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Review Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainm / Starship Troopers [Blu-ray] [1997]
Actors & Directors
  • Casper Van Dien
  • Paul Verhoeven
  • Eric Bruskotter
  • Dale Dye
  • John Cunningham
  • Christopher Curry
Release date: 2007-08-06
Run time: 130 min.
RRP: £26.99
Price: £15.99

Review Starship Troopers [Blu-ray] [1997] / Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainm:

A gloriously over-the-top treat, Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers takes the militaristic moralising of Robert Heinlein's pulp classic and sets about undermining it mercilessly. Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien) desperately wants to join the Mobile Infantry and kill some Earth-threatening alien bugs. He also desperately wants Carmen (Denise Richards), but only gets to fulfil one ambition in the second of Verhoeven's futuristic satires (also cowritten with his RoboCop scriptwriter Ed Neumeier). Set in a fascist future where kids must do military service to qualify as citizens, own property or even have babies, the film's dark Vietnam and Nazi-era parallels are all the more disturbing given its deceptively sunny Beverly Hills 90210 teenage cast (though scenery-chewing veteran Michael Ironside steals the movie as tough-talking Lt Rasczak). The CGI arachnids are among the most convincing and dangerous-looking creatures ever seen on screen, and with the movie clocking up the highest number of blanks ever fired on a film set, it's also pretty loud. Verhoeven went on to be Executive Producer of the Roughnecks: The Starship Troopers Chronicles animated TV series a couple of years later. -Paul Tonks.

Review Optimum Home Entertainment / Agatha Christie's Evil Under The Sun [1981]
Actors & Directors
  • Nicholas Clay
  • Jane Birkin
  • Maggie Smith
  • Guy Hamilton
  • Colin Blakely
  • Peter Ustinov
Release date: 2008-01-07
Run time: 111 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £4.44

Review Agatha Christie's Evil Under The Sun [1981] / Optimum Home Entertainment:


Actors & Directors
  • George Dzundza
  • Tony Scott
  • Viggo Mortensen
  • Denzel Washington
  • James Gandolfini
  • Rick Schroder
Release date: 2006-11-06
Run time: 130 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £3.96

Review Crimson Tide [1995] / Hollywood Pictures Home Video:


Review 4 Front Video / The Chamber [1997]
Actors & Directors
  • Gene Hackman
  • Faye Dunaway
  • Chris O'Donnell
  • James Foley
  • Raymond J. Barry
  • Robert Prosky
Release date: 2005-06-06
Run time: 108 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £3.47

Review The Chamber [1997] / 4 Front Video:


Review Starz Home Entertainment / The Long Good Friday [1981]
Actors & Directors
  • Dave King
  • Eddie Constantine
  • Helen Mirren
  • John Mackenzie
  • Bob Hoskins
  • Bryan Marshall
Release date: 2007-02-19
Run time: 109 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £2.79

Review The Long Good Friday [1981] / Starz Home Entertainment:


Review Sony Pictures Home Entertainment / Starsky And Hutch - Series 1-4 - Complete
Actors & Directors
  • David Sole
  • Paul Michael Glaser
  • Bernie Hamilton
  • Antonio Fargas
Release date: 2006-11-20
Run time: 3996 min.
RRP: £79.99
Price: £29.48

Review Starsky And Hutch - Series 1-4 - Complete / Sony Pictures Home Entertainment:


Review Network / Tales Of The Unexpected - The Complete First Series
Release date: 2006-03-13
Run time: 225 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £6.74

Review Tales Of The Unexpected - The Complete First Series / Network:


Review 2 Entertain Video / Law And Order (BBC, 1978)
Actors & Directors
  • Leslie Blair
  • Alan Ford
  • Ken Campbell
  • Peter Dean
  • Derek Martin
Release date: 2008-04-14
Run time: 320 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £12.29

Review Law And Order (BBC, 1978) / 2 Entertain Video:


Review ITV DVD / Poirot - Agatha Christie's Poirot - Set 4
Actors & Directors
  • David Suchet
Release date: 2005-11-21
Run time: 817 min.
RRP: £24.99
Price: £13.95

Review Poirot - Agatha Christie's Poirot - Set 4 / ITV DVD:


Review Warner Home Video / Copycat [1996]
Actors & Directors
  • Jon Amiel
  • Dermot Mulroney
  • William McNamara
  • Holly Hunter
  • Harry Connick Jr.
  • Sigourney Weaver
Release date: 1999-03-29
Run time: 118 min.
RRP: £13.99
Price: £4.48

Review Copycat [1996] / Warner Home Video:

Taking its lead from Jonathan Demme's Oscar-winning pulse-raiser The Silence Of the Lambs, Copycat strives for intelligence over gristle and carnage. It's a terse, involving thriller that swings away from the usual cinematic notion of violence as a means to an end by forgoing brawn for brains. Young San Francisco police inspector Ruben Goetz (Dermot Mulroney) is teamed with brilliant force vet, M J Monahan (Holly Hunter), a diplomatic, no-nonsense cop who must buck the system in order to find a killer who is copying the crimes of history's most notorious serial killers. Ruben would rather shoot to kill than merely wound a suspect; Monahan labours to help him think more diplomatically. Everything changes when crank calls arrive at the station from serial-killer pin-up girl psychiatrist Helen Hudson (Sigourney Weaver). She's been housebound for 13 months, ever since murderer Daryll Lee Cullum (Harry Connick Jr. ) nearly made her his next victim because she testified against him in court. Though he's in prison, he's still mentor and muse to every loose cannon walking the streets-one of whom is killing people with a vengeance and hoping to finish the job Cullum began. Cop and doc team up to solve the case in this stylish, plot-driven movie. Though Copycat loses steam in the end, it still makes a point. [+]
And it serves as a cautionary tale for people everywhere, tossing in street smart warnings against victimisation. The teaming of Hunter and Weaver works well, the short and the tall forging a terrific and friction-filled relationship that leads to grudging respect. Establishing an ominous atmosphere reminiscent of his classic British TV miniseries The Singing Detective, director Jon Amiel has an eye for the dark and the unusual and it gives this film an edge that eludes most other mainstream filmmakers. -Paula Nechak.

Review Optimum Home Entertainment / Seven Days To Noon [1950]
Actors & Directors
  • John Boulting
  • Barry Jones
  • Audre Morell
  • Hugh Cross
  • Roy Boulting
Release date: 2008-07-14
Run time: 93 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £22.93

Review Seven Days To Noon [1950] / Optimum Home Entertainment:


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 / The Return [2006]
Actors & Directors
  • Sarah Michelle Gellar
  • Peter O'Brien
  • Sam Shepard
  • Kate Beahan
  • Adam Scott
  • Asif Kapadia
Release date: 2007-05-21
Run time: 83 min.
RRP: £17.99
Price: £3.79

Review The Return [2006] / Universal Pictures UK:

The Return is a drowsy, mildly creepy and unexpectedly well-crafted supernatural thriller that lays off the cheap thrill and gore factor in favor of the slow build up to fright and a twist ending that, while effective, may hit viewers as mostly out of left field. The Sixth Sense it ain't, but there's enough texture, style and ladled-on art direction to keep the eeriness palpable even through some of the more labored dialogue and plot contrivances. A chocolate-haired Sarah Michelle Gellar (what was wrong with her natural goldilocks?) plays Joanna Mills, some sort of traveling sales rep in a big pickup truck who journeys from her nightmare-disturbed life in St. Louis back to a small town in Texas that she sort-of remembers. Demons from the girlhood she once knew there come fiendishly together in a mishmash of flashbacks and present-day creep-outs involving murder, self-mutilation and spirits that have haunted her more than she knows. Gellar has become a go-to for glossy Hollywood horrorshows like this, thanks to her work in the Grudge franchise and the remnants of our memories from her Buffy glory days. In spite of the handful of slipshod faults in story and directorial force, she holds her own against the vibrantly dilapidated set decorations along with a variety of other equally important characters. There's a creepy ex-boyfriend, a disgusting being stalking a phantom woman she recognises from her psychosis-induced visions, and a hunky guy who's facing down mysteries from his own past. (Do they all intersect? Hmmm. [+]
) She even stands her ground against Sam Shepard, who is all but slumming it in his few scenes as her dad. He talks about an incident that forever changed her when she was 11 years old, but his weird allusions are as enigmatic as the film itself, which desperately wants to be better than it is. But The Return still carries its share of respectable fears that are made scarier by the effectively edited string of spooky noises and images. Together they add up to make a worthy entrant in the genre of understated ghost story. -Ted Fry.

