"Actor: Phil Stevenson"

• Happiness | DVD | (22/05/2000) from £8.49   |  Saving you £11.50 (135.45%)   |  RRP £19.99

  At times brilliant and insightful, at times repellent and false, Happiness is director Todd Solondz's multi-story tale of sex, perversion and loneliness. Plumbing depths of Crumb-like angst and rejection, Solondz won the Cannes International Critics Prize in 1998 and the film was a staple of nearly every critic's Top 10 list. Admirable, shocking, and hilarious for its sarcastic yet strangely empathetic look at consenting adults' confusion between lust and love, the film stares unflinchingly until the audience blinks. But it doesn't stop there. A word of strong caution to parents: One of the main characters, a suburban super dad (played by Dylan Baker), is really a predatory paedophile and there is more than an attempt to paint him as a sympathetic character. Children are used in this film as running gags or, worse, the means to an end. Whether that end is a humorous scene for Solondz or sexual gratification for the rapist becomes largely irrelevant. Happiness is an intelligent, sad film, revelatory and exact at moments. It's also abuse in the guise of art. That's nothing to celebrate. --Keith Simanton

• Killer's Kiss | DVD | (15/07/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  An exercise in film noir fairytale, 1955's Killer's Kiss was Stanley Kubrick's second feature film (he had the first buried forever) and shows just how powerful a filmmaker he was right out of the gate. Followers of Kubrick's career will note the appearance of themes and images that recurred (a final axe-fight in a warehouse full of disembodied mannequin parts would not be out of place in The Shining), but this is also notably unlike later Kubrick films in its use of authentic locations and its 65-minute running time. The plot is a tiny anecdote about a washed-up boxer (Jamie Smith), a dance hall dame (Irene Kane) and a slimy hood (Frank Silvera) during one crowded weekend of brutality and romance. There's a sense of a young director playing games: the boxing match (a definite influence on Raging Bull) is all low-angle close-ups and subjective shots with plenty of thump and dazzle, and the traditional Expressionist look of noir is exaggerated with many a tricky shot or doomy plot twist. The three unfamiliar leads are all excellent as small-timers struggling with big passions, and there is already a potent use of raucous source music and subtle sound design to augment the stark, haunted black and white imagery. On the DVD Killer's Kiss on disc features no extras other than a blaring trailer ("a picture as brazen as the naked lights of Broadway, as hard as the New York streets in which it was shot!"). The black and white picture is 4:3, and comes with soundtracks in English, German, Italian and Spanish; subtitles in English, German, Italian, French, Dutch and Spanish. --Kim Newman

• Doris Day Box Set | Blu Ray | (20/05/2019) from £26.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Hollywood screen couple Doris Day and Rock Hudson light up the screen with laughter in three delightful comedy gems! Join them as they fall in, out, and back in love again in a series of misadventures including Pillow Talk, Lover Come Back and Send Me No Flowers. Co-starring the hilarious Tony Randall, the Dirus and Rock Hudson Romantic Comedy Collection captures one of cinema's most popular and enduring couples at their very best! Bonus Features Back in Bed with Pillow Talk Chemistry 101: The Film Duo of Doris Day and Rock Hudson Pillow Talk Feature Commentary with Film Historians Jeff Bond, Julie Kirgo and Nick Redman Theatrical Trailers

• Wolf Creek | DVD | (16/01/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Based on true events, "Wolf Creek" tells the chilling story of three backpackers travelling in remote Outback Australia.

• America's Sweethearts / Mona Lisa Smile / My Best Friend's Wedding | DVD | (03/10/2005) from £19.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  America's Sweethearts (Dir. Joe Roth 2001): Gwen (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and Eddie (John Cusack) are America's Sweethearts two wildly popular celebrities who share their love on and off the screen in this farcical romantic comedy. A messy breakup sends Eddie to a New Age Hollywood healing center and Gwen into the arms of her current affair a Spanish bohunk short on charm (Hank Azaria). When their relationship troubles begin to threaten their superstar celebrity status and the release of their final film together the studio heads call in legendary press agent Lee Phillips (Billy Crystal) to helm the troubled film's press junket. Julia Roberts costars as Kiki Gwen's personal assistant and sister who has always lived to please her demanding diva sister. Once overweight and severely self-conscious Kiki's life revolves around her sister's ridiculous demands in this send up of ego-driven movie star vanity. Phillips manages to gather the warring superstars together at a remote desert location for the all important press junket where his best laid plans begin to unravel in this hysterical parody of the movie industry replete with neurotic actors eccentric crazed directors (Christopher Walken in a gem of a cameo) maniacal studio heads and gossip-starved press who will do anything or anyone for the next big story. Mona Lisa Smile (Dir. Mike Newell 2003): Set in 1953 Katherine Watson (Roberts) is a free-spirited graduate of UC Berkeley who accepts a teaching post at Wellesley College a women-only school where the students are torn between the repressive mores of the time and their longing for intellectual freedom. My Best Friend's Wedding (Dir. P.J. Hogan 1997): Julia Roberts Cameron Diaz Rupert Everett and Dermot Mulroney star in My Best Friend's Wedding a high-spirited romantic comedy that serves up something wild something new sometimes touching and sometimes truly hilarious! Roberts's dazzles as commitment-shy Julianne Potter who suddenly realises she is in love with her best friend Michael (Mulroney). There's just one catch - he's about to marry someone else. Now she has to win him back and with just four days the help of her resourceful boss (Everett) and the benefits of an extremely devious mind Jules will do anything to steal him back - except tell him the honest truth!