"Director: Michael Steinberg"

• Wicked | DVD | (04/05/2009) from £9.43   |  Saving you £0.56 (5.94%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Residing within a wealthy green gated community in California the Christiansens are not your usual nuclear family. Ben Christiansen (William R. Moses) and his wife Karen (Chelsea Field) have two daughters an open marriage and a handful of lovers each. When Karen announces that she wants a divorce she winds up dead and there are several suspects. Their fifteen year-old daughter Ellie (Julia Stiles) never cared much for her mother anyway. She quickly steps into her mothers role cooking all the meals wearing her mother's clothes and sharing a bed with her father. Meanwhile the murder investigation is gaining momentum. Karen had her share of enemies. Is Ellie too obvious a suspect? This dark comedy which was a hit at several festivals combines elements of the best of Hitchcock with some heavy doses of Greek tragedy for a uniquely sinister stew with a strong bite!

• Wicked | DVD | (26/11/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  A teen-themed entry in the long-established Psycho-Bitch-from-Hell sub-genre of Hollywood thriller, Wicked affords current high school princess Julia Stiles an opportunity to stop smiling and play a manipulative, disturbed, alienated girl who is also the number one suspect in the “did she or didn't she batter Mum to death with a heavy tragedy mask” mystery.Set in one of those hideous American "gated communities", a pastel suburban enclave with round-the-clock security and enough adulteries to keep a soap going for a year, the film is subtler than stablemates like The Crush and Teacher's Pet, with a more convoluted plot and enough suspects to put the outcome in doubt. However it's still a by-the-numbers mix of soap and suspense. Stiles crosses her eyes and pouts a lot, making tastefully incestuous moves on her weakling father (an aptly hollow William R Moses), but she's not really well cast in a role Christina Ricci could have played in her sleep a few years ago. The best supporting performance comes from Michael Parks as a drawling cop brought into the community by the killing of the strident mother (Chelsea Field), who lingers to watch the fall-out as Stiles replaces Mum as the homemaker only to be sidelined in favour of the au pair who needs a green-card marriage. When the battering and stabbing starts, the film is surprisingly explicit, splattering several distinct types of stage blood around the designer living caricature home.On the DVD: the picture is an anamorphic 1.85:1 print, with Dolby Digital surround-sound. The minimal extras include trailers, filmographies for very few of the principals, and a neat menu. --Kim Newman