"Actor: Blake Heron"

• Shiloh | DVD | (02/09/2002) from £22.49   |  Saving you £-8.50 (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  When a mistreated beagle pup follows 11-year-old Marty Preston (Blake Heron) home one day, it sparks a passion in the boy that leads him into a web of moral and emotional turmohil. Marty knows the dog belongs to his irascible neighbour, Judd Travers (a spittin' mean performance by Scott Wilson); he also knows Judd breaks local gaming laws and abuses his hounds. But Marty's father (Michael Moriarty) is a stickler for the first rule of pet ownership: he who owns the pet rules the pet. Marty seeks advice from the wise Doc Wallace (Rod Steiger), who tells the boy about his own struggle to claim legal guardianship over his granddaughter following her parents' death. The story inspires Marty to fight for the creature he has come to love. With a believable blend of nerve, conviction, and a hint of fear, Marty works every angle to beg, buy, or (finally) strike a trade with Travers to save Shiloh. While its pace runs a bit slow, the film provides a thoughtful lesson in weighing right and wrong and should appeal to families with children under 12. Based on the Newbery Award-winning book Shiloh, by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. --Liane Thomas

• 11:14 | DVD | (17/09/2007) from £7.95   |  Saving you £8.04 (101.13%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The events leading up to an 11:14 PM car crash, from five very different perspectives.

• Cheaters | DVD | (07/06/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  In the coda of Cheaters, John Stockwell's dramatisation of the 1995 Steinmetz school scandal, Jolie Fitch (Jena Malone) ruminates, "I learned more about the way the world really works from my nine months on the academic decathlon team than most people will learn in a lifetime". Fitch is the team leader of the crumbling inner-city school's first "academic decathlon" squad, a group of hard-working kids hopelessly outclassed by the perennial champions from a lavishly funded model school for the gifted and the rich. When a Steinmetz student discovers the question sheet for the upcoming finals, the issue isn't whether to cheat, but how. Stockwell discards easy moralising and empty platitudes for an ambiguous perspective framed by questions of privilege and prejudice. Jeff Daniels, so long the cinema's hapless nice guy, is excellent as the tireless teacher, a well-meaning idealist who struggles with his inner demons through the ordeal. Malone is refreshing as a streetwise class brain whose ambition drives the team on. Their guilt is the focus of a predatory media scandal, but it's the hypocrisy of the system and the double standards of the gatekeepers that Stockwell takes to task in his compelling drama. Some might call it cynical, but Cheaters is too sharp and smart for such an easy label. Better to call it disillusioned.--Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com