Shelly, Adrienne Much like the films of Hal Hartley, Waitress is funny in a deadpan sort of way, but a sadness lurks below the surface. After making a splash in Hartley's The Unbelievable Truth and Trust, Adrienne Shelly turned to directing with Sudden Manhattan and I'll Take You There. Set in a small Southern town, her third picture revolves around waitress Jenna (Felicity's radiant Keri Russell), who works at Joe's Pie Diner (Joe is played by Andy Griffith). Jenna is the pastry genius who makes Joe's joint shine. Her co-workers include the forthright Becky (Cheryl Hines, Curb Your Enthusiasm) and insecure Dawn (Shelly). All three have man trouble, but Jenna has it the worst. Her husband, Earl (Jeremy Sisto, Six Feet Under), treats her like a piece of property. When she finds out she's pregnant, Jenna fears she'll be stuck with him forever. Then, she develops a crush on her married obstetrician, Dr. Pomatter (Nathan Fillion, Serenity). With the aid of her fanciful confections, like peachy keen tarts, their flirtation develops into a full-blown affair. It appears to be a no-win situation, but Shelly finds an empowering way to bring this bittersweet story to a close. If the candy-coloured conclusion plays more like fantasy than reality, it's a fantasy worth embracing. Sadly, Shelly was murdered before Waitress ever saw the light of day (leaving behind a husband and child of her own). Fortunately, her final film is far more life-affirming than morose, although it does end with the word "goodbye." —Kathleen C. Fennessy

Varda, Agnès

Amenábar, Alejandro

Rubin, Henry Alex, Shapiro, Dana Adam More than merely a sports documentary or an inspirational profile of triumph over adversity, Murderball offers a refreshing and progressive attitude toward disability while telling unforgettable stories about uniquely admirable people. It's ostensibly a film about quadriplegic rugby (or "Murderball", as it was formerly known), in which players with at least some loss of physical function in all four limbs navigate modified wheelchairs in a hardcore, full-contact sport that takes them all the way to the Paralympic Games in Athens, Greece, in 2004. But as we get to know paralyzed or amputee players on Team USA like Andy Cohn, Scott Hogsett, Bob Lujano and charismatic team spokesman Mark Zupan, we come to understand that quad rugby is a saving grace for these determined competitors, who battle Team Canada coach (and former Team USA superstar) Joe Soares en route to the climactic contest in Athens. Simply put, Murderball is the best film to date about living with a severe disability, but codirectors Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro avoid the sappy, inspirational sentiment that hampers nearly all mainstream films involving disability. By the time this blazing 85-minute film reaches its emotional conclusion, the issue of disability is almost irrelevant; these guys are as normal as anyone, and their life stories led to Murderball becoming the most critically acclaimed documentary of 2005. —Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

Hitchcock, Alfred From its cleverly choreographed opening sequence to its heart-stopping climax on a rampant carousel, this 1951 Hitchcock classic readily earns its reputation as one of the director's finest examples of timeless cinematic suspense. It's not just a ripping-good thriller but a film student's delight and a perversely enjoyable battle of wits between tennis pro Guy (Farley Granger) and his mysterious, sycophantic admirer, Bruno (Robert Walker), who proposes a "criss-cross" scheme of traded murders. Bruno agrees to kill Guy's unfaithful wife, in return for which Guy will (or so it seems) kill Bruno's spiteful father. With an emphasis on narrative and visual strategy, Hitchcock controls the escalating tension with a master's flair for cinematic design, and the plot (coscripted by Raymond Chandler) is so tightly constructed that you'll be white-knuckled even after multiple viewings. Strangers on a Train remains one of Hitchcock's crowning achievements and a suspenseful classic that never loses its capacity to thrill and delight. —Jeff Shannon

Hitchcock, Alfred To Catch a Thief is not one of Alfred Hitchcock's greatest, but it's arguably his most stylish thriller, loved as much for the elegantly erotic banter between Grace Kelly and Cary Grant as for the suspense that ensues when retired burglar Grant attempts to net the copycat diamond thief. The action, much of it shot on location, hugs the coast of the French Riviera; John Michael Hayes' screenplay crackles with doubles entendres; and Edith Head's dresses define the aloof poise of one of cinema's more enigmatic icons.

If anything is missing, it's the undertow of black humour which snags the unsuspecting viewer in so many of Hitchcock's greater films. Here, the edge is supplied by the splendid Jessie Royce Landis as Kelly's vulgar, worldly mother; her special way with a fried egg is one of those cinematic moments which linger in the mind with almost pornographic disgust. History, of course, delivered its own ironic blow years later when the then Princess Grace of Monaco died in an accident on the very road where Kelly and Grant shot their exhilarating car chase. Portents aside, she remains Hitchcock's most alluring and sophisticated heroine.

On the DVD: To Catch a Thief is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, which distils the distinctive qualities of the VistaVision cinematography, and with a mono Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. Interesting extras include several mini-documentaries in which Hitchcock's daughter and granddaughter, among others, reminisce about the great director, censor problems over the risqué dialogue, the talents of costume designer Edith Head, and the peculiar difficulties of shooting in VistaVision. An original theatrical trailer is another bonus. —Piers Ford

Hitchcock, Alfred The first of Alfred Hitchcock's World War II features, Foreign Correspondent was completed in 1940, as the European war was only beginning to erupt across national borders. Its titular hero, Johnny Jones (Joel McCrea), is an American crime reporter dispatched by his New York publisher to put a fresh spin on the drowsy dispatches emanating from overseas, his nose for a good story (and, of course, some fortuitous timing) promptly leading him to the "crime" of fascism and Nazi Germany's designs on European conquest.

In attempting to learn more about a seemingly noble peace effort, Jones (who's been saddled with the dubious nom de plume Hadley Haverstock) walks into the middle of an assassination, uncovers a spy ring, and, not entirely coincidentally, falls in love—a pattern familiar to admirers of Hitchcock's espionage thrillers, of which this is a thoroughly entertaining example. McCrea's hardy Yankee charms are neatly contrasted with the droll English charm of colleague George Sanders; Herbert Marshall provides a plummy variation on the requisite, ambiguous "good-or-is-he-really-bad" guy; Laraine Day affords a lovely heroine; and Robert Benchley (who contributed to the script) pops up, albeit too briefly, for comic relief.

As good as the cast is, however, it's Hitchcock's staging of key action sequences that makes Foreign Correspondent a textbook example of the director's visual energy: an assassin's escape through a rain-soaked crowd is registered by rippling umbrellas, a nest of spies is detected by the improbable direction of a windmill's spinning sails and Jones's nocturnal flight across a pitched city rooftop produces its own contextual comment when broken neon tubes convert the Hotel Europe into "Hot Europe". —Sam Sutherland

Hitchcock, Alfred

Hitchcock, Alfred

Hitchcock, Alfred

Hitchcock, Alfred One of Alfred Hitchcock's finest pre-Hollywood films, the 1936 Secret Agent stars a young John Gielgud as a British spy whose death is faked by his intelligence superiors. Reinvented with another identity and outfitted with a wife (Madeleine Carroll), Gielgud's character is sent on assignment with a cold-blooded accomplice (Peter Lorre) to assassinate a German agent. En route, the counterfeit couple keeps company with an affable American (Robert Young), who turns out to be more than he seems after the wrong man is murdered by Gielgud and Lorre. Dense with interwoven ideas about false names and real identities, about appearances as lies and the brutality of the hidden, and about the complicity of those who watch the anarchy that others do, Secret Agent declared that Alfred Hitchcock was well along the road to mastery as a filmmaker and, more importantly, knew what it was he wanted to say for the rest of his career. —Tom Keogh

Hitchcock, Alfred Alfred Hitchcock hadn't made a spy thriller since the 1930s, so his 1969 adaptation of Leon Uris's bestseller Topaz seemed like a curious choice for the director. But Hitchcock makes Uris's story of the West's investigation into the Soviet Union's dealings with Cuba his own. Frederick Stafford plays a French intelligence agent who works with his American counterpart (John Forsythe) to break up a Soviet spy ring. The film is a bit flat dramatically and visually, and there are sequences that seem to occupy Hitchcock's attention more than others. A minor work all around, with at least two alternative endings shot by Hitchcock. —Tom Keogh

Hitchcock, Alfred Both visually and psychologically, Marnie is crass in comparison with Hitchcock's peak achievement in Vertigo—although it shares some of that film's characteristic obsessive themes. Sean Connery, fresh from From Russia with Love, is a Philadelphia playboy who begins to fall for Tippi Hedren's blonde ice goddess only when he realises that she's a professional thief (she's come to work in his upper-crust insurance office in order to embezzle mass quantities). His patient programme of investigation and surveillance has a creepy, voyeuristic quality that's pure Hitchcock, but all's lost when it emerges that the root of Marnie's problem is phobic sexual frigidity, induced by a childhood trauma. Luckily, Sean is up to the challenge, as it were. Not even DH Lawrence believed as fervently as Hitchcock in the curative properties of sexual release. —David Chute

Hitchcock, Alfred Paul Newman and Julie Andrews star in Torn Curtain, what must unfortunately be called one of Alfred Hitchcock's lesser efforts. Still, sub-par Hitchcock is better than a lot of what's out there, and this one is well worth a look. Newman plays cold-war physicist Michael Armstrong, while Andrews plays his lovely assistant-and-fiancée Sarah Sherman. Armstrong has been working on a missile defence system that will "make nuclear defence obsolete", and naturally both sides are very interested. All Sarah cares about is the fact that Michael has been acting awfully fishy lately. The suspense of Torn Curtain is by nature not as thrilling as that in the average Hitchcock film—much of it involves sitting still and wondering if the bad guys are getting closer. Still, Hitchcock manages to amuse himself: there is some beautifully clever camera work and an excruciating sequence that illustrates the frequent Hitchcock point that death is not a tidy business. —Ali Davis

Hitchcock, Alfred Alfred Hitchcock's 1956 remake of his own 1934 spy thriller is an exciting event in its own right, with several justifiably famous sequences. James Stewart and Doris Day play American tourists who discover more than they wanted to know about an assassination plot. When their son is kidnapped to keep them quiet, they are caught between concern for him and the terrible secret they hold. When asked about the difference between this version of the story and the one he made 22 years earlier, Hitchcock always said the first was the work of a talented amateur while the second was the act of a seasoned professional. Indeed, several extraordinary moments in this update represent consummate filmmaking, particularly a relentlessly exciting Albert Hall scene, with a blaring symphony, an assassin's gun, and Doris Day's scream. Along with Hitchcock's other films from the mid-1950s to 1960 (including Vertigo, Rear Window, and Psycho), The Man Who Knew Too Much is the work of a master in his prime. —Tom Keogh

Hitchcock, Alfred It's generally acknowledged that the Master of Suspense disliked costume dramas and Jamaica Inn—a rip-roaring melodrama drawn from a Daphne du Maurier pot-boiler, set in 1820s Cornwall—is about as costumed as they come. So what was he doing directing it? Killing time, essentially. In 1939 Hitchcock was due to leave Britain for Hollywood, but delays Stateside left him with time on his hands. Never one to sit idle, he agreed to make one picture for Mayflower Productions, a new outfit formed by actor Charles Laughton and émigré German producer Erich Pommer.

An innocent young orphan (the 19-year-old Maureen O'Hara in her first starring role) arrives at her uncle's remote Cornish inn to find it a den of reprobates given to smuggling, wrecking and gross overacting. They're all out-hammed, though, by Laughton at his most corseted and outrageously self-indulgent as the local squire to whom Maureen runs for help. Since his star was also the co-producer, Hitch couldn't do much with the temperamental actor. He contented himself with adding a few characteristic touches—including a spot of bondage (always a Hitchcock favourite), and the chief villain's final spectacular plunge from a high place—and slyly sending up the melodramatic absurdities of the plot. Jamaica Inn hardly stands high in the Master's canon, but it trundles along divertingly enough. Hitchcock fanatics will have fun comparing it with his two subsequent—and far more accomplished—Du Maurier adaptations, Rebecca and The Birds. —Philip Kemp

Hitchcock, Alfred A high point of Hitchcock's pre-Hollywood career, 1935's The Thirty-Nine Steps is the first and best of three film versions of John Buchann's rather stiff novel. Robert Donat plays the rancher embroiled in a plot to steal British military secrets. He finds himself on the run; falsely accused of murder, while also pursuing the dastardly web of spies alluded to in the title. With a plot whose twists and turns match the hilly Scottish terrain in which much of the film is set, The Thirty-Nine Steps combines a breezy suavity with a palpable psychological tension. Hitchcock was already a master at conveying such tension through his cinematic methods, rather than relying just on situation or dialogue. Sometimes his ways of bringing the best out of his actors brought the worst out in himself. If the scene in which Donat is handcuffed to co-star Madeline Carroll has a certain edge, for instance, that's perhaps because the director mischievously cuffed them together in a rehearsal, then left them attached for a whole afternoon, pretending to have lost the key. The movie also introduces Hitchcock's favoured plot device, the "McGuffin" (here, the military secret), the unexplained device or "non-point" on which the movie turns. —David Stubbs

Hitchcock, Alfred One of Alfred Hitchcock's classics, this romantic thriller features a cast to die for: Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant and Claude Rains. Bergman plays the daughter of a disgraced father who is recruited by American agents to infiltrate a post-World War II spy ring in Brazil. Her control agent is Grant, who treats her with disdain while developing a deep romantic bond with her. Her assignment: to marry the suspected head of the ring (Rains) and get the goods on everyone involved. Danger, deceit, betrayal—and, yes, romance—all come together in a nearly perfect blend as the film builds to a terrific (and surprising) climax. Grant and Bergman rarely have been better. —Marshall Fine

Hitchcock, Alfred

Hitchcock, Alfred Classic Hitchcock movie starring Jane Wyman & Marlene Dietrich. Jonathan Cooper is wanted by the police who suspect him of killing his lover's husband. His friend Eve Gill offers to hide him and Jonathan explains to her that his lover, actress Charlotte Inwood is the real murderer. Eve decides to investigate for herself, but when she meets the detective in charge of the case, she starts to fall in love.

Hitchcock, Alfred Among Alfred Hitchcock's pre-Hollywood movies, 1938's Young and Innocent is a most unfairly overlooked classic. It's full of themes and stylistic touches that became permanent fixtures in his career. Based on Josephine Tey's novel A Shilling for Candles, the film title refers to the characters' outlook. However Hitchcock characteristically chips away at that innocence with flourishes of macabre humour, such as scenes of a dead rat at the lunch table and a hopeless conference with a defence lawyer, while suspense is heightened in a game of blindman's buff at a children 's party. The story concerns a typically Hitchcockian innocent man (Derrick de Marney) on the run, with a trivial object to find (a raincoat) that will prove his innocence. He's helped by a fiery young girl (Nova Pilbeam) who's unfortunately the daughter of the chief constable, but has some handy first aid skills. There's also an oppressive mother figure in the shape of an overbearing aunt (Mary Clare). Aside from these thematic traits, what remains impressive for viewers new or old is Hitchcock's technical set-pieces: a car sinks into a mineshaft, a railway station is recreated in miniature, and the twitchy-eyed murderer is finally located via an extended aerial tracking shot across a ballroom (pre-empting many similar shots, eg: Notorious). This sequence took two days to accomplish, and demonstrates the director was more than ready to move to the older and less innocent American industry . —Paul Tonks

Hitchcock, Alfred At first glance The Lady Vanishes appears to be a frothy, lightweight treat; a testament to Alfred Hitchcock's nimble touch. This snappy, sophisticated romantic thriller begins innocently enough, as a contingent of eccentric tourists spend the night in a picture-postcard village inn nestled in the Swiss Alps before setting off on the train the next morning. In a wonderfully Hitchcockian twist, on meeting, cute, attractive young Iris (Margaret Lockwood) clashes with brash music student Gilbert (Michael Redgrave) when his nocturnal concerts give her no peace. She gets him kicked out of his room, so he barges in on hers. True love is inevitable, but not before they are both plunged into an international conspiracy. The next day on the train, kindly old Mrs Froy (Dame May Whitty) vanishes from her train car without a trace and the once quarrelsome couple unite to search the train and uncover a dastardly plot. No one is as he or she seems, but sorting out the villains from the merely mysterious is a challenge in itself, as our innocents abroad face resistance from the entire passenger list.

Hitchcock effortlessly navigates this vivid thriller from light comedy to high tension and back again, creating one of his most enchanting and entertaining mysteries. Though this wasn't his final British film before departing for Hollywood (that honour goes to Jamaica Inn), many critics prefer to think of this as his fond farewell to the British Film Industry. —Sean Axmaker

Hitchcock, Alfred

Adamson, Andrew The lovably ugly green ogre returns with his green bride and furry, hooved friend in Shrek 2. The newlywed Shrek and Princess Fiona are invited to Fiona's former kingdom, Far Far Away, to have the marriage blessed by Fiona's parents—which Shrek thinks is a bad, bad idea, and he's proved right: the parents are horrified by their daughter's transformation into an ogress, a fairy godmother wants her son Prince Charming to win Fiona, and a feline assassin is hired to get Shrek out of the way. The computer animation is more detailed than ever, but it's the acting that make the comedy work—in addition to the return of Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, and Cameron Diaz, Shrek 2 features the flexible voices of Julie Andrews, John Cleese and Antonio Banderas, plus Jennifer Saunders as the gleefully wicked fairy godmother. —Bret Fetzer

Jarecki, Andrew A Sundance Grand Jury prize-winner and a true conversation starter, Capturing the Friedmans travels into one apparently ordinary Long Island family's heart of darkness. Arnold and Elaine Friedman had a normal life with their three sons until Arnold was arrested on multiple (and increasingly lurid) charges of child abuse. Because the Friedmans had documented their own lives with copious home movies, filmmaker Andrew Jarecki is able to sift through their material looking for clues. Yet what emerges is more surreal than fiction: the youngest Friedman son went to jail; the eldest became a birthday-party clown. In the end, we can't be sure whether Arnold Friedman is a monstrous child molester or the victim of railroading. The portrait of a disconnected family is deeply disturbing, either way, and this film is further proof that a documentary can be just as spellbinding as anything a great storyteller dreams up. —Robert Horton

On the DVD:Like the film itself, the bonus disc that accompanies Capturing the Friedmans asks a lot of questions, offers a few pertinent answers, and leaves a legacy of mystery in a case that many never be fully solved. What really happened in the basement of the Friedman home in Great Neck, New York? Is Jesse as guilty as his father in the notorious case of child molestation? Additional excerpts of the Friedmans' home movies only deepen the uncertainty we feel after viewing the film, and video footage from two early premiere screenings demonstrates that emotions will continue to run high as long as lingering doubts remain. The "altercation" at the New York premiere is actually rather benign, but only because filmmaker Andrew Jarecki kept the crowd under control before arguments could boil over; at the Great Neck premiere, the case's judge gets a chance to comment on facts that the film omitted while praising its overall veracity. Uncut footage of the prosecution's star witness makes it clear that the case was on shaky ground; even more than in the film proper, this witness (whose face is hidden in shadow) comes off as marginally credible at best, and at worst a vindictive liar, further suggesting serious weaknesses in the prosecution's case.

