"Actor: Annett Benning"

• Open Range | Blu Ray | (09/08/2021) from £16.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Western set in the 1880s, directed by Kevin Costner. Robert Duvall heads the cast as Boss Spearman, who, along with his partner Charley Waite (Costner) and their two helpers, Mose (Abraham Benrubi) and Buttons (Diego Luna), has been leading a quiet nomadic life driving cattle across the plains for the last ten years. Their peaceful existence comes under threat when the local cattle rancher Baxter (Michael Gambon) suddenly warns the foursome to get off his land. Boss, already riled by Baxter's dirty dealings, decides to fight back, and the film climaxes in a dramatic gunfight between Boss and Charley and Baxter's hired gunmen.

• American Beauty | Blu Ray | (14/02/2011) from £8.89   |  Saving you £11.10 (124.86%)   |  RRP £19.99

  From its first gliding aerial shot of a generic suburban street, American Beauty moves with a mesmerising confidence and acuity epitomised by Kevin Spacey's calm narration. Spacey is Lester Burnham, a harried Everyman whose midlife awakening is the spine of the story, and his very first lines hook us with their teasing fatalism--like Sunset Boulevard's Joe Gillis, Burnham tells us his story from beyond the grave. It's an audacious start for a film that justifies that audacity. Weaving social satire, domestic tragedy and whodunit into a single package, Alan Ball's first theatrical script dares to blur generic lines and keep us off balance, winking seamlessly from dark, scabrous comedy to deeply moving drama. The Burnham family joins the cinematic short-list of great dysfunctional American families, as Lester is pitted against his manic, materialistic realtor wife, Carolyn (Annette Bening, making the most of a mostly unsympathetic role) and his sullen, contemptuous teenaged daughter, Jane (Thora Birch, utterly convincing in her edgy balance of self-absorption and wistful longing). Into their lives come two catalytic outsiders. A young cheerleader (Mena Suvari) jolts Lester into a sexual epiphany that blooms into a second adolescence. And an eerily calm young neighbour (Wes Bentley) transforms both Lester and Jane with his canny influence. Credit another big-screen newcomer, English theatrical director Sam Mendes, with expertly juggling these potentially disjunctive elements into a superb ensemble piece that achieves a stylised pace without lapsing into transparent self-indulgence. Mendes has shrewdly insured his success with a solid crew of stage veterans, yet he has also made an inspired discovery in Bentley, whose Ricky Fitts becomes a fulcrum for both plot and theme. Cinematographer Conrad Hall's sumptuous visual design further elevates the film, infusing the beige interiors of the Burnhams' lives with vivid bursts of deep crimson, the colour of roses--and of blood. --Sam Sutherland

• Open Range | DVD | (09/08/2021) from £6.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A