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Review Universal Studios / Deliver Us From Eva [2002] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Essence Atkins
  • LL Cool J
  • Duane Martin
  • Gary Hardwick
  • Robinne Lee
  • Gabrielle Union
Release date: 2003-06-17
Run time: 105 min.
Creator: James Iver Mattson
Price: £4.84

Review Deliver Us From Eva [2002] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Universal Studios:


Review Paramount Home Entertainment (UK) / Grease 2 [1982]
Actors & Directors
  • Lorna Luft
  • Patricia Birch
  • Michelle Pfeiffer
  • Maureen Teefy
  • Maxwell Caulfield
  • Alison Price
Release date: 2003-09-01
Run time: 109 min.
Creator: Ken Finkleman
RRP: £15.99
Price: £7.99

Review Grease 2 [1982] / Paramount Home Entertainment (UK):


Review Henstooth Video / Babycakes [1989] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Paul Benedict
  • Nada Despotovich
  • Betty Buckley
  • Craig Sheffer
  • Paul Schneider
  • Ricki Lake
Release date: 2002-04-23
Run time: 100 min.
Creator: Jayne Bieber
Price: £13.18

Review Babycakes [1989] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Henstooth Video:


Review Warner Home Video / Wildcats [1986] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Michael Ritchie
  • Swoosie Kurtz
  • James Keach
  • Goldie Hawn
  • Robyn Lively
  • Brandy Gold
Release date: 2003-04-01
Run time: 106 min.
Creator: Ezra Sacks
Price: £4.93

Review Wildcats [1986] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Warner Home Video:


Review Prism Leisure / Swimming With Sharks [1996]
Actors & Directors
  • Frank Whaley
  • T.E. Russell
  • Benicio Del Toro
  • Michelle Forbes
  • Kevin Spacey
  • George Huang
Release date: 2005-09-19
Run time: 95 min.
Creator: Stephen Israel
RRP: £15.99
Price: £2.98

Review Swimming With Sharks [1996] / Prism Leisure:

A harsh, cutting, and wickedly funny look into the darker side of show business, Swimming with Sharks tells the story of a naive and eager assistant (Frank Whaley) and his slide into the cut-throat world of Hollywood power struggles. Whaley goes to work for a top movie executive (Kevin Spacey) who almost immediately begins to wear down his new assistant's exuberance with his whining, egomaniacal tantrums and relentless verbal abuse, even as he promises his young charge a chance to move up the ladder. Culminating in a violent and ultimately ironic confrontation between mentor and protégé, this brutal 1994 black comedy benefits from some razor-sharp writing and terrific comic turns from both Whaley (Hoffa) as one whose idealism is irrevocably shattered, and Spacey (Seven, L. A. Confidential), deliciously funny as a caustic, belligerent, and ultimately sad figure. A savage indictment of both the movie business and the price of ambition, Swimming with Sharks is one of the best black comedies in recent years. -Robert Lane Swimming with Sharks is a worthwhile contribution to the extensive list of films in which Hollywood savages itself and its local manners. In flashbacks we watch junior executive Guy remorselessly humiliated by his boss Buddy; in the film's present time, Guy breaks into Buddy's house and brutalises and tortures him in return. What makes the film work is inevitably Kevin Spacey's savage performance as Buddy, a bully and a toady who had a heart once but gave it up to his career producing schlock; though Buddy rants and raves and delivers killer one-liners, much of the strength of the performance is in subtle work with his eyes. Frank Whaley is almost equally fine as Guy in all the two-hander scenes; while Michelle Forbes is convincing as the woman director who forms a tentative alliance with Guy. [+]
George Huang's direction is perfectly competent: it never gets in the way of his fine script and the extraordinary performances. On the DVD: Swimming with Sharks comes to DVD in its original widescreen aspect ratio of 1. 85:1. There's an extensive commentary by George Huang in which he talks us through his years of misery in a junior studio job and is entertaining about all the horrid bosses whose bad behaviour-abuse, exploitation, pretending to praise him to a dead phone-he has combined into Buddy. He is also charmingly modest about the major if abrasive contribution Kevin Spacey made to the film, not only as actor but also as someone who would always tell a director if he did something less than brilliant. -Roz Kaveney.

