"Actor: Rita Zohar"

• Final Analysis | DVD | (22/11/1999) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  This film, which again pairs Richard Gere and Kim Basinger (who starred in 1986's No Mercy), offers up elements of classic noir: a hapless man becomes intimately involved with a beautiful blonde who may or may not be who or what she appears to be. Dedicated psychiatrist Isaac Barr (Gere) reluctantly, and then more obsessively, becomes involved with Heather Evans (Basinger), the sister of his patient, Diana Baylor (Uma Thurman). Evans is unhappily married to a gangster (appropriately played by a muscular and menacing Eric Roberts in a trademark role). Gere and Basinger make a credible, if dangerous couple, and Thurman delivers a subtle, understated performance and demonstrates her range and potential. The thriller is appropriately shot in gorgeous San Francisco, where the literal and figurative curving and hilly roads wind throughout. Credit legendary art director Dean Tavoularis for some amazing sets and scenes, notably the elegantly cavernous restaurant where Evans and her husband have a fateful dinner. This film is, in a way, glossy director Phil Joanou's Hitchcockian tribute--as a climactic lighthouse scene best demonstrates. Final Analysis doesn't offer an intimate look at its characters, but a beautifully stylized one, moody and gloomy. The intricate plot experiments with the device of "pathological intoxication," in which the subject completely loses control after drinking alcohol. And this doesn't mean a conventional ugly drunk; it means a frightening psychotic. Good and evil, hope and despair, beauty and repulsion are often juxtaposed in the film's complex world. --NF Mendoza

• From The Dead Of Night | DVD | (04/03/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  Beautiful Joanna Darby (Lindsay Wagner) is haunted by a brush with drowning and her frightful journey to the gates of the afterlife. Soon after she experiences a horrifying series of narrow escapes from death through encounters with strangers who seem bent on killing her. Struggling with fear and past guilt Joanna is unsure whether she is a victim of coincidence or the target of some malicious spirits. Hoping to restore her peace of mind Joanna and her boyfriend visit Mexico where unknowingly they arrive during the annual Day of the Dead festival. Before long Joanna is nearly pulled into another violent death by a boating accident victim who grabs her on his way down. Joanna enlists her old flame Peter to help her unearth supernatural explanations for her predicament. When they discover the eerie truth Joanna must race against time to survive four more attempts on her life by walkers from the other side who want to reclaim her.