"Director: Carl Franklin"

• The Pacific - Complete HBO Series | DVD | (01/11/2010) from £24.19   |  Saving you £15.80 (65.32%)   |  RRP £39.99

  Executive produced by Tom Hanks Steven Spielberg and Gary Goetzman The Pacific is an epic ten-part miniseries from HBO and the team that made Band of Brothers. The Pacific tracks the intertwined real-life stories of three U.S Marines Robert Leckie John Basilone and Eugene Sledge across the vast canvas of the Pacific Theater during World War 2. The miniseries follows these men and their fellow Marines from their first battle with the Japanese on Guadalcanal through the rain forests of Cape Gloucester and the strongholds of Peleliu across the bloody sands of Iwo Jima and through the horror of Okinawa and finally to their triumphant but uneasy return home after V-J Day. The Pacific is primarily based on two memoirs of US Marines Eugene Sledge's With The Old Breed: At Peleliu And Okinawa and Robert Leckie's Helmet For My Pillow. The series also draws on Eugene Sledge's China Marine and Chuck Tatum's Red Blood Black Sand as well as original interviews conducted by the filmmakers. If you're a fan of HBO's The Pacific then there's an ocean of great DVDs Blu-rays and Books to check out - click on any of the titles to find out more. DVDs: Band Of Brothers: Based on Stephen Ambrose's bestseller Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg bring you their epic vision of World War II from the perspective of elite US paratroopers dropped behind enemy lines. Flags Of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima Limited Edition Box Set: Clint Eastwood's daring and thought-provoking companion pieces come together in this 4-disc Collector's Edition. Blu-rays: Band Of Brothers: Limited Collector's Edition: Now available on Blu-ray every bullet bomb and bit of blood is rendered in spectacular high definition from the brutality of Bastogne to final victory in Berchtesgaden. Saving Private Ryan: Due for release on April 26th 2010 Spielberg's classic D-Day movie finally rolls onto Blu-ray - this is the kind of audio-visual masterpiece that the format was made for. Books: With The Old Breed by Eugene Sledge: As depicted in The Pacific Eugene Sledge was a real-life marine and this his memoires tells all about the horrifying hell of Pacific warfare during WWII. Helmet For My Pillow by Robert Leckie: Another inspiration behind the HBO series Robert Leckie's account from boot camp to demob is terrifying and captivating in equal measures. The Pacific (The Official HBO/Sky TV Tie-in) by Hugh Ambrose: Hugh Ambrose son of Band Of Brothers author Stephen Ambrose captures all the real-life spectacle savagery and heroism of The Pacific.

• High Crimes | DVD | (21/06/2004) from £5.70   |  Saving you £7.29 (127.89%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Ashley Judd plays a succesful lawyer shocked to find her husband as a secret past as a military operative. When he is committed of a terrible war crime she must defend him in a top secret military courtroom, where none of the rules she knows apply.

• Out Of Time | DVD | (10/05/2004) from £6.04   |  Saving you £13.95 (230.96%)   |  RRP £19.99

  When a double homicide happens in a Florida community, the chief of police finds himself in a race against time to solve the murders before he himself falls under suspicion in this modern noir thriller.

• The Pacific - Complete HBO Series | DVD | (01/11/2010) from £14.99   |  Saving you £2.01 (13.41%)   |  RRP £17.00

  Unsurprising attracting awards attention, The Pacific is a ten-part series set in the midst of World War II, that follows the actions of three US Marines In the Pacific Theatre Of War. It’s a series not a million miles away from its spiritual predecessor, Band Of Brothers, which is understandable given the crossover of creative talent. Yet The Pacific is still a show with an identity of its own. It boasts the same sky-high production values of Band Of Brothers, but it also has a broader canvas, and a slightly slower pace to it. It’s absorbing drama, though, and the standard of it is kept high right throughout the ten-episode run. During that time, it takes in many key events of the time, and presents them with staggering confidence and strength. All of this, of course, makes you hope that the high definition transfer can do all of this justice. Fortunately, the news here is good. Few television shows have been treated to anywhere near the love that The Pacific has been in its 1080p transfer, and matched by surround sound work that’d put many blockbuster movies to shame, Is it Band Of Brothers 2? Absolutely not. Instead, The Pacific is a wonderful drama series in its own right, and one well worth picking up. --Jon Foster

• One True Thing | DVD | (04/07/2005) from £8.07   |  Saving you £-2.08 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Based on Anna Quindlen's bestselling novel, this is a mother-daughter and father-daughter story, two for the price of one. But director Carl Franklin also tries to inject a police-mystery angle that it neither needs nor will support. Renee Zellweger plays a young writer on the rise, who has finally got her break for a New York magazine. While home for a birthday party for her nearly famous writer father (William Hurt), she learns that her mother (Meryl Streep) has been diagnosed with cancer. Then her father does the unthinkable: he all but commands her to put her career on hold to take care of her mother and nurse her through her illness. Dad, a popular college professor who has never received the literary acclaim he always believed he deserved, essentially checks out--and daughter must play parent to her mother. Strong performances by Streep and Zellweger give this parent-child relationship the heart--and the anger--of the real thing, while Hurt seems slightly disembodied as the self-involved father whose needs have dominated both women. Still, the detective-story aspect (the film is told in flashback, as the cops try to discover whether someone slipped Mom a fatal dose of morphine) is a construct that could have been done without. --Marshall Fine

• Magic City Complete Seasons 1 and 2 | DVD | (06/10/2014) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Series One Miami Beach 1959. As Ike Evans (Jeffrey Dean Morgan - Watchmen P.S. I Love You) rings in the New Year at his luxurious Miramar Playa Hotel Castro’s rebels seize Havana. Miami is turbulent but the Kennedys the mob and the CIA all hold court here. Owner Ike Evans is the star of the hotel. But at what price? Ben “The Butcher” Diamond (Danny Huston - Children of Men 30 Days of Night) financed Ike’s dream and now his life is a façade... just like the Miramar Playa. With diving clowns by day and escorts at night nothing’s what it seems in Magic City. Series Two Ike Evans will risk everything to rid his Miramar Playa Hotel of Ben Diamond. To do so he’ll encounter the powerful boss (James Caan - The Godfather) of the Chicago Outfit. Meanwhile as Vera (Olga Kurylenko - Quantum of Solice) gets a second chance at stardom Ike’s sons Stevie (Steven Strait - 10 000BC) and Danny (Christian Cooke - Cemetery Junction) drift farther from him. If Ike does take back his hotel will the price of victory be too high?