On a lighter note, "Just a Clown"—the film Jarecki was making when he discovered the true scope of the Friedman story—is a delightful portrait of New York party clowns and their reigning king, David Friedman, whose business thrives as he caters to wealthy Manhattanites. It's clear proof that Jarecki's a gifted documentarian. A featurette about Andrea Morricone (son of the great film composer Ennio Morricone) highlights his creation of the film's evocative score. Returning to the Friedman case, an interactive dossier of Friedman-related media delves deeper into the lives and personalities of this dysfunctional American family, and "Jesse's Life Today" examines the ex-convict's relatively upbeat recovery from 13 years in prison for a crime he allegedly didn't commit. For armchair detectives, an extensive menu of pertinent documents are provided as DVD-ROM content, the most fascinating being Arthur Friedman's confessional "My Story," a psychologist's assessment of alleged vic! tims, and a curiously revealing "Friedman family contract." Taken together, these and other documents add even more complexity to the film's compelling, Rashomon-like study of truth. —Jeff Shannon

Page, Anthony

Bayona, Juan Antonio Backed by Guillermo del Toro and yet made by a surprisingly inexperienced group of film makers (especially considering the end result), The Orphanage is a chilling, tense supernatural thriller that could certainly teach more established directors a thing or two about how to send shivers down the spine.

It tells the story of a woman, Laura, returning to the orphanage where she was raised as a child. Her plans are to look after sick children there, but it doesn’t take long for things to go awry. Without giving too much away, visions from her past and a threat to her own family are the starting points for a complex and quite haunting thriller, that stays in the mind long after the credits have rolled.

A film that works on more than one level, The Orphanage really is some piece of work. Juan Antonia Bayona, behind the camera, generates an incredibly atmospheric mood that underpins the film, and wisely takes time to put pieces in place. He’s aided by a terrific cast, and an unsettling screenplay that layers in an uneasy horror that’s as anti-Hollywood as it comes.

The result of all of this is one of the scariest films of recent times, and yet something that still manages to be that little bit more, that sticks in your mind for some time afterwards. Make no mistake, The Orphanage really is something different, and all the better for it. —Jon Foster

Mercero, Antonio

Powell, Aubrey

Kormákur, Baltasar

Breien, Bård

Hamer, Bent Sweden released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: LANGUAGES: Swedish ( Dolby Digital 5.1 ), Danish ( Subtitles ), English ( Subtitles ), Finnish ( Subtitles ), Norwegian ( Subtitles ), Swedish ( Subtitles ), ANAMORPHIC WIDESCREEN (1.85:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Anamorphic Widescreen, Cast/Crew Interview(s), Interactive Menu, Scene Access, Trailer(s), SYNOPSIS: The moment the train leaves the station without train driver Odd Horten aboard, he realizes that the path ahead is a journey without printed timetabels and well-known stations. Horten has retired, and the platform does not feel like a safe place anymore.

Lunas, Bigas Salted pork shanks as leitmotiv in Jamón Jamón a dark comedy about an absurd love triangle: this is what post-Franco cine is all about (food and sex). Spanish tortillas (i.e., potato omelets) are also big in this one. Director José Juan Bigas Luna is intelligent, wry, and—despite the formulaic narrative that melodrama must essentially contain—unpredictable. At times his film exudes a certain Almodóvar flavour, but there is an edge, perhaps even heavy-handedness, to the dark humour that is either Luna's success or his downfall. The film garnered the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival, after all. Try to follow: sexy Penelope Cruz (Belle Epoque) is growing up with her mother outside town on the wrong side of the highway. Together they run a truck stop where cars and life literally race past. Cruz is in love with Jordí Molla, by whom she is pregnant, but Molla's bourgeois mother, played by Anna Galiena (Being Human), thinks he can and should do better (of course, neither Cruz nor his mother knows of the erotic, avian interludes Molla enjoys on the side.) To save her son from the lower classes, Galiena hires Javier Bardem, a muscular, pretty man (whose regular consumption of the pork he distributes for a living has enhanced his sexual appeal) to pursue Cruz. The dark comedy finds a proper ending to the triangle in a grotesque but comedic landscape of death. This is not a cookie-cutter movie but rather one that will resonate with both your light and dark sides. After each surprise, you'll chuckle, feel guilty, and chuckle again. —Erik Macki, Amazon.com

August, Bille

August, Bille Germany released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: LANGUAGES: English ( Dolby Digital 2.0 ), English ( Dolby Digital 5.1 ), German ( Dolby Digital 2.0 ), German ( Dolby Digital 5.1 ), German ( Dolby DTS 5.1 ), German ( Subtitles ), WIDESCREEN, SPECIAL FEATURES: Biographies, Cast/Crew Interview(s), Filmographies, Interactive Menu, Scene Access, SYNOPSIS: Charlotte Cory (Connie Nielsen) is a young woman convict on Death Row who has built up a friendship with Frank Nitzche (Aidan Quinn) through mail correspondence, whilst her attorney (Kelly Preston) desperately tries to appeal the verdict before Charlotte's time runs out. With only days to spare Frank realizes that he has fallen in love with Charlotte and discovers that there is much more to the tragic circumstances of her imprisonment than he first thought - her life is now in his hands. Frank races to solve the puzzle that will reveal the truth, and tell the secrets that both he and Charlotte have been concealing, before it's too late.

Ray, Billy

Wilder, Billy More than half a century after its release in 1950, Sunset Boulevard is still the most pungently unflattering portrait of Hollywood ever committed to celluloid. Billy Wilder, unequalled at combining a literate, sulphurous script with taut direction, hits his target relentlessly. The humour—and the film is rich in this, Wilder's most abundant commodity—is black indeed. Sunset Boulevard is viciously and endlessly clever. William Holden's opportunistic scriptwriter Joe Gillis, whose sellout proves fatal, is from the top drawer of film noir. Gloria Swanson's monstrously deluded Norma Desmond, the benchmark for washed-up divas, transcends parody. And her literal descent down the staircase to madness is one of the all-time great silver-screen moments.

Sunset Boulevard isn't without pathos, most notably in Erich von Stroheim's protective butler who wants only to shield his mistress from the stark truths that are massing against her. But its view of human beings at work in a ruthlessly cannibalistic industry is bleak indeed. Nobody, not even Nancy Olson's sparkily ambitious writer Betty Schaefer, is untainted. And neither are we, "those wonderful people out there in the dark". Norma might be ready for her close-up, but it's really Hollywood that's in the frame. No wonder Wilder incurred the charge of treachery from his peers. It's cinematic perfection.

On the DVD: Sunset Boulevard lends itself effortlessly to a collector's edition of this quality. The film itself is presented in full-frame aspect ratio from an excellent print and the quality of the mono soundtrack is faultless: the silver screen comes to life in your living room. The extras are superb, including a commentary from film historian Ed Sikov and a making-of documentary which includes the memories of Nancy Olson. Interactive features such as the Hollywood location map add to the fun. —Piers Ford

Edwards, Blake No film better utilises Audrey Hepburn's flighty charm and svelte beauty than this romantic adaptation of Truman Capote's novella. Hepburn's urban sophisticate Holly Golightly, an enchanting neurotic living off the gifts of gentlemen, is a bewitching figure in designer dresses and costume jewellery. George Peppard is her upstairs neighbour, a struggling writer and "kept" man financed by a steely older woman (Patricia Neal). His growing friendship with the lonely Holly soon turns to love and threatens the delicate balance of both of their compromised lives. Taking liberties with Capote's bittersweet story, director Blake Edwards and screenwriter George Axelrod turn New York into a city of lovers and create a poignant portrait of Holly, a frustrated romantic with a secret past and a hidden vulnerability. Composer Henry Mancini earned Oscars for the hit song "Moon River" and his tastefully romantic score. The only sour note in the whole film is Mickey Rooney's demeaning performance as the apartment's Japanese manager, an offensively overdone stereotype even in 1961. The rest of the film has weathered the decades well. Edwards's elegant yet light touch, Axelrod's generous screenplay and Hepburn's mix of knowing experience and naivety combine to create one of the great screen romances and a refined slice of high-society bohemian chic. —Sean Axmaker

Davaa, Byambasuren, Falorni, Luigi

Cuarón, Carlos

Park, Chan-wook

Park, Chan-wook

Chaplin, Charles Chaplin's personal favourite among his own films, The Gold Rush embodies all the trademarks of his mix of slapstick, satire, social commentary and sentiment—a perfect showcase for his ever-popular Little Tramp. Set during the Klondike Gold Rush in 1898, the film features a comic reworking of the gruesome Donner Party story, where a group of snowbound immigrants resorted to eating their clothes and then each other to stay alive.

It opens with a grand shot of gold prospectors snaking up the side of a mountain. We then see the Tramp, typically estranged from the rest of the group, making his own way across the snow. Seeking shelter in a blizzard, he finds the cabin of the dangerous criminal Black Larson (Tom Murray) and when another prospector, Big Jim McKay (Mack Swain), comes along, the two of them take charge of the cabin and eventually drive him out. Starving on Thanksgiving, the pair decide to dine in style when the Tramp cooks one of his shoes, famously acting as if he's cooking a fine piece of meat; twirling the laces up like spaghetti and savouring every last nibble. When he finally escapes, the Tramp ends up in a local town and falls in love, only to be rebuffed on New Year's Eve. When a chance meeting reunites him with Big Jim, the two go back in search of gold hidden near the cabin.

Despite its unlikely origins, the story is shaped into a classic comedy containing many famous set-pieces, including the cabin teetering on the edge of a cliff and the Tramp morphing into a chicken before the starving Big Jim. Ultimately it's Chaplin's endearing and amusing persona that makes this material genuinely enduring.

On the DVD The Gold Rush comes to DVD in a decent transfer with good mono sound and the option of Dolby Digital 5.1. The second disc of bonus features opens with an introduction by David Robinson, who chronicles Chaplin's work on the film, which was interrupted when his clandestine affair with his 15-year-old leading lady meant that, due to her becoming pregnant, the filming had to close for a few months while a new female lead was found. The original 1925 version of the film, before Chaplin updated it with the addition of sound in 1942, appears in full. The Chaplin Today documentary illustrates the influence of the film on director Idrissa Ouedraogo from Burkina Faso, whose own work follows similar themes, as well as going behind the scenes on the original production. Trailers, posters and stills round off this worthy addition to the Chaplin Collection. —Laura Bushell

Chaplin, Charles

Chaplin, Charles

Chaplin, Charles

Kaufman, Charlie

Colombus, Chris The world's most famous boy wizard dives straight into a darker and more thrilling magical adventure in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. It's practically the same set-up—something evil's afoot at Hogwarts; Harry and his pals must put it right—but fans of the books won't be disappointed. Director Chris Columbus, whose artistic licence is necessarily limited by the demands of adapting JK Rowling's phenomenally popular novel, does a spectacular job rendering Rowling's imaginary world: the production design and costumes are fascinating in their own right; such is the impressive attention to detail.

Daniel Radcliffe gives a more assured performance here as Harry, though he's not quite strong enough to carry the film without the aid of an excellent ensemble cast of experienced adults, notably a twinkly-eyed Kenneth Branagh. Of course, most viewers will already know what's going to happen as far as the story is concerned, so for them the pleasure in watching The Chamber of Secrets lies in the visualisation of Rowling's magical creations and the verve brought to the action sequences. It's fantastic fun for kids and a good excuse to regress back to childhood for the rest of us. —Laura Bushell

On the DVD: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets's first disc offers the film in all its fine widescreen (2.35:1) and surround-sound glory—it's a shame they didn't think of adding a commentary.

The second disc's special features are sparse compared to last year's release, most notably the games, which are simpler and dull in comparison to The Philosopher's Stone. Gilderoy Lockhart's classroom offers nothing magical, and the interviews with teachers and students offer only snippets of the actors' thoughts on their characters. Don't get over excited about the "Build a Scene" feature as, unfortunately, this is not a miracle of modern DVD technology, but a simple featurette. The real gem on the disc is a 16-minute interview with JK Rowling and Steve Kloves about the transfer from book to screen. —Nikki Disney

Smith, Chris, Ollman, Dan, Price, Sarah

Menaul, Christopher

Nolan, Christopher Batman Begins discards the previous four films in the series and recasts the Caped Crusader as a fearsome avenging angel. That's good news, because the series, which had gotten off to a rousing start under Tim Burton, had gradually dissolved into self-parody by 1997's Batman & Robin. As the title implies, Batman Begins tells the story anew, when Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) flees Western civilization following the murder of his parents. He is taken in by a mysterious instructor named Ducard (Liam Neeson in another mentor role) and urged to become a ninja in the League of Shadows, but he instead returns to his native Gotham City resolved to end the mob rule that is strangling it. But are there forces even more sinister at hand?

Co-written by the team of David S. Goyer (a veteran comic book writer) and director Christopher Nolan (Memento), Batman Begins is a welcome return to the grim and gritty version of the Dark Knight, owing a great debt to the graphic novels that preceded it. It doesn't have the razzle dazzle, or the mass appeal, of Spider-Man 2 (though the Batmobile is cool), and retelling the origin means it starts slowly, like most "first" superhero movies. But it's certainly the best Bat-film since Burton's original, and one of the best superhero movies of its time. Bale cuts a good figure as Batman, intense and dangerous but with some of the lightheartedness Michael Keaton brought to the character. Michael Caine provides much of the film's humor as the family butler, Alfred, and as the love interest, Katie Holmes (Dawson's Creek) is surprisingly believable in her first adult role. Also featuring Gary Oldman as the young police officer Jim Gordon, Morgan Freeman as a Q-like gadgets expert, and Cillian Murphy as the vile Jonathan Crane. —David Horiuchi, Amazon.com

Berri, Claude SYNOPSIS: Camille (Audrey Tautou) works evenings as an office cleaning woman, and makes graceful drawings in her free time, living in the attic of a Parisian apartment block. Philibert (Laurent Stocker) is a young, aristocratic history buff living - temporarily - in an apartment lower down, part of the estate of his late grandmother. He has let out part of it to up and coming cook Franck (Guillaume Canet), a gruff young loner and womaniser with a genuine love for his frail grandmother, Paulette (Francoise Bertin). When Camille falls ill, Philibert insists she stay with the two of them so he can look after her. And even though she and Franck clash, the trio manage to live together and learn from each other. ABOUT THE DVD: This is a ALL REGION (Region 0) PAL format DVD release for the THAI market - The film is presented in COLOUR and WIDESCREEN format (16:9 aspect ratio) and runs for a total of 93 minutes - AUDIO is the original FRENCH language (there is also a Thai dubbed soundtrack on the disc) - SUBTITLES are in ENGLISH (there are also Thai language subs on the disc).

Bruckman, Clyde, Keaton, Buster

McPherson, Conor Irish playwright Conor McPherson successfully transitions from stage to screen for his third cinematic go-round (after two less successful efforts). Woodworking instructor Michael Farr (Munich's soulful Ciarán Hinds), who lost his wife two years before, volunteers as a chauffeur for Cobh Cove's annual literary festival. As the event begins, he sees the ghost of his father-in-law, Malachy (Jim Norton), who isn't dead, wandering through the townhouse he shares with his two children. Michael seeks advice from Lena Morelle (The Boss of It All's delicately pretty Iben Hjejle), British author of The Eclipse, a book about ghosts. She suspects Malachy might be close to death. Married American novelist Nicholas Holden (Aidan Quinn in feisty Norman Mailer mode), who had a fling with Lena the previous year, has also arrived in the Cork hamlet, hoping to rekindle the flame, except the divorced Lena finds herself drawn to the soft-spoken widower. If Michael shares her interest, he isn't quite ready to move on, though the combination of a persistent ghost and a desperate novelist pushes him in unexpected directions. As that trajectory suggests, McPherson's minor-key movie takes aim at the adult audience, and those accustomed to more sensationalistic fare may find it a little dull. The angular cinematography and minimal special effects produce some genuine chills, but psychology ultimately trumps the paranormal. In that sense, it serves as a welcome throwback to the sophisticated chillers of the 1960s, like The Innocents and The Haunting. —Kathleen C. Fennessy

Puiu, Cristi The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is a sadly funny film that tells the story of an old man whom no one really knows or cares about. When he falls ill and needs medical treatment, he faces a team of busy doctors who are concerned because they have to be, not because they really care. Running just over 2-1/2 hours, this Romanian film allows the viewer to visualize how suffocatingly slow time must seem for Lazarescu (Ion Fiscuteanu), who isn't expecting the best treatment—just any treatment would be nice. With the exception of a conscientious paramedic, there doesn't seem to be much concern whether he lives or dies. TV viewers have been weaned on medical dramas such as ER, Chicago Hope, and House—all of which depict physicians who will go to all lengths to cure their patients. While noble and entertaining, these series probably offer less realism than The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, in which lack of funds and staff don't allow time for suitable bedside manner. No one is vilified, not even some of the hospital staff that is disgusted by the side effects of their patients' illnesses. The story is well told in a humane and mesmerizing manner that yanks at the heartstrings while still eliciting a laugh or two. —Jae-Ha Kim

Espinosa, Daniel

Argento, Dario

McKean, Dave This visually stunning film is the product of a collaboration of award-winning graphic novelist Neil Gaiman (creator of the much-lauded Sandman series), his frequent collaborator Dave McKean (Cages), and The Jim Henson Company, themselves no strangers to elaborate fantasies such as The Dark Crystal. and Labyrinth. As with the latter film, MirrorMask focuses on a young woman unhappy with her daily existence; here, the artistically inclined Helena (Stephanie Leonides), is at odds with her circus performer parents. When a careless insult appears to send her mother (Gina McKee) into a coma, Helena withdraws into the dark and elaborate world of her drawings, in which a scenario very similar to her predicament in the real world is unfolding. Gaiman and director McKean create arresting images to populate Helena's world, and the Henson Company brings them vividly to life with CGI; though the story is occasionally murky, the fantasy elements are imaginative enough to enthral what will undoubtedly be the film's toughest customers—younger viewers. —Paul Gaita

Cronenberg, David After developing an addiction to the substance he uses to kill bugs, an exterminator accidentally murders his wife and becomes involved in a secret government plot being orchestrated by giant bugs in an Islamic port town in Africa. Not an adaptation of beat writer William S. Burrough's novel but a mix of biography and an interpretation of his drug- induced writing processes combined with elements of his work in this paranoid fantasy about Bill Lee, a writer who accidentally shoots his wife, whose typewriter transforms into a cockroach and who becomes involved in a mysterious plot in an Islamic port called Interzone. Wonderfully bizarre, not unlike Burrough's books.

