"Actor: Beano"

• Gang Boyz | DVD | (17/06/2002) from £8.08   |  Saving you £-0.09 (N/A%)   |  RRP £7.99

  When an innocent boy is the victim of a Los Angeles street gang's terror campaign, his ex-cop father returns from exile in Mexico to seek revenge. Collecting his own gang together from the victims of previous crimes, he leads them into one final bloody battle with his son's murderers.

• Wicked | DVD | (26/11/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  A teen-themed entry in the long-established Psycho-Bitch-from-Hell sub-genre of Hollywood thriller, Wicked affords current high school princess Julia Stiles an opportunity to stop smiling and play a manipulative, disturbed, alienated girl who is also the number one suspect in the “did she or didn't she batter Mum to death with a heavy tragedy mask” mystery.Set in one of those hideous American "gated communities", a pastel suburban enclave with round-the-clock security and enough adulteries to keep a soap going for a year, the film is subtler than stablemates like The Crush and Teacher's Pet, with a more convoluted plot and enough suspects to put the outcome in doubt. However it's still a by-the-numbers mix of soap and suspense. Stiles crosses her eyes and pouts a lot, making tastefully incestuous moves on her weakling father (an aptly hollow William R Moses), but she's not really well cast in a role Christina Ricci could have played in her sleep a few years ago. The best supporting performance comes from Michael Parks as a drawling cop brought into the community by the killing of the strident mother (Chelsea Field), who lingers to watch the fall-out as Stiles replaces Mum as the homemaker only to be sidelined in favour of the au pair who needs a green-card marriage. When the battering and stabbing starts, the film is surprisingly explicit, splattering several distinct types of stage blood around the designer living caricature home.On the DVD: the picture is an anamorphic 1.85:1 print, with Dolby Digital surround-sound. The minimal extras include trailers, filmographies for very few of the principals, and a neat menu. --Kim Newman

• Hardcase And Fist | DVD | (06/03/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  If falsely accused ex-cop Bud McCall didn't have enough problems after being sent to prison for a crime he didn't commit he does now. The sadistic crime lord responsible for for putting him behind bars has taken his girlfriend hostage but Bud is not about to take things lying down. If he testifies to the FBI he could really get even... or get killed.