"Actor: Russ Greene"

• The Wiz | DVD | (26/07/2004) from £8.08   |  Saving you £1.91 (23.64%)   |  RRP £9.99

  The fabulous land of Oz rocks in the spectacular musical based on the smash hit Broadway show. In this Motown production Dorothy is a shy Harlem kindergarten teacher who while searching for her lost dog Toto in a swirling blizzard is whisked to a wonderland to follow the yellow brick road. Director Sidney Lumet (Serpico Murder on the Orient Express) not content to merely film the stage production transforms the physical attributes of New York City into the fabulous land of Oz.

• A Nymphoid Barbarian In Dinosaur Hell | DVD | (18/12/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  Across a hostile landscape humans battle for supremacy against mutants deadly dinosaurs have arisen from a nuclear holocaust and all are hot for a nymphoid barbarian!

• Green Mile, The / Pay It Forward / Proof Of Life | DVD | (08/10/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £40.99

  The book was better" has been the complaint of many a reader since the invention of movies. Frank Darabont's second adaptation of a Stephen King prison drama The Green Mile (The Shawshank Redemption was the first) is a very faithful adaptation of King's serial novel. In the middle of the Depression, Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks) runs death row at Cold Mountain Penitentiary. Into this dreary world walks a mammoth prisoner, John Coffey (Michael Duncan) who, very slowly, reveals a special gift that will change the men working and dying on the mile. With Darabont's superior storytelling abilities, his touch for perfect casting, and a leisurely 188-minute running time, his movie brings to life nearly every character and scene from the novel. Darabont even improves the novel's two endings, creating a more emotionally satisfying experience. --Doug Thomas, Amazon.comPay It Forward is a multi-level marketing scheme of the heart. Beginning as a seventh-grade class assignment to put into action an idea that could change the world, young Trevor McKinney (Haley Joel Osment) comes up with a plan to do good deeds for three people who then by way of payment each must do good turns for three other people. These nine people also must pay it forward and so on, ad infinitum. If successful, the resulting network of do-gooders ought to comprise the entire world. While this could have turned into unmitigated schmaltz, the acting elevates this film to mitigated schmaltz. By turns powerful and measured, the performances of Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt, and Haley Joel Osment can't make up for the many missteps in a screenplay that sanitises the look of the lower-middle class and expects us to believe that homeless alcoholics and junkies speak in the elevated manner of grad students. One may wonder how it would have been handled by the likes of Frank Capra, who could balance sentiment with humour, clearly Capra would never have let the ending of his version to take the nosedive into cliché and pathos that director Mimi Leder has allowed in this film. --Jim Gay, Amazon.comWhen someone in Proof of Life says "Don't leave me hanging", you can bet they're going to be left hanging. There's little room for delicacy in Tony Gilroy's screenplay, adapted from an article by William Prochnau and the book Long March to Freedom by kidnapping survivor Thomas Hargrove. A hint of romance between Russell Crowe (the soldier-turned-"K&R") and Meg Ryan adds tension as the story shifts back and forth to David Morse's captivity. Avoiding that pitfall, director Taylor Hackford crafts the plot as a latter-day Casablanca that unfolds on a grander canvas (at stunning locations in Ecuador) while favouring an exciting rescue-mission climax over the tragedy of an ill-timed affair. It might have worked better as a straightforward macho action flick (with David Caruso doing lively work as Crowe's gung-ho K&R cohort), but Proof of Life effectively conveys the two-sided torment of a hostage crisis. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com