DVD Find the Perfect Gift    Send a Gift Certificate
Search 
Home › Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
Review Warner Home Video / The Gauntlet [1977]
Actors & Directors
  • William Prince
  • Clint Eastwood
  • Clint Eastwood
  • Bill McKinney
  • Pat Hingle
  • Sondra Locke
Release date: 1999-08-23
Run time: 104 min.
Creator: Michael Butler
RRP: £13.99
Price: £2.69

Review The Gauntlet [1977] / Warner Home Video:

Clint Eastwood is a down-and-out cop who is sent on a routine mission to pick up a witness and deliver her to the Phoenix courthouse. Sounds easy until he realises he's been set up by the man who gave him this simple assignment. The interplay between Eastwood and the witness, a clever prostitute played by the actor's former girlfriend, Sondra Locke, is tough and playful. They obviously had strong chemistry. The story is highly implausible at times, but the action sequences are satisfying. Eastwood directs The Gauntlet very much in the style of his Academy Award-winning Western Unforgiven. Although the body count is surprisingly low for an Eastwood action film, a house, several cars and a large bus get shot through with more holes than a big wheel of Swiss cheese. For Eastwood fans, this is the laconic hero at his prime. -Richard Natale.

Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / Planet Of The Apes [1968]
Actors & Directors
  • Franklin J. Schaffner
  • Charlton Heston
  • Roddy McDowall
  • James Whitmore
  • Kim Hunter
  • Maurice Evans
Release date: 2001-10-08
Run time: 108 min.
Creator: Rod Serling
RRP: £15.99
Price: £2.38

Review Planet Of The Apes [1968] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:

The original Planet of the Apes is that rarity of the genre: a science fiction film that has dated not one bit: its intelligent script, frightening costuming, and savagely effective conclusion (which needs no big-budget special effects to augment its impact) remain both potent and relevant. When Colonel George Taylor (the fabulous Charlton Heston) crash lands his spacecraft on what seems to be an unfamiliar planet, he is captured and held prisoner by a dominant race of rational, articulate apes. However, the ape community is riven with internal dissension, centred in no small part on its policy toward humans, who, on this planet, are treated as mindless animals. Befriended and ultimately assisted by the more liberal simians, Taylor escapes-only to find a more terrifying obstacle confronting his return home. Heavy-handed object lessons abound-the ubiquity of generational warfare, the inflexibility of dogma, the cruelty of prejudice-and the didactic finger prints of The Twilight Zone's Rod Serling are very much in evidence here. But director Franklin Schaffner has a dark, pop-apocalyptic sci-fi vision all of his own, helped along by Jerry Goldsmith's terrifyingly avant-garde score. And time has not dulled the monumental emotional imp act of the film's climactic payoff shot. -Miles Bethany, Amazon. com.

Review Optimum Home Entertainment / Fear In The Night [1972]
Actors & Directors
  • Peter Cushing
  • Thomas Sangster
  • Judy Geeson
  • Ralph Bates
  • Joan Collins
Release date: 2007-01-08
Run time: 90 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £4.43

Review Fear In The Night [1972] / Optimum Home Entertainment:


Review 2 Entertain Video / Holby Blue - Series 1 - Complete [2007]
Release date: 2008-04-21
Run time: 400 min.
Creator: Tony Jordan
RRP: £24.99
Price: £10.98

Review Holby Blue - Series 1 - Complete [2007] / 2 Entertain Video:


Review Pathe Distribution / Pi [1999]
Actors & Directors
  • Stephen Pearlman
  • Mark Margolis
  • Darren Aronofsky
  • Sean Gullette
  • Ben Shenkman
  • Pamela Hart
Release date: 2004-07-19
Run time: 80 min.
Creator: Katie King
RRP: £12.99
Price: £11.10

Review Pi [1999] / Pathe Distribution:

Patterns exist everywhere: in nature, in science, in religion, in business. Max Cohen (played hauntingly by Sean Gullette) is a mathematician searching for these patterns in everything. Yet, he's not the only one, and everyone from Wall Street investors, looking to break the market, to Hasidic Jews, searching for the 216-digit number that reveals the true name of God, are trying to get their hands on Max. This dark, low-budget film was shot in black and white by director Darren Aronofsky. With eerie music, voice-overs, and overt symbolism enhancing the somber mood, Aronofsky has created a disturbing look at the world. Max is deeply paranoid, holed up in his apartment with his computer Euclid, obsessively studying chaos theory. Blinding headaches and hallucinogenic visions only feed his paranoia as he attempts to remain aloof from the world, venturing out only to meet his mentor, Sol Robeson (Mark Margolis), who for some mysterious reason feels Max should take a break from his research. Pi is complex-occasionally toocomplex-but the psychological drama and the loose sci-fi elements make this a worthwhile, albeit consuming, watch. Pi won the Director's Award at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. -Jenny Brown.

Review Bfi Video / Paris Nous Appartient [1961]
Actors & Directors
  • Jacques Rivette
Release date: 2006-09-25
Run time: 140 min.
Creator: Jean-Claude Brialy
RRP: £19.99
Price: £11.16

Review Paris Nous Appartient [1961] / Bfi Video:


Review Touchstone Home Video / Nothing To Lose [1997]
Actors & Directors
  • Steve Oedekerk
  • Giancarlo Esposito
  • Tim Robbins
  • Martin Lawrence
  • John C. McGinley
  • Kelly Preston
Release date: 2006-06-15
Run time: 94 min.
Creator: Rae Proctor
RRP: £14.99
Price: £3.98

Review Nothing To Lose [1997] / Touchstone Home Video:

With a story that's too flimsy to support its running time, this road-mo vie comedy has plenty of problems, but at its best it's a surprisingly inspired vehicle for the clever teaming of Tim Robbins and Martin Lawrence. Robbins plays an addled advertising executive who comes home early one day and discovers his wife in bed with his boss. To make matters worse, he's later carjacked by a struggling, unemployed family-man-turned-petty-thief (Lawrence), and that's when he loses his cool completely. He takes the carjacker hostage and recruits him on a road-trip scheme of revenge against his wife and boss. Plotting to break into his boss' high-security vault, Robbins gets a criminal assist from Lawrence, but they're also on the run from another pair of would-be thieves who trail them to the vault's location. The routine plot of Nothing To Lose is occasionally limp and sluggish, but writer-director Steve Oedekerk (who makes a wacky cameo appearance as a security guard) mines comedy gold during several scenes that detour from the plot for the sake of sheer lunacy. Robbins and Lawrence have great comedic chemistry (if you can tolerate Lawrence's constant profanity), and although the movie ends on a false note with some unlikely turns of fate, it's definitely good for more than a few solid laughs. -Jeff Shannon, Amazon. com.

Review Prism Leisure / Rebecca [1940]
Actors & Directors
  • George Sanders
  • Joan Fontaine
  • Laurence Olivier
  • Nigel Bruce
  • Judith Anderson
  • Alfred Hitchcock
Release date: 2004-10-04
Run time: 126 min.
Creator: Robert E. Sherwood
RRP: £5.99
Price: £16.99

Review Rebecca [1940] / Prism Leisure:

"Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again. " From the first classic line of this unforgettable film, Rebecca casts its spell. David O. Selznick brought Alfred Hitchcock to the United States in order to give this adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's novel the proper atmosphere. The resulting film is a stunning marriage of their sensibilities. It paid off critically and financially as well. Like Gone with the Wind, which Selznick released a year earlier, Rebecca won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Laurence Olivier stars as Maxim de Winter, who, reeling from the recent and unexpected death of his glamorous wife Rebecca, impulsively marries a young and adoring governess (Joan Fontaine). [+]
The new Mrs de Winter tries to fit into her role as mistress of the great house Manderley, but every step she takes is haunted by Rebecca's spirit. The ghost's brooding presence is personified by the insanely meticulous Mrs Danvers, brilliantly portrayed by Judith Anderson. As Fontaine's character begins to uncover the dark secrets of the de Winter clan, the house seems to take on a life of its own. Passionate love and romance blend seamlessly with typically Hitchcockian emphases on guilt, sexuality and Gothic horror. The production values are stunning and the cast is excellent, down to the least of the supporting players. While Rebecca has enough surprises to captivate even the most jaded of moviegoers, it is also one of those rare films that improves with each viewing. -Raphael Shargel.

Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / Man On Fire (Two Disc Special Edition) [2004]
Actors & Directors
  • Denzel Washington
  • Marc Anthony
  • Tony Scott
  • Dakota Fanning
Release date: 2005-02-14
Run time: 140 min.
RRP: £22.99
Price: £5.49

Review Man On Fire (Two Disc Special Edition) [2004] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:

Style trumps substance in Man on Fire, a slick, brooding reunion of Crimson Tide star Denzel Washington and director Tony Scott. The ominous, crime-ridden setting is Mexico City, where a dour, alcoholic warrior with a mysterious Black Ops past (Washington) seeks redemption as the devoted bodyguard of a lovable 9-year-old girl (the precociously gifted Dakota Fanning), then responds with predictable fury when she is kidnapped and presumably killed. Prolific screenwriter Brian Helgeland (Mystic River, L. A. Confidential) sets a solid emotional foundation for Washington's tormented character, and Scott's stylistic excess compensates for a distended plot that's both repellently violent and viscerally absorbing. Among Scott's more distracting techniques is the use of free-roaming, comic-bookish subtitles. even when they're unnecessary! Adapted from a novel by A. J. [+]
Quinnell and previously filmed as a 1987 vehicle for Scott Glenn, Man on Fire is roughly on par with Scott's similar 1990 film Revenge, efficiently satisfying Washington's incendiary bloodlust under a heavy blanket of humid, doom-laden atmosphere. -Jeff Shannon.

Review Warner Home Video / Angel Eyes [2001]
Actors & Directors
  • Jeremy Sisto
  • Jennifer Lopez
  • Terrence Howard
  • Luis Mandoki
  • Sonia Braga
  • James Caviezel
Release date: 2002-03-25
Run time: 102 min.
Creator: Gerald Di Pego
RRP: £13.99
Price: £2.06

Review Angel Eyes [2001] / Warner Home Video:

Angel Eyes is a mature and level-headed drama about real people with authentic emotions, clawing through their own hurt and confusion toward a hopeful recovery. In a subtly effective performance as Chicago cop Sharon Pogue, Jennifer Lopez is both gutsy and vulnerable, using her badge as a shield against a past incident of domestic violence that left her estranged from her family and alone with her conviction that good deeds are not always rewarded. This leaves her open to the mysterious appeal of Catch (Jim Caviezel), a haunted loner whose slightly creepy demeanour is merely the cautious façade of a man who, ultimately, has as much to offer Sharon as she does him. They connect-he saves her life, just as she once saved his-and Angel Eyes proceeds to reveal the true and fateful depth of their love. It seems, at first, that Gerald Di Pego's script will turn in a supernatural direction-or at least a metaphysical one-but it doesn't, and director Luis Mandoki navigates an emotional minefield while acknowledging the walls that people build between themselves and the traumatic events they wish to forget. Catch has kept a deliberate distance between himself and a tragedy that Sharon had witnessed-not a repressed nightmare, but a devastating loss from which he will, eventually, recover. That these two characters should rediscover each other at a time of mutual need is not a contrived coincidence. In Angel Eyes, it's the karmic redemption for two wise and deserving souls. -Jeff Shannon, Amazon. com.

