"Actor: Tyrees Allen"

• The Rat Pack | DVD | (14/10/2002) from £17.66   |  Saving you £-7.67 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  An irresistible melange of showbiz and politics, The Rat Pack is a sprawling HBO TV movie about the late-50s axis between Frank Sinatra's cool-talking cronies and the White House-bound Kennedy clan. Ray Liotta, William L Petersen and Joe Mantegna manage to give real performances as opposed to impersonations as Frankie, JFK and Dean Martin, and there's a stand-out turn from Don Cheadle as Sammy Davis Jr, who fantasises a blazing, gunslinging rendition of "I've Got You Under My Skin" as delivered to the cross-burning Nazi pickets outside his hotel campaigning against his marriage to a white Swedish starlet. Naturally the story goes over a lot of familiar ground (Marilyn Monroe, and so on,) but the Hollywood-Vegas angle, with the obvious criminal tie-ins, lends it a freshness. Angus McFadyen remains typecast as real-life actors, following up his Orson Welles (Cradle Will Rock) and Richard Burton (Liz, the Elizabeth Taylor biopic) by doing a squirming, but funny take on Peter Lawford, caught between the White House and Sinatra's vast, demanding ego. Its general style is somewhere between a Scorsese gangland epic and made-for-TV muckraking biopic and a lot of material from Shawn Levy's fine book Rat Pack Confidential is worked into the weave. On the DVD: The Rat Pack is a no-frills disc presented in a good-looking 16:9 anamorphic transfer, though as it's a TV movie this means trimming the top and the bottom of the image. --Kim Newman

• The Perfect Host | DVD | (05/08/2013) from £13.79   |  Saving you £2.20 (15.95%)   |  RRP £15.99

  John Taylor (Clayne Crawford) has just robbed a bank. However now it is all over the news and he has been identified. Injured in a car known to the cops, John must ditch the vehicle and get off the streets. He chooses refuge at the home of Warwick Wilson (David Hyde Pierce) who is in the middle of preparing the dinner party that he will be hosting that evening. Warwick, who prides himself on being a perfect host decides to take a chance and invites John in. As the night progresses it becomes apparent that Warwick may not be what he appears and what is first assumed may prove to be fatally misguided.

• Robocop (Steelbook) | Blu Ray | (12/04/2022) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A