Cronenberg, David On the surface, David Cronenberg may seem an unlikely candidate to direct A History of Violence, but dig deeper and you'll see that he's the right man for the job. As an intellectual seeker of meaning and an avowed believer in Darwinian survival of the fittest, Cronenberg knows that the story of mild-mannered small-town diner proprietor Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) is in fact a multilayered examination of inbred human behavior, beginning when Tom's skillful killing of two would-be robbers draws unwanted attention to his idyllic family life in rural Indiana. He's got a loving wife (Maria Bello) and young daughter (Heidi Hayes) who are about to learn things about Tom they hadn't suspected, and a teenage son (Ashton Holmes) who has inherited his father's most prominent survival trait, manifesting itself in ways he never expected. By the time Tom has come into contact with a scarred villain (Ed Harris) and connections that lead him to a half-crazy kingpin (William ! Hurt, in a spectacular cameo), Cronenberg has plumbed the dark depths of human nature so skillfully that A History of Violence stands well above the graphic novel that inspired it (indeed, Cronenberg was unaware of the source material behind Josh Olson's chilling adaptation). With hard-hitting violence that's as sudden as it is graphically authentic, this is A History of Violence that's worthy of serious study and widespread acclaim. —Jeff Shannon

de Vos, David

Fincher, David They all laughed at college nerd Mark Zuckerberg, whose idea for a social-networking site made him a billionaire. And they all laughed at the idea of a Facebook movie—except writer Aaron Sorkin and director David Fincher, merely two of the more extravagantly talented filmmakers around. Sorkin and Fincher's breathless picture, The Social Network, is a fast and witty creation myth about how Facebook grew from Zuckerberg's insecure geek-at-Harvard days into a phenomenon with 500 million users. Sorkin frames the movie around two lawsuits aimed at the lofty but brilliant Zuckerberg (deftly played by Adventureland's Jesse Eisenberg): a claim that he stole the idea from Ivy League classmates, and a suit by his original, now slighted, business partner (Andrew Garfield). The movie follows a familiar rise-and-fall pattern, with temptation in the form of a sunny California Beelzebub (an expert Justin Timberlake as former Napster founder Sean Parker) and an increasingly tangled legal mess. Emphasizing the legal morass gives Sorkin and Fincher a chance to explore how unsocial this social-networking business can be, although the irony seems a little facile. More damagingly, the film steers away from the prickly figure of Zuckerberg in the latter stages—and yet Zuckerberg presents the most intriguing personality in the movie, even if the movie takes pains to make us understand his shortcomings. Fincher's command of pacing and his eye for the clean spaces of Aughts-era America are bracing, and he can't resist the technical trickery involved in turning actor Armie Hammer into privileged Harvard twins (Hammer is letter-perfect). Even with its flaws, The Social Network is a galloping piece of entertainment, a smart ride with smart people… who sometimes do dumb things. —Robert Horton

Lean, David

Lynch, David Though Inland Empire's three hours of befuddling abstraction could try the patience of the most devoted David Lynch fan, its aim to reinvigorate the Lynch-ian symbolic order is ambitious, not to mention visually arresting. The director's archetypes recognizable from previous movies once again construct the film's inherent logic, but with a new twist. Sets vibrate between the contemporary and a 1950s alternate universe crammed with dim lamps, long hallways, mysterious doors, sparsely furnished rooms and, this time, a vortex/apartment/sitcom set where rabbit-masked humans dwell, and a Polish town where women are abused and killed. Instead of speaking backwards, mystic soothsayers and criminals speak Polish. Filmed on video, the film's look has the sinister, frightening feel of a Mark Savage film or a bootlegged snuff movie. Constant close-ups, both in and out of focus, make Inland Empire feel as if a stalker covertly filmed it.

A straightforward, hokey plot unravels during the first third of Inland Empire to ground the viewer before a dive off the deep end. Actor Nikki Grace (Laura Dern) is cast as Susan Blue, an adulterous white trash Southerner, in a film that mimics too closely her actual life with an overbearingly jealous and dangerous husband. When Nikki and co-star Devon (Justin Theroux) learn that the cursed film project was earlier abandoned when its stars were murdered, the pair lose their grasp of reality. Nikki suffers a schizophrenic identity switch to Sue that lasts until nearly the film's end. Suspense builds as Nikki's alter ego sleuths her way through surreal situations to discover her killer, culminating in Sue's gnarly death on set. Sue's actions drag on because any sign of a narrative thread disappears due to idiosyncratic editing. Non-sensical scenes still captivate, however, such as when Sue stumbles onto the soundstage where she finds Nikki (herself) rehearsing for Sue's part. In this meta-film about identity slippage, Dern's multiple characters remind one of how a victim can become the hunter in their fight for survival. Lynch's portrayal of Nikki/Sue's increasing paranoia is, in its own confusion, utterly realistic. Laura Dern has created her own Lady Macbeth, undone by her guilt over infidelity. Even though Inland Empire is too long and too random, Laura Dern's performance coupled with Lynch's video experiments make it magical. —Trinie Dalton

Lynch, David Though Inland Empire's three hours of befuddling abstraction could try the patience of the most devoted David Lynch fan, its aim to reinvigorate the Lynch-ian symbolic order is ambitious, not to mention visually arresting. The director's archetypes recognizable from previous movies once again construct the film's inherent logic, but with a new twist. Sets vibrate between the contemporary and a 1950s alternate universe crammed with dim lamps, long hallways, mysterious doors, sparsely furnished rooms and, this time, a vortex/apartment/sitcom set where rabbit-masked humans dwell, and a Polish town where women are abused and killed. Instead of speaking backwards, mystic soothsayers and criminals speak Polish. Filmed on video, the film's look has the sinister, frightening feel of a Mark Savage film or a bootlegged snuff movie. Constant close-ups, both in and out of focus, make Inland Empire feel as if a stalker covertly filmed it.

A straightforward, hokey plot unravels during the first third of Inland Empire to ground the viewer before a dive off the deep end. Actor Nikki Grace (Laura Dern) is cast as Susan Blue, an adulterous white trash Southerner, in a film that mimics too closely her actual life with an overbearingly jealous and dangerous husband. When Nikki and co-star Devon (Justin Theroux) learn that the cursed film project was earlier abandoned when its stars were murdered, the pair lose their grasp of reality. Nikki suffers a schizophrenic identity switch to Sue that lasts until nearly the film's end. Suspense builds as Nikki's alter ego sleuths her way through surreal situations to discover her killer, culminating in Sue's gnarly death on set. Sue's actions drag on because any sign of a narrative thread disappears due to idiosyncratic editing. Non-sensical scenes still captivate, however, such as when Sue stumbles onto the soundstage where she finds Nikki (herself) rehearsing for Sue's part. In this meta-film about identity slippage, Dern's multiple characters remind one of how a victim can become the hunter in their fight for survival. Lynch's portrayal of Nikki/Sue's increasing paranoia is, in its own confusion, utterly realistic. Laura Dern has created her own Lady Macbeth, undone by her guilt over infidelity. Even though Inland Empire is too long and too random, Laura Dern's performance coupled with Lynch's video experiments make it magical. —Trinie Dalton

Mann, Delbert Taken from the novel by Erich Maria Remarque; All Quiet on the Western Front is a devastating portrait by Delbert Mann (Desire Under the Elms; Marty) of a small group of German soldiers throughout the World War I. The star-studded cast is headed by Richard Thomas (The Waltons) as Paul Baumer; and includes such award-winning actors as Ernest Borgnine; Ian Holm; and Patricia Neal. As both narrator and star; Thomas occasionally seems to reincarnate his familiar John-Boy persona; but creates a character that has many more levels than that television alter ego. Watching Paul as he watches all of his high school buddies die is a highly emotional experience. He returns to his home a different person; conflicted in his feelings about the Army and war; evolving from an idealistic schoolboy to a fearful and humble veteran. The scenery and costuming in this period piece are well done; and surely contributed to its winning the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Made for TV. Also contributing to the greatness of the film are the exceptional cinematography and special effects that; while realistically gruesome; truly emphasize the horrors of war.

Arcand, Denys

Standaert, Dominique

Coscarelli, Don Don Coscarelli directs and Bruce Campbell stars as the King of Camp in this intentionally over-the-top schlockfest. Bubba Ho-Tep is partially about Elvis Presley and partially about the title character, an Egyptian cowboy zombie, but mostly it is about camp. The movie is equal parts story and back story. We learn through narration and flashback how Elvis didn't really die, ending up instead in a rest home in East Texas with JFK (played by Ossie Davis), who was dyed black and had his brain removed, presumably for reasons of national security. Campbell and Davis realize that something strange is going on when their rest-home compatriots start dropping off suspiciously. The whole movie leads up to a final showdown to the death with the Egyptian cowboy zombie who has been sucking the souls of their fellow residents because he thought no one would notice. The movie unfolds a bit slowly; it is, after all, a geriatrics-fight-Egyptian-cowboy-zombie movie. However, one wishes this self-conscious movie's pacing took its cue from the atypically fast-moving zombie instead of from the senior-citizen Elvis and JFK. In the end, though, Campbell is flawless as the aged King; his accent, intonations, glasses, and trademark karate are at the same time sincere and over the top. —Brian Saltzman

Liman, Doug Released amidst rumors of romance between costars Angelina Jolie and soon-to-be-divorced Brad Pitt, Mr. and Mrs. Smith offers automatic weapons and high explosives as the cure for marital boredom. The premise of this exhausting action-comedy (no relation to the 1941 Alfred Hitchcock comedy starring Carole Lombard and Robert Montgomery) is that the unhappily married Smiths (Pitt and Jolie) will improve their relationship once they discover their mutually-hidden identities as world-class assassins, but things get complicated when their secret-agency bosses order them to rub each other out. There's plenty of amusing banter in the otherwise disposable screenplay by Simon Kinberg, and director Doug Liman gives Pitt and Jolie a slick, glossy superstar showcase that's innocuous but certainly never boring. It could've been better, but as an action-packed summer confection, Mr. and Mrs. Smith kills two hours in high style. —Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

Sirk, Douglas Douglas Sirk puts the opera back into soap opera in this exquisitely baroque melodrama, the epitome of Technicolor gloss. Rock Hudson (as wonderfully wooden as ever) and Lauren Bacall play stalwart examples of altruism, clean living, and good old American ambition, but Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone steal the film as white trash millionaire siblings stewing in self-pity. The plot reads like an episode of Dallas: Texas oil-baron playboy Stack steals good girl Bacall from best friend Hudson while Stack's sister Malone puts her slinky moves on Hudson, the strapping poor boy made good. Toss in impotence, jealousy, alcoholic binges, emotional blackmail, and backstabbing nastiness, mix vigorously with high style and expressionist flourishes, and you've got the most potent melodrama cocktail of the 1950s. Stack twists his arch delivery into the practiced bravado of a boozing womanizer nursing an inferiority complex while Malone sashays and flirts her way through an Oscar-winning performance as a slutty, sassy good-time girl. It's so over the top that it might seem kitschy at first glance, but former theater director Sirk subtly shades his vision in the shadows of film noir and uses the portentous angles and gaudy color to create a vivid, vivacious world of glossy surfaces and social masks cracking under the pressure of responsibility and the pain of lost love. —Sean Axmaker

Rikardsen, Karl E.

Steel, Eric

Akin, Fatih

Aurvåg, Trond Fausa

Coraci, Frank The 2004 version of Around the World in 80 Days is an entertaining hodge-podge of adventure, comedy, and scenery from across the globe. Phileas Fogg (Steve Coogan, 24 Hour Party People), an obsessively precise inventor, bets that he can circumnavigate the planet in 80 days—considered impossible in the Victorian era. In this version, Jackie Chan plays a Chinese peasant who retrieves a stolen idol from the Bank of England, then convinces Fogg to hire him as a French valet so that Chan can get back to his village. Chan supplies numerous spectacular fights against the forces trying to stop Fogg or get the idol, while Coogan is both funny and a surprisingly appealing romantic lead (he flirts with a fetching French painter who joins them). The various episodes—featuring cameos by Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Cleese, Owen Wilson, and Sammo Hung—are uneven, but a goofy good cheer prevails. —Bret Fetzer

Salvatores, Gabriele

Noé, Gaspar Irreversible begins with the closing credits running backwards before the film begins (or ends) with Marcus (Vincent Cassell) and Pierre (Albert Dupontel) being escorted out of a gay s/m club by the cops, Marcus with his arm broken and Pierre in handcuffs. The "story" proceeds to unwind in a series of single-take scenes that unfold Memento-style, with each scene giving more context to what we have seen previously.

Each scenario depicts actions, dialogue, incident, behaviour and circumstance that the lead characters might have wished didn't happen, ranging from extreme violence through awkward social situations to mild embarrassment. The central character (and possible dreamer of this whole what-if story) emerges as Alex (Monica Bellucci), who suffers the worst in a very hard-to-watch rape sequence in an underpass. Semi-improvised, the scenes all have attack and power as themes, with later/earlier conversational sequences that suggest life isn't all sexual assaults in the dark, showing equal cinematic imagination with the horrors. Arguably, this is not a film most would subject themselves to twice, but it is something that stays in the mind for days after viewing, sparking far more ideas and emotions than most wallow-in-nastiness pictures. —Kim Newman

Hood, Gavin

Wright, Geoffrey

Clooney, George LIONSGATE, RRD93809, pal2 RENTAL COPY

Sluizer, George It's not unusual for Hollywood to remake European hits. What is unusual is the director of the original getting the chance to helm the new version with an American cast, which is what happened with this film based on an intensely creepy Dutch film of the same name (both directed by George Sluizer). Kiefer Sutherland and Sandra Bullock are on vacation when, while stopped at a crowded rest area, she disappears. He devotes the next several years to discovering what happened to her, ruining his life in the process. When he does get a clue, it leads him to Jeff Bridges, who plays a bizarre and highly organized individual whose motives are almost as strange as he is. Bridges is spooky, but Sluizer ultimately is undone by Hollywood's demand for a happy ending, which makes this film affecting but far less unsettling than the original. —Marshall Fine

Waggner, George Danish Edition, PAL/Region 2 DVD: Subtitles: Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, English. 4 Movies Box Set: WereWolf of London, The Wolf Man, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, She-Wolf of London. Features: Monster By Moonlight, Commentary. The Wolf Man The original horror classic that introduced one of the screen's most infamous monsters! Lon Chaney Jr. portrays Larry Talbot, who returns to his father's (Claude Rains) castle in Wales and meets a beautiful woman (Evelyn Ankers). One fateful night, Talbot escorts her to a local carnival where Jenny's fate is revealed by a mysterious gypsy fortune teller. The dreamlike atmospheres and elaborate settings combined with a chilling musical score make The Wolf Man a masterpiece not only of the genre, but for all time! Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man Bela Lugosi as Frankenstein's' Monster and Lon Chaney Jr. as the cursed Wolf Man collide in one of the great classic horror films of the 1940s. Beginning as a moody chiller, director Roy William Neill sets the stage for an unforgettable clash. The resurrected Wolf Man, seeking a cure for his malady, enlists the aid of mad scientist Patric Knowles, who claims he will not only rid the Wolf Man of his nocturnal Metamorphosis but will also revive the frozen body of Frankenstein's inhuman creation. She-Wolf of London The citizens in turn-of-the-century London are terrified and Scotland Yard is baffled by a mysterious string of bloody killings in the city's most infamous park. In a nearby estate Phyllis Allenby (June Lockhart) fears that the "Allenby Curse" which led to the death of her parents has now turned her into a "she-wolf." Haunted by dreams of mayhem and worried she's going insane, Phyllis breaks off her engagement with her fiancé (Don Porter). Determined to prove that the woman he love couldn't be a murderess, he sets out to unmask the real killer.

Babluani, Géla Skadinavian Edition, PAL/Region 2 DVD: Subtitles: Danish. Audio: English. No English Subtitles. A naive young man assumes a dead man's identity and finds himself embroiled in an underground world of power, violence, and chance where men gamble behind closed doors on the lives of other men.

MacKinnon, Gillies

Verbinski, Gore The movie that helped breathe new life into the summer blockbuster, the success of Pirates Of The Caribbean: Curse Of The Black Pearl is remarkable for several reasons.

Firstly, there’s the unlikely source material. There’s no previous history of theme park rides inspiring major hit movies, yet that’s just what’s happened here. Secondly, there’s the patchy performance of pirate-related movies over the years (does anyone remember seeing Cutthroat Island in a cinema?). And then there’s that performance from Johnny Depp, the one that had Disney executives in a flap prior to the release of the movie. His Captain Jack Sparrow is a fantastic, unlikely creation, proving to be both unpredictable yet utterly compelling. Such is his impact on the film that it’s hardly surprising Depp snared an Oscar nomination for the role.

Yet Depp’s performance shouldn’t blind anyone to the film’s many other qualities. The supporting cast, particularly the likes of Geoffrey Rush, Jack Davenport and Jonathan Pryce are all clearly having a whale of a time, while Gore Verbinski’s pacey yet controlled direction rarely lets the momentum slow. And with all their work grounded by a quality script and worthwhile story, the end result is a film that clicks in many, many different ways.