Review Lionsgate / The Doom Generation [1998] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Johnathon Schaech
  • James Duval
  • Gregg Araki
  • Cress Williams
  • Rose McGowan
  • Dwayne R. Goettel
Release date: 2007-08-07
Run time: 85 min.
Creator: Pascal Caucheteux
Price: £6.05

Review The Doom Generation [1998] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Lionsgate:

Made for a fraction of the cost of Oliver Stone's similarly themed Natural Born Killers, Gregg Araki's The Doom Generation is more persuasively outrageous in its cultural satire, scarier in its violence and more profound in its vision of a hate-fuelled, media-drunk America seemingly determined to eat its young and dwell stupidly on their vengeance. Rose McGowan (Scream), James Duval (Nowhere) and Johnathon Schaech (That Thing You Do!) star as a trio of friends (Schaech's character actually being a complete stranger who steps into their car and into their lives one club-hopping night) who end up on a sex-and-crime spree that draws the fixed stare of television coverage. Araki makes a case for their continuing innocence in a society whose anti-outsider malevolence is barely disguised in the media but is quite naked out in the heartland, where a punishing level of bigotry is not unknown. Araki's jokes and techniques are crude yet forceful, and his anger is absolutely clear where Stone's was obscured and overreaching. The climax is among the most shattering and enraged scenes of 90s cinema. The DVD includes cast information, a theatrical trailer, and French and Spanish subtitles. -Tom Keogh.

Review Warner Home Video / The Clock [1945] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Tex Avery
  • Judy Garland
  • James Gleason
  • Vincente Minnelli
  • Keenan Wynn
  • Robert Walker
  • Marshall Thompson
Release date: 2007-02-06
Run time: 90 min.
Creator: Robert Nathan
Price: £8.93

Review The Clock [1945] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Warner Home Video:


Review ITV DVD / Emma [1996]
Actors & Directors
  • Bernard Hepton
  • Diarmuid Lawrence
  • Mark Strong
  • Samantha Bond
  • Kate Beckinsale
  • James Hazeldine
Release date: 2004-09-27
Run time: 107 min.
Creator: Jane Austen
RRP: £12.99
Price: £5.52

Review Emma [1996] / ITV DVD:


Review Paramount Home Entertainment / Partners [1982] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Jennifer Ashley
  • Ryan O'Neal
  • John Hurt
  • Robyn Douglass
  • Denise Galik
Release date: 2008-07-01
Run time: 93 min.
Price: £6.07

Review Partners [1982] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Paramount Home Entertainment:


Review MGM Home Entertainment / Tortilla Soup [2002]
Actors & Directors
  • María Ripoll
  • Hector Elizondo|Jacqueline Obradors|Tamara Mello
Release date: 2003-06-23
Run time: 100 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £2.99

Review Tortilla Soup [2002] / MGM Home Entertainment:

Food, life and love share a common lineage going back to antiquity, and Tortilla Soup remakes the connection with pathos and humour. The scenario of three daughters trying to make the break with their domineering father might sound heavy-going, but Hector Elizondo is wonderfully understated as Martin-the patriarchal father who conveys his love through the opulent Mexican lunches he prepares for his daughters each Sunday. The daughters are full of character and are a well-contrasted trio: Leticia (Elizabeth Peña), school-teacher and devout Christian whose life is transformed by the love letters she starts receiving; Carmen (Jacqueline Obradors), business graduate and rising executive whose real goal is to convince her father of her culinary prowess; and Maribel (Tamara Mello), keen to put college on hold and see the world with her new boyfriend. The interaction between them has a theatrical immediacy, and there are excellent contributions from Nikolai Kinsky as Brazilian free-spirit Andy, Paul Rodriquez as gauche baseball coach Orlando and Raquel Welch as the cringingly over-the-top Hortensia. Director María Ripoli gets some persuasive ensemble acting-making the most of a witty and touching script—-along with Mexican cuisine prepared under the supervision of specialist chefs Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger. As a movie about growing-up and taking control, Tortilla Soup is as irresistible as the food you'll see on screen-and equally worth savouring. -Richard Whitehouse.

