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Review CSI: Ny / CSI: Crime Scene Investigation - New York - Season 2 Part 1
Release date: 2006-07-17
RRP: £39.99
Price: £8.53

Review CSI: Crime Scene Investigation - New York - Season 2 Part 1 / CSI: Ny:


Review CSI: Miami / CSI: Crime Scene Investigation - Miami - Season 1 Part 1
Release date: 2004-09-06
RRP: £40.99
Price: £9.51

Review CSI: Crime Scene Investigation - Miami - Season 1 Part 1 / CSI: Miami:

CSI: Miami follows the same super-successful formula as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Fortunately, this instantly popular spin-off established its own unique identity from the start. Like Gil Grissom's motley crew, the Dade County criminalists of CSI: Miami solve murders using forensic science. Unlike the Vegas crew, however, they're cops with the power to arrest, their coroner talks to dead people, and almost everybody speaks Spanish. Sometimes their crime scene is a swamp, sometimes a resort hotel. Either way, the skies are always sunny, the gators always biting. Real-life Florida resident David Caruso-playing Lt Horatio Caine, the head honcho-is joined by Khandi Alexander (NewsRadio) as coroner Alexx Woods, Emily Procter (The West Wing) as ballistics expert Calleigh Duquesne, Adam Rodriguez (Roswell) as underwater recovery expert Eric Delko, and featured player Rory Cochrane (Dazed and Confused) as Tim "Speed" Speedle-though Cochrane wouldn't become a full-fledged cast member until the 12th episode ("Entrance Wound"). Kim Delaney (Caruso's former NYPD Blue cast mate) features in the first few episodes, but left after the tenth, reportedly due to a lack of chemistry with Caruso. Just as CSI has made the most of its location with stories about showgirls and casino owners, so has CSI: Miami exploited its surroundings for all they're worth. Like its parent show, CSI: Miami quickly became a US ratings powerhouse and was followed by CSI: New York in 2004. [+]
-Kathleen C. Fennessy.

Review Mgm Home Ent. (Europe) Ltd. / James Bond - Goldfinger (Ultimate Edition 2 Disc Set) [1964]
Actors & Directors
  • Harold Sakata
  • Sean Connery
  • Guy Hamilton
  • Gert Frobe
  • Shirley Eaton
  • Honor Blackman
Release date: 2006-07-17
Run time: 105 min.
RRP: £16.99
Price: £3.05

Review James Bond - Goldfinger (Ultimate Edition 2 Disc Set) [1964] / Mgm Home Ent. (Europe) Ltd.:


Review Sony Pictures Home Entertainment / 10 Rillington Place (Special Edition) [1970]
Actors & Directors
  • Richard Fleischer
  • Isobel Black
  • Judy Geeson
  • Pat Heywood (II)
  • John Hurt
  • Richard Attenborough
Release date: 2004-03-29
Run time: 106 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £3.76

Review 10 Rillington Place (Special Edition) [1970] / Sony Pictures Home Entertainment:


Review Sony Pictures Home Entertainment / Moonlighting - Complete Seasons 1 and 2
Actors & Directors
  • Bruce Willis
  • Cybill Shepherd
  • Rebecca Stanley
  • James Karen
  • Allyce Beasley
Release date: 2008-10-06
Run time: 1152 min.
RRP: £29.99
Price: £14.98

Review Moonlighting - Complete Seasons 1 and 2 / Sony Pictures Home Entertainment:

