"Actor: Frank Gallacher"

• Dark City | DVD | (01/10/1999) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  If you're a fan of brooding comic-book anti-heroes, got a nihilistic jolt from The Crow (1994) and share director Alex Proyas's highly developed preoccupation for style over substance, you might be tempted to call Dark City an instant classic of visual imagination. It's one of those films that exists in a world purely of its own making, setting its own rules and playing by them fairly, so that even its derivative elements (and there are quite a few) acquire their own specific uniqueness. Before long, however, the film becomes interesting only as a triumph of production design. And while that's certainly enough to grab your attention (Blade Runner is considered a classic, after all), it's painfully clear that Dark City has precious little heart and soul. One-dimensional characters are no match for the film's abundance of retro-futuristic style, so it's best to admire the latter on its own splendidly cinematic terms. Trivia buffs will be interested to know that the film's 50-plussets (partially inspired by German expressionism) were built at the Fox Film Studios in Sydney, Australia, home base of director Alex Proyas and producer Andrew Mason. The underground world depicted in the film required the largest indoor set ever built in Australia. --Jeff Shannon

• Hammers Over The Anvil | DVD | (16/09/2002) from £4.88   |  Saving you £3.11 (63.73%)   |  RRP £7.99

  A Young Boy's Hero. A Married Woman's Desire. Russell Crowe stars as East Driscoll a bachelor horsebreaker who won't settle down. He becomes the idol of Alan a young boy with polio who dreams of riding just like his hero. As Alan struggles with the hardships of growing up he meets Grace an older English aristocrat for whom he develops feelings. The situation gets further complicated when the married Grace falls for the much younger East and Alan unwillingly is caught in the middle...

• Till Human Voices Wake Us | DVD | (08/03/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Til Human Voices Wake Us is a ghostly romance from Australia. Guy Pearce plays a brooding psychiatrist who must go back to his family's summer home to bury his father and settle some lingering childhood traumas. Helena Bonham Carter is the mysterious woman he meets on his journey, twice: once in a fleeting encounter on a train, again as she takes a dive off a trestle into a river. By the way, she's amnesiac--Guy Pearce just can't shake that Memento feel. For viewers susceptible to this kind of thing, director Michael Petroni's lofty literary tone might just work (the breathless pauses are broken by quotations from TS Eliot); otherwise, it will look like a skeletal take on a potentially interesting subject. The two fine actors give it a go and they're always good to look at, but finally one wonders what they saw in this very slim proposition. --Robert Horton