"Actor: Helen Wallace"

• Radio Days | DVD | (11/03/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Woody Allen's gentlest and most unassuming movie, Radio Days isn't so much a story as a series of anecdotes loosely linked together by a voice-over spoken by the director. The film is strongly autobiographical in tone, presenting the memories of a young lad Joe (clearly a stand-in for Allen himself) growing up in a working-class Jewish family in the seafront Brooklyn suburb of Rockaway during the late 1930s and early 40s. In this pre-TV era the radio is ubiquitous, a constant accompaniment churning out quiz shows, soap operas, dance music, news flashes and Joe's favourite, the exploits of the Masked Avenger. Given Allen's well-publicised gallery of neuroses, you might expect childhood traumas. But no, everything here is rose-tinted and even the outbreak of war makes little impact on the easygoing, protective tenor of family life. Now and then Allen counterpoints his family album with the doings of the radio folk themselves (blink, and you'll miss a young William H Macy in the studio scene when the news of Pearl Harbour comes through). The rise to fame of Sally (Mia Farrow), a former night-club cigarette girl turned crooner, is the nearest the film comes to a coherent storyline. But most of the time Allen is content to coast on a flow of easy nostalgia, poking affectionate fun at the broadcasting conventions of the period and basking in the mildly rueful Jewish humour and small domestic crises of Joe's extended family. There aren't even any of his snappy one-liners, and the humour is kept low-key, raising at most an indulgent smile. A touch of Allen's usual acerbity wouldn't have come amiss. But for anyone who shares these memories, Radio Days will surely be a delight. On the DVD: Not much besides the theatrical trailer, scene menu and a choice of languages. The screen's the full original ratio, but nothing seems to have been done to enhance the soundtrack, and the dialogue's not always clear. A boost in volume may help.--Philip Kemp

• The Curse Of The Jade Scorpion | DVD | (01/11/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Woody Allen stars as a top New York insurance investigator of the 1940s who, thanks to the hypnotic powers of the Jade Scorpion, finds the mind of a thief taking him over!

• Critical Care | DVD | (01/09/2003) from £12.98   |  Saving you £-6.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Werner Ernst is an overworked intern who only wants what is best for his elderly comatose patient--until he falls for the ailing man's beautiful daughter Felicia. The seductive Felicia has ten million reasons to let her father ""die with dignity "" while her deeply religious sister has her own motives for keeping him alive. Caught between passion and duty Werner descends into a moral mine field where the physician's god-like powers of life and death depend on knowing right from wrong-

• Because Of Him | DVD | (07/03/2011) from £13.48   |  Saving you £-0.49 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Young and beautiful Kim Walker (Durbin) aspires for the life of a Broadway actress and singer. She devises a scheme which will get her on stage in fact she gets the lead role in a new play through the help of the magnificent John Sheridan (Laughton) even against the writer's objections.

• Reform School Girl | DVD | (17/11/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Gloria Castillo stars as mixed up teenager Donna Price. When she witnesses her boyfriend steal a car and get involved in a fatal hit and run accident he frames her for the accident to save himself and she is sent to reform school on car theft charges. Despite her innocence Donna refuses to reveal who was really driving the stolen vehicle it is only once the culprit reveals himself to be throughly nasty that Donna is able to extricate herself from her spiralling dilemma.

• Child Bride Of Short Creek | DVD | (15/08/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £6.99

  Partially based on the true events surrounding a rural religious cult in the American Midwest and how the members' children suffered for their parents' fanaticism. 19 year old Isaac King returns from the Korean war to become frustrated and discouraged by his village's blind acceptance of the Brethren's strict doctrines. He falls in love with Jessica Ray Jacobs a 15 year old who is promised in marriage to Isaac's father Frank a devout town leader. Rebelling against Short Creek's c