"Director: Raja Gosnell"

• Home Alone/Home Alone 2/Home Alone 3 | DVD | (19/09/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £7.99

  Home Alone: Eight-year-old Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) has become the man of the house overnight! Accidentally left behind when his family rushes off on a Christmas vacation Kevin gets busy decorating the house for the holidays. But he's not decking the halls with tinsel and holly. Two bumbling burglars are trying to break in and Kevin's rigging a bewildering battery of booby traps to welcome them! Home Alone 2: Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) is back. But this time he's in New York City - with enough cash and credit cards to turn the Big Apple into his own playground! But Kevin won't be alone for long. The notorious Wet Bandits Harry and Marv (Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern) still smarting from their last encounter with Kevin are bound for New York too plotting a huge holiday heist. Home Alone 3: International crooks hide a top-secret computer chip inside a toy car but an airport mix-up lands it in the hands of eight-year-old Alex Pruitt who's home alone with the chicken pox. Madness and mayhem kick into high gear as the pint-sized hero defends his house against the bumbling bad guys armed with an outrageous array of ambushes and booby traps.

• Scooby Doo: Live Action Movie | HD DVD | (05/11/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £25.99

  Ghosts haunting spooky old factories? Hip kids being brainwashed? The Darkopalypse about to engulf the world? Scooby-Doo, where are you? Well, the gang have all fallen out and dissolved the Mystery Inc partnership for good. Jinkeys! But luckily a strange invitation to solve a mystery on Spooky Island has unwittingly reunited the now-flopped members of the team. Can ghoul-getting gang get along again? The latest in a long line of live-actioned-up retro cartoon faves, Scooby-Doo: The Movie features superb action set-pieces and seamlessly blended live actor/CGI interaction--our eponymous hero is rendered with particular panache. What's more, the special effects are backed by a scarily well-written script and some frighteningly good performances. The Buffy-tastic Sarah Michelle Gellar was born to be Daphne, and Matthew Lillard is show-stealing as the dream-to-play Shaggy. The characters themselves are darkly developed--Fred is now a vain egotist, Velma a last-picked-at-sport geek and Daphne a Clueless-style airhead. Happily, Shaggy and Scooby are still a pair of snack-happy gormless goofs for whom friendship outweighs all else. Scooby-Doo: The Movie manages to be great fun for the kids without neglecting the fans of the original (1969!) series. Alongside the fun, frights and frantic action are clever in-jokes and even a few hints at some rather adult goings on--Shaggy getting "toasted" in a smokey hippy-style camper van may explain why he's always so peckish. Throw in a surprise appearance from a love-to-hate familiar face, some Charlie's Angels-style wire work and a storming rap-rock soundtrack and it's a hit for all the family. If you're thinking of missing it, Scooby-Don't! --Paul Eisinger

• Scooby-Doo: The Movie / Goes Hollywood | DVD | (19/11/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99