"Actor: Michael Edward Stevens"

• Babe | DVD | (02/01/2006) from £5.70   |  Saving you £6.29 (110.35%)   |  RRP £11.99

  The surprise hit of 1995, this splendidly entertaining family film was nominated for six Academy Awards, including best picture, director, and screenplay, and deservedly won the Oscar for its subtly ingenious visual effects. Babe is all about the title character, a heroic little pig who's been taken in by the friendly farmer Hoggett (Oscar nominee James Cromwell), who senses that he and the pig share "a common destiny." Babe, a popular mischief-maker the Australian farm, is adopted by the resident border collie and raised as a puppy, befriended by Ferdinand the duck (who thinks he's a cockerel), and saves the day as a champion "sheep-pig." Filled with a supporting cast of talking barnyard animals and a chorus of singing mice (courtesy of computer enhancements and clever animatronics), this frequently hilarious, visually imaginative movie has already taken its place as a family classic with timeless appeal. --Jeff Shannon

• Komodo | DVD | (27/01/2003) from £22.98   |  Saving you £-6.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  I think they're contesting our place in the food chain", quips an Imperilled teen at an especially low moment of Komodo, a regulation trapped-with-monsters straight-to-video quickie. There was a millennial blip of such nature-on-the-rampage horrors in the year 2000 and Komodo settles comfortably onto the shelf with King Cobra, Blood Surf, They Nest, Crocodile, Spiders and Octopus. If you've seen all of them, you'll probably want to see this too--but don't say we didn't warn you. Komodo familiarly packs a few no-name actors to an island supposedly off the shore of Carolina (actually somewhere in Australasia and has them menaced by CGI creatures, then fighting back and beating the beasts. Though the title gives away the nature of the menace, ex-effects technician-turned-director Michael Lantieri keeps the monsters off-screen and purportedly mysterious for half the running time. Teenage Patrick (Kevin Zegers) is traumatised by the deaths of parents (and his dog) and retreats into an amnesiac fugue, but his psychiatrist Victoria (Jill Hennessy) brings him back to the site of the tragedy to stir his memories. It turns out that the local evil oil company has always known that a bunch of giant, flesh-eating lizards were on the loose but kept quiet about it for nebulously nefarious purposes. Oates (Billy Burke), a rebellious company minion, hooks up with Patrick (who shows unexpected resourcefulness in whipping up lizard traps) and the shrink and they have a last-reel confrontation with the monsters that allow for some very distant echoes of Jurassic Park. The CGI and model work is seamless but the monsters have too little personality and, despite their voracious appetites, require all manner of contrivances to bring their victims within snapping distance. Nice bit at the end though with a gory if not dramatic finale. --Kim Newman

• Beverly Hills Family Robinson | DVD | (07/08/2006) from £29.99   |  Saving you £-12.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Marsha Robinson host of a TV cooking show takes her family on a working vacation to a South Seas Island but their yacht is hijacked by pirates and then shipwrecked and the Robinsons must survive Marsha's complaints while they build a treehouse meet a handsome carpenter bond together as a family and fight off the pirates.

• Dead End | DVD | (26/06/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £2.99

  Best Selling crime author Todd Russell is famous wealthy and engaged to the stunningly beautiful Lori. In fact he seems to be the man who has everything but looks can be deceiving! Homicide detectives David Wolcott and Dwayne Seaver uncover a string of murders which took place ten years earlier suggesting a copycat killer is on the loose. With the killings being identical in every detail the conclusion is that only one man could possibly have such detail and that is the detective who investigated and became obsessed with the Evergreen murders. That man was Todd Russell before he quit the force to become a best selling author! Finding himself as the prime suspect Russell is further confused when he receives an ambiguous call notifying him that a woman who he has never heard of has passed away and bequeathed everything to him as her only son! As far as she is concerned Russell believes that his mother who he knows and loves is alive and well and for this mystery writer fiction soon starts to blur with reality as his life starts to spiral out of control and the copycat killings escalate. He hurtles from one surreal situation to another with the detectives hot on his tail but they are thrown into confusion themselves as possible further suspects are unearthed.