"Actor: Tom Kinney"

• The Firm | DVD | (04/12/2000) from £7.99   |  Saving you £8.00 (100.12%)   |  RRP £15.99

  This first film adaptation of a John Grisham novel is a crackerjack popcorn movie that satisfies even though it radically changes the last half of the book. The novel's dynamic setup is intact: Mitch McDeere, a hot law graduate (a well-suited Tom Cruise), finds a dream job in a luxurious Memphis law firm. His superiors (Gene Hackman, Hal Holbrook) provide Mitch and his young wife, Abby (Jeanne Tripplehorn), with a house and plenty of money in exchange for lots of work, and maybe something more. Soon FBI agents (including a bald Ed Harris) encircle Mitch, telling him his firm has a sinister secret, forcing Mitch into a heck of a pickle. How Mitch deals with his situation is where the book and movie differ, yet by the time Mitch is running from bad guys with suitcase in hand, the movie delivers Grisham's goods. For Sydney Pollack's film, Mitch is more confrontational and heroic. Plot aside, the care Pollack put into this fair-weather thriller is unimpeachable, as is his cast. There is hardly a better all-star cast in any 1990s thriller, from Hackman and Harris in key roles to actors in smaller parts, sometimes with only a scene or two. Standouts include David Strathairn as Mitch's wayward brother, Wilford Brimley as the head of security, film producer Jerry Weintraub as an angry client, Gary Busey as a private investigator and Holly Hunter in a delicious, Oscar-nominated supporting role as Busey's most loyal of secretaries. The cast seems to have had as much fun making the film as we do watching it. It's slick Hollywood product, but first-rate all the way. --Doug Thomas

• Devil in a Blue Dress | DVD | (05/09/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  It's 1948 and Los Angeles is booming but Easy Rawlins (Denzel Washington) has seen better days. He has just been fired and his house payments are due so when DeWitt Albright (Tom Sizemore) offers him a seemingly harmless job he jumps at the chance. All he has to do is track down the elusive Daphne Monet (Jennifer Beals) a mysterious beauty known to keep company on the wrong side of town. Soon he finds himself implicated in two murders and is forced to call upon an old friend Mouse (Don Cheadle) who is all too familiar with the violent world Easy has landed himself in. Slowly drawn deeper and deeper into a web of blackmail dirty cops and even dirtier politicians the ways out for Easy become harder and harder to find.

• Space Chimps 2 - Zartog Strikes Back | Blu Ray | (17/04/2019) from £6.49   |  Saving you £18.50 (285.05%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Space Chimps 2: Zartog Strikes Back follows Comet, the cool techno chimp who longs to be taken seriously as a fully-fledged space chimp.

• Devil In A Blue Dress | DVD | (15/05/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  Despite rave reviews as one of the most stylish and intelligent detective pictures in a number of years, this 1995 adaptation of Walter Mosley's novel never found a mass audience. Too bad, because Carl Franklin's film is nearly perfect in every way, from its rich, shadowy look to its depiction of life in post-World War II black America (LA-style) to the acting of Denzel Washington, Don Cheadle and others. Washington plays Easy Rawlins, an aircraft factory worker who is laid off only to find his true calling: as a private eye, albeit an unlicensed one. Hired to find a missing woman, he becomes entangled in a complex but satisfying case involving sex, corruption, racism and, of course, money. Devil In A Blue Dress is top-notch from top to bottom--and Cheadle is dangerously funny as Easy's best friend, a killer named Mouse. --Marshall Fine, Amazon.com