DVD Find the Perfect Gift    Send a Gift Certificate
Search 
Home › Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
Review Optimum Home Entertainment / In My Father's Den [2005]
Actors & Directors
  • Emily Barclay
  • Matthew Macfadyen
  • Brad McGann
  • Colin Moy
  • Jimmy Keen
  • Miranda Otto
Release date: 2005-10-03
Run time: 120 min.
Creator: Maurice Gee
RRP: £19.99
Price: £3.98

Review In My Father's Den [2005] / Optimum Home Entertainment:


Review Warner Home Video / Bonnie & Clyde - 40th Anniversary Edition [1967]
Actors & Directors
  • Faye Dunaway
  • Arthur Penn
  • Gene Hackman
  • Warren Beatty
  • Gene Wilder
Release date: 2008-05-05
Run time: 106 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £5.88

Review Bonnie & Clyde - 40th Anniversary Edition [1967] / Warner Home Video:

One of the landmark films of the 1960s, Bonnie and Clyde changed the course of American cinema. Setting a milestone for screen violence that paved the way for Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, this exercise in mythologized biography should not be labelled as a bloodbath; as critic Pauline Kael wrote in her rave review, "it's the absence of sadism that throws the audience off balance". The film is more of a poetic ode to the Great Depression, starring the dream team of Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway as the titular antiheroes, who barrel across the South and Midwest robbing banks with Clyde's brother Buck (Gene Hackman), Buck's frantic wife Blanche (Estelle Parsons) and their faithful accomplice C W Moss (the inimitable Michael J. Pollard). Bonnie and Clyde is an unforgettable classic that has lost none of its power since the 1967 release. -Jeff Shannon.

Review Mgm Home Ent. (Europe) Ltd. / James Bond - The Spy Who Loved Me (Ultimate Edition 2 Disc Set) [1977]
Actors & Directors
  • Lewis Gilbert
  • Barbara Bach
  • Richard Kiel
  • Curt Jurgens
  • Sidney Tafler
  • Roger Moore
Release date: 2006-07-17
Run time: 120 min.
RRP: £16.99
Price: £4.84

Review James Bond - The Spy Who Loved Me (Ultimate Edition 2 Disc Set) [1977] / Mgm Home Ent. (Europe) Ltd.:


Review Mgm Home Ent. (Europe) Ltd. / James Bond - The Living Daylights (Ultimate Edition 2 Disc Set) [1987]
Actors & Directors
  • John Glen
  • Maryam D'Abo
  • Jeroen Krabbe
  • John Rhys Davies
  • Timothy Dalton
  • Joe Don Baker
Release date: 2006-07-17
Run time: 126 min.
RRP: £16.99
Price: £5.33

Review James Bond - The Living Daylights (Ultimate Edition 2 Disc Set) [1987] / Mgm Home Ent. (Europe) Ltd.:


Review Universal Pictures Video / United 93 [2006]
Actors & Directors
  • Paul Greengrass
Release date: 2006-10-02
Run time: 106 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £1.09

Review United 93 [2006] / Universal Pictures Video:

One of the most shocking events in modern American history gets a skilled and respectful treatment in United 93. The movie begins by following the four terrorists who hijacked the plane that never reached its target on 9/11/2001, tracking them as they enter the airport and wait for their flight, surrounded by the people who will die from their actions. From there, it cuts to and fro among air traffic controllers and the military as, gradually, it becomes clear that planes are being hijacked and crashed into buildings. As the focus turns to the captive United Flight 93, the passengers discover, due to cell phone connections with family, that they're on a suicide mission and-almost paralyzed by stress and anxiety-decide to fight back. Most movies create tension by implying what might happen, but with United 93 the audience knows exactly what happened: Every person on that plane died. As a result, the movie is more relentlessly gut-wrenching than suspenseful (though the dawning realisation of the air traffic controllers has an effective creeping dread). But writer/director Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Supremacy) manages to keep the scale of the events human; there are no glamourous heroics, only terrifying confusion and desperate, hopeless bravery. One can only hope the movie brings some peace to the families of the passengers, as United 93 is the cinematic equivalent of a war memorial, commemorating lives lost in a moment of horrible, harrowing conflict. -Bret Fetzer.

Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / Airheads [1994]
Actors & Directors
  • Adam Sandler
  • Michael Lehmann
  • Steve Buscemi
  • Michael McKean
  • Chris Farley
  • Brendan Fraser
Release date: 2003-10-06
Run time: 88 min.
Creator: Rich Wilkes
RRP: £5.99
Price: £3.30

Review Airheads [1994] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:

Spinal Tap it ain't, but Michael Lehmann's good-natured comedy of errors, about a garage band whose unannounced visit to a local radio station escalates into a hostage situation, is pleasant diversion with a fair share of laughs. Brendan Fraser plays the singer-songwriter of the unknown heavy metal band the Lone Rangers, a trio of socially challenged musicians rounded out by dimwitted but sweet bass player Adam Sandler and aging drummer/toy-store employee Steve Buscemi-who just happens to be packing a lifelike toy machine gun from work. Needless to say, the friendly visit is misinterpreted as a hostile takeover, but all the Lone Rangers want is to play their music on the air-and they sabotage themselves again by destroying their own demo tape! Joe Mantegna plays a burned-out deejay who tries to help the muddled metalheads as the media surrounds the building and asks the question on everyone's lips: "How can you be the Lone Rangers if you're always together?" -Sean Axmaker.

Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / Minority Report - Single Disc Edition [2002]
Actors & Directors
  • Neal McDonough
  • Steven Spielberg
  • Patrick Kilpatrick
  • Max von Sydow
  • Tom Cruise
  • Steve Harris
Release date: 2003-10-13
Run time: 142 min.
Creator: Scott Frank
RRP: £17.99
Price: £1.39

Review Minority Report - Single Disc Edition [2002] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:

Full of morally flawed characters, and shot in grainy desaturated colours, Steven Spielberg's Minority Report is futuristic film noir with a far-fetched B-movie plot that's so feverishly presented the audience never gets a chance to ponder its many improbabilities. Based on a short story by Philip K Dick, the film is set in the Orwellian near-future of 2054, where a trio of genetically modified "pre-cogs" warn of murders before they happen. In an SF twist on the classic Hitchcockian wrong-man scenario, Detective John Anderton (Tom Cruise) is the zealous precrime cop who is himself revealed as a future killer. Plot twists and red herrings drive the action forward, and complications abound, not least Anderton's crippling emotional state, his drug habit, his avuncular-yet-sinister boss (Max Von Sydow) and the ambitious FBI agent Witwer (Colin Farrell) snapping at his heels. Though the film toys with the notion of free will in a deterministic universe, this is not so much a movie of grand ideas as forward-looking ones. Its depiction of a near-future filled with personalised advertising and intrusive security devices that relentlessly violate the right of anonymity is disturbingly believable. Ultimately, though, it's a chase movie and the innovative set-piece sequences reveal Spielberg's flair for staging action. As with A. I. before it, there's a nagging feeling that the all-too-neat resolution is a Spielbergian touch too far: the movie could satisfactorily have ended several minutes earlier. [+]
Although this is superior SF from one of Hollywood's greatest craftsmen, it would have been more in the spirit of Philip K Dick to leave a few tantalisingly untidy plot threads dangling. -Mark Walker.

Review Optimum Home Entertainment / Nine Queens [2002]
Actors & Directors
  • Graciela Tenenbaum
  • María Mercedes Villagra
  • Gabriel Correa
  • Ricardo Darín
  • Gastón Pauls
  • Fabián Bielinsky
Release date: 2003-01-27
Run time: 113 min.
Creator: Pablo Bossi
RRP: £19.99
Price: £4.58

Review Nine Queens [2002] / Optimum Home Entertainment:

