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Review 4 Front Video / Obsession [1949]
Actors & Directors
  • Edward Dmytryk
  • Naunton Wayne
  • Robert Newton
  • Sally Gray
  • Phil Brown
  • James Harcourt
Release date: 1998-05-11
Run time: 93 min.
Price: £5.99

Review Obsession [1949] / 4 Front Video:


Review Paramount Home Entertainment / Star Trek : Deep Space Nine - Vol. 7.1 - Image In The Sand / Shadows And Symbols [1995]
Actors & Directors
  • Avery Brooks
  • Alexander Siddig
  • Cirroc Lofton
  • Colm Meaney
  • Rene Auberjonois
Release date: 1999-03-01
Run time: 88 min.
Creator: Rick Berman
RRP: £5.99
Price: £9.99

Review Star Trek : Deep Space Nine - Vol. 7.1 - Image In The Sand / Shadows And Symbols [1995] / Paramount Home Entertainment:

From the outset, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was about conflict. Producers Rick Berman and Michael Piller challenged the utopian ideals of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek universe to create something totally different from its predecessors. That meant no familial camaraderie, squeaky-clean Federation diplomacy, or beige décor. Instead they wanted inter-personal friction, ruthless enemies (Gamma Quadrant Imperialists-The Dominion) and rebellion at every turn. The DS9 concept was originally facilitated by introducing the Cardassian/Bajoran war during The Next Generation's final days. After a muted first reception fans gradually came to accept the new look, but no-one liked Star Trek without a starship and eventually the producers capitulated to viewers' wishes by introducing the USS Defiant (an apt name) in Season 3. Relying far less on technobabble than TNG, DS9 was unafraid to focus on matters of the spirit instead, demonstrating a gutsy independence from its parent shows. Taking up the gauntlet thrown down by Babylon 5, improved CGI space battles also became a fan favourite. Throughout the increasingly serialised story arc there were rebellious factions within the different establishments: Kira had belonged to the Shakaar resistance cell; The Maquis was Starfleet vs Cardassians; Section 31 was a secret Starfleet group; The True Way was a Bajoran group opposed to peace; the Cardassians had their Obsidian Order and the Romulans their Gestapo-like Tal Shiar. Yet for all its constant bickering and espionage (even Bashir got to be James Bond!), there was always some contemporary social commentary lurking: the Ferengi were used as a comedic foil to frown on materialistic greed; drugs were looked at via the Jem'Hadar foot soldiers' addiction to Ketracel White. [+]
Perhaps Sisko summed up the real heart of things: "Bajor doesn't need a man, it needs a legend". A future vision that retains a place for religion and spirituality turned out to be Deep Space Nine's first best destiny. -Paul Tonks.

Review Fremantle Home Entertainment / Cabaret - 30th Anniversary Special Edition [1972]
Actors & Directors
  • Joel Grey
  • Helmut Griem
  • Fritz Wepper
  • Liza Minnelli
  • Michael York
  • Bob Fosse
Release date: 2002-09-09
Run time: 119 min.
Creator: John Van Druten
RRP: £12.99
Price: £12.95

Review Cabaret - 30th Anniversary Special Edition [1972] / Fremantle Home Entertainment:

Cabaret is one of those film musicals whose cultural and stylistic influence extend well beyond the cinema. It confirmed Bob Fosse's status as one of the boldest choreographers of the 20th century and gave Liza Minnelli an early peak in a film career which would never scale such heights again. Minnelli is both the film's strength-on its own merits her performance is an Oscar-winning tour de force-and weakness. The real Sally Bowles was a third-rate performer and just one of a rich gallery of characters; here, the constant allowances for Minnelli's star turns and mannerisms ultimately throw the story off balance. But the source material is impeccable: Kander and Ebb's stage show, based on the autobiographical stories of Christopher Isherwood, has long since been acknowledged a classic. The songs, augmented by some new numbers in the film, are ageless. Joel Grey from the original Broadway production is the Emcee, the master of ceremonies who, with his Kit Kat Klub girls, provides a depraved Greek chorus satirising the rise of the Nazi regime and the lazy complacency of the 1930s Berlin cabaret-goers. The "divine decadence" tag is only part of the story, though. Cabaret still works a sinister, uncomfortable magic which sets it apart as a uniquely powerful film musical. On the DVD: Cabaret's 30th Anniversary Special Edition is packed with extras which include a scratchy "making of" documentary from 1972 and a retrospective from 1997, the latter featuring reminiscences from the cast. [+]
There's also the original theatrical trailer, though in the absence of the late director Fosse the lack of some kind of commentary is a disappointment. The picture itself, presented in widescreen 16:9 letterbox format with a Dolby Digital 2. 0 stereo soundtrack, gleams as sharply, visually and aurally, as it did on its first release. -Piers Ford.

