The Original Basil Brush Show proves that Basil, now a pop-culture icon, is a truly 21st-century fox. --Helen Baker

• Housesitter | DVD | (25/06/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A slick, smart vehicle for Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn, Housesitter offers an acceptably daffy premise and enough inventive business to sustain it through to the, not unexpected, happy ending. Architect Martin builds a dream home for his childhood sweetheart (Dana Delaney) only to be rejected when he proposes marriage. After a one-night stand, Hawn--a daffy waitress with a gift for making up improbable but convincing lies--moves into Martin's house and tells his parents (Donald Moffatt, Julie Harris) and the whole community that she is his surprise new wife. When he sees how this impresses Delaney, Martin goes along with the charade, encouraging wilder and wilder fictions and doing his best to join in so that he can rush through to a divorce and move on to the woman he has always wanted. Hawn has to recruit a couple of winos to pose as her parents and impress Martin's boss into giving him a promotion, but we glimpse her real misery at his eventual intention to toss her out of the make-believe world she has created because her own real background is so grim. Its sit-com hi-jinx are manic enough not to be strangled by an inevitable dip in to sentiment towards the end, and Hawn, who always has to work hard, is better matched against the apparently effortless Martin than in their subsequent pairing in Out-of-Towners. Martin, often wasted in comparatively straight roles, has a few wild and crazy scenes as Hawn prompts him into joining her improvised fantasies. Director Frank Oz, a frequent Martin collaborator (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Little Shop of Horrors, Bowfinger), is the model of a proper, competent, professional craftsman when he sets out to put a comedy together--but the film misses streaks of lunacy or cruelty that might have made it funnier and more affecting. On the DVD: The disc offers a pristine widescreen non-anamorphic transfer, letterboxed to 1.85:1. There are no extra features to speak of, just text-based production notes, cast and director bios, plus a trailer and an assortment of language and subtitle options. --Kim Newman

• The Frontline | DVD | (04/10/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  When young film-maker Paul Hills was asked at an interview for Plymouth film school what he wanted to do in the industry he replied 'direct feature films' he was told 'you have more chance of being struck by lightning twice than ever directing a feature film'. Two years later he embarked on making The Frontline...Filmed in the Moss Side area of Manchester this gritty tale of futility pulls no punches in its graphic depiction of drug addition political corruption and society out of control.On his release from mental hospital James re-kindles his relationship with pirate DJ Marion helping her to kick her heroin addiction and moving in together with plans for marriage. However Marion is found dead. Suicide? The police would have us think so. But James has other ideas.With the help of Marion's father James follows through his plan to trap and expose the 'protected killer. A plan that leads to a tense and bloody showdown that will leave you shattered.As you'll hear on the director's commentary making The Frontline was a creative struggle of epic proportions. Hills like a modern day King Canute empowered with super-human willpower and a titanic endurance waged a war to end all wars for three long years with a small band of like-minded irrepressibles to shape this film out of the most meagre of raw materials - 12 000 - for the money this is the greatest film ever made. It nearly killed Paul Hills. Now we can watch it in the comfort of our living rooms.

• The Psyborgs | Blu Ray | (14/01/2020) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A