"Actor: John Rubinstein"

• The Boys From Brazil | DVD | (10/03/2003) from £3.99   |  Saving you £6.00 (150.38%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Robustly entertaining and bracingly sinister, The Boys from Brazil stars Gregory Peck as the infamous Dr Josef Mengele, the former Nazi chief who intends to resurrect the Führer and create a Fourth Reich through genetic experiments that commence with the assassination of some 94 fathers. Elderly Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman (Laurence Olivier, in an Oscar-nominated performance) is tipped to the plot, but his efforts to expose Peck (fiendishly cast against type) are thwarted by a set of menacing triplets played by Jeremy Black. Back in 1978, The Boys from Brazil (adapted from Ira Levin's novel) was an incalculably tense, straight-faced entertainment whose lack of irony allowed the viewer to indulge the film's outrageous premise without moral offence. But in view of the scientific advancements made since the release of the film, it's now a cautionary tale, and all the more compelling for being so. Jerry Goldsmith's richly conceived, Oscar-nominated score--replete with echoes of Mahler and Strauss--reinforces this impression.--Kevin Mulhall

• Without A Trace - Season 1 | DVD | (10/01/2005) from £11.99   |  Saving you £52.00 (520.52%)   |  RRP £61.99

  It has not taken long for Without a Trace to emerge from the shadows of CSI and become a ratings force in its own right. Jerry Bruckheimer produced both series, and both feature the-face-is-familiar character actors with extensive and diverse resumes who have been catapulted to primetime stardom. Jack Malone, head of a crack FBI missing persons unit, is the Australian-born Anthony LaPaglia's breakout role after years of portraying enough Italian mobsters and criminals to populate a season of The Sopranos. LaPaglia was a surprise Golden Globe Award-winner for this inaugural season. Without a Trace is instantly arresting. "The clock is ticking" in each episode, as Malone and company race against time to find a missing person. "After 48 hours," Malone explains to the rookie member of the team in the series pilot, "they're gone." To solve each baffling case, Malone and fellow agents Samantha Spade (Poppy Montgomery), Vivian Johnson (Marianne Jean-Baptiste of Secrets and Lies), Danny Taylor (Enrique Murciano), and new guy Martin Fitzgerald (Eric Close), must work from the inside out. "Once we find out who she is," Malone says of one victim, "odds are we'll find out where she is." Among the inaugural season's most wrenching episodes are "Between the Cracks" and "Hang On to Me," both featuring Charles Dutton in his Emmy Award-winning performance as a father whose son has been missing for five years. The powerful season finale, "Fallout," presented in this four-disc set in a "creator's cut," concerns a man who lost his wife in the 9/11 attacks. The riveting episodes mostly stand alone, but some cases do return to haunt Malone, as witness "In Extremis," a case that ends tragically and leads to an internal investigation that threatens to subvert the close-knit unit in the episode. "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been?" Sharp writing, authentic procedurals, taut direction, and effective use of music make Without a Tracea series worth finding on DVD. --Donald Liebenson

• Stakeout / Another Stakeout | DVD | (10/10/2005) from £9.99   |  Saving you £8.00 (80.08%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Stakeout (Dir. John Badham 1987): While on an FBI stakeout detective Chris Lecce (Richard Dreyfuss) falls hard for Maria (Madeleine Stowe) the woman he's supposed to be watching. Soon he's inside her home enjoying a torrid love affair while his young partner Bill Reimers (Emilio Estevez) waits across the street looking through his binoculars and fuming. But the woman's ex-boyfriend (Aidan Quinn) a crazed escaped convict who is the real object of the stakeout is on his