Glamorous Maddie Hayes (Cybill Shepherd) is an ex-model with a problem-her accountant just ran off with her money. Granted, he did leave her with a few broken-down businesses. One happens to be a detective agency run by charming loudmouth David Addison (Bruce Willis). Her attempt to shutter the agency fails when they stumble across a crime and David convinces Maddie to help him solve it. And with that, one of television's most popular partnerships was born. Moonlighting made a star out of newcomer Willis and turned Shepherd (Taxi Driver), who had already found fame through fashion and film, into a bona fide TV star. Created for TV by Glenn Gordon Caron (Remington Steele), the romantic comedy/detective drama was a mid-season replacement that quickly became a hit. There were only six episodes in the first season, including the two-part pilot, but 18 were produced for the second. The first two seasons attracted an eclectic array of guest stars, including Tim Robbins ("Gunfight at the So-So Corral") and Whoopi Goldberg ("Camille"), who earned an Emmy nomination for her performance. The most notable guest was surely Orson Welles, who introduces the black and white noir spoof "The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice". [+]
It would be his final TV appearance. Moonlighting ran for three more years. While the Emmy-winning Willis would abandon TV for the big screen, Shepherd found subsequent small screen success with Cybill. Caron, meanwhile, would launch another mid-season replacement series which became a surprise hit: NBC's Medium with Patricia Arquette. -Kathleen C. Fennessy, Amazon. com.

Review Midsomer Murders / Midsomer Murders - Midsomer Life
Release date: 2008-10-06
Run time: 95 min.
RRP: £16.99
Price: £10.98

Review Midsomer Murders - Midsomer Life / Midsomer Murders:


Review Universal Pictures UK / Red Dragon [2002]
Actors & Directors
  • Edward Norton
  • Emily Watson
  • Harvey Keitel
  • Anthony Hopkins
  • Brett Ratner
  • Ralph Fiennes
Release date: 2004-02-12
Run time: 121 min.
RRP: £9.99
Price: £2.98

Review Red Dragon [2002] / Universal Pictures UK:

A lot could've gone wrong in Red Dragon, but the movie exceeds expectations. Replacing the acclaimed Manhunter as an "official" entry in the Hannibal Lecter trilogy, this topnotch thriller-the second adaptation of Thomas Harris's first Lecter novel-returns to the fertile soil of The Silence of the Lambs, serving as both prequel and heir to the legacy of Lecter as portrayed, with mischievous menace, by the great Anthony Hopkins. Familiar faces and locations reappear (along with Lambs screenwriter Ted Tally) as Lecter coaches FBI profiler Will Graham (Edward Norton) in tracking the horrific "Tooth Fairy" killer (Ralph Fiennes), whose transformative killing spree is inspired by a William Blake painting. By dutifully serving Harris's potent material, Tally and director Brett Ratner craft a suspenseful film worthy of its predecessors, bringing Hopkins full circle as one of the cinema's all-time greatest villains. With overtones of Psycho and a superb supporting cast, Red Dragon succeeds against considerable odds. -Jeff Shannon.

Review Sony Pictures Home Entertainment / Hex - Season 2
Actors & Directors
  • Jemima Rooper
  • Anna Wilson-Jones
  • Brian Grant
  • Andy Goddard
  • Christina Cole
  • Laura Pyper
  • Julian Murphy
  • Michel Fassbender
Release date: 2006-03-06
Run time: 594 min.
RRP: £39.99
Price: £9.88

Review Hex - Season 2 / Sony Pictures Home Entertainment:


Review ITV DVD / Sherlock Holmes - The Complete Collection
Actors & Directors
  • Edward Hardwicke
  • David Burke
  • Jeremy Brett
Release date: 2005-02-21
Run time: 999 min.
RRP: £120.99
Price: £71.79

Review Sherlock Holmes - The Complete Collection / ITV DVD:


Review Network / The Lady Vanishes [1938]
Actors & Directors
  • Michael Redgrave
  • Margaret Lockwood
  • May Whitty
  • Paul Lukas
  • Alfred Hitchcock
  • Googie Withers
Release date: 2008-08-18
Run time: 92 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £3.98

Review The Lady Vanishes [1938] / Network:


Review MGM Entertainment / Appointment With Death [1988]
Actors & Directors
  • Carrie Fisher
  • Michael Winner
  • Piper Laurie
  • John Gielgud
  • Lauren Bacall
  • Peter Ustinov
Release date: 2006-02-20
Run time: 98 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £3.25