Review Odyssey Video / Clarissa [1991]
Actors & Directors
  • Lynsey Baxter
  • Sean Bean
  • Saskia Wickham
  • Jeffrey Wickham
  • Robert Bierman
  • Jonathan Phillips
Release date: 2003-05-19
Run time: 194 min.
Creator: Samuel Richardson
RRP: £12.99
Price: £36.95

Review Clarissa [1991] / Odyssey Video:


Review Warner Home Video / Miss Marple - Murder At The Gallop [1963]
Actors & Directors
  • Margaret Rutherford
  • George Pollock
  • Flora Robson
  • Stringer Davis
  • Charles 'Bud' Tingwell
  • Robert Morley
Release date: 2000-08-21
Run time: 87 min.
Creator: James P. Cavanagh
Price: £5.99

Review Miss Marple - Murder At The Gallop [1963] / Warner Home Video:


Actors & Directors
  • Philip Jackson
  • Pauline Moran
  • David Suchet
  • Richard Bebb
  • Hugh Fraser
Release date: 2004-04-19
Creator: Nick Elliott
RRP: £9.99
Price: £6.85

Review Poirot - Agatha Christie's Poirot - 5 Little Pigs [1989] / Granada Media:


Review Walt Disney Home Video / White Fang [1991]
Actors & Directors
  • Susan Hogan
  • Ethan Hawke
  • James Remar
  • Randal Kleiser
  • Seymour Cassel
  • Klaus Maria Brandauer
Release date: 1994-10-03
Run time: 104 min.
Creator: Nick Thiel
RRP: £10.99
Price: £14.99

Review White Fang [1991] / Walt Disney Home Video:


Review Tartan Video / Wild Side [1998]
Actors & Directors
  • Donald Cammell
  • Christopher Walken
  • Anne Heche
  • Steven Bauer
  • Allen Garfield
  • Joan Chen
Release date: 2000-11-20
Run time: 111 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £3.57

Review Wild Side [1998] / Tartan Video:


Review Sony Pictures Home Entertainment / Legends Of The Fall / The Devil's Own [1997]
Actors & Directors
  • Harrison Ford
  • Alan J. Pakula
  • Julia Ormond
  • Brad Pitt
  • Aidan Quinn
  • Edward Zwick
  • Anthony Hopkins
Release date: 1999-04-12
Run time: 235 min.
Creator: William D. Wittliff
RRP: £9.99
Price: £2.60

Review Legends Of The Fall / The Devil's Own [1997] / Sony Pictures Home Entertainment:


Review 4 Front Video / The Cotton Club [1984]
Actors & Directors
  • Diane Lane
  • Lonette McKee
  • Gregory Hines
  • Francis Ford Coppola
  • Richard Gere
  • Bob Hoskins
Release date: 2001-06-04
Run time: 123 min.
Creator: William Kennedy
RRP: £5.99
Price: £3.85

Review The Cotton Club [1984] / 4 Front Video:

The Cotton Club is routinely eclipsed by the controversies that surrounded its tumultuous production, but the film itself offers abundant pleasures that should not be overlooked. If Apocalypse Now represents the triumph of director Francis Coppola's perilous ambition, then The Cotton Club represents the ungainly glory of uncontrolled genius, as brilliant as it is out of its depth. As an upscale homage to classic gangster films it's frequently astonishing, cramming a thick novel's worth of plot and characters into 129 minutes, gloriously serviced by impeccable production design, elegant cinematography, and stylistic flourishes that show Coppola at the top of his game. What The Cotton Club lacks is cohesion. Written by Coppola and novelist William Kennedy (then enjoying the peak of his critical acclaim), the film struggles to exceed the narrative scope of The Godfather, but its multiple early-'30s plotlines fail to form any strong connective tissue. It's three (or four) movies in one, with cornet player Dixie Dwyer (Richard Gere, playing his own jazzy solos) drifting from one story to the next-loving a young, ambitious vamp (Diane Lane, with whom Gere shares precious little chemistry), enjoying the success of a hot-shot hoofer (Gregory Hines), and protecting his brazen brother (Coppola's then-newcomer nephew, Nicolas Cage) from the deadly temper of mob boss "Dutch" Schultz (James Remar). Bob Hoskins and Fred Gwynne also score big in grand supporting roles, but The Cotton Club is perhaps best appreciated for its meticulous recreation of Harlem's Cotton Club heyday, and the brilliant music (Ellington, Calloway, etc. ) that brought rhythm to gangland's rat-a-tat-tat. -Jeff Shannon, Amazon. com.

