"Director: Rand Ravich"

• The Astronaut's Wife | DVD | (24/04/2000) from £5.38   |  Saving you £14.61 (271.56%)   |  RRP £19.99

  An intriguingly creepy premise but failed execution marks The Astronaut's Wife, a stylish and ultimately bland thriller about a pretty, young woman whose pretty, young astronaut husband comes back from his most recent space mission a little... odd. Before that fated space trip, Spencer (Johnny Depp) and Jillian (Charlize Theron) were a sunny, happy couple with matching blonde hairdos and a predilection for romping in the sack from extremely clever camera angles. However, after a communications blackout brings Spencer and his partner back down to earth prematurely, things are a little... peculiar. Spencer's partner goes bonkers and has a heart attack; on top of that, the partner's wife takes a fatal shower with a plugged-in radio. Getting out of the space biz, Spencer accepts a job as a corporate exec in New York, and as a welcome to the Big Apple for his comely wife, he molests her at the company cocktail party. Soon enough, Jillian is pregnant, but as you might expect, this pregnancy (twins, don't you know) is a little... unusual. Writer-director Rand Ravich takes his sweet time getting from extremely obvious plot point A to even more obvious plot point B, stretching out the development particulars in mind-numbing, suspense-killing fashion. Even Joe Morton, as a sinisterly psychotic NASA official, can't liven things up--you know you're in bad thriller territory when the biggest scare comes from a light suddenly being switched off. Theron, sporting a Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby style haircut, sleepwalks beautifully through the movie, but she did this role much, much better in The Devil's Advocate. Depp, with a cornpone Southern accent, is about as realistic as his peroxided hair. Ravich does the viewer no favours with a hackneyed ending straight out of a B-grade paperback horror novel in which the most shocking moment is Theron's sudden emergence as a brunette. With Blair Brown as a jaded socialite who offers to help out Theron by providing do-it-yourself abortion pills, and a lovely Donna Murphy as the suicidal wife who figures it all out before everyone else. -- Mark Englehart, Amazon.com

• Johnny Depp Collection | DVD | (02/11/2015) from £11.95   |  Saving you £4.43 (37.07%)   |  RRP £16.38

  The Astronaut's Wife On a seemingly routine mission to repair a space satellite, astronaut Spencer Armacost (Depp) loses contact with Mission Control for a period of time. Once Spencer has returned to Earth his wife Jillian (Charlize Theron) falls pregnant with twin boys, but her joy is tempered by the suspicion that something terrible happened to her husband in space - something which could threaten the entire human race. Dark Shadows When playboy Barnabas Collins (Depp) breaks the heart of the beautiful Angelique Brouchard (Eva Green), an old family curse is released as Angelique, a witch, turns Barnabas into a vampire before burying him alive. Two centuries later, Barnabas is inadvertently freed and emerges into the very changed world of 1972. Returning to his former home at Collinwood Manor, he finds his estate in ruins and the dysfunctional dregs of his family in tatters. Matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Michelle Pfeiffer) has enlisted the services of live-in psychiatrist Dr Julia Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter) to help with her numerous family problems - but between Elizabeth's loser brother, Roger Collins (Jonny Lee Miller), her rebellious teenage daughter, Carolyn Stoddard (Chlo? Moretz), and Roger's precocious 10-year-old son, David Collins (Gulliver McGrath), Dr Hoffman has certainly got her work cut out. Sweeny Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street' (2007), Tim Burton's film version of the Stephen Sondheim musical, is based on a 'penny dreadful' tale (which later became an urban myth) from the mid-19th Century. The story centres around Benjamin Barker (Depp), a barber who returns to London after spending years in exile for a crime he didn't commit. He soon discovers from pie-maker Mrs Lovett (Bonham Carter) that, in his absence, his wife has taken her own life and his daughter is now in the care of the man who had him sent away - the dastardly Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman). Seeking revenge and filled with a murderous rage, Barker sets up a barber's shop above Mrs Lovett's premises. Now calling himself Sweeney Todd, Barker kills off all his customers with a razor to the throat and sends their cadavers to the shop below to be used as a tasty new filling for Mrs Lovett's meat pies. What was once the worst pie shop in London quickly becomes one of the city's most popular eateries, but Barker won't be satisfied until he can lure Judge Turpin into the barber's chair... Don Juan DeMarco Marlon Brando plays a psychiatrist whose last case, that of Don Juan (Depp), is his most difficult. Don Juan is the world's greatest lover, having seduced over 1000 women, and his amorous tales totally captivate the analyst, re-awakening passions which he thought had been lost forever.

• Johnny Depp Collection | Blu Ray | (02/11/2015) from £13.59   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  The Astronaut's Wife On a seemingly routine mission to repair a space satellite, astronaut Spencer Armacost (Depp) loses contact with Mission Control for a period of time. Once Spencer has returned to Earth his wife Jillian (Charlize Theron) falls pregnant with twin boys, but her joy is tempered by the suspicion that something terrible happened to her husband in space - something which could threaten the entire human race. Dark Shadows When playboy Barnabas Collins (Depp) breaks the heart of the beautiful Angelique Brouchard (Eva Green), an old family curse is released as Angelique, a witch, turns Barnabas into a vampire before burying him alive. Two centuries later, Barnabas is inadvertently freed and emerges into the very changed world of 1972. Returning to his former home at Collinwood Manor, he finds his estate in ruins and the dysfunctional dregs of his family in tatters. Matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Michelle Pfeiffer) has enlisted the services of live-in psychiatrist Dr Julia Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter) to help with her numerous family problems - but between Elizabeth's loser brother, Roger Collins (Jonny Lee Miller), her rebellious teenage daughter, Carolyn Stoddard (Chlo? Moretz), and Roger's precocious 10-year-old son, David Collins (Gulliver McGrath), Dr Hoffman has certainly got her work cut out. Sweeny Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street' (2007), Tim Burton's film version of the Stephen Sondheim musical, is based on a 'penny dreadful' tale (which later became an urban myth) from the mid-19th Century. The story centres around Benjamin Barker (Depp), a barber who returns to London after spending years in exile for a crime he didn't commit. He soon discovers from pie-maker Mrs Lovett (Bonham Carter) that, in his absence, his wife has taken her own life and his daughter is now in the care of the man who had him sent away - the dastardly Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman). Seeking revenge and filled with a murderous rage, Barker sets up a barber's shop above Mrs Lovett's premises. Now calling himself Sweeney Todd, Barker kills off all his customers with a razor to the throat and sends their cadavers to the shop below to be used as a tasty new filling for Mrs Lovett's meat pies. What was once the worst pie shop in London quickly becomes one of the city's most popular eateries, but Barker won't be satisfied until he can lure Judge Turpin into the barber's chair... Don Juan DeMarco Marlon Brando plays a psychiatrist whose last case, that of Don Juan (Depp), is his most difficult. Don Juan is the world's greatest lover, having seduced over 1000 women, and his amorous tales totally captivate the analyst, re-awakening passions which he thought had been lost forever.