Review Appointment With Death [1988] / MGM Entertainment:


Review Lions Gate Home Ent. UK Ltd / Hard Candy [2006]
Actors & Directors
  • Ellen Page
  • David Slade
  • Patrick Wilson
  • Jennifer Holmes
  • Sandra Oh
Release date: 2007-09-10
Run time: 100 min.
RRP: £17.99
Price: £3.69

Review Hard Candy [2006] / Lions Gate Home Ent. UK Ltd:


Review Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainm / Gone Baby Gone [Blu-ray] [2007]
Actors & Directors
  • Ed Harris
  • Ben Affleck
  • Casey Affleck
  • Morgan Freeman
  • Amy Ryan
  • Michelle Monaghan
Release date: 2008-09-22
Run time: 109 min.
RRP: £23.99
Price: £14.70

Review Gone Baby Gone [Blu-ray] [2007] / Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainm:

For his initial offering as director, Ben Affleck returns to the site of his first Oscar: South Boston (he and Matt Damon shared the award for Good Will Hunting). Hot on the heels of his moving turn in Hollywoodland, Affleck's Dennis Lehane adaptation marks one of the more seamless actor-to-filmmaker transitions in recent years. Ostensibly, a procedural about the search for a missing child, class and corruption emerge as his primary concerns. First off, there's low-rent private eye Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck, equally adept in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford). Then there's the girl's drug mule mother, Helene (Amy Ryan, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead). She and Patrick grew up in Dorchester, but he took a different path, setting up an agency with his girlfriend, Angie (Michelle Monaghan). Helene's aunt, Bea (Amy Madigan), hires the duo to augment the investigation, and they team up with Captain Doyle (Morgan Freeman) and Detective Bressant (Madigan's husband, Ed Harris). The authorities don't appreciate the interference, but Patrick knows how to get the local populace talking, and he soon finds there's more to the story than anyone could possibly imagine. Hard-hitting, but never soft-headed, the evocative end result proves Affleck has a flair for this directing thing and that his little brother can carry a major motion picture with aplomb. Gone Baby Gone belongs on the list of great Boston crime dramas, along with The Departed and Mystic River, Clint Eastwood's take on Lehane. [+]
-Kathleen C. Fennessy.

Review Paramount Home Entertainment / Firm The [1993]
Actors & Directors
  • Jeanne Tripplehorn
  • Terry Kinney
  • Tom Cruise
  • Hal Holbrook
  • Sydney Pollack
  • Gene Hackman
Release date: 2000-12-04
Run time: 148 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £2.46

Review Firm The [1993] / Paramount Home Entertainment:

This first film adaptation of a John Grisham novel is a crackerjack popcorn movie that satisfies even though it radically changes the last half of the book. The novel's dynamic setup is intact: Mitch McDeere, a hot law graduate (a well-suited Tom Cruise), finds a dream job in a luxurious Memphis law firm. His superiors (Gene Hackman, Hal Holbrook) provide Mitch and his young wife, Abby (Jeanne Tripplehorn), with a house and plenty of money in exchange for lots of work, and maybe something more. Soon FBI agents (including a bald Ed Harris) encircle Mitch, telling him his firm has a sinister secret, forcing Mitch into a heck of a pickle. How Mitch deals with his situation is where the book and movie differ, yet by the time Mitch is running from bad guys with suitcase in hand, the movie delivers Grisham's goods. For Sydney Pollack's film, Mitch is more confrontational and heroic. Plot aside, the care Pollack put into this fair-weather thriller is unimpeachable, as is his cast. There is hardly a better all-star cast in any 1990s thriller, from Hackman and Harris in key roles to actors in smaller parts, sometimes with only a scene or two. Standouts include David Strathairn as Mitch's wayward brother, Wilford Brimley as the head of security, film producer Jerry Weintraub as an angry client, Gary Busey as a private investigator and Holly Hunter in a delicious, Oscar-nominated supporting role as Busey's most loyal of secretaries. The cast seems to have had as much fun making the film as we do watching it. [+]
It's slick Hollywood product, but first-rate all the way. -Doug Thomas.

