"Actor: Tom Bryson"

• Downtime | DVD | (07/06/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Down Time is a strange attempt to mix concrete Northern social realism and Bruce-Willis-style cliffhanger thrills, with balls of fire billowing up empty lift shafts and so forth. Paul McGann plays an ex-police psychologist, retired through ill health, drafted in to dissuade miserable single mother Chrissy (Susan Lynch) from throwing herself and her child off the top of a tower block. He succeeds, though in so doing betrays some of the problems that caused him to quit his job. He then pursues Chrissy romantically, during the course of which he, she and her little boy become stuck in the tower block lift, which then starts ascending and descending at random when hoodlum squatters break into the control box and mess about with it for an idle laugh. With its bizarre and somewhat improbable scenario, its odd mix of whimsical light romance, grim-up-North-style melodrama and explosive stunt action, Down Time as a whole doesn't really come off. The behaviour of key characters borders on the arbitrary, the "yobs" who cause all the problems go curiously unpunished and the ending barely makes sense. However, the lengthy mid-sequence in which McGann rescues (and is rescued by) Chrissy from the perilously dangling lift is, though predictable in its outcome, gripping enough. --David Stubbs

• 3 Classic Sherlock Holmes Films Of The Silver Screen - Vol. 2 | DVD | (04/09/2006) from £4.03   |  Saving you £0.96 (19.20%)   |  RRP £4.99

  Woman In Green (Dir. Roy William Neill 1945): Enter the master of detection as Scotland Yard are mystified by a quartet of horrifying crimes defying any logical explanation. The murder of four women is always going to create concern but when each victim is missing their right forefinger there is something more to the case than meets the eye. Holmes of course being a mind capable of penetrating the most evil of plots is eager to face the challenge and with the aid of his faithful companion Dr. Watson sets out in pursuit of the fiend or fiends. As the mystery unravels it is plain to see that this is no simple case of a murderer with a fetish but that of a very clever adversary in the shape of the accursed Professor Moriarty. The brilliant detective is facing a real threat as he is put into a trance with no doubt the same deadly outcome as the unfortunate souls whose untimely death he's trying to solve. The Speckled Band (Dir. Jack Raymond 1932): The legendary sleuth Sherlock Holmes (Raymond Massey in his screen debut) uncovers a sinister plot while in the midst of solving a girl's murder case based on her two dying words - ""Band"" and ""Speckled."" A Study in Scarlet (Dir. Edwin L. Marin 1933): When the body of a man is found in a house in London Holmes is called in to investigate some interesting clues; a woman's wedding ring and a timetable for the Atlantic Steamship Company.

• Sherlock Holmes - The Woman In Green | DVD | (26/07/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  A sequence of strange murders baffles the police. Holmes is called onto the scene and discovers the existence of a blackmail ring that uses a female hypnotist to further their skullduggery...