Review MGM Entertainment / Kalifornia [1993]
Actors & Directors
  • Juliette Lewis
  • Brad Pitt
  • Michelle Forbes
  • Dominic Sena
  • Kathy Larson
  • David Duchovny
Release date: 2002-05-06
Run time: 118 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £3.14

Review Kalifornia [1993] / MGM Entertainment:

Directed with a cool remove by Dominic Sena, Kalifornia falls somewhere between Badlands and Natural Born Killers. David Duchovny is a blocked author with a fascination for outlaw killers who hatches a plan to road trip through America's mass-murder landmarks to finish his book. He enlists the help of his frustrated photographer girlfriend Michelle Forbes, who desperately wants to leave the East Coast for LA, and they advertise for riding partners. Luckily for them, they wind up with a veteran killer, the greasy trailer-park ex-con Brad Pitt, who decides to skip parole with his cowering child-woman girlfriend Juliette Lewis. Duchovny is enamoured by gun-toting Pitt's recklessness and lawless disregard for, well, everything-simultaneously terrified and thrilled by Pitt's brutal beating of a barfly. Meanwhile, Pitt's leaving a trail of corpses in their wake. Pitt brings a ferocious magnetism to his part, but it's still hard to buy genial Duchovny's odd attraction; Juliette Lewis conveys a terrifying sense of victimization with her poor dumb creature. Despite the film's best efforts, it never really plumbs the psyche of Pitt's simmering psycho-he's just plain bad, you know-but it does fashion an effective little thriller out of the tensions brewing in the restless quartet. -Sean Axmaker, Amazon. com.

Review Warner Home Video / The Getaway (Deluxe Edition) [1972]
Actors & Directors
  • Sally Struthers
  • Al Lettieri
  • Sam Peckinpah
  • Ben Johnson
  • Steve McQueen
  • Ali MacGraw
Release date: 2005-07-18
Run time: 118 min.
RRP: £18.99
Price: £3.99

Review The Getaway (Deluxe Edition) [1972] / Warner Home Video:

This original version of The Getaway is much better than the 1994 remake starring Kim Basinger and husband Alec Baldwin, but this thriller from 1972 relies too heavily on the low-key star power of Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw, and the stylish violence of director Sam Peckinpah, reduced here to a mechanical echo of his former glory. McQueen plays a bank robber whose wife (MacGraw) makes a deal with a Texas politician to have her husband released from prison in return for a percentage from their next big heist. But when the plan goes sour, the couple must flee to Mexico as fast as they can, with a variety of gun-wielding thugs on their trail. MacGraw was duly skewered at the time for her dubious acting ability, but the film still has a raw, unglamorous quality that lends a timeless spin to the familiar crooks-on-the-lam scenario. As always, Peckinpah rises to the occasion with some audacious scenes of action and suspense, including a memorable chase on a train that still grabs the viewer's attention. -Jeff Shannon.

Review Dreamworks Home Entertainment / Red Eye
Actors & Directors
  • Wes Craven
  • Cillian Murphy
  • Brian Cox
  • Rachel McAdams
Release date: 2006-01-30
Run time: 82 min.
RRP: £17.99
Price: £3.68

Review Red Eye / Dreamworks Home Entertainment:

Red Eye is the latest movie from Wes Craven, whose most recent successes, the Scream trilogy, give some flavour of what to expect here. The action once again centres on a strong, young woman, this time called Lisa and played by Rachel McAdams (recently seen in Wedding Crashers), who spends all her time managing a busy hotel. On a flight back from a funeral, she finds herself sat next to a wealthy businessman, played by Cillian Murphy (whose performance remains one of the many highlights of Batman Begins. He has an agenda however, that involves using Lisa to clear the way for a contract killing at her hotel. With her father at home under constant watch, and sat next to a man threatening to kill him, the stage is set for a healthy little thriller. And that's just what Red Eye is. While some distance away from Craven's best work, it has some big pluses in its favour. Firstly, it's a very swift ride that doesn't outstay its welcome, speeding through plot developments that others in the genre would sit and ponder on for some time. It's also got the charm of Rachel McAdams in the lead role, who pitches well against the sneer and creepiness of Cillian Murphy. And finally, it delivers good old fashioned Friday night fun, without having pretensions to do anything else. [+]
So while it's hardly a defining thriller in any way, nor is it without one or two unintentional giggles, Red Eye works surprisingly well. In the hands of a lesser director, it's got all the ingredients for straight-to-video hell, but with Craven at the helm and his two leads performing well, it's a movie that happily punches above its weight. -Simon Brew.