Of course, it’s now proved the inspiration for a pair of sequels, yet no matter how they turn out, Pirates Of The Caribbean: Curse Of The Black Pearl will always stand as a quite brilliant example of what happens on those rare occasions when Hollywood blockbusters get it absolutely right. And it’s a treat that can easily be enjoyed time after time.—Simon Brew

Van Sant, Gus

Van Sant, Gus

Hamilton, Guy

Hamilton, Guy The British spy with a licence to kill takes on his dark underworld double, a classy assassin who kills with golden bullets at £1 million a hit. Roger Moore, in his second outing as James Bond, meets Christopher Lee's Scaramanga, one of the most magnetic villains in the entire series, in this entertaining but rather wan entry in the 007 sweepstakes. Bond's globetrotting search takes him to Hong Kong, Bangkok, and finally China, where Scaramanga turns his island retreat into a twisted theme park for a deadly game of wits between the gunmen, moderated by Scaramanga's diminutive man Friday Nick Nack (Fantasy Island's Hervé Villechaize). Britt Ekland does her best as an embarrassingly inept Bond girl, a clumsy, dim agent named Mary Goodnight who looks fetching in a bikini, while Maud Adams is Scaramanga's tough but haunted lover and assistant. Clifton James, the redneck sheriff from Live and Let Die, makes an ill-advised appearance as a racist tourist. He briefly teams up with 007 in what is otherwise the film's highlight, a high-energy chase through the crowded streets of Bangkok that climaxes with a breathtaking mid-air corkscrew jump. Bond and company are let down by a lazy script, but Moore balances the overplayed humour with a steely performance and Lee's charm and enthusiasm makes Scaramanga a cool, deadly, and thoroughly enchanting adversary. —Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com

Palfi, Gyorgy

Hartley, Hal Simple Men opens with small-time hood Bill (Robert Burke from RoboCop 3) asking a bound and blindfolded security guard if he can have the guard's Virgin Mary medallion; "Be good to her and she'll be good to you", says the guard. Immediately after, Bill is double-crossed by his girlfriend and his partner. From there, the plot goes off in a completely different direction: Bill and his younger brother Dennis (William Sage, High Art), a philosophy student, go off in search of their father, a former star shortstop who may have committed a bombing many years ago. Their only clue is a phone number on Long Island; they end up at a cafe run by Kate (Karen Sillas, Female Perversions), which is also the hang-out for Elina Loewensohn (Nadja) and Martin Donovan (Hollow Reed, The Opposite of Sex). Plot is never the point in Hal Hartley movies (Trust, Amateur, Henry Fool); it's just a clothesline on which to hang odd, quirky scenes—moments like Donovan and Sage trying to imitate Loewensohn's dance movements to a Sonic Youth song or a half-drunken conversation about pop music and self-exploitation. Hartley's deliberately stilted dialogue and stylised performances actually play better on video; the movie feels more intimate, making the humour more relaxed and fluid. Hartley is the kind of idiosyncratic filmmaker who provokes love-him-or-hate-him responses, but there's a deep sincerity to his artifices that goes beyond mere posing. Against all commercial wisdom, he's struggling to find his own cinematic poetry. Such an uncommon aspiration is worth checking out. —Bret Fetzer

Needham, Hal

Zwart, Harald One Night at McCool's is a giddy attempt to combine a standard film noir plot and a contemporary sex farce about men who (to quote John Hiatt's song) let their little heads do the thinking. Not as polished as Grosse Pointe Blank, with which it shares a similar offbeat sensibility, it's a promising comedy that never quite hits full speed, coasting along amiably enough before spiralling into violence that clashes with its trashy sensibility. But it's fun enough, especially for those who drool at the sight of Liv Tyler. The movie begins by suggesting that Liv is sexy, then proceeds to prove it, and continually insists upon it until you're left with no choice but to agree wholeheartedly.

As bombshell Jewell Valentine, Tyler lures three guys into her criminal scheme. Happy homemaking. Bartender Matt Dillon's the first to take the bait; as Dillon's lawyer cousin, Paul Reiser also can't resist; and when murder complicates everything, detective John Goodman employs his own love-struck brand of chivalry. Sporting a tacky pompadour, Michael Douglas steals the show as a hit man hired to whack the scheming sexpot—and Andrew Dice Clay is surprisingly funny in a dangerous dual role—but of course Liv can hold her own. It's all quite amusing, but rarely is McCool's as funny as you hope it will be; the dialogue by Stan Seidel (who sadly died before filming completed) is zesty enough but lacks the Coen-esque punch that would kick it over the top. It hardly matters, though; with a femme fatale such as Liv in control, the movie's faults will easily be forgiven. —Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

Ahlsson, Helen, Munthe, Lisa Sweden released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: LANGUAGES: Swedish ( Dolby Digital 2.0 ), English ( Subtitles ), Finnish ( Subtitles ), Norwegian ( Subtitles ), Swedish ( Subtitles ), WIDESCREEN (1.85:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Commentary, Deleted Scenes, Interactive Menu, Scene Access, SYNOPSIS: The tiny village in the far north of Sweden called Ensamheten (Solitude) has sixteen inhabitants. They all share an unusual passion - armwrestling. Among them is 22-year-old Heidi Andersson, three times a world champion. Here is a varied life. One day in the forest with the other lumberjacks, the next she is in the big city modelling bridal gowns. She hunts moose with her mother and talks about boys with her father. The village is a cooperative and they are all behind this slender woman as she takes on the world.

Nakata, Hideo Dark Water is Japanese horror auteur Hideo Nakata's return to the genre after his Ring cycle made you too scared to watch television ever again. Where Ring dealt with a supernatural force wreaking revenge via technology, Dark Water is a much more traditional ghost story. After winning a custody battle for her daughter, single mother Yoshimi moves into what she thinks is the perfect apartment with her daughter Hitomi. No sooner have they unpacked than strange things begin to disturb their new life. A water leak from the supposedly abandoned apartment above gets bigger and bigger, a child's satchel reappears even though Yoshimi throws it away several times, and she is haunted by the image of a child wearing a yellow mackintosh who bears a striking resemblance to a young girl who disappeared several years before.

The conventional narrative follows Yoshimi's increasingly desperate attempts to discover who or what force is haunting her daughter, but the story's execution is far from predictable. Nakata is the master of understated suspense: there's always a feeling of motiveless malignancy that runs like an undercurrent through his films—far more frightening than out and out shocks—and here he also practically drowns his audience in water imagery. The film is saturated; the relentless dripping in the apartment, the constant rain outside and the deliberately washed-out photography make any colour, such as the yellow coat, seem incongruous and unsettling. Nakata also clears the film of unnecessary characters—this is an almost deserted Tokyo—preferring to concentrate the action on Yoshimi's rising hysteria as she struggles to understand what is happening and how to save her daughter. Granted, the special effects are somewhat unconvincing and the ending confused, but even so the result is a stylish and disquieting chiller that will do for bathtubs what Ring did for video recorders. —Kristen Bowditch

Bergman, Ingmar Made in 1966, Persona is among Ingmar Bergman's greatest, most vital movies, made during a difficult period in his life (Bergman's life is one short on easy times), having been hospitalised following a viral infection. It was while laid up that he conceived the notion of Persona, in which a famous actress, Elisabet (Liv Ullmann) suddenly lapses into a muteness from which, though mentally and physically healthy, she refuses to emerge. She is attended to by a young, naive nurse, Alma (Bibi Andersson) who develops an obsession, bordering on infatuation with her silent charge. She finds herself jabbering all of her innermost secrets to her and, little by little, through dream sequences, repeated dialogue and trick photography, it's as if the consciousnesses of the two women have actually merged.

With its opening sequence of cryptic projected reel images (allusions to Bergman's previous work), jarringly atonal soundtrack and devices such as the audible chatter of camera crew, Persona contains an unusual share of avant-garde trimmings, which haven't necessarily stood the test of time. However, the relationship between Alma and Elisabet dominates the movie. Some confounded critics wondered if theirs was a lesbian relationship.

Actually, Persona is an occasionally cryptic but overwhelmingly powerful meditation on the parasitic interaction between Art and Life, the way the former feeds off the latter (Alma is distraught to discover a letter at one point which suggests Elisabet has been coolly observing her, as if for material). However, as an early scene featuring TV footage of a Vietnamese Buddhist monk torching himself as a protest against the war, it's also about the helpless incapacity of art to "say" anything in the face of grim reality. A small film budget-wise, but a colossal event in world cinema. —David Stubbs

Reitman, Ivan Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis wrote the script, but Bill Murray gets all the best lines and moments in this 1984 comedy directed by Ivan Reitman (Meatballs). The three comics, plus Ernie Hudson, play the New York City-based team that provides supernatural pest control, and Sigourney Weaver is the love interest possessed by an ancient demon. Reitman and company are full of original ideas about hobgoblins—who knew they could "slime" people with green plasma goo?—but hovering above the plot is Murray's patented ironic view of all the action. Still a lot of fun, and an obvious model for sci-fi comedies such as Men in Black. —Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

Mangold, James Charting the life stories of both legendary musician Johnny Cash and singer June Carter, Walk The Line has proven to be among the most popular music biopics of all time. And with good reason.

Spearheaded by two superb performances (which we’ll come to shortly), the film’s main focus is on Cash himself, from his childhood, early successes, eventual troubles through to the legendary concert of Folsom Prison. His journey also takes in drug problems, the tragedy that haunted him and bumpy relationships with the women in his life. Throughout, of course, there’s Cash’s enviable body of musical work, which not only helps provide markers for his story, but makes for an excellent soundtrack to the movie as a whole.

As a film, Walk The Line is resolutely formulaic, with a structure that’ll be familiar to anyone who regularly watches biopics of this ilk. What really helps this one stand tall though are Joaquin Pheonix and Reese Witherspoon. Pheonix is utterly compelling in the lead role, while Witherspoon is back on the form she displayed back in the days of Election.

James Mangold’s direction is fine and uncluttered, and while his film clearly chooses which elements of Cash’s life to focus on (there’s certainly far more to know than you get in the two and a quarter hours here), it works extremely well as an entry point into the life story of a great musician. Even the casual viewer will get a lot from Walk The Line, and it may even compel them to expand their CD collection off the back of it,—Simon Brew

Whale, James "It's alive! Alive!" shouts Colin Clive's triumphant Dr. Frankenstein as electricity buzzes over the hulking body of a revived corpse. "In the name of God now I know what it's like to be God!" For years unheard, this line has been restored, along with the legendary scene of the childlike monster tossing a little girl into a lake, in James Whale's Frankenstein, one of the most famous and influential horror movies ever made. Coming off the tremendous success of Dracula, Universal assigned sophomore director Whale to helm an adaptation of Mary Shelley's famous novel with Bela Lugosi as the monster. When Lugosi declined the role, Whale cast the largely unknown character actor Boris Karloff and together with makeup designer Jack Pierce they created the most memorable monster in movie history: a towering, lumbering creature with sunken eyes, a flat head, and a jagged scar running down his forehead. Whale and Karloff made this mute, misunderstood brute, who has the brain of a madman (the most obvious of the many liberties taken with Shelley's story), the most pitiable freak of nature to stumble across the screen. Clive's Dr. Frankenstein is intense and twitchy and Dwight Frye set the standard for mad-scientist sidekicks as the wild-eyed hunchback assistant. Whale's later films, notably the spooky spoof The Old Dark House and the deliriously stylised sequel The Bride of Frankenstein, display a surer cinematic hand than seen here and add a subversive twist of black comedy, but given the restraints of early sound films, Whale breaks the film free from static stillness and adorns it with striking design and expressionist flourishes. —Sean Axmaker

Whale, James

Whale, James It appeared, at the end of the epochal 1931 horror movie Frankenstein, that the monster had perished in a burning windmill. But that was before the runaway success of the movie dictated a sequel. In Bride of Frankenstein, we see that the monster (once again played by Boris Karloff) survived the conflagration, as did his half-mad creator (Colin Clive). This remarkable sequel, universally considered superior to the original, reunites other key players from the first film: director James Whale (whose life would later be chronicled in Gods and Monsters) and, of course, the inimitable Dwight Frye, as Frankenstein's bent-over assistant. Whale brought campy humour to the project, yet Bride is also somehow haunting, due in part to Karloff's nuanced performance. The monster, on the loose in the European countryside, learns to talk and his encounter with a blind hermit is both comic and touching. (The episode was later spoofed in Mel Brooks's Young Frankenstein.) A prologue depicts the author of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, being urged to produce a sequel by her husband Percy and Lord Byron. She's played by Elsa Lanchester, who reappears in the climactic scene as the man-made bride of the monster. Her lightning-bolt hair and reptilian movements put her into the horror-movie pantheon, despite being onscreen for only a few moments. But in many ways the film is stolen by Ernest Thesiger, as the fey Dr. Pretorious, who toasts the darker possibilities of science: "To a new world of gods and monsters!" —Robert Horton

Troell, Jan

Jeunet, Jean-Pierre Perhaps these films are like the Star Trek movies: the even-numbered episodes are the best ones. Certainly Alien Resurrection film (directed by French stylist Jean-Pierre Jeunet) is an improvement on Alien 3, with a script that breathes exciting new life into the franchise. This chapter is set even further in the future, where scientists on a space colony have cloned both the alien and Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), who died in Alien 3; in doing so, however, they've mixed alien DNA with Ripley's human chromosomes, which gives Ripley surprising power (and a bad attitude). A band of smugglers comes aboard only to discover the new race of aliens—and when the multi-mouthed melonheads get loose, no place is safe. But, on the plus side, they have Ripley as a guide to help them get out. Winona Ryder is on hand as the smugglers' most unlikely crew-member (with a secret of her own), but this one is Sigourney's all the way. —Marshall Fine

Jeunet, Jean-Pierre

Jarmusch, Jim Don Johnston is an empty man. He’s not short of money, thanks to his considerable success with computers, but he is short of emotion, and very much alone. Yet as the latest woman in his life exits stage left, he receives a mysterious note. In it, he learns of a son he never knew he had, with no clues whatsoever to his identity. And so begins Broken Flowers.

Primarily a road movie, it follows Johnston as he tracks back over his past romances and flings, in an attempt to find out who mothered his child, and ultimately, to meet his son. It’s not a task he’s too keen on, and one primarily undertaken at the urging of his next door neighbour. Yet it does make for a compelling film, anchored by yet another superb performance from Bill Murray, as Johnston.

The equal of his work in Lost In Translation, he’s very much the heart of this slow, diligent movie, that doesn’t answer the majority of the questions it poses, yet proves to be something well worth seeking out. And he’s well supported too, not least by Sharon Stone, who turns in lively, yet measured, work as one of Johnston’s exes.

Still, Broken Flowers is clearly not a movie for everybody, with its relaxed pace and willingness to not worry about ticking every box unlikely to earn it truly mass appeal. But it is a little gem in its own right, and a strong addition to an already weight back catalogue for indie moviemaker Jim Jarmusch. It’s worth it alone for Murray, yet Broken Flowers is a movie with plenty else going for it too. Perhaps you might like to give it a try…?—Simon Brew

Coen, Joel, Coen, Ethan Blood Simple made it clear that the cinematically precocious Coen brothers (writer-director Joel and writer-producer Ethan) were gifted filmmakers to watch out for. But it was the outrageously farcical Raising Arizona that announced the Coens' darkly comedic audacity to the world. It wasn't widely seen when released in 1987, but its modest audience was vocally supportive, and this hyperactive comedy has since developed a large and loyal following. It's the story of "Ed" (for Edwina, played by Holly Hunter), a policewoman who falls in love with "Hi" (for H.I. McDonnough, played by Nicolas Cage) while she's taking his mug shots. She's infertile and he's a habitual robber of convenience stores, and their folksy marital bliss depends on settling down with a rug rat. Unable to conceive, they kidnap one of the newsworthy quintuplets born to an unpainted-furniture huckster named Nathan Arizona (Trey Wilson), who quickly hires a Harley-riding mercenary (Randall "Tex" Cobb) to track the baby's whereabouts. What follows is a full-throttle comedy that defies description, fuelled by the Coens' lyrical, redneck dialogue, the manic camerawork of future director Barry Sonnenfeld and some of the most inventively comedic chase scenes ever filmed. Some will dismiss the comedy for being recklessly over-the-top; others will love it for its clever mix of slapstick action, surreal fantasy and homespun family values. One thing's for sure—this is a Coen movie from start to finish, and that makes it undeniably unique. —Jeff Shannon

Ford, John

Ford, John A favourite film of some of the world's greatest filmmakers, including Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, John Ford's The Searchers has earned its place in the legacy of great American films for a variety of reasons. Perhaps most notably, it's the definitive role for John Wayne as an icon of the classic Western—the hero (or antihero) who must stand alone according to the unwritten code of The West. The story takes place in Texas in 1868; Wayne plays Ethan Edwards, a Confederate veteran who visits his brother and sister-in-law at their ranch and is horrified when they are killed by marauding Comanches. Ethan's search for a surviving niece (played by young Natalie Wood) becomes an all-consuming obsession. With the help of a family friend (Jeffrey Hunter) who is himself part-Cherokee, Ethan hits the trail on a five-year quest for revenge. At the peak of his masterful talent, director Ford crafts this classic tale as an embittered examination of racism and blind hatred, provoking Wayne to give one of the best performances of his career. As with many of Ford's classic Westerns, The Searchers must contend with revisionism in its stereotypical treatment of "savage" Native Americans, and the film's visual beauty (the final shot is one of the great images in all of Western culture) is compromised by some uneven performances and stilted dialogue. Still, this is undeniably one of the greatest Westerns ever made. —Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

Glen, John Roger Moore was nearing the end of his reign as James Bond when he made Octopussy, and he looks a little worn out. But the movie itself infuses some new blood into the old franchise, with a frisky pace and a pair of sturdy villains. Maud Adams—who'd also been in The Man with the Golden Gun—plays the improbably named Octopussy, while old smoothie Louis Jourdan is her crafty partner in crime. There's an island populated only by women, as well as a fantastic sequence with a hand-to-hand fight on a plane—and on top of a plane. The film even has an extra emotional punch, since this time 007 is not only following the orders of Her Majesty's Secret Service, but he is also exacting a personal revenge: a fellow double-0 agent has been killed. Two Bond films were actually released in 1983 within a few months of each other, as Octopussy was followed by Sean Connery's comeback in Never Say Never Again. The success of both pictures proved that there was still plenty of mileage left in the old licence to kill, though Moore had one more workout—A View to a Kill—before hanging it up. And that title? The franchise had already used up the titles to Ian Fleming's novels, so Octopussy was taken from a lesser-known Fleming short story. —Robert Horton, Amazon.com

On the DVD: The high standard of these 007 discs is maintained here, with another extra-packed selection. The "Inside Octopussy" documentary details the making of the movie, which faced competition from Sean Connery's Never Say Never Again, as well as being handicapped by a potentially risible title. The initial story was developed by George Macdonald Fraser, author of the "Flashman" books, whose knowledge of Indian history and locales proved invaluable. Roger Moore prevaricated about signing on as Bond, so American James Brolin was screen-tested instead. The movie also produced the worst accident of the series while filming the train sequence and the stuntman involved was hospitalised for six months. Director John Glen provides a solo commentary that reveals a wealth of technical detail and also that this is one of his favourite Bond movies. Rita Coolidge performs "All Time High", and there are also some storyboard sequences and trailers. —Mark Walker

Hughes, John John Hughes's popular 1985 teen drama finds a diverse group of high school students—a jock (Emilio Estevez), a metalhead (Judd Nelson), a weirdo (Ally Sheedy), a princess (Molly Ringwald), and a nerd (Anthony Michael Hall)—sharing a Saturday in detention at their high school for one minor infraction or another. Over the course of a day, they talk through the social barriers that ordinarily keep them apart, and new alliances are born, though not without a lot of pain first. Hughes (Sixteen Candles), who wrote and directed, is heavy on dialogue but he also thoughtfully refreshes the look of the film every few minutes with different settings and original viewpoints on action. The movie deals with such fundamentals as the human tendency toward bias and hurting the weak, and because the characters are caught somewhere between childhood and adulthood, it's easy to get emotionally involved in hope for their redemption. Preteen and teenage kids love this film, incidentally. —Tom Keogh