Review Entertainment in Video / The Astronaut's Wife [1999]
Actors & Directors
  • Charlize Theron
  • Donna Murphy
  • Rand Ravich
  • Joe Morton
  • Clea DuVall
  • Johnny Depp
Release date: 2000-04-24
Run time: 100 min.
Creator: Mark Johnson
RRP: £19.99
Price: £3.82

Review The Astronaut's Wife [1999] / Entertainment in Video:

An intriguingly creepy premise but failed execution marks The Astronaut's Wife, a stylish and ultimately bland thriller about a pretty, young woman whose pretty, young astronaut husband comes back from his most recent space mission a little. odd. Before that fated space trip, Spencer (Johnny Depp) and Jillian (Charlize Theron) were a sunny, happy couple with matching blonde hairdos and a predilection for romping in the sack from extremely clever camera angles. However, after a communications blackout brings Spencer and his partner back down to earth prematurely, things are a little. peculiar. Spencer's partner goes bonkers and has a heart attack; on top of that, the partner's wife takes a fatal shower with a plugged-in radio. [+]
Getting out of the space biz, Spencer accepts a job as a corporate exec in New York, and as a welcome to the Big Apple for his comely wife, he molests her at the company cocktail party. Soon enough, Jillian is pregnant, but as you might expect, this pregnancy (twins, don't you know) is a little. unusual. Writer-director Rand Ravich takes his sweet time getting from extremely obvious plot point A to even more obvious plot point B, stretching out the development particulars in mind-numbing, suspense-killing fashion. Even Joe Morton, as a sinisterly psychotic NASA official, can't liven things up-you know you're in bad thriller territory when the biggest scare comes from a light suddenly being switched off. Theron, sporting a Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby style haircut, sleepwalks beautifully through the movie, but she did this role much, much better in The Devil's Advocate. Depp, with a cornpone Southern accent, is about as realistic as his peroxided hair. Ravich does the viewer no favours with a hackneyed ending straight out of a B-grade paperback horror novel in which the most shocking moment is Theron's sudden emergence as a brunette. With Blair Brown as a jaded socialite who offers to help out Theron by providing do-it-yourself abortion pills, and a lovely Donna Murphy as the suicidal wife who figures it all out before everyone else. - Mark Englehart, Amazon. com.

Review Universal Pictures UK / The Informer [1935]
Actors & Directors
  • Margot Grahame
  • Wallace Ford
  • Heather Angel
  • John Ford
  • Una O'Connor
  • Victor McLaglen
Release date: 2008-05-05
Run time: 91 min.
RRP: £9.99
Price: £4.30

Review The Informer [1935] / Universal Pictures UK:


Review Cinema Club / Sexy Beast [2001]
Actors & Directors
  • Amanda Redman
  • James Fox
  • Ray Winstone
  • Ian McShane
  • Jonathan Glazer
  • Ben Kingsley
Release date: 2003-01-13
Run time: 84 min.
Creator: Louis Mellis
RRP: £9.99
Price: £4.97

Review Sexy Beast [2001] / Cinema Club:

Fed up with the seemingly endless succession of Brit gangster flicks? Or just wish that someone would reinvent the genre? Either way, Sexy Beast is for you. While reintroducing some of the well-worn characters of recent years, the film at least attempts to take a sideways look at the genre. Centred on the lives of two ex-con ex-pats and their new lives in Spain, the story is one concerning the conflict between the past and the present. Ray Winston is Gel, who, enjoying his life of early retirement in the sun, finds his loyalties called into question when asked to return to Britain to take part in an audacious heist. There's not much else to say plot wise, but the script and cast is so strong that the film gets away with it. Eschewing the younger brat pack in favour of the likes of Winston, Ian McShane, Amanda Redman (sadly under-used) and Ben Kingsley (whose ultra foul-mouthed Don steals every scene) gives the film a calm authority. Quite violent-although more in language than action-but not without its moments of brilliant humour, Sexy Beast is an intelligent, enthralling and welcome addition to the gangster-film genre. -Phil Udell.

