Bucking the trend of "seeing the thing you are writing about", James Moran walks around HMV and draws his own conclusions. These are the reviews The Powers That Be (informed, paid reviewers) don't want you to see/don't even know about. This week, if you're looking for a Christmas gift DVD special look no further. Well, actually, look further down this page.
Breaking Bad - Complete Praise Boxset (£32, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment)
Hot on the heels of its television finale, this 262-hour boxset includes all the endless, vaguely irritating praise this seminal show has received. Included is a half hour special of your co-worker telling you "Bryan Cranston's performance is the best of his generation", alongside a 1.5 hour supercut of people who were a couple of episodes ahead of you and smugly told you "it's about to get so good". Fans may be annoyed by the absence of a package of utterly pointless Facebook statuses wherein people expressed their liking for the cult hit as if nobody had ever fucking heard of it before.
Pacific Rim (£9.99, Warner Home Video)
Having finally accrued enough prestige in Hollywood, visionary director Guillermo Del Toro is able to bring to life a rarity in modern film - an original concept and screenplay with the word "rim" in the title. His previous attempts (Pan's Rim, The Devil's Rimbone) had all suffered last-minute title meddling from the studio executives, but now the opposition has parted and the director's dream is revealed in all its glory. Easter egg: observant viewers may notice some giant monsters in the background of certain shots. This is an in-joke from Del Toro, as he found their incongruity amusing because they have nothing to do with rims.
The Wolverine (£10, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment)
A man with swords for hands gains a new weapon - a sword.
Planes, (£10, Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment)
Meet Pixar's latest group of loveable characters - a collection of two-dimensional surfaces. Bringing the analogues of a point, a line and a solid to life with breathtaking CGI, Planes is the story of a plucky young Euclidian concept (voiced by Ryan Gosling) who teams up with a wisecracking black surface (Eddie Murphy and/or Chris Tucker) and a lumbering, comical plane (John Goodman) in order to fulfil their quest - making Disney tens of millions of dollars with little or no effort.