Review Blue Dolphin Film and Video / The Ninth Configuration [1981]
Actors & Directors
  • Stacy Keach
  • Scott Wilson
  • Ed Flanders
  • William Peter Blatty
  • Jason Miller
  • Neville Brand
Release date: 2002-11-21
Run time: 108 min.
Creator: William Paul
Price: £12.99

Review The Ninth Configuration [1981] / Blue Dolphin Film and Video:

The lunatics are running the asylum in The Ninth Configuration-but are they really lunatics? Is Colonel Kane (Stacy Keach) really a noted psychiatrist assigned to supervise patients in an experimental government clinic or is he really "Killer" Kane, a decorated US Marine who committed atrocities in Vietnam before going insane? These are just some of the puzzles that will eventually be solved in this giddy and often brilliant drama created by William Peter Blatty, who wrote The Exorcist before going on to direct this adaptation of his own novel, Twinkle, Twinkle, Killer Kane. A satirical study of war's traumatic aftermath, the film uses battle psychosis as the springboard for a delirious and scathingly intelligent human tragedy, laced with some of the wittiest dialogue you're ever likely to hear. The film boasts a veritable menagerie of crazy characters, all brought vividly to life by a stellar supporting cast. One patient is preparing a production of Shakespeare with an all-dog cast. Another is convinced he's Superman and the resident doctor can't seem to find his trousers. But there's a method to this madness and it takes a barroom brawl-one of the most memorable in film history-to provide the harsh slap of reality to Blatty's elaborate group therapy scheme. When the true purpose of The Ninth Configuration is revealed, the film (and particularly the fine performances of Keach and Wilson) offers a depth of compassionate sanity that may well take you completely by surprise. -Jeff Shannon, Amazon. com.

Review Warner Home Video / The Devils [1971]
Actors & Directors
  • Max Adrian
  • Vanessa Redgrave
  • Gemma Jones
  • Ken Russell
  • Oliver Reed
  • Dudley Sutton
Release date: 1997-09-08
Run time: 107 min.
Creator: John Whiting
RRP: £12.99
Price: £18.67

Review The Devils [1971] / Warner Home Video:


Review Warner Home Video / Belle De Jour (1967)
Actors & Directors
  • Pierre Clémenti
  • Michel Piccoli
  • Catherine Deneuve
  • Jean Sorel
  • Luis Buñuel
  • Geneviève Page
Release date: 2000-05-15
Run time: 95 min.
Creator: Joseph Kessel
RRP: £9.99
Price: £8.39

Review Belle De Jour (1967) / Warner Home Video:


Actors & Directors
  • Bob Hoskins
  • Geoffrey Chater
  • Anthony Hopkins
  • Jonathan Miller
  • Penelope Wilton
  • Rosemary Leach
Run time: 206 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £19.94

Review Othello (1990) (The BBC Shakespeare Collection) / BBC Enterprises BBCV4338:

The BBC Shakespeare Tv-production from 1990, featuring an all-star cast, headed by Anthony Hopkins(The Elephant Man, Silence Of The Lambs, & The World's Fastest Indian) as Othello, with Bob Hoskins (Mona Lisa, Mermaids & The Long Good Friday) as Iago and Penelope Wilton (Clockwise, Tv's Ever Decreasing Circles) as Desdemona. Superbly produced & directed by Jonathan Miller),this is one of the finest versions of Shakespeare classic play. This is released on two videos, part one runs. 107 mins & part two runs. 99 mins.

Review Warner Home Video / Cal [1984]
Actors & Directors
  • Pat O'Connor
  • John Lynch
  • John Kavanagh
  • Ray McAnally
  • Donal McCann
  • Helen Mirren
Release date: 1995-11-27
Run time: 99 min.
Creator: Bernard MacLaverty
RRP: £5.99
Price: £44.99

Review Cal [1984] / Warner Home Video:


Review Buena Vista / High Heels & Low Lifes [2001]
Actors & Directors
  • Mary McCormack
  • Minnie Driver
  • Kevin McNally
  • Danny Dyer
  • Mark Williams
  • Mel Smith
Release date: 2002-05-13
Run time: 86 min.
Creator: Georgia Pritchett
RRP: £12.99
Price: £0.49

Review High Heels & Low Lifes [2001] / Buena Vista:

With its limp efforts to mix comedy and drama, High Heels and Low Lifes is in many ways a faltering attempt to combine the most successful aspects of recent British cinema. Directed by Mel Smith (whose The Tall Guy was unarguably a fine film), the movie tries to work the modern gangster genre into a more farcical setting. By basing his film on the story of two friends Frances (Mary McCormack) and Shannon (Minnie Driver), Smith is aiming for a Thelma & Louise feel, but falls some way short of the mark. Having literally stumbled into a local bank robbery, the pair devise a plan to blackmail the gang behind the heist-a plan that descends into a rather predictable farce. McCormack certainly makes energetic use of the limited material she has to work with, and while kudos must go to Driver for picking a low-budget British film, she simply has been much better in her Hollywood work (notably the more understated humour of Grosse Pointe Blank). Indeed, its female leads aside, the cast is almost predominantly assembled from British television comedy shows, with Mark Williams from The Fast Show and Big Train's Danny Dyer acquitting themselves particularly well. Overall, though, it's not an awful lot to write home about. On the DVD: High Heels and Low Lifes the DVD, like the film itself, is fairly average. The soundtrack (a vibrant mix of old and new) certainly sounds good and Smith's snappy visual style is well represented. The special features, however, fail to offer us anything particularly new or exciting, featuring the now standard featurette, audio commentary from Smith and writer Kim Fuller, and a peculiar thing called an "action overload"-essentially the trailer without the voiceover. [+]
-Phil Udell.