Review Sony Pictures Home Entertainment / And Justice For All [1979]
Actors & Directors
  • Jack Warden
  • Al Pacino
  • Norman Jewison
  • John Forsythe
  • Jeffrey Tambor
  • Lee Strasberg
Release date: 2001-02-05
Run time: 114 min.
Creator: Valerie Curtin
RRP: £19.99
Price: £3.89

Review And Justice For All [1979] / Sony Pictures Home Entertainment:

Al Pacino plays a Maryland lawyer who takes on a judicial system rife with deal making in And Justice for All, an awkward blend of satire and sentimentality. Topical director Norman Jewison can't seem to help Pacino get comfortable with the mismatched material, which pushes the film into outrageousness at some turns and mawkishness at others. The script by Barry Levinson and Valerie Curtin is more an accumulation of random ideas and moments than a congruent story. However, it's interesting to see the large cast of good actors, most of whom were unknowns at the time including Christine Lahti who made her film debut here. -Tom Keogh, Amazon. com.

Review Universal Pictures UK / The Relic [1997]
Actors & Directors
  • Tom Sizemore
  • James Whitmore
  • Clayton Rohner
  • Penelope Ann Miller
  • Linda Hunt
  • Peter Hyams
Release date: 2002-02-25
Run time: 105 min.
Creator: Rick Jaffa
RRP: £9.99
Price: £1.70

Review The Relic [1997] / Universal Pictures UK:

The Relic is the story of a monster that runs amok in a Chicago museum on the very day the institution is holding a glitzy reception. Naturally, the museum bosses want to go ahead with their public relations even as the creature is decapitating victims. Penelope Ann Miller plays a scientist on the run from the critter (which is at times computer generated and reminiscent of the raptors in Jurassic Park), and Tom Sizemore is a cop looking for his cold-blooded (in every sense) killer. Peter Hyams (Timecop) directs, and as always he excels at managing the plastic action at the cost of real feeling and logic. (Much of the story is pretty laughable. ) -Tom Keogh.

Actors & Directors
  • Joel Schumacher
  • Chris O'Donnell
  • Nicole Kidman
  • Tommy Lee Jones
  • Val Kilmer
  • Jim Carrey
Release date: 2008-12-22
Run time: 115 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £12.98

Review Batman Forever [Blu-ray] [1995] / Warner Home Video:


Review MGM Entertainment / Kid Galahad [1962]
Actors & Directors
  • Elvis Presley
Release date: 2003-09-15
Run time: 93 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £1.24

Review Kid Galahad [1962] / MGM Entertainment:


Review Contender Entertainment Group / Bad Girls - Series 2 [1999] (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Mandana Jones
  • Ian White
  • Jack Ellis
  • Julie Edwards
  • Victoria Alcock
  • Nigel Douglas
  • Ian Knox
  • David Gwillim
  • David Crean
  • Kika Mirylees
Release date: 2001-10-01
Run time: 630 min.
Creator: Di Burrows
RRP: £39.99
Price: £49.99

Review Bad Girls - Series 2 [1999] (NTSC) / Contender Entertainment Group:

Few television dramas of recent years have managed to combine quality and popularity as successfully as Bad Girls. Series two of the women's-prison drama offers essentially more of the same, but the formula is so well honed that it would be churlish to complain. The main characters and storylines are still there, with the relationship that began between Nikki and Helen (Mandana Jones and Simone Lahbib) at the end of the first series brought eloquently and stylishly to centre stage-a result of both superb writing and performance. The show is given fresh impetus by the constant introduction of new characters. The resulting plot lines see the growing influence of the superb Yyvonne, the unhinged prison officer Di and a new wing governor Karen Betts added to the equation, all with explosive results. The mixture of humour and drama is, as ever, played to perfection. On the DVD: Having set an impressive standard with the DVD release of series one, Bad Girls continues to lead the field for television drama releases. Again the packaging of the four-disc set is handy but extremely stylish and comes with a whole series of extras. The documentary this time follows the cast on a promotional trip to South Africa and there are two galleries of photographs, deleted scenes, production and cast notes and a mass of outtakes that beg the question how they ever actually managed to make one programme, let alone the 13 included here, without the whole cast convulsing with laughter. -Phil Udell.

