"Director: Sydney Pollack"

• The Way We Were/Out Of Africa | DVD | (28/07/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The Way We Were (Dir. Sydney Pollack) (1973): Screen legends Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford make movie magic as the captivating star-crossed lovers Katie Morosky and Hubbell Gardiner. Theirs is a classic love story sparked by the attraction of opposites played out against the backdrop of American life during times of foreign war domestic prosperity and McCarthy-era paranoia in Hollywood. Winner of two Academy Awards (Best Song 'The Way We Were' and Best Score) The Way We Were is the timeless romance that cannot be forgotten. Out Of Africa (Dir. Sydney Pollack) (1985): Meryl Streep stars as Karen Blixen the restless wife of European aristocrat and plantation owner Baron Bror Blixen (Brandauer). When Bror departs to hunt big game and chase women the running of their East African coffee plantation falls to Karen. She throws herself into this task with the same determination and spirit she brings to her passionate but sporadic affair with free-spirited British hunter Denys Finch Hatton (Robert Redford). While enduring her husband's infidelities and the eventual destruction of their beloved land she entertains Denys and befriends the workers. Hatton shares Karen's profound love for the African landscape but is unwilling to sacrifice his independence for their relationship...

• The Firm/The Rainmaker | DVD | (18/08/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £7.99

  The Firm: Three-time Oscar nominee Tom Cruise delivers the most electrifying performance of his career in this riveting film based on the international best-seller. Cruise plays Mitch McDeere a brilliant and ambitious Harvard Law grad. Driven by a fierce desire to bury his working class past Mitch joins a small prosperous Memphis firm that affords Mitch and his wife (Jeanne Tripplehorn) an affluent lifestyle beyond their wildest dreams. But when FBI agents confront him with evidence of corruption and murder within the firm Mitch sets out to find the truth in a deadly crossfire between the FBI the Mob and a force that will stop at nothing to protect its interests - The Firm. The Rainmaker: Francis Ford Coppola directs and scripts an exciting star-packed adaptation of John Grisham''s novel about an idealistic young attorney who takes on the case of a lifetime. Matt Damon (Good Will Hunting) plays Rudy Baylor a rookie lawyer in over his head on a high-profile case. Opposing him: an army of seasoned legal sharks (led by Jon Voight). On Rudy''s side: Deck Shifflet (Danny DeVito) a feisty ''paralawyer'' who specialises in flunking the bar exam. Rudy''s chances are slim to none until he uncovers a trail of corruption that might lead to the one thing that could win his case: the truth.

• Out of Africa | DVD | (04/04/2016) from £7.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Winner of seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Out of Africa seems to have slipped more readily from public memory than other comparably lauded films. Yet Sidney Pollack's panoramic treatment of Karen Blixen's novel has retained its atmosphere and slow-burning emotion, and deserves reassessment. Meryl Streep is in her possibly most involving starring role as Baroness Karen Blixen, Danish free spirit whose ill-fated venture at the beginning of World War One to run a coffee plantation in Kenya is overlaid by her intimate yet distant relationship with adventurer and idealist Denys Finch Hatton, unselfconsciously portrayed by Robert Redford. Klaus Maria Brandauer puts in a rare and convincing English-language appearance as the amoral but charming womaniser Baron Bror Blixen. The film is tellingly held together by Kurt Luedke's finely honed screenplay, and John Barry's sumptuously expressive score. On the DVD: The anamorphic 1.85:1 widescreen format reproduces superbly, as does the 4.1 discrete audio. 18 access points are provided, with printed and aural subtitles in English only. Pollack's feature commentary is amusing enough on a single run-through, but an on-location documentary would have been preferable. Production notes and biographies are very adequate, though the theatrical trailer reproduction is notably inferior. No matter, this is a major film, well worth the transfer to DVD.--Richard Whitehouse