Review MGM Entertainment / James Bond - Tomorrow Never Dies (Ultimate Edition 2 Disc Set) [1997]
Actors & Directors
  • Desmond Llewelyn
  • Terence Rigby
  • Al Matthews
  • Pierce Brosnan
  • Pip Torrens
  • Roger Spottiswoode
Release date: 2006-07-17
Run time: 114 min.
RRP: £16.99
Price: £4.99

Review James Bond - Tomorrow Never Dies (Ultimate Edition 2 Disc Set) [1997] / MGM Entertainment:


Review Warner Home Video / The Assassin [1993]
Actors & Directors
  • Dermot Mulroney
  • Bridget Fonda
  • Anne Bancroft
  • John Badham
  • Gabriel Byrne
  • Miguel Ferrer
Release date: 1999-05-24
Run time: 104 min.
RRP: £13.99
Price: £4.92

Review The Assassin [1993] / Warner Home Video:

This is one of those Hollywood remakes of a European hit in which one can visualize a committee of studio executives sitting around and saying, "Okay, we know what made the original film unique and different and fun. How can we make that same movie and do exactly the opposite?" For-hire director John Badham (Saturday Night Fever) took La Femme Nikita, Luc Besson's undeniably sexy, original, and kitschy French film about a female assassin, and translated it into The Assassin, a calculating, mechanistic American thriller with no distinctive style. Bridget Fonda gamely plays the willowy street punk who becomes a high-society killer, but once that provocative irony is in place, the movie is pretty much a series of by-the-numbers action set pieces. Until, that is, Dermot Mulroney shows up as a love interest; but even that twist can't save this film. You're much better off with the original, subtitles and all. The DVD release has optional full-screen and widescreen presentations, production notes, theatrical trailer, optional French and Spanish soundtracks, and optional English, French, and Spanish subtitles. -Tom Keogh, Amazon. com.

Review Universal Pictures UK / The Black Windmill
Actors & Directors
  • Donald Pleasence
  • Janet Suzman
  • Michael Caine
  • Clive Revill
  • Don Siegel
Release date: 2006-08-07
RRP: £15.99
Price: £4.98

Review The Black Windmill / Universal Pictures UK:


Review 20th Century Fox / Point Break (Pure Adrenaline Edition) [1991] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Lori Petty
  • Patrick Swayze
  • Kathryn Bigelow
  • Gary Busey
  • John C. McGinley
  • Keanu Reeves
Release date: 2006-10-03
Run time: 122 min.
Price: £4.19

Review Point Break (Pure Adrenaline Edition) [1991] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / 20th Century Fox:

A rash of daring bank robberies erupt in which the bad guys all wear the masks of worse guys-former presidents (nice touch). Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves), an impossibly named former football star who blew out his knee and became a studly crime-busting fed instead, figures out that none of the heists occur during surfing season and all of them occur when, so to speak, surf's down. So obviously, he reasons, we're dealing with some surfer-dude bank robbers. He goes undercover with just such a group, led by a very spiritual, very guru-type guy played by Patrick Swayze, who has some muddled philosophies when it comes to materialism. If you can buy all that, this efficiently directed (by Kathryn Bigelow) action flick has some diverting moments (credit it, for example, for anticipating the extreme-sports fad). But Reeves' intelligent-sounding lines don't make him seem remotely intelligent and that plot makes him look positively brilliant. -David Kronke Efficiently directed by Kathryn Bigelow and featuring some diverting action scenes, 1991's Point Break can be credited with anticipating the extreme-sports fad. A rash of daring bank robberies erupt in which the bad guys all wear the masks of worse guys-former presidents (nice touch). Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves), an impossibly named former football star who blew out his knee and became a crime-busting federal agent instead, figures out that none of the heists occur during surfing season and all of them occur when, so to speak, surf's down. So obviously, he reasons, we're dealing with some surfer-dude bank robbers. [+]
He goes undercover with just such a group, led by a very spiritual guru-type Patrick Swayze, who has some muddled philosophies when it comes to materialism. Reeves' intelligent-sounding lines don't make him seem remotely intelligent, but the plot makes him look positively brilliant. -David Kronke.

Browse Crime, Thrillers & Mystery:

Models & Brands:
Starship Troopers [Blu-ray] [1997], Agatha Christie's Evil Under The Sun [1981], Crimson Tide [1995], The Chamber [1997], The Long Good Friday [1981], Starsky And Hutch - Series 1-4 - Complete, Tales Of The Unexpected - The Complete First Series, Law And Order (BBC, 1978), Poirot - Agatha Christie's Poirot - Set 4, Copycat [1996], Seven Days To Noon [1950], Midsomer Murders - Midsomer Life, The Return [2006], Kalifornia [1993], The Getaway (Deluxe Edition) [1972], Red Eye, James Bond - Tomorrow Never Dies (Ultimate Edition 2 Disc Set) [1997], The Assassin [1993], The Black Windmill, Point Break (Pure Adrenaline Edition) [1991] (REGION 1) (NTSC)

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