If David Mamet had been born in Buenos Aires instead of Chicago, Nine Queens is most likely the kind of movie he'd be making. An intricate, playful scam caper, where not only the characters but we the audience are constantly trying to suss out who's screwing whom-and how, and why-it's a movie very much in the Mametian mould. But at the same time the Argentinian setting gives Fabian Bielinsky's debut feature a specifically Latin pungency and the urgent sense of a society teetering over a financial abyss. Which is all the more remarkable since, even though a key plot-point turns on a bank going bust, the movie was made a few months before the Argentinean economy went belly-up. The intrigue grips from the very outset as Juan, a young con artist, overreaches himself in a grocery store. He's rescued from disaster by Marcos, an older and more experienced grifter, who then takes him on in a master-pupil relationship. When the chance of a major coup involving some rare stamps (the Queens of the title) turns up, the partnership starts coming under strain; can either one really trust the other? And is either who he pretends to be? The plot suffers from a few implausibilities and loose ends, but sustains its momentum beguilingly. Ricardo Darín, as the saturnine Marcos, and Gastón Pauls as the fresh-faced, seemingly ingenuous Juan play off each other beautifully-but the dominant character is the seething, hustling city of Buenos Aires itself, where social mores are fluid and uncertain, and everybody has his eye out for the main chance. This is a society Bielinsky (who also scripted) clearly knows intimately, and like a true con-artist he makes shrewd use of his expertise to keep us guessing right up to the final twist. -Philip Kemp.

Review Warner Home Video / Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil [1998]
Actors & Directors
  • Kevin Spacey
  • Irma P. Hall
  • John Cusack
  • Jude Law
  • Clint Eastwood
  • Jack Thompson
Release date: 1999-01-25
Run time: 149 min.
Creator: John Lee Hancock
RRP: £12.99
Price: £3.19

Review Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil [1998] / Warner Home Video:

Readers of John Berendt's bestselling novel, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, were bound to be at least somewhat disappointed by this big-screen adaptation, but despite mixed reaction from critics and audiences, there's still plenty to admire about director Clint Eastwood's take on the material. Readers will surely miss the rich atmosphere and societal detail that Berendt brought to his "Savannah story," and the movie can only scratch the surface of Georgian history, tradition and wealthy decadence underlying Berendt's fact-based murder mystery. Still, Eastwood maintains an assured focus on the wonderful eccentrics of Savannah, most notably a gay Savannah antiques dealer (superbly played by Kevin Spacey), who may or may not have killed his friend and alleged lover (Jude Law). John Cusack plays the Town & Country journalist who arrives in Savannah to find much more than he bargained for-including the city's legendary drag queen Lady Chablis (playing "herself")-and John Lee Hancock's smoothly adapted screenplay succeeds in bringing Berendt's characters vividly to life with plenty of flavourful dialogue. -Jeff Shannon.

Review Pathe Distribution / Point Break [1991]
Actors & Directors
  • John C. McGinley
  • Patrick Swayze
  • Gary Busey
  • Lori Petty
  • Keanu Reeves
  • Kathryn Bigelow
Release date: 2003-06-30
Run time: 117 min.
Creator: W. Peter Iliff
RRP: £12.99
Price: £17.99

Review Point Break [1991] / Pathe Distribution:

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.

Review Sony Pictures Home Entertainment / The Looking Glass War [1969]
Actors & Directors
  • Anthony Hopkins
  • Paul Rogers
  • Frank R. Pierson
  • Christopher Jones
  • Ralph Richardson
Release date: 2005-10-17
Run time: 103 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £5.92

Review The Looking Glass War [1969] / Sony Pictures Home Entertainment:


Review Warner Home Video / Batman [1989]
Actors & Directors
  • Pat Hingle
  • Jack Nicholson
  • Michael Keaton
  • Robert Wuhl
  • Tim Burton
  • Kim Basinger
Release date: 1998-09-25
Run time: 121 min.
Creator: Warren Skaaren
RRP: £13.99
Price: £17.99

Review Batman [1989] / Warner Home Video:

Thanks to the ambitious vision of director Tim Burton, the blockbuster hit of 1989 delivers the goods despite an occasionally spotty script, giving the caped crusader a thorough overhaul in keeping with the crime fighter's evolution in DC Comics. Michael Keaton strikes just the right mood as the brooding "Dark Knight" of Gotham City; Kim Basingerplays Gotham's intrepid reporter Vicki Vale; and Jack Nicholson goes wild as the maniacal and scene-stealing Joker, who plots a take over of the city with his lethal Smilex gas. Triumphant Oscar-winning production design by the late Anton Furst turns Batman into a visual feast, and Burton brilliantly establishes a darkly mythic approach to Batman's legacy. Danny Elfman's now-classic score propels the action with bold, muscular verve. -Jeff Shannon.

