"Actor: Jessie Keosian"

• Green Card | DVD | (20/05/2002) from £11.25   |  Saving you £3.74 (33.24%)   |  RRP £14.99

  In the delightful romantic comedy Green Card, Georges (Gérard Depardieu), a composer and one-time petty thief who grew up in poverty, attempts to escape his life in Paris and begin anew in America by illegally marrying Bronte (Andie MacDowell), a prim and repressed young lady from a privileged life in Connecticut. Bronte, who has agreed to the scheme for her own self-serving reasons, is exasperated when the Immigration & Naturalisation Service investigates their case, and she and Georges, whom she detests, must spend time together studying each other's lives to avoid disaster. The fallout is infinitely better handled than any run-of-the-mill Hollywood romantic comedy, and the very ending itself stops deliciously short of where Hollywood would feel compelled to drag the story. Fine performances are given by MacDowell, Depardieu--who is fiercely charming pounding the keyboard of a Steinway at an upper class Manhattan dinner party--and Bebe Neuwirth, who is perfect as an upper-class child turned artist who revels in her irresponsibility. --James McGrath, Amazon.com

• New York Stories | DVD | (08/04/2002) from £5.38   |  Saving you £9.61 (178.62%)   |  RRP £14.99

  New York Stories comprises three views of life in the city of all cities, with segments directed by Woody Allen, Francis Coppola, and Martin Scorsese. The best of the three is Scorsese's "Life Lessons", about an artist (played by Nick Nolte) who uses his hyper-success to lure beautiful, young, aspiring artists to serve as his assistant/lovers. It's an astute portrait of the nature of the New York art world. In "Life Without Zoe", Coppola portrays the life of the privileged daughter of a world-renowned flautist, whose adventures on the Upper East Side (in the upper echelons of society) play like something approaching a cartoon. Woody Allen finishes up the film with his "Oedipus Wrecks", a typical Allen number about a successful New York lawyer who's still hounded by his mother--the title tells you all you need to know. Though stronger segments to complement Scorsese's would have made the movie as a whole much more interesting and enjoyable, it does at least provide an accurate glimpse of life in the Big Apple. --James McGrath, Amazon.com