Huston, John

Huston, John The 1951 John Huston classic, set in Africa during World War I, garnered Humphrey Bogart an Oscar for his role as a hard-drinking riverboat captain in Africa, who provides passage for a Christian missionary spinster (Katharine Hepburn). Taking an instant, mutual dislike to one another, the two endure rough waters, the presence of German soldiers, and their own bickering to finally fall into one another's arms. The African Queen is classic Huston material—part adventure, part quest—but this time with a pair of characters who'd all but given up on happiness. Bogart (a longtime collaborator with Huston on such classics as The Maltese Falcon and Key Largo) and Hepburn have never been better, and support from frequent Huston crony Robert Morley (Beat the Devil, also featuring Bogart) adds some extra dimension and colour. —Tom Keogh

Landis, John After building up the duo's popularity through recordings and several performances on Saturday Night Live, John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd—as "legendary" Chicago blues brothers Jake and Elwood Blues—took their act to the big screen in this action-packed hit from 1980. As Jake and Elwood struggle to reunite their old band and save the Chicago orphanage where they were raised, they wreak enough good-natured havoc to attract the entire Cook County police force. The result is a big-budget stunt-fest on a scale rarely attempted before or since, including extended car chases that result in the wanton destruction of shopping malls and more police cars than you can count. Along the way there's plenty of music to punctuate the action, including performances by Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Cab Calloway, and James Brown that are guaranteed to knock you out. As played with deadpan wit by Belushi and Aykroyd, the Blues Brothers are "on a mission from God," and that gives them a kind of reckless glee that keeps the movie from losing its comedic appeal. Otherwise this might have been just a bloated marathon of mayhem that quickly wears out its welcome (which is how some critics described this film and its 1998 sequel). Keep an eye out for Steven Spielberg as the city clerk who stamps some crucial paperwork near the end of the film.— Jeff Shannon

Schlesinger, John John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy) directed this gripping, entertaining 1977 thriller that centres on graduate student Dustin Hoffman (The Graduate, Tootsie). Hoffman plays a sullen and cowardly loner haunted by the suicide of his father, a suspected communist. He is drawn into a murky web of international intrigue when his brother, CIA agent Doc Levy, played by Roy Scheider (Jaws, The French Connection), is murdered by a former Nazi (Laurence Olivier) who has come to the United States to reclaim a valuable stash of diamonds. Babe (Hoffman) must confront his fears of the past as he runs for his life and tries to avenge his brother's death at the same time. Featuring a classic torture sequence and a terrific cast that includes William Devane and Marthe Keller, Marathon Man written by William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President's Men) stands as a great entertainment and as one of the seminal films of the 1970s. —Robert Lane

Schlesinger, John The first, and only, X-rated film to win a best picture Academy Award, John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy seems a lot less daring today (and has been reclassified as an R), but remains a fascinating time capsule of late-1960s sexual decadence in mainstream American cinema. In a career-making performance, Jon Voight plays Joe Buck, a naive Texas dishwasher who goes to the big city (New York) to make his fortune as a sexual hustler. Although enthusiastic about selling himself to rich ladies for stud services, he quickly finds it hard to make a living and eventually crashes in a seedy dump with a crippled petty thief named Ratzo Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman, doing one of his more effective "stupid acting tricks," with a limp and a high-pitch rasp of a voice). Schlesinger's quick-cut, semi-psychedelic style has dated severely, as has his ruthlessly cynical approach to almost everybody but the lead characters. But at its heart the movie is a sad tale of friendship between a couple of losers lost in the big city, and with an ending no studio would approve today. It's a bit like an urban Of Mice and Men, but where both guys are Lenny. —Jim Emerson

Sturges, John Akira Kurosawa's rousing Seven Samurai was a natural for an American remake—after all, the codes and conventions of ancient Japan and the Wild West (at least the mythical movie West) are not so very far apart. Thus The Magnificent Seven effortlessly turns samurai into cowboys (the same trick worked more than once: Kurosawa's Yojimbo became Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars). The beleaguered denizens of a Mexican village, weary of attacks by banditos, hire seven gunslingers to repel the invaders once and for all. The gunmen are cool and capable, with most of the actors playing them just on the cusp of '60s stardom: Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn. The man who brings these warriors together is Yul Brynner, the baddest bald man in the West. There's nothing especially stylish about the approach of veteran director John Sturges (The Great Escape), but the storytelling is clear and strong, and the charisma of the young guns fairly flies off the screen. If that isn't enough to awaken the 12-year-old kid inside anyone, the unforgettable Elmer Bernstein music will do it: bum-bum-ba-bum, bum-ba-bum-ba-bum... Followed by three inferior sequels, Return of the Seven, Guns of the Magnificent Seven, and The Magnificent Seven Ride! —Robert Horton

Grimås, Jonas

Dayton, Jonathan, Faris, Valerie Pile together a blue-ribbon cast, a screenplay high in quirkiness, and the Sundance stamp of approval, and you've got yourself a crossover indie hit. That formula worked for Little Miss Sunshine, a frequently hilarious study of family dysfunction. Meet the Hoovers, an Albuquerque clan riddled with depression, hostility, and the tattered remnants of the American Dream; despite their flakiness, they manage to pile into a VW van for a weekend trek to L.A. in order to get moppet daughter Olive (Abigail Breslin) into the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant. Much of the pleasure of this journey comes from watching some skillful comic actors doing their thing: Greg Kinnear and Toni Collette as the parents (he's hoping to become a self-help authority), Alan Arkin as a grandfather all too willing to give uproariously inappropriate advice to a sullen teenage grandson (Paul Dano), and a subdued Steve Carell as a jilted gay professor on the verge of suicide. The film is a crowd-pleaser, and if anything is a little too eager to bend itself in the direction of quirk-loving Sundance audiences; it can feel forced. But the breezy momentum and the ingenious actors help push the material over any bumps in the road. — Robert Horton

Bong, Joon-ho At first glance, The Host looks like any other monster movie—an amphibious creature from the depths stalks and devours an urban population—but there's actually much, much more going on beneath the surface. Not that there needs to be: although it has a fairly hefty 119-minute runtime, The Host is fast moving, with plenty of action and a truly gruesome-looking monster. Visually, it's a gorgeous movie, with stunning special effects and beautiful settings (even the rather nasty sewer scenes look perversely great). However, the real crux of The Host isn't really anything to do with the monster: at heart, this is a family drama, not a horror movie. The story focuses on one small family and how they react to the weird goings-on all around them. When the youngest member of the family, Hyun-seo, is snatched by the titular monster, the family is devastated until a call from her mobile phone gives them fresh hope. Unfortunately, everyone who came into contact with the being has been quarantined due to a virus scare, so they have to escape the Korean authorities to go on a rescue mission. Then the American army steps in, and all hell breaks loose...
It's a very original idea, with nuanced and well-written characters, plenty of humour, and a darker undercurrent of social and political commentary, topped off with a thrilling monster-killing adventure. Brilliant, in other words. —Sarah Dobbs

Marston, Joshua

Chen, Kaige

Freund, Karl

Loach, Ken

Macdonald, Kevin As the evil Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, Forest Whitaker gives an unforgettable performance in The Last King of Scotland. Powerfully illustrating the terrible truth that absolute power corrupts absolutely, this fictionalised chronicle of Amin's rise and fall is based on the acclaimed novel by Giles Foden, in which Amin's despotic reign of terror is viewed through the eyes of Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy), a Scottish doctor who arrives in Uganda in the early 1970s to serve as Amin's personal physician. His outsider's perspective causes him to be initially impressed by Amin's calculated rise to power, but as the story progresses—and as Whitaker's award-worthy performance grows increasingly monstrous—The Last King of Scotland turns into a pointed examination of how independent Uganda (a British colony until 1962) became a breeding ground for Amin's genocidal tyranny. As Whitaker plays him, Amin is both seductive and horribly destructive—sometimes in the same breath—and McAvoy effectively conveys the tragic cost of his character's naiveté, which grows increasingly prone to exploitation. As directed by Kevin Macdonald (who made the riveting semi-documentary Touching the Void), this potent cautionary tale my prompt some viewers to check out Barbet Schroeder's equally revealing documentary General Idi Amin Dada, an essential source for much of this film's authentic detail. —Jeff Shannon

Smith, Kevin

Smith, Kevin Kevin Smith knows his audience, so he's mostly indulging his fans with the abundance of Clerks II's DVD extras. On disc 1, three separate commentaries cover the entirety of Clerks II's production, beginning with Smith, producer Scott Mosier, and original Clerks director of photography David Klein talking about Clerks II's technical details, focusing on Klein's approach to the film's desaturated colour palette, the benefits of digital color manipulation, and other aspects of the DP's craft. It's informative material for anyone who's curious about the many decisions that go into any film's overall look and feel. Smith and Mosier return for the cast commentary, which quickly devolves into a casual free-for-all with Jason Mewes, Jeff Anderson, Brian O'Halloran, Trevor Fehrman, and Jennifer Schwalbach candidly riffing on varied topics including reluctance or enthusiasm in reprising their Clerks roles, on-set romance (Mewes and Fehrman got some), working with Dawson (who was unavailable when the commentary was recorded), and their general happiness with the film. Smith, Mosier, and Anderson also provide a podcast commentary that's more focused, but mostly redundant if you've listened to the other two. With an introduction by Smith and Mosier, over 30 minutes of deleted scenes are OK but not great, with some nice character interplay between Anderson and O'Halloran, and some mostly-improvisational riffing from stand-up comedians Wanda Sykes and Earthquake in extended takes from their "Mooby's" scene. "A Closer Look at Interspecies Erotica" is a good-natured featurette about Zak "Sexy Stud" Knutson, who gamely made movie history with his leather-clad performance in the infamous "donkey-show" scene.

Mosier and Smith (who obsessively monitors his fans and critics on the Internet) also provide introductions to the features on disc 2, starting with "Back to the Well," a comprehensive 90-minute "making of' documentary that's almost as fun as the movie itself. "How Movies Are Made" is another name for "Blooper Reel," with nearly 30 minutes of flubs, goofs, and crack-ups—enjoyable enough for a quick look, but mostly a waste of time. The 50-minute compilation of "Train Wrecks" (or video production diaries) is more worthwhile, covering such topics as crewmember intros (with Mewes), Smith's early feedback screening (in December 2005) for friends Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, and the eight-minute standing ovation that Clerks II received at the 2006 Cannes film festival. All in all, these bonus features function as a video scrapbook for Clerks II's cast and crew, revealing a happy shoot that led, to the relief and delight of everyone involved, to a happy ending of critical and box-office success. The uninitiated should be forewarned that most of these features are just as lewd and crude as Clerks II itself, but devotees of the View Askewniverse wouldn't have it any other way. —Jeff Shannon

Mankiewicz, Joseph L. Alfred Hitchcock famously observed that movies should be more than just picture postcards of people talking. Sometimes, though, dialogue is all that's needed. Joseph L. Mankiewicz's immaculately scripted All About Eve is a case in point. There are no special effects (unless one considers Marilyn Monroe's wiggle or a scene in which a car breaks down). What the movie offers instead is some of the most coruscating one-liners ever committed to celluloid.

The top-name cast certainly know how to put Mankiewicz's words across. Anne Baxter is all doe-eyed charm as Eve, the ruthless aspiring actress who passes herself off as a little girl lost. George Sanders (eminent character actor and the voice of Shere Khan the tiger in The Jungle Book) shows his customary mellowness of sneer as Addison De Witt, theatre critic and professional cynic ("a venomous foot louse" as he's characterised) who helps push Eve up the greasy pole toward success, if not happiness. Best of all is Bette Davis, a soured but still resplendent stage diva, who takes Eve under her wing. ("I'll admit I've seen better days but I'm still not to be had for the price of a cocktail—like a salted peanut", she tells her lover.) The plotting and double-dealing on the screen, described in Sam Staggs' All About All About Eve: The Complete Behind-the-Scenes Story of the Bitchiest Film Ever Made, were matched by what went on behind the scenes. Davis heartily loathed fellow actress Celeste Holm who—ironically enough—plays her best friend. She fell in love with another co-star, the handsome, good-looking Gary Merrill, whom she later married. Backstage dramas are often self-indulgent and stagy affairs, but this one dazzles. —Geoffrey Macnab

Clark, Larry Netherlands released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: LANGUAGES: English ( Dolby Digital 5.1 ), Dutch ( Subtitles ), French ( Subtitles ), ANAMORPHIC WIDESCREEN (1.85:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Cast/Crew Interview(s), Filmographies, Interactive Menu, Scene Access, Trailer(s), Uncut, SYNOPSIS: Ken Park focuses on several teenagers and their tormented home lives. Shawn seems to be the most conventional. Tate is brimming with psychotic rage; Claude is habitually harassed by his brutish father and coddled, rather uncomfortably, by his enormously pregnant mother. Peaches looks after her devoutly religious father, but yearns for freedom. They're all rather tight, or so they claim. But they spend precious little time together and none of them seems to know much about one another's family lives. This bizarre dichotomy underscores their alienation # the result of suburban ennui, a teenager's inherent sense of melodrama, and the disturbing nature of their home environments. SCREENED/AWARDED AT: Toronto International Film Festival,

Von Trier, Lars

Von Trier, Lars

Leigh,Mike The brilliant writer-director Mike Leigh (Topsy-Turvy, Secrets and Lies, Naked) has crafted an utterly compelling movie about one of the most controversial of topics. An irrepressibly hopeful housecleaner in 1950s London named Vera Drake (Imelda Staunton, Antonia and Jane, Shakespeare in Love) mothers everyone around her, from her own family to helpless shut-ins and lonely men living in tiny, isolated apartments. None of these people know that Vera also helps young women get rid of unwanted pregnancies, until the police appear and tear her world apart. Vera Drake isn't just an inspired character portrait; through simple and straightforward scenes, the movie weaves a quiet but mesmerizing portrait of how people—both wealthy and poor—cope with adversity. Though wrenching, Vera Drake has too much life to be depressing. Leigh is deservedly famous for his work with actors; every character brims with truth and Staunton's performance deserves every award it could possibly win. —Bret Fetzer

Wiseman, Len Twelve years after Die Hard with a Vengeance, the third and previous film in the Die Hard franchise, Die Hard 4.0 finds John McClane (Bruce Willis) a few years older, not any happier, and just as kick-ass as ever. Right after he has a fight with his college-age daughter (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a call comes in to pick up a hacker (Justin Long, Dodgeball) who might help the FBI learn something about a brief security blip in their systems. Now any Die Hard fan knows that this is when the assassins with foreign accents and high-powered weaponry show up, telling McClane that once again he's stumbled into an assignment that's anything but routine. Once that wreckage has cleared, it is revealed that the hacker is only one of many hackers who are being targeted for extermination after they helped set up a "fire sale," a three-pronged cyberattack designed to bring down the entire country by crippling its transportation, finances, and utilities. That plan is now being put into action by a mysterious team (Timothy Olyphant, Deadwood, and Maggie Q, Mission: Impossible 3) that seems to be operating under the government's noses. Die Hard 4.0 uses some of the cat-and-mouse elements of Die Hard with a Vengeance along with some of the pick-'em-off-one-by-one elements of the now-classic original movie. And it's the most consistently enjoyable installment of the franchise since the original, with eye-popping stunts (directed by Len Wiseman of the Underworld franchise), good humour, and Willis's ability to toss off a quip while barely alive. Yippee-ki-ay! —David Horiuchi

Teague, Lewis

Lagerlöf, Daniel Lind

Lagerlöf, Daniel Lind

Halvorsen, Line Skadinavian Edition, PAL/Region 2 DVD: Subtitles: Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, English. Sami Al-Arian has worked for many years as a dedicated activist and lobbyist for the Palestinian cause in the USA. In 2003 he was arrested and jailed, accused by American authorities of having given economic support to Palestinian terrorist groups. In spite of many years of investigation, hearings, and a six-month long, high profile court case with over 80 witnesses, the authorities were unable to convince a jury that Al-Arian was guilty. But this verdict did not make a difference—Al-Arian is still in jail. The documentary allows the audience to follow the case against Al-Arian through the eyes of his wife and children, and shows the consequences of the USA's controversial Patriot Act—a law that was promoted as a necessary step in the war against terror—and which has led to loss of freedom, betrayal of civil rights, and political persecution. [Less]

Ullmann, Liv

Dardenne, Luc, Jean-Pierre

Visconti, Luchino Luchino Visconti's adaptation of the Thomas Mann story Death in Venice is the very definition of sumptuous: the costumes and sets, the special geography of Venice, and the breathtaking cinematography combine to form a heady experience. At the centre of this gorgeousness is Aschenbach (Dirk Bogarde in a meticulous performance), a controlled intellectual who unexpectedly finds himself obsessed by the vision of a 14-year-old boy while on a convalescent vacation in 1911. Visconti has turned Aschenbach into a composer, which accounts for the lush excerpts from Mahler on the soundtrack (Bogarde is meant to look like Mahler, too). Even if it tends to hit the nail on the head a little too forcefully, and even if Visconti can test one's patience with lingering looks at crowds at the beach and hotel dining rooms, Death in Venice creates a lushness rare in movies. —Robert Horton

Moodysson, Lukas

Ramsey, Lynne Eerie, morbid, yet somehow life-affirming, Morvern Callar stars the superb Samantha Morton (Sweet and Lowdown, Minority Report) as the title character, a young Scottish woman whose boyfriend has just killed himself, leaving behind a cassette of assorted songs and an unpublished novel. Instead of reporting his death, Morvern puts her name on his novel before sending it off to a publisher, then uses the dead man's bank card to pay for a trip to Spain with her friend Lana (Kathleen McDermott), where she tries to lose herself in sensation and chaos. The events of Morvern Callar suggest a story, but director Lynn Ramsay (Ratcatcher) focuses on moments of ambiguity and ambivalence between the sequences of dramatic action—and when Morvern does take decisive action, her choices are unnerving. The movie's striking images and rich use of colour vividly capture a dislocated state of mind, when life has come unmoored from meaning. —Bret Fetzer

Forster, Marc Sweetness that doesn't turn saccharine is hard to find these days; Finding Neverland hits the mark. Much credit is due to the actors: Johnny Depp applies his genius for sly whimsy in his portrayal of playwright J. M. Barrie, who finds inspiration for his greatest creation from four lively boys, the sons of widow Sylvia Llewelyn Davies (Kate Winslet, who miraculously fuses romantic yearning with common sense). Though the friendship threatens his already dwindling marriage, Barrie spends endless hours with the boys, pretending to be pirates or Indians—and gradually the elements of Peter Pan take shape in his mind. The relationship between Barrie and the Llewelyn Davies family sparks both an imagined world and a quiet rebellion against the stuffy forces of respectability, given physical form by Barrie's resentful wife (Radha Mitchell, High Art) and Sylvia's mother (Julie Christie, McCabe and Mrs. Miller). This gentle silliness could have turned to treacle, but Depp and Winslet—along with newcomer Freddie Highmore as one of the boys—keep their feet on the earth while their eyes gaze into their dreams. Also featuring a comically crusty turn from Dustin Hoffman (who appeared in another Peter Pan-themed movie, Hook) as a long-suffering theater producer. —Bret Fetzer

Olin, Margreth Norway released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: LANGUAGES: Norwegian ( Dolby Surround ), English ( Subtitles ), Norwegian ( Subtitles ), SPECIAL FEATURES: Interactive Menu, Scene Access, SYNOPSIS: There is a lot of lies told about being a human being. Most lies are told about the youth. But once we are grown up, we start missing and looking back. And we have lost the language, because the youth has a language of its own. We dare not go and look for them, ask them who they are, where they are going. Youth is not ours anymore, that is why we lie about who they are. SCREENED/AWARDED AT: European Film Awards,

Scorsese, Martin While every Martin Scorsese fan has her or his favourite movie, few would argue that Raging Bull is one of his very best. It strikes a near-perfect balance between formal experiment (it's shot in black and white and features heavily stylised, slo-mo fight sequences) and emotional content, delivered through the compelling true-life story of heavyweight boxer Jake La Motta (on whose autobiography it was based), and frequently scores high on critic and audience polls of the best films of the 20th century.

