"Actor: Rosanna DeSoto"

• La Bamba (Criterion Collection) UK Only | Blu Ray | (15/01/2024) from £22.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  The brief but incandescent life of rock-and-roll trailblazer Ritchie Valens is immortalized in this enthralling biopic from another Mexican American icon, Luis Valdez, the father of Chicano cinema. With sweetness and swagger, Lou Diamond Phillips embodies the 1950s California teenager who, forged by his fiercely supportive mother (Rosana DeSoto) and rebellious brother (Esai Morales), rises from his farm-working roots to chart-topping fame in the early days of rock until one fateful night that haunts music history. Propelled by a hip-shaking soundtrack featuring Los Lobos and Carlos Santana, La Bamba captures the electric vitality of an artist who bridged cultures to create his own American dream. Product Features New 4K digital restoration, approved by director Luis Valdez, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack Audio commentaries featuring Valdez, actors Lou Diamond Phillips and Esai Morales, and producers Stuart Benjamin, Taylor Hackford, and Daniel Valdez New interview with Luis Valdez Conversation between Valdez and filmmaker Robert Rodriguez from El Rey Networks The Directors Chair Making-of program featuring cast and crew Audition footage Trailer English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing and Spanish subtitles PLUS: An essay by critic Yolanda Machado

• Family Business | DVD | (04/10/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Connery Hoffman and Broderick star as three generations of a family formerly linked to organized crime. Grandfather Jesse has been in and out of jail and his son Vito has decided to leave a life of crime in order to become a respectable family man but when grandson Adam comes up with a can't-miss heist plan the intergenerational sparks begin to fly.

• About Last Night | DVD | (17/05/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  For better or worse, David Mamet's hit play Sexual Perversity in Chicago is watered down into this romantic comedy about a couple (played by Rob Lowe and Demi Moore) who get together and then fall apart due to Lowe's character's inability to commit. Jim Belushi is on hand as the gratuitously swinish best friend who looks at women as meat, and Elizabeth Perkins is entertainingly arch as Moore's gal pal and Belushi's nemesis. There is nothing about this 1986 film by Edward Zwick (co-creator of TV's thirtysomething and director of Glory and Courage Under Fire) that is at all reminiscent of Mamet, but that doesn't make it bad or dull. While one can feel the script straining to fill in gaps where chunks of the original play have disappeared, Zwick often successfully tells the story without words at all, relying on the actors to convey pure emotion. Lowe is good, and the then-willowy Moore's understated performance reminds one of the actress she might have been before she became a spectacle. --Tom Keogh

• Robin Cook's Invasion | DVD | (19/07/2004) from £9.96   |  Saving you £-3.97 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  It begins in Arizona when three college friends Beau Cassy a student teacher and Pitt a four-year medical student discover a meteorite - stinging hot to the flesh - in the parking lot of a Phoenix diner. Within hours of touching it Beau falls ill with strange flu-like symptoms that defy rational diagnosis. By the following morning he has not only recovered but feels euphoric. In fact he feels changed. But Beau isn't the only one who has undergone the transformation. The strange flu has spread rapidly affecting each victim with the same inexplicable exhilaration. The phenomenon inspires Beau to team with a billionaire entrepreneur to develop The Institute for a New Humankind. It's a chance for its newly-illuminated members to experience the world as they never have before - and change it. Cassy and Pitt suspicious of Beau's newfound cult are compelled to investigate. What they uncover is unfathomable but terrifyingly real: the virus is an alien intelligence systematically infecting the bodies and minds of everyone on Earth. Their attempt to solicit help from the Centre of Disease Control elicits only fear. For the CDC along with the police are already among the changed. Tracking the course of the meteorite assault over the Internet it's up to Cassy and Pitt to stop it. Their underground fight takes them to an isolated government germ warfare base where a secret portal to another world - and a life-or-death confrontation with Beau the leader of the new alien race - awaits them.

• La Bamba | DVD | (19/03/2001) from £32.98   |  Saving you £-26.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Lou Diamond Phillips leaves a haunting impression in La Bambaas the late 1950s pop idol Ritchie Valens, who made the Latino influence in rock & roll conspicuous through his hit songs. Filmmaker Luis Valdez (Zoot Suit) creates a nimble, exciting, and sympathetic portrait of the boy driven to rise above obstacles of race and family legacy, and Esai Morales is equally fine as Ritchie's envious, searching brother. Great support from Elizabeth Pena and Danielle von Zerneck as Valens's sister and mother, respectively, and Joe Pantoliano is solid as the singer's straight-talking manager. Valdez brightens up the third act with a rock & roll show featuring, among others, Brian Setzer as Eddie Cochrane. Marshall Crenshaw turns up as Buddy Holly getting on that plane with Valens, and Los Lobos (who actually performs Valens's music on the soundtrack) has a nifty cameo as a Tijuana band that gives Valens a piece of crucial inspiration. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com