Review ITV DVD / Agatha Christie's Poirot - Collection 5
Actors & Directors
  • David Suchet
Release date: 2005-11-21
Run time: 773 min.
RRP: £24.99
Price: £9.36

Review Agatha Christie's Poirot - Collection 5 / ITV DVD:


Review Optimum Home Entertainment / The Servant [1963]
Actors & Directors
  • Dirk Bogarde
  • Joseph Losey
  • Sarah Miles
  • James Fox
  • Wendy Craig
Release date: 2008-01-07
Run time: 111 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £5.51

Review The Servant [1963] / Optimum Home Entertainment:


Review MGM Entertainment / James Bond - For Your Eyes Only (Ultimate Edition 2 Disc Set) [1981]
Actors & Directors
  • Lynn-Holly Johnson
  • John Glen
  • Carole Bouquet
  • Roger Moore
  • Julian Glover
  • Topol
Release date: 2006-07-17
Run time: 121 min.
RRP: £16.99
Price: £3.95

Review James Bond - For Your Eyes Only (Ultimate Edition 2 Disc Set) [1981] / MGM Entertainment:


Review MGM Entertainment / Hang 'Em High [1968]
Actors & Directors
  • Clint Eastwood
  • Pat Hingle
  • Ted Post
  • Ed Begley
  • Ben Johnson
  • Inger Stevens
Release date: 2000-06-12
Run time: 110 min.
Creator: Mel Goldberg
RRP: £12.99
Price: £3.74

Review Hang 'Em High [1968] / MGM Entertainment:

After starring in the now-legendary Dollars trilogy of spaghetti Westerns for Italian director Sergio Leone, Clint Eastwood became a box-office star and imported the style of those classic shoot-em-ups for this 1967 Western directed by Ted Post, with whom Eastwood had worked during their days on the television series Rawhide. Eastwood plays an innocent rancher who is mistaken for a cattle rustler and sentenced to hang by an angry mob. When he is saved from the noose by a passing lawman, he embarks on a renegade campaign of vengeance against the men who attempted to lynch him. Hang 'Em High offers a number of memorable moments and stylistic flourishes, and features a superb supporting cast of Western veterans, including Ben Johnson, Ed Begley, Pat Hingle, Dennis Hopper, Bruce Dern, LQ Jones, and the "Skipper" himself, Alan Hale Jr Made just three years before Dirty Harry, the film marked a turning point for Eastwood, who would soon move into a prolific period of contemporary thrillers. -Jeff Shannon, Amazon. com.

Review MGM Entertainment / Thelma And Louise [1991]
Actors & Directors
  • Geena Davis
  • Harvey Keitel
  • Michael Madsen
  • Ridley Scott
  • Christopher McDonald
  • Susan Sarandon
Release date: 2000-02-01
Run time: 124 min.
Creator: Mimi Polk Gitlin
RRP: £15.99
Price: £2.75

Review Thelma And Louise [1991] / MGM Entertainment:

Thelma & Louise is a feminist manifesto writ large on the big screen, a smart and funny gender reversal of the standard Hollywood buddy formula, a road movie extraordinaire, with characters who became instant cultural icons. No matter how you define it, Ridley Scott's 1991 box-office hit pinched a nerve and made the cover of national news magazines for tweaking gender politics like no movie before or since. Callie Khouri's screenplay overhauls the buddy formula with its story about two best friends (Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis) who embark on a liberating adventure that turns into an interstate police chase after a traumatic incident makes both women into fugitives; they are en route to a destiny they could never have imagined. The perfect casting of Sarandon and Davis makes Thelma & Louise a movie for the ages and Brad Pitt became an overnight star after his appearance as the con-artist cowboy who gives Davis a memorable (but costly) night in a roadside motel. -Jeff Shannon.

Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / What Lies Beneath [2000]
Actors & Directors
  • Michelle Pfeiffer
  • James Remar
  • Harrison Ford
  • Robert Zemeckis
  • Joe Morton
  • Diana Scarwid
Release date: 2001-09-17
Run time: 125 min.
Creator: Sarah Kernochan
RRP: £12.99
Price: £2.00

Review What Lies Beneath [2000] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:

What would Hitchcock have done if he had had modern digital effects? The answer is almost certainly: something very like What Lies Beneath, Robert Zemeckis' technically accomplished supernatural thriller that pays open homage to Suspicion, Rear Window and Psycho, to name but three. Michelle Pfeiffer delivers one of the finest, most nuanced performances of her career as a woman in an ideal relationship whose perfect life begins to unravel with terrifying consequences. Harrison Ford plays sympathetically against type as her husband who may or may not be telling her the truth. Although made in the middle of his filming Cast Away, while the director waited for Tom Hanks to shed some pounds, this is no quickie throwaway picture. Zemeckis loads this character-driven story with genuinely scary suspense, using subtle camera moves, mirrored reflections and red-herrings in a classic Hitchcockian manner-the difference here is that he has access to the most up-to-date digital effects and employs them with characteristic imagination, creating seemingly impossible camera angles that only enhance the tension. The Production Design is equally carefully considered, as even the idyllic household setting with its pristine bathroom is gradually transformed into an object of terror. Composer Alan Silvestri's score winds up the drama several notches further with an appropriate Bernard Herrmann pastiche. On the DVD: The principal attraction of this disc is the pin-sharp anamorphic picture and 5. 1 soundtrack-superb picture and sound quality contribute greatly to the enjoyment here, since Zemeckis is one of the few contemporary directors who remains acutely sensitive to the composition of each and every scene. The brief featurette is a little misleadingly titled, as it's essentially a profile of Zemeckis' career with a few comments about this film thrown in for good measure. [+]
The rather dry and uninvolving commentary is by Zemeckis with producers Steve Starkey and Jack Rapke. -Mark Walker.

Review Pathe Distribution / Color Of Night [1994]
Actors & Directors
  • Scott Bakula
  • Richard Rush
  • Lesley Ann Warren
  • Jane March
  • Bruce Willis
  • Rubén Blades
Release date: 2003-06-30
Run time: 117 min.
Creator: Matthew Chapman
RRP: £5.99
Price: £3.26

Review Color Of Night [1994] / Pathe Distribution:


Review Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment / Dirty Pretty Things [2002]
Actors & Directors
  • Zlatko Buric
  • Sophie Okonedo
  • Stephen Frears
  • Audrey Tautou
  • Sergi López
  • Chiwetel Ejiofor
Release date: 2007-05-01
Run time: 97 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £3.20

Review Dirty Pretty Things [2002] / Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment:

With Dirty Pretty Things Stephen Frears (The Grifters) gives us a dark gritty film examining London's seedier underbelly. Oscar nominated Chiwetel Ejiofor is Okwe, a Nigerian doctor who fled to Britain after the death of his family. So far he has evaded capture by the authorities and successfully held down two jobs as a taxi driver and night porter in a downmarket hotel. But all this changes when he finds a human heart blocking a toilet in one of the rooms and discovers his manager is running an organ trafficking operation offering illegal immigrants passports for organs. The plot then follows a well-trodden thriller path as Okwe wrestles with his conscience and also the growing affections of Turkish asylum seeker Senay (Audrey Tautou). Ejiofor and Tautou give incredibly affecting performances as the disenfranchised inhabitants of the capital city and the plot is harrowing without being sensationalist. The only disappointment is the black-and-white morality that holds the film together. In a drama that sets out to challenge our perceptions and prejudices, the inappropriately Hollywood ending is a letdown that does nothing to raise this film above being a stock thriller, albeit of the more intelligent kind. -Kristen Bowditch.

Browse Crime, Thrillers & Mystery:

Models & Brands:
In My Father's Den [2005], Bonnie & Clyde - 40th Anniversary Edition [1967], James Bond - The Spy Who Loved Me (Ultimate Edition 2 Disc Set) [1977], James Bond - The Living Daylights (Ultimate Edition 2 Disc Set) [1987], United 93 [2006], Airheads [1994], Minority Report - Single Disc Edition [2002], Nine Queens [2002], Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil [1998], Point Break [1991], The Looking Glass War [1969], Batman [1989], Agatha Christie's Poirot - Collection 5, The Servant [1963], James Bond - For Your Eyes Only (Ultimate Edition 2 Disc Set) [1981], Hang 'Em High [1968], Thelma And Louise [1991], What Lies Beneath [2000], Color Of Night [1994], Dirty Pretty Things [2002]

Top headlines:
Search 
DVD Rental: try it for free