The traditional rise-and-fall biopic structure serves as a vehicle for a brutally tender distillation of most of the director's favourite themes (male violence, sexual jealousy, ambition and failure). Onscreen, it features two of his favourite leading actors, Robert De Niro (whose intense physical exertions and pasta diet for the role won him an Academy Award), and Joe Pesci, as La Motta and his brother Joey respectively. Trapped in a bubble of emotional and verbal inarticulacy, Jake and Joey's constant, repetitive bickering ("Did you fuck my wife?" La Motta asks over and over again in one scene, undaunted by however many times Joey denies it), is counterpointed by Jake's eloquence in the ring, manifestly the only place where he can express himself. As the title suggests, the guy's an animal, a real antihero in satin shorts.

The smouldering, statuesque Cathy Moriarty is on hand as Jake's long-suffering wife Vickie, as are a whole posse of Scorsese regulars. All are aided and abetted by several of Scorsese's most gifted and vital off-screen collaborators: screenwriter Paul Schrader (co-author of Taxi Driver), cinematographer Michael Chapman (Taxi Driver), and the indispensable Thelma Schoonmaker, editor of almost every Scorsese film since his feature, Who's That Knocking at My Door?. They don't come much better than this. —Leslie Felperin

Scorsese, Martin From Hollywood's legendary Cocoanut Grove to the pioneering conquest of the wild blue yonder, Martin Scorsese's The Aviator celebrates old-school filmmaking at its finest. We say "old school" only because Scorsese's love of golden-age Hollywood is evident in his approach to his subject—Howard Hughes in his prime (played by Leonardo DiCaprio in his)—and especially in his technical mastery of the medium, which reflects his love for classical filmmaking of the studio era. Even when he's using state-of-the-art digital trickery for the film's exciting flight scenes (including one of the most spectacular crashes ever filmed), Scorsese's meticulous attention to art direction and costume design suggests an impassioned pursuit of craftsmanship from a bygone era; every frame seems to glow with gilded detail. And while DiCaprio bears little physical resemblance to Hughes from the film's 20-year period (late 1920s to late '40s), he efficiently captures the eccentric millionaire's golden-boy essence, and his tragic descent into obsessive-compulsive seclusion. Bolstered by Cate Blanchett's uncannily accurate portrayal of Katharine Hepburn as Hughes' most beloved lover, The Aviator is easily Scorsese's most accessible film, inviting mainstream popularity without compromising Scorsese's artistic reputation. As compelling crowd-pleasers go, it's a class act from start to finish. —Jeff Shannon

Brooks, Mel If you were to argue Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein ranks among the top-10 funniest movies of all time, nobody could reasonably dispute the claim. Spoofing classic horror in the way that Brooks' previous film Blazing Saddles sent up classic Westerns, the movie is both a loving tribute and a raucous, irreverent parody of Universal's classic horror films Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Filming in glorious black and white, Brooks recreated the Frankenstein laboratory using the equipment from the original Frankenstein (courtesy of designer Kenneth Strickfaden), and this loving attention to physical and stylistic detail creates a solid foundation for non-stop comedy. The story, of course, involves Frederick Frankenstein (Gene Wilder) and his effort to resume experiments in re-animation pioneered by his late father. (He's got some help, since dad left behind a book titled How I Did It.) Assisting him is the hapless hunchback Igor (Marty Feldman) and the buxom but none-too-bright maiden Inga (Teri Garr), and when Frankenstein succeeds in creating his monster (Peter Boyle), the stage is set for an outrageous revision of the Frankenstein legend. With comedy highlights too numerous to mention, Brooks guides his brilliant cast (also including Cloris Leachman, Madeline Kahn, Kenneth Mars and Gene Hackman in a classic cameo role) through scene after scene of inspired hilarity. Indeed, Young Frankenstein is a charmed film, nothing less than a comedy classic, representing the finest work from everyone involved. Not one joke has lost its payoff, and none of the countless gags have lost their zany appeal. From a career that includes some of the best comedies ever made, this is the film for which Mel Brooks will be most fondly remembered. No video library should be without a copy of Young Frankenstein. And just remember—it's pronounced "Fronkensteen". —Jeff Shannon

Smith, Mel Translating Rowan Atkinson's Mr Bean character from British television to the big screen takes a bit of a toll, but there are some hilarious sequences in this popular comedy. The eponymous Bean, a boy-man twit with a knack for getting into difficult binds (and then making them worse and worse and worse), is a London museum guard who is sent to Los Angeles in the company of the famous painting Whistler's Mother. He's mistaken as an art expert by the well-meaning curator (Peter MacNicol) of an LA museum, but Bean's famously eccentric behaviour soon causes the poor guy to almost lose his family and job. The insularity of Bean's TV world is sacrificed in this film, and that change diminishes some of the character's appeal. But Atkinson is a man naturally full of comedy, and he doesn't let his fans down. —Tom Keogh

Pedersen, Janus Metz Denmark released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: LANGUAGES: Danish ( Dolby Digital 5.1 ), Danish ( Dolby DTS 5.1 ), Danish ( Subtitles ), English ( Subtitles ), Norwegian ( Subtitles ), Swedish ( Subtitles ), WIDESCREEN (1.85:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Anamorphic Widescreen, Cast/Crew Interview(s), Interactive Menu, Scene Access, SYNOPSIS: In February 2009 a group of Danish soldiers accompanied by documentary filmmaker Janus Metz arrived at Armadillo, an army base in the southern Afghan province of Helmand. Metz and cameraman Lars Skree spent six months following the lives of young soldiers situated less than a kilometer away from Taliban positions. The outcome of their work is a gripping and highly authentic war drama that was justly awarded the Grand Prix de la Semaine de la Critique at this year's Cannes film festival. But it also provoked furious debate in Denmark concerning the controversial behavior of certain Danish soldiers during a shootout with Taliban fighters. The filmmakers repeatedly risked their lives shooting this tense, brilliantly edited, and visually sophisticated probe into the psychology of young men in the midst of a senseless war whose victims are primarily local villagers. Yet more disturbing than scenes in which Taliban bullets whiz past their cameras is the footage of the young soldiers as each tries, in his own way, to come to terms with putting his life constantly on the line. SCREENED/AWARDED AT: Toronto International Film Festival,

Bay, Michael As sci-fi action blockbusters go, they don’t come much bigger than Transformers. Maybe it’s because of the subject matter: it’s based on a toy line from the 1980s, concerning giant robots from outer space engaged in a civil war that pits the heroic Autobots against the evil Decepticons. They have the ability to disguise themselves as vehicles and other mechanical objects, transforming back into robots when it’s time to stomp each other senseless. As a premise, it’s rather silly. But it’s also very simple, and that’s why it works.

The heroes are truly heroic: the noble and powerful Autobot leader Optimus Prime is one of the most iconic characters of the 1980s, and getting the original voice actor (Peter Cullen) to give him life was a stroke of genius. The villains, meanwhile, are just plain evil: Decepticon leader Megatron (voiced by Hugo Weaving) is motivated by absolute power, and his soldiers are not above a bit of wanton destruction to achieve their goals. Mix in a bit of mysticism in the form of the Allspark, the source of life for all Transformers, and the result is pure cinematic magic.

It’s not a perfect film: there are some characters and sub-plots that are unnecessary and which go nowhere, and at almost three hours, it’s a lot of movie. But the Transformers themselves, rendered in CGI, have a very realistic size and weight on screen, and look particularly good as they switch from one mode to the other. Moreover, director Michael Bay is smart enough to realise that appealing to kids doesn’t mean pandering to them—the cutest robot on screen is a manic little psychotic killer with the apt name Frenzy. The humans in the film, meanwhile, keep the film grounded, whilst never detracting from the real robot stars. Unlike The Matrix trilogy, which tried to be too clever, or The Lord of the Rings films, which were too clever, Transformers is probably the best science fiction epic since the original Star Wars trilogy. —Robert Burrow

Haneke, Michael An unexpected critical (Grand Prix at Cannes) and commercial (three months in London's West End) success on its release in 2001, The Piano Teacher is a provocative, but ultimately frustrating, film. The intensifying relationship between Erika Kohut, a Viennese piano teacher whose musical focus is gradually undone by sexual repression, and Walter Klemmer, her uninhibited but unsuspecting student and admirer, lacks an underlying motivation, either physical or emotional, to sustain the tortuous encounters of the film's later stages.

Director Michael Haneke powerfully evokes the claustrophobic décor of the flat that Kohut shares with her dictatorial yet ineffectual mother, with whom her relationship progresses from the pitiful to the farcical. And farce of the blackest kind is what the film descends to, as Kohut and Klemmer play out a vicious game of sado-masochistic control with an intriguing but indecisive conclusion.

Isabelle Huppert is magnificently assured as Kohut, but Benoît Magimel often seems confused as Klemmer, while Annie Girardot resorts to a caricature of the mother. Fans of classical piano will enjoy the masterclass and rehearsal sequences during the first hour, though music is then relegated to a minor role—its deeper relevance to the film being ultimately difficult to define. English subtitles are provided, and the monochrome shades in which the scenes abound come through with suitably wan intensity. Yet it's hard not to feel that a more profound inquiry into the darker side of sexual desire has been lost along the way. —Richard Whitehouse

Lehmann, Michael

Mann, Michael Collateral offers a change of pace for Tom Cruise as a ruthless contract killer, but that's just one of many reasons to recommend this well-crafted thriller. It's from Michael Mann, after all, and the director's stellar track record with crime thrillers (Thief, Manhunter, and especially Heat) guarantees a rich combination of intelligent plotting, well-drawn characters, and escalating tension, beginning here when icy hit-man Vincent (Cruise) recruits cab driver Max (Jamie Foxx) to drive him through a nocturnal tour of Los Angeles, during which he will execute five people in a 10-hour spree. While Stuart Beattie's screenplay deftly combines intimate character study with raw bursts of action (in keeping with Mann's directorial trademark), Foxx does the best work of his career to date (between his excellent performance in Ali and his title-role showcase in Ray), and Cruise is fiercely convincing as an ultra-disciplined sociopath. Jada Pinkett-Smith rises above the limitations of a supporting role, and Mann directs with the confidence of a master, turning L.A. into a third major character (much as it was in the Mann-produced TV series Robbery Homicide Division). Collateral is a bit slow at first, but as it develops subtle themes of elusive dreams and lives on the edge, it shifts into overdrive and races, with breathtaking precision, toward a nail-biting climax. —Jeff Shannon

Radford, Michael Italian star and filmmaker Massimo Troisi was dying of heart failure even before this film, his dream project, began production, and he prevailed upon British director Michael Radford (White Mischief) to see him and the film through to the end. (The 40-year-old Troisi, a beloved comic actor in Italy, died the day production wrapped.) Based on true events, Troisi plays a shy postman who strikes up an unlikely friendship with exiled Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (Philippe Noiret). Through Neruda's example and tutelage, the hero learns to think of his Italian fishing village in lyrical terms, as well as how to talk to women and even find the strength to take his political stands. Sweet as it is, the film finally pushes beyond its charming borders to become an even more complex and poignant story about the pain of growing into one's destiny. —Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

Winterbottom, Michael

Winterbottom, Michael

Leigh, Mike

Leigh, Mike The phrase ‘national treasure’ is, inevitably, an overused one. But Mike Leigh, arguably Britain’s most consistently strong film director of the past 20 years, surely warrants the tag. His latest film, Another Year, is one of his finest, as Leigh once more draws sensational performances from his cast. The cast features Lesley Manville, Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen, and the premise of the film follows a married couple in the later years of their lives. We meet them across the four seasons of one year, and Another Year calmly explores the unhappiness, events and people that surround them during that time.

It’s a wonderfully understated piece of work. As is his usual approach, Leigh worked with his cast for months to shape the characters in the film, and they come through as fully three-dimensional human beings. They’re exquisitely played, too, with Broadbent and Manville rightly attracting awards attention for their work here. The hidden star of the piece, though, is Mike Leigh himself. His focused direction, and honest exploration of human lives, shines through once more. And while Another Year may not, ultimately, be one of 2010’s most upbeat movies, it’s undoubtedly one of its very best. —Jon Foster

Mills, Mike A sterling cast—including Vince Vaughn, Keanu Reeves, Vincent D'Onofrio and especially Tilda Swinton—lifts this coming-of-age story above the norm. Justin (Lou Pucci, Personal Velocity) is 17, yet he still sucks his thumb. Depressed, he frets that his parents (D'Onofrio, Full Metal Jacket, and Swinton, Orlando) are going to split up, that he has no focus in life, and that the girl he longs for can never love him—until his orthodontist (Reeves, The Matrix) hypnotises Justin into quitting his thumbsucking, and a questionable diagnosis of Attention Deficit Disorder results in medication that launches him into a wave of over-achievement. The script, though it has some clever flourishes, never lifts beyond typical adolescent turmoil, but thanks to wonderfully vivid and multi-layered performances (including Vaughn, Wedding Crashers, as a debate teacher with hair issues), the movie never flags. Swinton also executive-produced the movie; she clearly saw in this suburban mother a character she could invest with as much emotion and intensity as the angel Gabriel (Constantine) or the White Witch of Narnia (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe). It's rich, intricate acting—never showy—yet mesmerizing. Thumbsucker also features Benjamin Bratt (Pinero) and Kelli Garner (Man of the House). —Bret Fetzer, Amazon.com

Newell, Mike The latest entry in the Harry Potter saga could be retitled Fast Times at Hogwarts, where finding a date to the winter ball is nearly as terrifying as worrying about Lord Voldemort's return. Thus, the young wizards' entry into puberty (and discovery of the opposite sex) opens up a rich mining field to balance out the dark content in the fourth movie (and the stories are only going to get darker). Mike Newell handily takes the directing reins and eases his young cast through awkward growth spurts into true young actors. Harry (Daniel Radcliffe, more sure of himself) has his first girl crush on fellow student Cho Chang, and has his first big fight with best bud Ron. Meanwhile, Ron's underlying romantic tension with Hermione comes to a head over the winter ball, and when she makes one of those girl-into-woman Cinderella entrances, the boys' reactions indicate they've all crossed a threshold.

But don't worry, there's plenty of wizardry and action in Goblet of Fire. When the deadly Tri-Wizard Tournament is hosted by Hogwarts, Harry finds his name mysteriously submitted (and chosen) to compete against wizards from two neighboring academies, as well as another Hogwarts student. The competition scenes are magnificently shot, with much-improved CGI effects (particularly the underwater challenge). And the climactic confrontation with Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes, in a brilliant bit of casting) is the most thrilling yet. Goblet, the first installment to get a PG-13 rating, contains some violence as well as disturbing images for kids and some barely shrouded references at sexual awakening (Harry's bath scene in particular). The 2 1/2-hour film, lean considering it came from a 734-page book, trims out subplots about house elves (they're not missed) and gives little screen time to the standard crew of the other Potter films, but adds in more of Britain's finest actors to the cast, such as Brendan Gleeson as Mad Eye Moody and Miranda Richardson as Rita Skeeter. Michael Gambon, in his second round as Professor Dumbledore, still hasn't brought audiences around to his interpretation of the role he took over after Richard Harris died, but it's a small smudge in an otherwise spotless adaptation.—Ellen A. Kim, Amazon.com

Ôshima, Nagisa A highly unusual war movie with as many detractors as fans, this English-language feature directed by Nagisa Oshima (In the Realm of the Senses) stars David Bowie as a silent, ethereal POW in a Japanese camp. Protesting—via his own enigmatic rebellion—the camp's brutal conditions and treatment of prisoners, Bowie's character earns the respect of the camp commandant (Ryuichi Sakamoto). While the two seem locked in an unspoken, spiritual understanding, another prisoner (Tom Conti) engages in a more conventional resistance against a monstrous sergeant (Takeshi). The film has a way of evoking as many questions as certainties and it is not always easy to understand the internal logic of the characters' actions. But that's generally true of Oshima's movies, in which the power of certain relationships is almost hallucinatory in self-referential intensity. The cast is outstanding, and Bowie is particularly fascinating in his alien way. —Tom Keogh

Park, Nick, Box, Steve A decade after their last hilarious short, the Oscar-winning A Close Shave, Claymation wonders Wallace and Gromit return for a full-length adventure. Daffy scientist Wallace (voiced by Peter Sallis) and his heroic dog Gromit are doing well with their business, Anti-Pesto, a varmint-hunting outfit designed to keep their English town safe from rabbits chomping on prized vegetables. Wallace meets Lady Tottington (Helena Bonham Carter), who appreciates Wallace's humane way of dealing with rabbits (courtesy of the Bun-Vac 6000), and sets up a rivalry with the gun-toting Victor Quartermaine (Ralph Fiennes, enjoying himself more than ever). Creator Nick Park, with co-director/writer Steve Box, delivers a story worthy of the 85-minute running time, although it stretches the act a bit; the formula plays better shorter, but the literally hand-crafted film is a joy to watch. Taking a chapter from classic horror films, a giant were-rabbit is soon on the prowl, and the town is up in arms, what with the annual vegetable contest close at hand. (Anyone who's seen the previous three shorts knows who saves the day.) Never content to do something simply when the extravagant will do, W&G's lives are filled with whimsical Rude Goldberg-style devices, and the opening number showcasing their alarm system is pure Aardman Animation at its finest. Even though there's a new twist here—a few mild sight gags aimed at adults—this G-rated film will delight young and old alike as Park, like team Pixar, seems incapable of making anything but an outstanding film. —Doug Thomas, Amazon.com

Caro, Niki Whale Rider [DVD] [2002].