Review Warner Home Video / Don't Look Now [1973]
Actors & Directors
  • Clelia Matania
  • Julie Christie
  • Donald Sutherland
  • Nicolas Roeg
  • Hilary Mason
  • Massimo Serato
Release date: 2002-07-29
Run time: 105 min.
Creator: Daphne Du Maurier
RRP: £13.99
Price: £4.23

Review Don't Look Now [1973] / Warner Home Video:

Don't Look Now was filmed in 1973 and based around a Daphne Du Maurier novel. Directed by Nicolas Roeg, it has lost none of its chill: like Kubrick's The Shining, its dazzling use of juxtaposition, colour, sound and editing make it a seductive experience in cinematic terror, whose aftershock lingers in daydreams and nightmares, filling you with uncertainty and dread even after its horrific climax. Donald Sutherland plays John Baxter, an architect, Julie Christie his wife: a well-to-do couple whose young daughter drowns while out playing. Cut to Venice, out of season, where the couple encounter a pair of sisters, one of whom claims psychic powers and to have communicated with their dead daughter. The subsequent plot is as labyrinthine as the back streets of the city itself, down which Baxter spots a diminutive and elusive red-coated figure akin to his daughter, before being drawn into an almost unbearable finale. Don't Look Now is a Gothic masterpiece, with its melange of gore, mystery, ecstasy, the supernatural and above all grief, while the city of Venice itself-which thanks to Roeg and his team seems to breathe like a dark, sinister living organism throughout the movie-deserves a credit in its own right. Not just a magnificent drama but an advanced feat of cinema. -David Stubbs.

Review Momentum Pictures / Total Recall [1990]
Actors & Directors
  • Rachel Ticotin
  • Paul Verhoeven
  • Ronny Cox
  • Michael Ironside
  • Sharon Stone
  • Arnold Schwarzenegger
Release date: 2001-04-30
Run time: 108 min.
Creator: Ronald Shusett
RRP: £17.99
Price: £5.00

Review Total Recall [1990] / Momentum Pictures:

Total Recall, director Paul Verhoeven's mega-budget sci-fi action blockbuster from 1990, began its production life as a very different movie. An adaptation of the Philip K. Dick short story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale", it was originally conceived of with Richard Dreyfuss starring as a Walter-Mitty-like character who experiences a variety of artificially induced fantasies. But with Arnold Schwarzenegger on board, the final version took a rather different direction. The Austrian Oak plays a normal working man who discovers his entire reality has been invented to conceal a scheme for planetary domination on Mars. Oscar-winning special effects and violent action propel the twisting plot, in which Arnold manipulates his manipulators in a world of dazzling high technology. Verhoeven (Robocop, Starship Troopers) indulges his usual penchant for gratuitous bloodshed, but the movie has enough cleverness to rise above its excesses. -Jeff Shannon, Amazon. com On the DVD: Not many extras, but excellent picture and sound. The reds of Mars are a terrific way of testing your television's colour definition in this digital transfer. [+]
Combine that with testing your speakers in the opening scene to Jerry Goldsmith's pounding score boosted to Dolby 5. 1, and what an ideal home cinema demo disc this is! Two trailers show the way a film should and shouldn't be advertised, since the teaser gives nothing away but the main advert tells you everything. A seven-minute behind the scenes featurette with cast interviews and on-set action rounds out the extras package. -Paul Tonks.

Browse Crime, Thrillers & Mystery:

Models & Brands:
The Gauntlet [1977], Planet Of The Apes [1968], Fear In The Night [1972], Holby Blue - Series 1 - Complete [2007], Pi [1999], Paris Nous Appartient [1961], Nothing To Lose [1997], Rebecca [1940], Man On Fire (Two Disc Special Edition) [2004], Angel Eyes [2001], The Astronaut's Wife [1999], The Informer [1935], Sexy Beast [2001], And Justice For All [1979], The Relic [1997], Batman Forever [Blu-ray] [1995], Kid Galahad [1962], Bad Girls - Series 2 [1999] (NTSC), Don't Look Now [1973], Total Recall [1990]

Top headlines:
Search 
DVD Rental: try it for free