"Actor: David Riley"

• A Soldier's Story | DVD | (17/08/2009) from £9.98   |  Saving you £-3.99 (-66.60%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Charles Fuller adapted his Pulitzer Prize-winning A Soldier's Play for the big screen in 1984. The film version, A Soldier's Story is essentially a murder mystery, played out against a background of inter and intra-racial conflict at a Second World War training camp. To the consternation of his white opposite number at the camp, a black captain (Howard W Rollins) arrives to investigate the death of a black sergeant (Adolph Caesar). Suspicion immediately falls on a pair of bigoted white officers but as the tale unfolds in a series of flashbacks, it soon becomes clear that a different kind of prejudice is also at work. Assisted by some excellent performances, director Norman Jewison opens the story out from its stage roots. There's a wonderful baseball scene (filmed on location at Little Rock) in which the double standards of Dennis Lipscomb's fidgety white captain are exposed with neat irony; he'll cheer his successful black team all the way home in the name of sport. His gradual, forced liberalisation provides the film with an important comic element. A Soldier's Story wears its heart on its sleeve without being superficial in any way. It's a compelling tale, well told and often highly entertaining, in which nobody gets off lightly, least of all the good guy. On the DVD: The widescreen presentation helps give an epic feel to what could, in other hands, have been a claustrophobic production. The picture quality is fine. But the monaural sound track is often rather muffled, leaving you straining to catch some of the dialogue. This is also a shame because the blues music--an inspired job by Herbie Hancock, assisted by Patti Labelle singing her lungs out as bar owner Big Mary--is an important element of the film's underlying theme and deserves to be better heard. The extras are valuable. Norman Jewison's commentary is detailed and sensitive. As he says, the film deals with "ideas in racism never seen on screen before", and he acknowledges the strength of his actors in getting those ideas across. "March to Freedom" is an excellent short documentary which features the moving testimonies of black servicemen on the insufferable prejudices they encountered while attempting to defend their country during the Second World War; A Soldier's Story is thus put sharply into context. --Piers Ford

• London's War Part 3 The Beginning of the End | DVD | (02/06/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  By May 1941, the House of Commons lay in ruins and only Marylebone station was functioning. Cracks began to emerge in the 'Blitz Spirit', but a major victory gave the capital a chance to rejoice

• London's War Part 4 The Road to Victory | DVD | (02/06/2010) from £9.43   |  Saving you £3.56 (27.40%)   |  RRP £12.99

  A week after the Normandy landings, Hitler struck back with a terrifying new weapon ' the V1. Once again, London was undergoing a trial by fire, as Nazi missiles pounded the city

• London's War Part 1 The Beginning | DVD | (02/06/2010) from £8.06   |  Saving you £5.93 (73.57%)   |  RRP £13.99

  In 1939, London was the heart of the British Empire. A year later, it was on the frontline. As pilots duelled in the skies above, the city prepared for the gathering storm'

• A.I. / The Time Machine / Eight Legged Freaks | DVD | (29/09/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A.I. - Artificial Intelligence 'Artificial Intelligence' is the story of David (Haley Joel Osment) the first mecha (a futuristic term for a mechanized human being) designed with the ability to love. A couple whose son is in a coma adopts David to help them recover from their loss. Naturally things do not go as planned and David is forced to leave the mother (Frances O'Connor) he's been imprinted to love and make his way in the world. Traveling with Teddy a hi-tech stuffed bear David escapes the Flesh Fair where angry humans destroy mechas to purge artificiality and unexpectedly befriends Gigolo Joe (Jude Law) a robot designed to pleasure women. Joe agrees to help David in his quest to become human. The Time Machine (2002): This adaptation of the classic sci-fi adventure tale by H.G. Wells directed by Simon Wells (the great-grandson of the author) stars Guy Pearce as Alex Hartdegen an absent-minded New York professor preoccupied with what passes for technology at the turn of the 20th century. However the one thing that can distract him from his calculations is his love for Emma (Sienna Guillory) his bride-to-be. When tragedy strikes and he loses Emma Alex uses the time-travelling machine that he's built in secret to change the present by going into the past. When that fails to alter fate he leaps forward in time eventually landing 800 000 years in the future an era where humanity has splintered into two races; the docile Eloi and the ferocious Morlocks. There Alex befriends two of the Eloi (Samantha and Omero Mumba) and attempts to help them resist almost certain death at the hands of the Morlocks... Eight Legged Freaks: What do you get when you cross toxic waste with a bunch of exotic spiders? Eaten!!! Mutated ravenous arachnids the size of SUVs invade a tiny Arizona town in this gleeful comedy monster-mash.