• One False Move | DVD | (22/01/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  They did it for money. For power. For fun. Two ruthless drug dealers commit a brutal mass murder in Los Angeles and are forced to flee the state. And when Fantasia their beautiful accomplice begs to go home to Arkansas she unwittingly leads them into the eye of the hurricane. Waiting for them in Arkansas is an unlikely arsenal of law enforcers that includes two cynical L.A. cops and one eager small-town sheriff. Sheriff Dale ""Hurricane"" Dixon has waited all his life for a majo

• Devil in a Blue Dress | DVD | (05/09/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  It's 1948 and Los Angeles is booming but Easy Rawlins (Denzel Washington) has seen better days. He has just been fired and his house payments are due so when DeWitt Albright (Tom Sizemore) offers him a seemingly harmless job he jumps at the chance. All he has to do is track down the elusive Daphne Monet (Jennifer Beals) a mysterious beauty known to keep company on the wrong side of town. Soon he finds himself implicated in two murders and is forced to call upon an old friend Mouse (Don Cheadle) who is all too familiar with the violent world Easy has landed himself in. Slowly drawn deeper and deeper into a web of blackmail dirty cops and even dirtier politicians the ways out for Easy become harder and harder to find.

• High Crimes | Blu Ray | (27/05/2013) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Just about acceptable as an in-flight movie, High Crimes is a tad weak for the big-screen, though its amiable stars and typical plotting offer the comforts of familiarity for home viewing. Ashley Judd plays a high-end lawyer who specialises in brilliant defence of the guilty, while Morgan Freeman is a broken-down ex-drunk who specialises in court martials ("military justice is to justice what military music is to music"). When Judd's handyman husband (Jim Caviezel) is arrested by the FBI and indicted for a massacre carried out in El Salvador while he was serving as a marine, Judd gets over the fact that he has concealed his entire past and even his real name and rallies to fight the case, even if it means going up against the shadowy masters of a conspiracy to cover up what actually happened. The movie rattles through all the clichés: bugs in phones; cars that cruise ominously by; staged road accidents; night-time intrusions; mystery men who hand out clues in the supermarket; dubious polygraph results; appearing and disappearing witnesses; smugly brutal generals, brilliantly made points of law; fights in the interview room; multiple revelations; a media circus and a final tussle in a darkened, deserted house. Judd, one of the best screen actresses of her generation, needs to pick better scripts since her commitment to rubbish only makes her look silly, but Freeman has done enough of these walk-through parts to get by on charisma and the odd smart line. On the DVD: High Crimes on disc comes with a gaggle of featurettes: a chat with the author of the original novel, Joseph Finder, some making-of puffery about staging stunts and the working relationship of the stars, and interesting little bits with the technical advisors about the court martial system and how to beat a polygraph. Franklin contributes a commentary track with a lot of enthusiasm, which is a little more pleased with the end product than most viewers will be. --Kim Newman

• High Crimes | DVD | (31/03/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Ashley Judd plays a succesful lawyer shocked to find her husband as a secret past as a military operative. When he is committed of a terrible war crime she must defend him in a top secret military courtroom, where none of the rules she knows apply.

• Devil In A Blue Dress | DVD | (15/05/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  Despite rave reviews as one of the most stylish and intelligent detective pictures in a number of years, this 1995 adaptation of Walter Mosley's novel never found a mass audience. Too bad, because Carl Franklin's film is nearly perfect in every way, from its rich, shadowy look to its depiction of life in post-World War II black America (LA-style) to the acting of Denzel Washington, Don Cheadle and others. Washington plays Easy Rawlins, an aircraft factory worker who is laid off only to find his true calling: as a private eye, albeit an unlicensed one. Hired to find a missing woman, he becomes entangled in a complex but satisfying case involving sex, corruption, racism and, of course, money. Devil In A Blue Dress is top-notch from top to bottom--and Cheadle is dangerously funny as Easy's best friend, a killer named Mouse. --Marshall Fine, Amazon.com

• Don't Say A Word/High Crimes | DVD | (21/05/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £8.99

  Don't Way A Word (Dir. Gary Fleder 2001): ...I'll never tell. Michael Douglas is ""tremendous"" (Tribune New Services) in this psychological thriller ""in the classic Hitchcock tradition"" (The New York Observer). When the daughter of a prominent New York psychiatrist (Douglas) is kidnapped his only hope for her safe return is to pry a 6-digit number from the memory of a troubled teenage girl; time is running out... High Crimes (Dir. Carl Franklin 2002): Claire Kubik (Judd) is a smart and sexy attorney whose perfect world comes crashing down when the FBI charges her husband Tom (Caviezel) with the murder of innocent civilians during a covert Army operation fifteen years earlier. Aided by a shrewd ex-military lawyer (Freeman) Claire fights to clear Tom's name but gets too close to exposing a government cover-up in the process. Now she must risk her career-and even her life-to find the truth...