• Zachariah | DVD | (08/04/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Advertised in 1970 as "the first electric Western", Zachariah is an endearingly pretentious effort that prefigures such genre oddities as Jodorowsky's El Topo and Alex Cox's Straight to Hell. The story is the archetypal one about two friends who become gunslingers and must inevitably face off against each other in the finale, but it's treated here as if it Meant Something Deeper--which means that after enjoying 75 minutes of violence we can all agree that peace and love and harmony is on the whole better for children and other living things. Curly haired farmboy Zachariah (John Rubinstein) and eternally grinning apprentice blacksmith Matthew (Don Johnson) are the fast friends who run away from home to join up with a gang of outlaws known as the Crackers (played by hippie folk-rock collective Country Joe and the Fish). These apparent 19th-century Westerners tote electric guitars and are given to staging free festival freak-outs at one end of town to distract from the bank robbery at the other. The boys soon hook up with Job Cain (Elvin Jones), an all-in-black master gunfighter who is also an ace drummer (his solo is impressive), but then drift apart as Zachariah has a liaison with Old West madame Belle Starr (Pat Quinn) in a town that consists of fairground-style brightly painted wooden cut out buildings (a gag reused in Blazing Saddles), then gets rid of his outrageous all-white cowboy outfit to settle down on a homestead and grow his own dope and vegetables. Matthew, of course, goes for the black leather look after outdrawing Cain, and comes a gunning for the only man who might be faster than him, but the hippie-era message is once these kids have killed everyone else they can still make peace with each other and the desert or something, man. Aside from a Beatle-haired teenage Johnson making a fool of himself by over-emoting to contrast with Rubinstein's non-performance, the film offers a lot of beautiful "acid Western" scenery and excellent prog rock and bluegrass music from the James Gang, White Lightnin' and the New York Rock Ensemble. Comedy troupe the Firesign Theatre (huge on album in 1970) provided the script, which explains satirical touches like the horse-and-buggy salesman (Dick Van Patten) spieling like a used car dealer and the madame's claim to have had affairs with gunslingers from Billy the Kid to Marshal McLuhan. The DVD extras are skimpy, but the print quality is outstanding. --Kim Newman

• 21 Grams | DVD | (13/09/2004) from £4.99   |  Saving you £15.00 (300.60%)   |  RRP £19.99

  21 grams is the weight we lose when we die, and this moving drama tells of three very different people brought together by the common bond of death.

• Another Stakeout | DVD | (20/05/2002) from £7.97   |  Saving you £7.02 (88.08%)   |  RRP £14.99

  The sequel to the 1987 FBI action comedy, Another Stakeout sees the unlikely crime-fighting duo, again played by Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez, getting involved in, well, another stakeout. This time they are joined by Rosie O'Donnell (one of the comedienne's first film roles) as assistant DA and have to masquerade as the perfect nuclear family to flush out a star witness in their case against the mob. Pretty much the entire cast and crew from Stakeout are reunited by director John Badham for the sequel and, luckily, there is enough new material, slapstick comedy moments and solid performances from the trio of stars to ensure that this isn't just a rehash of the original. The film has a few laugh-out-loud moments, such as the dinner party the bogus family throw so that they can get the couple next door out of the house to enable Estevez to bug it, and there is a brilliant cameo performance from Dennis Farina (Get Shorty, Snatch) as the clueless next-door neighbour. This is not a classic by any means but is entertaining nonetheless. --Kristen Bowditch

• Someone To Watch Over Me | DVD | (08/11/2004) from £15.58   |  Saving you £-9.59 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Someone to Watch Over Me is a stylish, smart film noir directed by Ridley Scott (Blade Runner). The movie stars Tom Berenger as a New York cop and family man who falls for the rich and beautiful witness (Mimi Rogers) he's assigned to protect. Scott, who always displays a distinctive eye for extraordinary art direction, does something here he should be doing a lot more often: directing contemporary noir. Berenger and Rogers rise to the occasion, seemingly aware that they're making something special. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

• The Car | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £4.99   |  Saving you £5.00 (50.10%)   |  RRP £9.99

  There's nowhere to turn nowhere to hide no way to stop... A monstrous black sedan roars out of the desert without warning and mercilessly begins to terrorize the residents of a small New Mexico town. Is it a phantom a demon...or even the Devil himself?

• Skokie | DVD | (11/08/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  In a comfortable Chicago suburb the advantages of life are abundant but when a politically astute Nazi organizer selects Skokie as the site of his next rally feelings run riot. This film drama spans over a year of legal battles and explores the very meaning of freedom in America.

• Norma Jean And Marilyn | DVD | (20/04/2004) from £6.73   |  Saving you £8.26 (122.73%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Mira Sorvino and Ashley Judd deliver stunning performances in this acclaimed psychological drama that takes a revealing look at the two personalities of Marilyn Monroe.

• Skokie | DVD | (31/12/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  In a comfortable Chicago suburb the advantages of life are abundant but when a politically astute Nazi organizer selects Skokie as the site of his next rally feelings run riot. This film drama spans over a year of legal battles and explores the very meaning of freedom in America.

• The Boys From Brazil | UMD | (30/01/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99