"Director: Antonio Banderas"

• Crazy in Alabama | DVD | (03/05/2004) from £9.74   |  Saving you £-0.76 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  In the sweltering summer of 1965 everybody in Alabama went completely crazy especially 12-year-old Peejoe's glamorous Aunt Lucille. When she got rid of her abusive husband and hit the road to fulfill her dreams of Hollywood she left Peejoe with one explosive secret. And as she tried to outrun the long arm of the law on her hilarious journey Peejoe was left behind to discover which secrets are worth keeping in this poignant comedy about freedom and why it's always worth whatever it costs. Antonio Banderas' directorial debut.

• Crazy In Alabama | DVD | (17/08/2009) from £7.79   |  Saving you £5.20 (40.00%)   |  RRP £12.99

  It's clear why Melanie Griffith saw Mark Childress's bestselling book Crazy in Alabama, as the perfect vehicle for herself. The role of Lucille, a beautiful, battered wife in rural Alabama who dreams of glamorous movie stardom, is tailor-made for her. Griffith's husband, Antonio Banderas, has done quite a respectable job guiding her in this, his directorial debut; her performance--compelling, funny, and warm--is her best since Something Wild. (She also looks simply smashing.) Otherwise, the film is a curious amalgam of genres: an antic, surreal Southern Gothic comedy combined with a deadly serious civil-rights parable. As the movie opens, in the summer of 1965, Lucille (Griffith) has just murdered her abusive husband and is blowing town for Hollywood with his head in a Tupperware container. Scenes of her wacky cross-country road trip are interspersed with incidents back in Alabama involving clashes between protesting blacks and murderously intolerant whites. One can't imagine how these two seemingly disparate narrative lines will come together, but they do, in a surprisingly effective manner. The moral of both stories turns out to be: "You can bury freedom, but you can't kill it". Stand-out performances by Robert Wagner, as Lucille's Hollywood agent; Rod Steiger, as a quirky Southern judge; Lucas Black (Sling Blade) as Lucille's highly principled young nephew; and, believe it or not, Meat Loaf, as a brutal, bigoted Southern sheriff give the film an additional boost. --Laura Mirsky