"Actor: Peter Hock"

• Sphere | DVD | (23/10/1998) from £2.87   |  Saving you £12.38 (768.94%)   |  RRP £13.99

  From yet another derivative science fiction novel by Michael Crichton comes Sphere, an equally derivative and flaccid movie, in which three top Hollywood stars struggle to squeeze tension and excitement out of material that doesn't match their talents. You're supposed to find awe and mystery in Crichton's story about a team of scientists and scholars who discover a 300-year-old alien spacecraft deep on the ocean floor, but mostly you feel that this is all much ado about nothing. The exploration team consists of a psychologist (Dustin Hoffman), mathematician (Samuel L Jackson), biochemist (Sharon Stone), and an astrophysicist (Live Schreiber), and when they enter the alien ship they discover a mysterious sphere inside. What they don't know is that the sphere has the power to manipulate their thoughts and perceptions, and before long the scientists' undersea habitat is a veritable haunted house of frightening visions and creeping paranoia. Who can be trusted? What is the sphere's purpose, and why is it on the ocean floor? Sphere makes some attempt to answer these questions, but the film is a mess, and it leads to one of the most anticlimactic endings of any science fiction film ever made. There are moments of high intensity and psychological suspense, and the stellar cast works hard to boost the talky screenplay. But it's clear that this was a hurried production (Hoffman and director Barry Levinson made Wag the Dog during an extended production delay), and as a result Sphere looks and feels like a film that wasn't quite ready for the cameras. Though it's by no means a waste of time, it's undeniably disappointing. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

• Crown Court Vol.6 | DVD | (20/07/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Crown Court: Vol.6 (4 Disc)

• Q: The Winged Serpent | DVD | (20/06/2005) from £20.59   |  Saving you £-3.60 (N/A%)   |  RRP £16.99

  It's name is Quetzalcoatl... just call it Q that's all you'll have time to say before it tears you apart! It's just another monstrous day in New York City where window washers have their heads bitten off topless sunbathers are plucked from rooftops bloody body parts rain down onto the streets and small-time crook Jimmy Quinn (Moriarty) discovers an enormous nest in the spire of the Chrysler building. Meanwhile an NYPD detective (Carradine) investigates a series of ritual

• The South Bank Show: Volume 2 | DVD | (31/12/2013) from £26.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A