Actors & Directors
  • Margaret Leighton
  • James Mason
  • Sarah Miles
  • Robert Morley
  • Michael York
  • Joseph Hardy
Release date: 2000-02-28
Run time: 119 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £3.98

Review Great Expectations [1974] / ITV DVD:


Review 4 Front Video / No Escape [1994]
Actors & Directors
  • Lance Henriksen
  • Kevin Dillon
  • Stuart Wilson
  • Ray Liotta
  • Kevin J. O'Connor
  • Martin Campbell
Release date: 1996-09-23
Run time: 118 min.
Creator: Richard Herley
RRP: £5.99
Price: £4.74

Review No Escape [1994] / 4 Front Video:


Review Universal Pictures UK / About A Boy / Notting Hill / Mickey Blue Eyes [1999]
Actors & Directors
  • James Caan
  • Gina McKee
  • Chris Weitz
  • Kelly Makin
  • Tim McInnerny
  • Paul Weitz
  • Hugh Grant
  • James Dreyfus
  • Roger Michell
Release date: 2003-09-15
Run time: 314 min.
Price: £12.99

Review About A Boy / Notting Hill / Mickey Blue Eyes [1999] / Universal Pictures UK:


Review Paramount Home Entertainment / Chinatown [1974]
Actors & Directors
  • Roman Polanski
  • John Hillerman
  • John Huston
  • Jack Nicholson
  • Perry Lopez
  • Faye Dunaway
Release date: 2001-05-07
Run time: 125 min.
Creator: Robert Towne
Price: £11.99

Review Chinatown [1974] / Paramount Home Entertainment:

Roman Polanski's brooding film noir exposes the darkest side of the land of sunshine, the Los Angeles of the 1930s, where power is the only currency-and the only real thing worth buying. Jack Nicholson is J J Gittes, a private eye in the Chandler mould, who during a routine straying-spouse investigation finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into a jigsaw puzzle of clues and corruption. The glamorous Evelyn Mulwray (a dazzling Faye Dunaway) and her titanic father, Noah Cross (John Huston), are at the black-hole centre of this tale of treachery, incest and political bribery. The crackling, hard-bitten script by Robert Towne won a well-deserved Oscar, and the muted colour cinematography makes the goings-on seem both bleak and impossibly vibrant. Polanski himself has a brief, memorable cameo as the thug who tangles with Nicholson's nose. Chinatown is one of the greatest, most completely satisfying crime films of all time. -Anne Hurley Roman Polanski's brooding film noir exposes the darkest side of the land of sunshine, the Los Angeles of the 1930s, where power is the only currency-and the only real thing worth buying. Jack Nicholson is JJ Gittes, a private eye in the Chandler mould, who during a routine straying-spouse investigation finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into a jigsaw puzzle of clues and corruption. The glamorous Evelyn Mulwray (a dazzling Faye Dunaway) and her titanic father, Noah Cross (John Huston), are at the black-hole centre of this tale of treachery, incest, and political bribery. The crackling, hard-bitten script by Robert Towne won a well-deserved Oscar, and the muted colour cinematography makes the goings-on seem both bleak and impossibly vibrant. [+]
Polanski himself has a brief, memorable cameo as the thug who tangles with Nicholson's nose. One of the greatest, most completely satisfying crime films of all time. -Anne Hurley, Amazon. com.

Models & Brands:
Obsession [1949], Star Trek : Deep Space Nine - Vol. 7.1 - Image In The Sand / Shadows And Symbols [1995], Cabaret - 30th Anniversary Special Edition [1972], Clarissa [1991], Miss Marple - Murder At The Gallop [1963], Poirot - Agatha Christie's Poirot - 5 Little Pigs [1989], White Fang [1991], Wild Side [1998], Legends Of The Fall / The Devil's Own [1997], The Cotton Club [1984], The Ninth Configuration [1981], The Devils [1971], Belle De Jour (1967), Othello (1990) (The BBC Shakespeare Collection), Cal [1984], High Heels & Low Lifes [2001], Great Expectations [1974], No Escape [1994], About A Boy / Notting Hill / Mickey Blue Eyes [1999], Chinatown [1974]

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