Arcel, Nikolaj Denmark released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: LANGUAGES: Danish ( Dolby Digital 5.1 ), Danish ( Dolby DTS 5.1 ), Danish ( Subtitles ), English ( Subtitles ), Finnish ( Subtitles ), Norwegian ( Subtitles ), Swedish ( Subtitles ), ANAMORPHIC WIDESCREEN (1.85:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Alternative Footage, Cast/Crew Interview(s), Commentary, Deleted Scenes, Documentary, Featurette, Interactive Menu, Posters, Teaser(s), Trailer(s), SYNOPSIS: Starting a new job as a political journalist at a leading newspaper, Ulrik Torp witnesses a brutal struggle for power in the Midparty's ranks a struggle that coincides with the party's charismatic leader's involvement in a near fatal car accident. A flurry of lies and media speculation surround the incident. Gradually, Ulrik unearths a ruthless conspiracy involving the incumbent prime minister and becomes obsessed with bringing the truth into the light. But neither his colleagues nor the politicians are willing to listen to him, and as election day draws near, Ulrik finds himself alone, battling against the powers that be.

Tsuruta, Norio Ring 0 is the prequel to the successful Japanese ghost/horror movie Ring which has already spun off a conventional follow-up (Ring 2) and inspired a host of Far Eastern imitations, with a US remake in development. Opening with some tiny scene-setting to remind you of the urban legend of the cursed videotape, the film skips back to "30 years ago" and dramatises the hitherto-only-hinted-at tale of how the witchlike Sadako ended up in a well from which her melancholy, malign spirit spread her curse.

Strange young woman Sadako (Yukie Nakama) leaves her island home to become an apprentice in a theatre company, where her ambiguous psychic powers, several deaths and an outbreak of madness complicate the production. Nakama is fine as the spooky, Carrie-like heroine, as much a victim of her psychic abilities as those who drop dead around her, and there are several creepy sequences: a first night plagued by apparitions, a mob struck down one by one as they chase Sadako through a wood, and the inevitable, foreshadowed waking-up-in-a-well climax.

The original filmmakers have departed and the new team don't quite have the material to work with, which means Ring 0 plays better to initiate newcomers but can't hope to duplicate the stand-alone chills ofRing. Series fans will enjoy the filled-in back-story, but others should be warned that the film takes a bewildering amount of plot information for granted. —Kim Newman

Bornedal, Ole

Hirschbiegel, Oliver The riveting subject of Downfall is nothing less than the disintegration of Adolph Hitler in mind, body, and soul. A 2005 Academy Award nominee for best foreign language film, this German historical drama stars Bruno Ganz as Hitler, whose psychic meltdown is depicted in sobering detail, suggesting a fallen, pathetic dictator on the verge on insanity, resorting to suicide (along with Eva Braun and Joseph and Magda Goebbels) as his Nazi empire burns amidst chaos in mid-1945. While staging most of the film in the claustrophobic bunker where Hitler spent his final days, director Oliver Hirschbiegel dares to show the gentler human side of der Fuehrer, as opposed to the pure embodiment of evil so familiar from many other Nazi-era dramas. This balanced portrayal does not inspire sympathy, however: We simply see the complexity of Hitler's character in the greater context of his inevitable downfall, and a more realistic (and therefore more horrifying) biographical portrait of madness on both epic and intimate scales. By ending with a chilling clip from the 2002 documentary Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary, this unforgettable film gains another dimension of sobering authenticity. —Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

Preminger, Otto Anatomy of a Murder, Otto Preminger's 1959 film of the novel by Robert Traver (a pen name for a Michigan Supreme Court Justice), was controversial in its day for making frank on-screen use of then-unheard words such as "panties", "rape" and "spermatogenesis"—and it remains a trenchant, bitter, tough, witty dissection of the American legal system. With its striking Saul Bass title design and jazzy Duke Ellington score, Anatomy of a Murder takes a sophisticated approach unusual for a Hollywood film of its vintage. Most radically, it refuses to show the murder or any of the private scenes recounted in court, leaving it up to us to decide along with the jury whether the grumpy and unconcerned Lieutenant Frederick Manion (Ben Gazzara) was or was not subject to an "irresistible impulse" tantamount to insanity when he shot dead Barney Quill, the bear-like bar owner alleged to have raped Manion's teasing trailer-trash wife Laura (Lee Remick in unfeasibly tight trousers). James Stewart plays Paul "Polly" Biegler a former District Attorney keen to get back into court to clash with the political dullard who replaced him in office. Biegler is supported by the skills of his snide secretary (Eve Arden) and boozy-but-brilliant research partner (Arthur O'Connell). For the prosecution, the befuddled local DA hauls in Dancer (George C Scott), a prissy legal eagle from the local big city whose sharp-suited, sly elegance makes an interesting clash with Biegler's "aw-shucks" jimmy-stewartian conniving. This is simply the best trial movie ever made, with a real understanding of the way lawyers have to be not only great actors but stars, assuming personalities that exaggerate their inner selves and weighing every outburst and objection for the effect it has on the poor saps in the jury box.

On the DVD: The print is letterboxed to 1.85:1, but it's a bit of a cheat since that seems to involve trimming the top and bottom of the image (losing the steps under and the clouds above the Columbia lady in the opening titles), though the film isn't seriously hurt by a tighter look at the action. Also included are: an Ellington-scored photo montage, soundtracks in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish with subtitles in ten languages, filmographies for director and principal cast, original advertising (highlighting Saul Bass' poster designs, a trailer and more trailers for more Columbia Jimmy Stewart or courtroom films. —Kim Newman

King, Michael Patrick As light and frothy as the Vivienne Westwood wedding gown that's an unofficial fifth star, the film version of Sex and the City is both captivatingly stylish and sweetly sentimental. Viewers who loved hanging with Carrie Bradshaw and her three pals during the series' TV run will feel as though no time has passed. Except that it has: Carrie and Big are poised to make a Big Commitment; Miranda and Steve are facing the breakup of their wonderful family; Charlotte and Harry have added to their brood; and Samantha (are we sitting down?) has been devoted to hunky Smith for five full years. Still, in all that time, the women's style, conviviality, and appetite for bons mots have only grown. When practical attorney Miranda learns that Carrie is considering moving in with Big (in possibly the coolest apartment in Manhattan), she can't help but frown in that but-you-might-lose-everything way. Carrie's retort: "For once, can't you feel what I want you to feel—jealous?!"

The cast is spot-on, as always. Sarah Jessica Parker is effortless as the angst-ridden yet practical, stylish yet vulnerable Carrie. Kim Cattrall is deliciously decadent as Samantha, but she's wiser now and knows herself and her needs for a real relationship. Kristin Davis, as Charlotte, has quietly become the most gorgeous among the beauties, her sleek presence both winsome and sophisticated. And Cynthia Nixon (Miranda) shows nuance as a woman torn between betrayal and grudging hope. Supporting roles include Candice Bergen as the Vogue editor who anoints Carrie "The Last Single Girl in New York," and Jennifer Hudson, as a starry-eyed, ambitious romantic who represents the new generation of SATC women. Through it all, New York is a benevolent cocoon that envelopes and nurtures the women and their friendships and careers. No matter that none of them appears to have any semblance of "real" family; as long as they have each other, and Manhattan, all will be right with their world. —A.T. Hurley

Pawlikowski, Pawel There's a tantalizing touch of irony in the title My Summer of Love, since this superbly-acted relationship drama reveals much more than love between its curiously fascinating characters. As directed by Polish-born Pawel Pawlikowski (a veteran of British TV documentaries whose previous film was the praiseworthy Last Resort), this unconventional love story is an engrossing exercise in mood and psychology, set in a bleak but invitingly sunlit village in Yorkshire. It's there that lonely, working-class teenager Mona (Nathalie Press) encounters rebellious rich-girl Tamsin (Emily Blunt), and their unlikely friendship grows intimate... but is it really love? Or is Tamsin (who was suspended from boarding school) merely indulging her clever penchant for emotional manipulation during a lazy summer of privilege? Mona's born-again Christian brother (Paddy Considine) factors into the film's languorous mood and complex emotional landscape; this is a film in which love and loss are inseparably intertwined, and motivations remain partially hidden, making it all the more powerful when guarded truths are revealed. In addition to being a compelling study of class distinctions, My Summer of Love includes scenes of anxious menace and some unexpected surprises, packing more into 84 minutes than most films manage in two hours or more. Pawlikowski was listed among "10 directors to watch" in a 2005 article in Variety, and My Summer of Love validates that acclaim. —Jeff Shannon

Fly, Per Sweden released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: LANGUAGES: Danish ( Dolby Digital 5.1 ), Danish ( Subtitles ), English ( Subtitles ), Norwegian ( Subtitles ), Swedish ( Subtitles ), ANAMORPHIC WIDESCREEN (1.85:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Commentary, Deleted Scenes, Featurette, Interactive Menu, Music Video, Scene Access, Trailer(s), SYNOPSIS: A man is torn between love, family, and a responsibility he does not want in this drama. Christoffer (Ulrich Thomsen) used to work for his family's steel company, but when the stress of the job began taking a serious toll on his health, he left the firm and now happily runs a restaurant in Stockholm and is married to Maria (Lisa Werlinder), a lovely and promising stage actress. At the urging of his father, Christoffer flies to Denmark for a family visit, only to discover upon arrival that his dad has just killed himself. Christoffer quickly discovers why: the steel business is on the verge of collapse and his mother (Ghita Nørby) urges him to take over rather than let his brother-in-law Ulrik (Lars Brygmann) assume control. Christoffer reluctantly agrees, but before long, his decision begins to drive a wedge between himself and Maria, while his difficulty in reviving the failing business forces him to deal honestly with his employees in a manner he's not accustomed to, as well as dealing with the uncomfortable points of corporate power. Arven (aka The Inheritance) is the second part of a trilogy by director Per Fly on the three primary social classes, following his 2000 debut Bænken.
SCREENED/AWARDED AT: San Sebastian International Film Festival,

Fly, Per Denmark released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: LANGUAGES: Danish ( Dolby Digital 5.1 ), Danish ( Dolby DTS 5.1 ), Danish ( Subtitles ), English ( Subtitles ), Finnish ( Subtitles ), Norwegian ( Subtitles ), Swedish ( Subtitles ), ANAMORPHIC WIDESCREEN (1.85:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Interactive Menu, Making Of, Trailer(s), SYNOPSIS: A 50-year-old university lecturer who is in love with a young political activist involved in the circumstances surrounding the death of a policeman. For the lecturer, this is the start of a new life. SCREENED/AWARDED AT: European Film Awards, San Sebastian International Film Festival,

Kassovitz, Peter Jakob The Liar Robin Williams Region 2 PAL Robin Williams, Hannah Taylor-Gordon, Éva Igó, István Bálint, Justus von Dohnányi

Medak, Peter

Bouchareb, Rachid

Bouchareb, Rachid

Attenborough, Richard Sir Richard Attenborough (Gandhi) directs this semi-successful drama about the relationship between South African black activist Steven Biko and a sympathetic newspaper editor (Kevin Kline). Attenborough's typical sweep of the life and times of Biko is particularly rewarding in the first half of the film, but once the leader comes to his untimely end at the hands of white police, the story shifts entirely to Kline's character and the latter's efforts to escape the country with his family. That change is a tactical error in the script that robs the film of its initial power and makes the arguably unfortunate choice of emphasizing the destiny of a white character when Biko himself deserved an entire feature for his story and causes. —Tom Keogh

Donner, Richard, Lester, Richard Director Richard Lester (A Hard Day's Night) took over the franchise with this first sequel in the series, though the film doesn't look much like his usual stylish work. (Superman III is far more Lesteresque.) Still, there is a lot to like about this film, which finds Superman grappling with the conflict between his responsibilities as Earth's saviour and his own needs of the heart. Choosing the latter, he gives up his powers to be with Lois Lane (Margot Kidder), but the timing is awful: three renegades from his home planet, Krypton, are smashing up the White House, aided by the mocking Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman). The film isn't nearly as ambitious as its predecessor, but the accent on relationships over special effects (not that there aren't plenty of them) is very satisfying. —Tom Keogh

Franklin, Richard

Pryor, Richard

Gervais, Ricky, Merchant, Stephen It might be lower key and less overtly comedic than you may be expecting from Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, but there are plenty of reasons nonetheless to commend their nostalgic 70s drama Cemetery Junction. Leaving behind the style of comedy the pair fine-tuned to perfection with The Office, Cemetery Junction instead concerns itself with telling the story of three young men.

These men all live in their home town of Cemetery Junction, each working for an insurance company. Joining them there is their boss, played by Ralph Fiennes, with the cast also fleshed out by the likes of Emily Watson, Gervais himself and the terrific Matthew Goode.

But it’s Christian Cooke who catches the eye in what turns out to be the lead role of Freddie. It’s Freddie’s evolving professional and personal life that forms the core of the narrative, and laced with some fine comedic moments, he anchors the film well. It helps that Gervais and Merchant are so focused on how to put across the story, with the dingy style of 70s Britain captured terrifically well.

It’s quite a low key project, perhaps, and it doesn’t tread too much in the way of new ground. But Cemetery Junction is nonetheless fine work, and a quality British movie. It’s well worth seeking out. —Jon Foster

Stills from Cemetery Junction (click for larger image)

Reiner, Rob A sleeper hit when released in 1986, Stand by Me is based on Stephen King's novella "The Body" (from the book Different Seasons); but it's more about the joys and pains of boyhood friendship than a morbid fascination with corpses. It's about four boys ages 12 and 13 (Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, Jerry O'Connell) who take an overnight hike through the woods near their Oregon town to find the body of a boy who's been missing for days. Their journey includes a variety of scary adventures (including a ferocious junkyard dog, a swamp full of leeches and a treacherous leap from a train trestle), but it's also a time for personal revelations, quiet interludes and the raucous comradeship of best friends. Set in the 1950s, the movie indulges an overabundance of anachronistic profanity and a kind of idealistic, golden-toned nostalgia (it's told in flashback as a story written by Wheaton's character as an adult, played by Richard Dreyfuss). But it's delightfully entertaining from start to finish, thanks to the rapport among its young cast members and the timeless, universal themes of friendship, family and the building of character and self-esteem. Kiefer Sutherland makes a memorable teenage villain and look closely for John Cusack in a flashback scene as Wheaton's now-deceased and dearly missed brother. A genuine crowd-pleaser, this heartfelt movie led director Rob Reiner to even greater success with his next film, The Princess Bride. —Jeff Shannon

Reiner, Rob Director Rob Reiner's The Princess Bride is a gently amusing, affectionate pastiche of a medieval fairytale adventure, offering a similar blend of warm, literate humour as his Stand By Me (1985) and When Harry Met Sally (1989). Adapted from his own novel, William Goldman's script plays with the conventions of such 1980s fantasies as Ladyhawke and Legend (both 1985), and with the budget never allowing for spectacle, sensibly concentrates on creating a gallery of memorable characters. Robin Wright makes a delightful Princess Buttercup, Cary Elwes is splendid as Westley and "Dread Pirate Roberts", while Mandy Patinkin makes fine Spanish avenger. With winning support from Mel Smith, Peter Cook, Billy Crystal and Carol Kane there is sometimes a Terry Gilliam/Monty Python feel to the proceedings, and the whole film is beautifully shot, with a memorably romantic main theme by Mark Knopfler. Occasionally interrupted by Peter Falk as a grandfather reading the story to his grandson, The Princess Bride is an elegant post-modern family fable about storytelling itself; a theme found in other 1980s films The Neverending Story (1984) and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988). A modest, small-scale work that manages to be both cynically modern and genuinely romantic all at once. As charming as you wish.

On the DVD: The 1.77:1 anamorphic transfer is strong, if not quite as detailed as it might be. Colours lack just a little solidity and some scenes evidence a fair amount of grain. Released theatrically in Dolby stereo, the Dolby Digital 5.1 remix spreads the sound effectively across the front speakers but makes very little use of the rear channels indeed. Extras are limited to filmographies of five of the leading actors, and a 4:3 presentation of the theatrical trailer, which gives far too many of the film's surprises away.—Gary S Dalkin

Altman, Robert It's set during the Korean War, in a mobile army surgical hospital. But no one seeing MASH in 1970 confused the film for anything but a caustic comment on the Vietnam War; this is one of the counterculture movies that exploded into the mainstream at the end of the 1960s. Director Robert Altman had laboured for years in television and sporadic feature work when this smash-hit comedy made his name (and allowed him to create an astonishing string of offbeat pictures, culminating in the masterpiece Nashville). Altman's style of cruel humour, overlapping dialogue, and densely textured visuals brought the material to life in an all-new kind of war movie (or, more precisely, antiwar movie). Audiences had never seen anything like it: vaudeville routines played against spurting blood, fuelled with open ridicule of authority. The cast is led by Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland, as the outrageous surgeons Hawkeye Pierce and Trapper John McIntyre, with Robert Duvall as the uptight Major Burns and Sally Kellerman in an Oscar-nominated role as nurse "Hot Lips" Houlihan. The film's huge success spawned the long-running TV series, a considerably softer take on the material; of the film's cast, only Gary Burghoff repeated his role on the small screen, as the slightly clairvoyant Radar O'Reilly. —Robert Horton

Donaldson, Roger On its theatrical release Thirteen Days was pummelled by American critics for taking liberties with the facts of the Cuban missile crisis and smothering its compelling drama with phoney Boston accents by its primary stars. But anyone who enjoys taut, intelligent political thrillers will find little to complain about here. Co-star and co-producer Kevin Costner drew criticism for fictionally enhancing the White House role of presidential aide Kenneth O'Donnell, but while Costner's Boston accent may be grating, his fine performance as O'Donnell offers expert witness to the crisis, its nerve-wracking escalation and the efforts of John F Kennedy (Bruce Greenwood) and Robert F Kennedy (Steven Culp) to negotiate a peaceful settlement with Russia. While Soviet missiles approach operational status in Cuba, director Roger Donaldson (who directed Costner in No Way Out) cuts to exciting US Navy flights over the missile site, ramping up the tension that history itself provided. Donaldson's occasional use of black and white is self-consciously distracting, and he's further guilty of allowing a shrillness (along with repetitive, ominous shots of nuclear explosions) to invade the urgency of David Self's screenplay. Still, as Hollywood history lessons go, Thirteen Days is riveting stuff. You may find yourself wondering what might happen if reality presented a repeat scenario under less intelligent leadership.—Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

Polanski, Roman Living in exile in Paris after eluding a controversial charge of statutory rape in America, director Roman Polanski seemed professionally adrift during the 1980s, making only one film (the ill-fated Pirates) between 1979 and 1988. Then Polanski found inspiration—and a major star in Harrison Ford—to make Frantic, a thriller that played directly into Polanski's gift for creating an atmosphere of mystery, dread, escalating suspense and uncertain fate. Set in Paris (Polanski couldn't go to Hollywood, so Hollywood came to him), the story begins when an American heart surgeon (Ford) arrives in the City of Lights with his wife (Betty Buckly) for a medical convention. They check into a posh hotel, and in a brilliantly directed scene, Ford takes a shower and emerges to find that his wife has vanished. This mysterious disappearance—and a confusion between two identical pieces of luggage—leads Ford into the Paris underground and a plot that grows increasingly dangerous as he approaches the truth of his wife's disappearance. The plot of Frantic gets too complicated, and the pace drops off in the cluttered second half, but in Polanski's capable hands the film is blessed with moments of heightened suspense in the tradition of classic thrillers. —Jeff Shannon

Polanski, Roman

Howard, Ron Cate Blanchett blazes through The Missing, a new Western directed by Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind, Apollo 13). The camera truly loves the planes of her face; even dusty and bedraggled, she radiates star power—which is good, because The Missing needs it. When her daughter is kidnapped by renegade Indians, Maggie Gilkeson (Blanchett) is forced to turn to her estranged father (Tommy Lee Jones, Men in Black, The Fugitive), a man who abandoned her as a child to join an Indian tribe. Together, they pursue a malignant brujo (or witch), who sells young girls in Mexico. The Missing features solid supporting performances from Evan Rachel Wood, Eric Schweig, Aaron Eckhart, Val Kilmer, and feisty young Jenna Boyd as Maggie's youngest daughter Dot, who refuses to be left behind. Despite the cast and some gorgeous cinematography, though, The Missing never finds its stride. —Bret Fetzer

Grønkjær, Pernille Rose

Peckinpah, Sam

Peckinpah, Sam In Cross of Iron Sam Peckinpah weighs in on World War II from the German point of view. The result is as bleak, if not quite as bloody, as one expects from the director of The Wild Bunch, in part because this 1977 film was cut to ribbons by nervous studio executives. The assorted excerpts that remain don't constitute an exhilarating or even an especially thrilling battle epic. The war is grinding to a close, and veterans like James Coburn's Steiner are grimly aware that it's a lost cause. The battlefield is a death trap of sucking mud and barbed wire, and the German generals (viz., the martinet played by James Mason) seem to pose a bigger threat to the life and limbs of Steiner's men than the inexorable enemy. Not even Peckinpah's famous sensuous exuberance when shooting violence is much in evidence; the picture is a depressive, claustrophobically overcast experience. The bloody high (or low) point isn't a shooting; it's a wince-inducing de-penis-tration during oral sex. For a fun time with the men in (Nazi) uniform, try Das Boot instead. —David Chute, Amazon.com

Raimi, Sam It's hard not to feel there's something wrong when Army of Darkness, the third entry in Sam Raimi's lively Evil Dead series, opens with a 15 certificate. And indeed, this is not quite the non-stop rollercoaster of splat we're entitled to expect.