Review Momentum Pictures / Cookie's Fortune [1999]
Actors & Directors
  • Liv Tyler
  • Chris O'Donnell
  • Robert Altman
  • Charles S. Dutton
  • Julianne Moore
  • Glenn Close
Release date: 2002-03-25
Run time: 118 min.
Creator: Anne Rapp
RRP: £15.99
Price: £0.78

Review Cookie's Fortune [1999] / Momentum Pictures:

Robert Altman's films are generally known for their cool misanthropy, but Cookie's Fortune finds the veteran director in atypically genial mood. Set in a sleepy Mississippi township, it takes in suicide, fraud and wrongful arrest, but there's never any feeling of peril. A white Southern sheriff; a black man held for the murder of an elderly white woman; all the ingredients for an explosion of racist venom, you'd think. But no, not this time. The dead woman is the Cookie of the title, sweetly dappy, who decides to join her beloved dead husband; the black man is Willis, her live-in factotum. But Cookie's snobbish niece Camille (Glenn Close, pulling out a few extra stops on her Cruella DeVil persona) can't bear the thought of suicide besmirching the family name, and fixes the evidence so that Willis is accused of murder. Not that the sheriff believes it for a second; hell, he and Willis go fishing together. As ever, Altman directs with freewheeling aplomb and ropes in a whole cast of eccentric characters, all of whom dive into their roles with gusto. [+]
Julianne Moore, as Camille's dippy sister, gets some of the most outrageous scenes; her gloriously inept performance in Wilde's Salome for the local amateur production has to be seen to be disbelieved. OK, maybe the South was never as lazily easy-going and largely colour-blind as it's presented here; but it's hard not to suspend disbelief and relax into this beguilingly shaggy-doggish Southern comfort of a movie. On the DVD: the usual ingredients-theatrical trailer, written production notes, a 10-minute featurette on the making of the movie and brief snatches of interview with the director and his lead players. No revelations, but everyone seems to have had a genuinely good time-as always the actors adore working with Altman. Widescreen (1. 85:1) ratio and Dolby 5. 1 make the most of his practised eye (and ear) for detail. -Philip Kemp.

Review Universal Studios / Once Around [1991] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Laura San Giacomo
  • Gena Rowlands
  • Lasse Hallström
  • Holly Hunter
  • Danny Aiello
  • Richard Dreyfuss
Release date: 2004-12-28
Run time: 115 min.
Creator: G. Mac Brown
Price: £3.50

Review Once Around [1991] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Universal Studios:


Review Funimation Prod / Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Season 2 - Part 2 (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Cam Clarke
  • Barry Gordon
  • James Avery
  • Rob Paulsen
  • Jennifer Darling
Release date: 2008-10-21
Run time: 308 min.
Creator: Larry Parr
Price: £7.13

Review Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Season 2 - Part 2 (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Funimation Prod:


Review Animeigo / The Ballad of Narayama [1983] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Seiji Kurasaki
  • Sumiko Sakamoto
  • Aki Takejo
  • Shohei Imamura
  • Tonpei Hidari
  • Ken Ogata
Release date: 2008-06-10
Run time: 130 min.
Creator: Jiro Tomoda
Price: £8.65

Review The Ballad of Narayama [1983] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Animeigo:


Review Warner Home Video / Dogfight [1991] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Anthony Clark
  • Richard Panebianco
  • Mitchell Whitfield
  • Nancy Savoca
  • Lili Taylor
  • River Phoenix
Release date: 2003-01-07
Run time: 89 min.
Creator: Bob Comfort
Price: £5.91

Review Dogfight [1991] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Warner Home Video:


Review UMBRELLA / Travelling North
Actors & Directors
  • Graham Kennedy
  • Julia Blake
  • Henri Szeps
  • Leo McKern
  • Carl Schultz
  • Michele Fawdon
Release date: 2004-06-25
Run time: 93 min.
Creator: David Williamson
RRP: £19.99
Price: £3.54

Review Travelling North / UMBRELLA:


Review Cinema Club / The Beiderbecke Affair [1985]
Actors & Directors
  • Frank W. Smith
  • David Reynolds
Release date: 2003-11-10
Run time: 300 min.
RRP: £9.99
Price: £69.99

Review The Beiderbecke Affair [1985] / Cinema Club:


Review Warner Home Video / The Joan Crawford Collection, Vol. 2 (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • David Miller
  • Charles Walters
  • Melvyn Douglas
  • Clarence Brown
  • Michael Wilding
  • Clark Gable
  • Zachary Scott
  • Friz Freleng
  • Frank Borzage
  • Joan Crawford
Release date: 2008-02-12
Run time: 495 min.
Price: £25.93

Review The Joan Crawford Collection, Vol. 2 (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Warner Home Video:


Review Warner Home Video / Convoy [1978]
Actors & Directors
  • Madge Sinclair
  • Burt Young
  • Sam Peckinpah
  • Ernest Borgnine
  • Ali MacGraw
  • Kris Kristofferson
Release date: 2001-03-05
Run time: 106 min.
Creator: Bill L. Norton
Price: £13.99

Review Convoy [1978] / Warner Home Video:

Even in the tiny genre of films based on songs, Convoy is a strange effort-CW McCall's 1977 CB radio-themed novelty hit was just a collection of trucker slang, but here it is gussied up by Sam Peckinpah (no less) as a big rig reprise of The Wild Bunch with Kris Kristofferson as trucker outlaw hero Rubber Duck and a wonderfully oversized Ernest Borgnine as "Dirty Lyle", the "bear" who hates "breakers" and finally decides to call in the National Guard to help him enforce traffic laws with machine guns. The plot is almost invisible, as Rubber Duck and his breaker buddies just up and decide to trundle their lorries across the Western States in a dash for Mexico (no one ever mentions delivering their loads to intended destinations) and becoming such a folk hero that the creepy governor (Seymour Cassell) tries to cash in. Kristofferson and Borgnine were old Peckinpah hands, as is heroine Ali MacGraw (a characterless photographer) and sidekick Burt Young ("Love Machine" aka "Pigpen"), and there's a lot of business about cops and outlaws who mirror each other, but the main attraction is the visuals-huge trucks rolling across desert roads in clouds of dust, police cars crashing through billboards, trucks demolishing a corrupt small town. There are traces of road-movie melancholia in the depressed cafes, jails and laybys where free spirits are broken, but it's still mostly a cash-in on Smokey and the Bandit with a few rags of poetry tossed into the mix. On the DVD: A letterboxed print, enhanced for 16x9, looks pretty good, with enough widescreen to get all the trucks into the image. But otherwise this is the sort of release that passes off "chapter search" and "multilingual menus" as extras, although there are basic filmographies for the principal and a poster/photo album. The mono soundtrack comes in English, French, Spanish and Italian. -Kim Newman.

Review Columbia TriStar / Henry Fool [1998] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Maria Porter
  • Thomas Jay Ryan
  • Parker Posey
  • Hal Hartley
  • James Saito
  • James Urbaniak
Release date: 2003-12-16
Run time: 137 min.
Creator: Larry Meistrich
Price: £6.34

Review Henry Fool [1998] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Columbia TriStar:

Simon (James Urbaniak), a shy garbageman, lives with his sister (Parker Posey of Party Girl and Waiting for Guffman, among dozens of other movies) and mother, both of whom treat him with minimal respect. Into Simon's life comes Henry Fool (Thomas Jay Ryan), a heavy-drinking self-proclaimed great writer who encourages/provokes Simon to write an enormous poem-a poem that becomes the source of great controversy, proclaimed by some as a great work of art, by others as perverse trash. As Simon's star rises, he tries to draw attention to Henry's work as well, to little avail. Though the premise seems simple, Henry Fool takes on something of an epic sweep as it follows the effects of fame on Simon and Henry's lives. This rumination on art and inspiration was hailed by some critics as the best film yet by writer/director Hal Hartley (Trust, Simple Men, Amateur), while others felt it brought out his worst indulgences. All of Hartley's movies defy easy interpretation, and Henry Fool is no exception. Still, it is a rare film that even tries to tackle such subjects, let alone does so with a combination of intelligence and humour (ranging from verbal quirkiness to scatological embarrassment). Hartley's films, surprisingly enough, feel warmer and more accessible on video; perhaps watching them in one's home makes them seem more intimate and less abstract. -Bret Fetzer.

Models & Brands:
Deliver Us From Eva [2002] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Grease 2 [1982], Babycakes [1989] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Wildcats [1986] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Swimming With Sharks [1996], The Doom Generation [1998] (REGION 1) (NTSC), The Clock [1945] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Emma [1996], Partners [1982] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Tortilla Soup [2002], Cookie's Fortune [1999], Once Around [1991] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Season 2 - Part 2 (REGION 1) (NTSC), The Ballad of Narayama [1983] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Dogfight [1991] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Travelling North, The Beiderbecke Affair [1985], The Joan Crawford Collection, Vol. 2 (REGION 1) (NTSC), Convoy [1978], Henry Fool [1998] (REGION 1) (NTSC)

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