Review Optimum Home Entertainment / The Long Arm [1956]
Actors & Directors
  • Dorothy Alison
  • Michael Brooke (III)
  • Sam Kydd
  • Charles Frend
  • Jack Hawkins
  • John Stratton
Release date: 2008-02-11
Run time: 92 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £6.28

Review The Long Arm [1956] / Optimum Home Entertainment:


Review Paramount Home Entertainment / Twilight [1997]
Actors & Directors
  • Paul Newman
  • Stockard Channing
  • Susan Sarandon
  • Cora Witherspoon
  • Robert Benton
  • Gene Hackman
Release date: 2002-06-10
Run time: 91 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £2.98

Review Twilight [1997] / Paramount Home Entertainment:


Review CSI: Crime Scene Investigation / CSI: Crime Scene Investigation - Las Vegas - Season 3 Part 2 [2001]
Release date: 2004-07-05
RRP: £39.99
Price: £6.23

Review CSI: Crime Scene Investigation - Las Vegas - Season 3 Part 2 [2001] / CSI: Crime Scene Investigation:

The second half of CSI's third season serves up generous amounts of the bizarre and depraved for our voyeuristic viewing pleasure: a man driving with a wooden spike in his head, ultra-violent Robot Wars, decomposing bodies in toxic waste drums and violent death during foam-soaked debauchery all add up to a typical night's work for the Las Vegas crime lab. Standout episodes include the 90-minute special, "Lady Heather's Box", in which Grissom renews his acquaintance with the sultry bordello madam and her world of S&M. But is the delightful dominatrix the murderer? In "Night at the Movies" the plot hinges on a reworking of a Hitchcock classic and in "Play with Fire" an explosion in the lab has disastrous consequences for the team. Personal concerns come to the fore in these 12 episodes more prominently than ever before (a contrast to the show's original single-minded focus on the cases). Here, Sara Sidle's paramedic boyfriend unwittingly reveals a guilty secret when he is involved in a devastating car accident ("Crash & Burn"); Warwick witnesses his boyhood mentor falling apart when the older man's daughter is killed in a drive-by shooting ("Random Acts of Violence"); Catherine Willows' daughter and ex-husband are caught up in more violence and mayhem; and Grissom finally has to admit that his hearing problem can no longer be ignored. A welcome development is the expansion of the CSI unit and the introduction of some new, albeit secondary, team members. Guest stars include Elizabeth Berkely ("Lady Heather's Box") and Bobcat Goldthwait ("Last Laugh"). The show remains unrivalled for slick, fast-paced entertainment. On the DVD: CSI, Series 3 Part 2 is a three-disc set with a handful of minor extra features. It has two frankly rather uninspiring episode commentaries featuring the directors, scriptwriters and other crew. [+]
Better are the two small featurettes-"Making It Real" and "The Writer's Room"-that shed more light on the making of the show. -Mark Walker.

Review Acorn Media / Midsomer Murders : The Third Collection - A Further 10 Investigations (10 Disc Box Set)
Actors & Directors
  • John Nettles
  • Jason Hughes
Release date: 2006-10-09
Run time: 990 min.
RRP: £99.99
Price: £28.31

Review Midsomer Murders : The Third Collection - A Further 10 Investigations (10 Disc Box Set) / Acorn Media:


Review Touchstone Home Video / Signs [DTS] [2002]
Actors & Directors
  • Mel Gibson|Joaquin Phoenix|Rory Culkin
  • M. Night Shyamalan
Release date: 2003-03-31
Run time: 102 min.
RRP: £17.99
Price: £2.74

Review Signs [DTS] [2002] / Touchstone Home Video:

Director-writer M Night Shyamalan brings his distinctive, oblique approach to aliens in Signs after tackling ghosts (The Sixth Sense) and superheroes (Unbreakable). With Mel Gibson replacing Bruce Willis as the traditional Shyamalan hero-a family man traumatised by loss-and leaving urban Philadelphia for the Pennsylvania sticks, the film starts with crop circles showing up on the property Gibson shares with his ex-ballplayer brother (Joaquin Phoenix) and his two troubled pre-teen kids (pay attention-all these character quirks turn out to be important). Though the world outside is undergoing a crisis of Independence Day-sized proportions, Shyamalan limits the focus to this family, who retreat into their cellar when "intruders" arrive from lights in the sky and set out to "harvest" them. Just as Unbreakable slowly revealed itself to be Superman re-thought as an intense personal drama, this is The Birds redone as a religious drama of faith lost and perhaps regained. The tone is less certain than the earlier films-some of the laughs seem unintentional and Gibson's performance isn't quite on a level with Willis's commitment-but Shyamalan still directs the suspense and shock dramas better than anyone else. On the DVD: Signs has THX-certified Dolby Digital Surround Sound which reproduces in the home exactly as the scary sounds that creeped you out in the cinema. A selection of deleted scenes are mostly tiny, but there's a self-reflexive joke (wisely dropped but worth preserving) as Gibson wishes his dead wife were here in the crisis because she was so smart: "She always knew how movies would end. " A six-part making-of goes deeper than the usual puff-piece, including an interesting alternative to a commentary track as Shyamalan talks through a précis of clips and on-set snippets. A tradition continued from the Sixth Sense and Unbreakable DVDs is an extract from Pictures, "Night's first alien film". It's a teenage camcorder effort in which the future A-list Hollywoodian is menaced by a tiny Halloween-masked robot. [+]
Also included are a "multi-angle storyboards" feature, subtitles in a clutch of languages and eerie menu screens. -Kim Newman.

Review Universal Pictures UK / Psycho (2 Disc Special Edition) [1960]
Actors & Directors
  • Martin Balsam
  • Janet Leigh
  • John Gavin
  • Vera Miles
  • Anthony Perkins
  • Alfred Hitchcock
Release date: 2005-10-17
Run time: 104 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £3.98

Review Psycho (2 Disc Special Edition) [1960] / Universal Pictures UK:

For all the slasher pictures that have ripped off Psycho (and particularly its classic set piece, the "shower scene"), nothing has ever matched the impact of the real thing. More than just a first-rate shocker full of thrills and suspense, Psycho is also an engrossing character study in which director Alfred Hitchcock skillfully seduces you into identifying with the main characters-then pulls the rug (or the bathmat) out from under you. Anthony Perkins is unforgettable as Norman Bates, the mama's boy proprietor of the Bates Motel; and so is Janet Leigh as Marion Crane, who makes an impulsive decision and becomes a fugitive from the law, hiding out at Norman's roadside inn for one fateful night. Psycho gets the masterpiece treatment it deserves on DVD. -Jim Emerson.

Browse Crime, Thrillers & Mystery:

Models & Brands:
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation - New York - Season 2 Part 1, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation - Miami - Season 1 Part 1, James Bond - Goldfinger (Ultimate Edition 2 Disc Set) [1964], 10 Rillington Place (Special Edition) [1970], Moonlighting - Complete Seasons 1 and 2, Midsomer Murders - Midsomer Life, Red Dragon [2002], Hex - Season 2, Sherlock Holmes - The Complete Collection, The Lady Vanishes [1938], Appointment With Death [1988], Hard Candy [2006], Gone Baby Gone [Blu-ray] [2007], Firm The [1993], The Long Arm [1956], Twilight [1997], CSI: Crime Scene Investigation - Las Vegas - Season 3 Part 2 [2001], Midsomer Murders : The Third Collection - A Further 10 Investigations (10 Disc Box Set), Signs [DTS] [2002], Psycho (2 Disc Special Edition) [1960]

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