"Director: Steven Soderbergh"

• The Informant! | UMD | (29/03/2010) from £7.98   |  Saving you £4.00 (66.78%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Steven Soderbergh's The Informant!, like the director's one-two Oscar® punch Erin Brockovich and Traffic, is an energetic exposé of corporate/criminal chicanery with wide-ranging implications for life in these United States. Not so much like those movies, it plays as hyper-caffeinated comedy. At its center is Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon), a biochemist and junior executive at agri-giant Archer Daniels Midland who, in 1992, began feeding the FBI evidence of ADM's involvement in price fixing. Mark's motive for doing so is elusive, sometimes self-contradictory, and subject to mutation at any moment. To describe him as bipolar would be akin to finding the Marx Brothers somewhat zany. His Fed handlers, along with the audience, start thinking of him as a hapless goofball. Then they and we get blind-sided with the revelation of further dimensions of Mark's life at ADM, and the nature of the investigation, and the movie, changes. That will happen again. And again. It's Soderbergh's ingenious strategy to make us fellow travelers on Mark's crazy ride, virtually infecting us with a short-term version of his dysfunctional being. Props to screenwriter Scott Z. Burns for boiling down Kurt Eichenwald's 600-page book The Informant: A True Story without sacrificing coherence. And Matt Damon, bulked up by two stones and spluttering his manic lines from under a caterpillar mustache, reconfirms his virtuosity and his willingness to dive deep into such a dodgy personality. On the downside, despite a small army of comedians in cameo roles, The Informant! has nothing like the rich field of subsidiary characters encountered in Erin Brockovich and Traffic. That lack of vibrancy is aggravated by the dominance of prairie-flat Midwest speech patterns and cadences (most of the film unreels in Illinois), and the razzmatazz score by veteran tunesmith Marvin Hamlisch sounds like pep-rally music on an industrial film. Soderbergh also photographed the movie (under his pseudonym Peter Andrews), and his decision to show everything through a corn-mush filter turns it into a big-screen YouTube experience. --Richard T. Jameson

• The Abyss/Solaris | DVD | (18/06/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £8.99

  The Abyss (Dir. James Cameron 1989): A Place On Earth More Awesome Than Anywhere In Space. In this thrilling underwater action-adventure from writer-director James Cameron. a civilian oil-rig crew is recruited to conduct a search-and-rescue effort when a nuclear submarine mysteriously sinks. One diver (Ed Harris) soon finds himself on a spectacular odyssey over 25 000 feet below the ocean's surface where he confronts a mysterious force that has the power to change the world or destroy it. Solaris (Dir. Steven Soderbergh): Aboard a lonely space station orbiting the mysterious planet Solaris a terrified crew encounters a host of strange phenomena including eerie visitors who seem all too human. When psychologist Chris Kelvin (Clooney) arrives to investigate he must confront an unknown entity that could hold the key to mankind's deepest dreams or darkest nightmares...

• Full Frontal | DVD | (09/05/2011) from £4.99   |  Saving you £15.00 (300.60%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Steven Soderbergh's contemporary comedy about life and love in 24 hours of LA life.

• Donnie Brasco/Charlie/Traffic | DVD | (13/11/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Donnie Brasco: The true story of an FBI undercover agent (Johnny Depp) who becomes Donnie Brasco 'The Jewel Man' to infiltrate one of the mob families. Donnie manoeuvres his way into the confidence of ageing hit man Lefty Ruggiero (Al Pacino) who trusts Donnie and vouches for him to the mob. But Lefty and Donnie become friends when they should be enemies. As Donnie moves deeper and deeper into the Mafia chain of command he realises he is not only crossing the line between federal agent and criminal but it also leading his friend Lefty to an almost certain death sentence... Charlie: Luke Goss teams up with Steven Berkoff to tell the real life story of `Charlie Richardson' the head of the notorious `torture gang'. In the sixties London was owned and ruled by two families north of the river the Krays the Richardsons to the south. Now for the first time in his own words `Charlie' reveals what really happened when he was arrested and tried in what notoriously became known as the `Torture Trial'. Traffic: A high-ranking judge with a vendetta against drugs learns his own daughter is a cocaine addict - a San Diego housewife must suddenly take over her husband's drug dealing business when he is arrested - a Mexican police officer struggles to do the right thing in the midst of corruption. Michael Douglas Catherine Zeta-Jones and Benicio Del Toro star in Steven Soderbergh's amazing intertwined stories of the failing war on drugs.

• George Clooney Box Set | DVD | (09/10/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  A cracking compendium of films featuring George Clooney. One Fine Day (Dir. Michael Hoffman, 1996: In this charming, romantic comedy, three-time Academy Award nominees Michelle Pfeiffer and George Clooney find that opposites attract whether they like it or not... Melanie Parker (Pfeiffer) is juggling single parenthood with a career as an architect. Jack Taylor (Clooney) is a commitment-shy newspaper columnist who only has his daughter every other weekend. When their kids miss a scho...

• Charlie/Traffic/Donnie Brasco | DVD | (31/10/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Donnie Brasco (Dir. Mike Newell, 1997): The true story of an FBI undercover agent (Johnny Depp) who becomes Donnie Brasco, 'The Jewel Man', to infiltrate one of the mob families. Donnie manoeuvres his way into the confidence of ageing hit man, Lefty Ruggiero (Al Pacino) who trusts Donnie and vouches for him to the mob. But Lefty and Donnie become friends when they should be enemies. As Donnie moves deeper and deeper into the Mafia chain of command, he realises he is not only crossin.

• Kafka | DVD | (31/10/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Kafka (Pathe)