Like Evil Dead II, it opens with a digest-cum-remake of the original movie, taking geeky Ash (Bruce Campbell) back out to that cabin in the woods where he is beset by demons who do away with his girlfriend (blink and you'll miss Bridget Fonda). Blasted back in time to 12th century England, Ash finds himself still battling the Deadites and his own ineptitude in a quest to save the day and get back home.

Though it starts zippily, with Campbell's grimly funny clod of a hero commanding the screen, a sort of monotony sets in as magical events pile up. Ash is attacked by Lilliputian versions of himself, one of whom incubates in his stomach and grows out of his shoulder to be his evil twin. After being dismembered and buried, Evil Ash rises from the dead to command a zombie army and at least half the film is a big battle scene in which rotted warriors (nine mouldy extras in masks for every one Harryhausen-style impressive animated skeleton) besiege a cardboard castle. There are lots of action jokes, MAD Magazine-like marginal doodles and a few funny lines, but it lacks the authentic scares of The Evil Dead and the authentic sick comedy of Evil Dead II.

On the DVD: Army of Darkness may be the least of the trilogy, but Anchor Bay's super two-disc set is worthy of shelving beside their outstanding editions of the earlier films. Disc 1 contains the 81-minute US theatrical version in widescreen or fullscreen, plus the original "Planet of the Apes" ending, the trailer and a making-of featurette. Disc 2 has the 96-minute director's cut, with extra slapstick and a lively, irreverent commentary track from Raimi, Campbell and co-writer Ivan Raimi, plus yet more deleted scenes and some storyboards. The fact that the film exists in so many versions suggests that none of them satisfied everybody, but fans will want every scrap of Army in this one package. —Kim Newman

Wood, Sam, Goulding, Edmund

Polley, Sarah

Gregor Schnitzler Import from the Netherlands which plays in German with English subtitles. SUMMARY: What To Do In Case of Fire? tells the humorous and touching story of six former creative anarchists who lived as house squatters in Berlin during its heyday in the 80s when Berlin was still an island in the middle of the former eastern Germany. At the end of the 80s they went their separate ways with the exception of Tim and Hotte, who have remained true to their ideals and continue to fight the issues they did as a group. In 2000, with Berlin as Germany's new capital, an event happens forcing the group out of existential reason to reunite and, ultimately, come to grips with the reason they separated 12 years ago.

Ellis, Sean A slight but likable British comedy-fantasy with a touch of naughtiness, Cashback is an expanded version of director Sean Ellis' Oscar-nominated short film of the same name about a bored supermarket clerk who discovers that he has the ability to stop time. Sean Biggerstaff (from the Harry Potter franchise) is Ben, a lovelorn young man whose chronic insomnia (due to a bad breakup) forces him to bury himself in pointless and repetitive work at a local grocery store. Once there, boredom causes him to believe that he can stop time, and he enjoys long and languid fantasies about undressing and sketching the female shoppers. But reality intrudes in the form of recollections of his troubled past, as well as the lovely presence of fellow clerk Sharon (Emilia Fox), who offers the promise of love in the real world. A gentle and artfully directed independent film, Cashback doesn't run very deep in terms of emotion, but the special effects are clever, the cast quirky and amusing, and its premise is an appealing mix of softcore reverie and boyish longing. —Paul Gaita

Meadows, Shane If there’s a more exciting and diverse a film director currently working in the UK than Shane Meadows, then it’s reason to truly celebrate. In fact, the sheer quality of Meadow’s own output is enough reason to be enthused, not least his finest film to date, This Is England.

Set in the early 1980s, This Is England initially focuses on 12-year old Shaun (played by Thomas Turgoose, a real find), as he befriends a group of skinheads. Shaun bears the scars of the 80s, with his dad lost in the Falklands War, and his relationship with his new friends develops carefully across the first half of the film.

But it’s in the second half where This Is England soars. It’s not easy watching, as is the usual drill with Meadows’ best films, From a stunning tirade about the state of Britain, to moments of real unease and tension, it’s a terrific piece of cinema, and one destined to enjoy a healthy life on DVD. It’s also one that should, if there’s any justice, provide a major career springboard for its primarily unknown cast, and one that should get Meadows far more of the recognition he absolutely deserves.

Bluntly, not only is This Is England the best British film of the year. It’s a standout contender for the best film of 2007 full stop. It’s utterly superb, and it’d be remiss not to see it. —Jon Foster

Kapur, Shekhar Elizabeth: The Golden Age may not have been bestowed with a similar shower of awards (nor quite as glowing critical reaction) as its predecessor. But don’t be fooled: this is a terrific costume drama, and one that very much leaves you hoping for the hinted-at third installment.

Once again starring Cate Blanchett in the title role, Elizabeth: The Golden Age sees events pick up with her very well established on the throne. It’s a new set of problems and issues that present themselves, with the impending threat of the Spanish Armada, and the scheming Mary, Queen Of Scots (brilliantly played by the always-terrific Samantha Morton) foremost in her mind.

That is, of course, apart from Sir Walter Raleigh, played by Clive Owen. Elizabeth: The Golden Age adds a potential romance for the virgin Queen, one that she struggles to come to terms with. And in the capable hands of returning director Shekhar Kapur, these many threads are woven together skillfully and a willingness to break the conventions of the period drama.

The star attraction remains Blanchett again, of course, whose performance is just as striking and textured as it was nearly a decade before. Elizabeth: The Golden Age may have an impressive cast, but all of them must have known they were on a hiding to nothing going up against the majesty (in more than one sense) of Blanchett. Because while the film itself does have a problems, it’s still better than you may have been led to believe, and boasts a tour-de-force central performance that you simply won’t see matched very often at all. —Jon Foster

Auerbach, Shona

Barmak, Siddiq

Lumet, Sidney

Wincer, Simon

Paulsen, Sjur Norway released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: LANGUAGES: Norwegian ( Dolby Digital 5.1 ), English ( Subtitles ), Norwegian ( Subtitles ), WIDESCREEN (1.85:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Cast/Crew Interview(s), Commentary, Deleted Scenes, Interactive Menu, Scene Access, SYNOPSIS: Loop is a full-length documentary film investigating modern people's relationship with time, seen through the eyes of some of our time's rather extreme consumers. The people we meet have each in their own way made drastic decisions concerning their life situations. A 41 year old extreme sport practitioner with ambitions to climb a spectacular mountain, then throw himself off the mountain in a base jump. Two part-time fishermen and skiing enthusiasts who are getting tired of urban life in Narvik go on an immensely long journey in their rowing boat to go skiing under ultimate conditions on one of the unique islands of Lofoten. An ambulance driver and former UN rep in Lebanon and Bosnia takes a break from his extremely hectic life to sit alone in a tower in the middle of a forest in Østfold county, where his only assignment is to scout with binoculars for four months and make sure the forest doesn't catch fire. At the end of a long journey, the 92 year old philosopher Arne Næss Senior looks back at the decisions he made and the decisions he did not make.

Kubrick, Stanley Stanley Kubrick's 1961 version of Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov's notorious 1953 novel, prompted a scandal in its day: even to address the issue of paedophilia on screen was deemed to be as perverted as the hapless protagonist Humbert Humbert. James Mason plays Humbert, the suave English Professor whose gentlemanly exterior peels away as quickly as his scruples once exposed to Sue Lyons' well-developed teenage beauty. In order to be close to her, he marries her mother, the lonely and pathetically pretentious Charlotte (Shelley Winters) only for her to expire conveniently, leaving Humbert free to embark on a motel-to-motel trek across America with Lolita in tow, evading suspicions that theirs is more than a father-daughter relationship. Peter Sellers, meanwhile, gives a Dr Strangelove-type tour de force performance as Clare Quilty, a TV writer also in pursuit of Lolita, who harasses Humbert under several guises, including a psychiatrist.

As a movie, Lolita is flawed, albeit interestingly so. The sexual innuendo (a summer camp called Camp Climax, for example) seems jarring and pointless, while Sellers' comic turn detracts from any sense of guilt, tension or tragedy. It's as if the real purpose of the film is to offer a sort of silent, mocking laughter at the wretched Humbert and systematically divest him of his dignity. By the end, he is a babbling wretch while Sue Lyons' Lolita is pragmatic and self-possessed. It's Mason and Lyons' performances, which lift the film from its mess of structural difficulties. Decades on, their central relationship still makes for pitifully compulsive viewing.

On the DVD: Few extras, sadly, though the brief original trailer is excellent, built around the question, "How could they make a film out of Lolita?". The original black and white picture and mono sound are excellent. —David Stubbs

Schwartz, Stefan Shooting Fish is the kind of movie that evaporates once the end credits roll, but it's lightweight fun while it lasts. An amusing prologue sets the tone: two young orphan boys—one in America, one in England—demonstrate their precocious ability to subvert the strict rules of society. Eighteen years later, the clever Yankee schemer Dylan (Dan Futterman) and techno-geek Jez (Stuart Townsend) are fast friends in London, pulling off a series of royal scams to finance their dream of building a luxurious home for orphans—of course, it's a selfish cause since they're the orphans. Their newly hired secretary Georgie (played by the delightful Kate Beckinsale) goes along with their con games in the belief that their intentions are good, and when she discovers their selfish motivations... well, let's just say the boys (who are both smitten with the charming medical student Georgie) manage to rise to the occasion and do the right thing. Despite a few clever twists, this frothy plot meanders too much to be very involving, but the three young co-stars make it all worthwhile. (Futterman had already played Robin Williams's son in The Birdcage and Beckinsale made a strong impression in The Last Days of Disco.) It's one of those featherweight British comedies that's so good-natured you feel Scroogey if you resist it, and director and co-writer Stefan Schwartz has made the movie just smart enough to hold its own against a wall-to-wall soundtrack of kitschy pop songs. If you don't consider "cute" a derogatory term, this movie will offer an agreeable diversion. —Jeff Shannon

Frears, Stephen

Hopkins, Stephen

Buscemi, Steve

Deutsch, Steven

Spielberg, Steven Like an airport running at peak efficiency, The Terminal glides on the consummate skills of its director and star. Having refined their collaborative chemistry on Saving Private Ryan and Catch Me if You Can, Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks mesh like the precision gears of a Rolex, turning a delicate, not-very-plausible scenario into a lovely modern-age fable (partly based on fact) that's both technically impressive and subtly moving. It's Spielberg in Capra mode, spinning the featherweight tale of Victor Navorski (Hanks, giving a finely tuned performance), an Eastern European who arrives at New York's Kennedy Airport just as his (fictional) homeland has fallen to a coup, forcing him, with no valid citizenship, to take indefinite residence in the airport's expansive International Arrivals Terminal (an astonishing full-scale set that inspires Spielberg's most elegant visual strategies). Spielberg said he made this film in part to alleviate the anguish of wartime America, and his master's touch works wonders on the occasionally mushy material; even Stanley Tucci's officious terminal director and Catherine Zeta-Jones's mixed-up flight attendant come off (respectively) as forgivable and effortlessly charming. With this much talent involved, The Terminal transcends its minor shortcomings to achieve a rare degree of cinematic grace. —Jeff Shannon

Spielberg, Steven Many catalogue movies are increasingly being shovelled onto the Blu-ray format with the bare minimum of care and attention, in the hope of picking up a few extra quid. Minority Report, whilst not a radical overhaul of the DVD special edition, thankfully treads a different path.

Much of that is down to a terrific collection of behind the scenes extra features, that retrospectively dig into the look and feel of the movie. It’s interesting material to work through. But it’s the film that’s stood the test of time very well, and Minority Report is arguably one of director Steven Spielberg’s finest movies of the past decade or two.

Taking a Philip K Dick story as its inspiration, Minority Report stars Tom Cruise as an officer in Pre-Crime, a department in the future that stops crime before it’s happened. Yet when his name appears as a future criminal, he has to get to the bottom of just what’s happening.

This all sets the scene for a fabulously entertaining futuristic thriller, that only stumbles slightly as it heads to the end. Spielberg delivers some excellent action sequences, and the look and feel of the movie is simply outstanding. That’s enhanced too by the excellent high definition transfer the film has benefited from, which will both test out any quality 1080p display, and also give a solid speaker set-up a real workout.

Minority Report is, then, one of the best catalogue Blu-ray releases of recent times, and a welcome chance to revisit a film that’s otherwise in danger of being lost in the Spielberg back-catalogue. And it’s a movie that simply deserves a lot more than that… —Jon Foster

Rosenberg, Stuart Paul Newman gives one of the defining performances of his career and cemented his place as a beautiful, rebel screen icon playing the stubbornly tough and independent title character in Cool Hand Luke. And before he became familiar as a sidekick in 1970s' disaster movies (Earthquake and the Airport movies), George Kennedy won an Oscar for playing Dragline, the brutal chain-gang boss who tries to beat loner Luke's cool out of him. It's a classic rebel-against-the-repressive-institution story in the line of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest or The Shawshank Redemption. Certain moments have become classics—particularly the hardboiled egg-eating contest and the immortal line (drooled by Strother Martin, as a sadistic redneck prison officer): "What we have here is a failure to communicate". And don't forget, Luke is also the source of the oft-quoted driving ditty: "I don't care if it rains or freezes, long as I have my plastic Jesus, right here on the dashboard of my car." —Jim Emerson

Malick, Terrence Still one of American cinema's most powerful, daring film-making debuts, Terrence Malick's Badlands is a quirky, visionary psychological and social enigma masquerading as a simple lovers-on-the-run flick. Inspired by the 1958 murders in the cold, stark badlands of South Dakota by Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, the film's plot, on the surface, is similar to that of other killing-couple films, like Bonnie and Clyde and Gun Crazy. Martin Sheen, in an understated, sophisticated performance, plays the strange James Dean-like social outcast who falls in love with the naïve Sissy Spacek—and then kills her father when he comes between them. The two flee like animals to the wilderness, until the police arrive and the killing spree begins.

What sets the film apart from others of its genre is Malick's complicated approach. Gorgeous, impenetrable images contrast sharply with Spacek's nostalgically artless narration, serving as ironic counterpoints, blurring concrete meaning and stressing that nothing this horrific is simple. Malick observes, rather than analyses, the couple in a manner as detached and apathetic as the couple's shocking actions. No judgment or definitive motivations are offered, though Malick's empathy often leans toward his senseless protagonists, rather than the star-struck society that makes killers famous. Compared with the interchangeable uniform cops who hunt them and the film's other nameless characters stuck in suburban banality, the couple are presented like tarnished, warped andfrustrated results of squelched individuality.

Badlands, on one level, views America's suffocating homogeneity and, conversely, its continued obsession with celebrities (individuals considered different but adored) as hypocritical. Ambiguous and bold, the movie hints that society may be as guilty as the killers. —Dave McCoy

Gilliam, Terry A medieval comedy-adventure starring Michael Palin and directed by Terry Gilliam, Jabberwocky is an episodic adaptation of Lewis Carroll's surreal poem. Having previously directed Monty Python and The Holy Grail (1975) with Terry Jones, Jabberwocky marked Gilliam's solo directorial debut—is it coincidental that Jones is killed by the titular monster in the opening scene? Palin plays the naive Dennis Cooper, a man seeking his fortune just as the Jabberwocky is laying waste to the country. It's much the same world as Holy Grail, with all the trappings of the romantic Hollywood epic being liberally coated with literal and metaphorical muck.

Palin's character causes unwitting mayhem wherever he goes—one stand-out scene involves the destruction of a maintenance shop for damaged knights-in-armour—though as much humour comes from exposing the foibles of the people he meets. And those people constitute a roll call of contemporary British comedy: Harry H Corbett as a sex-mad squire, Warren Mitchell's Mr Fishfinger, plus Annette Badland, Max Wall, John Le Mesurier, Rodney Bewes, John Bird, Neil Innes and John Gorman. Jabberwocky lacks the hilarity of Holy Grail, but is a consistently amusing, exceptionally atmospheric, gleefully gory yarn which points the way to Gilliam's Time Bandits (1981) and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988).

On the DVD Jabberwocky is distinguished by an engaging and enthusiastic commentary from Gilliam and Palin, in which they delight in the amazing cast and ponder how such a handsome film was made. Otherwise the extras are a short sketch-to-screen comparison, three posters and three trailers (only one for Jabberwocky). Transferred anamorphically enhanced at 1.77:1, the picture is variable, with many beautifully lit indoor scenes looking fine, while other exterior, daylight shots appear washed out. There is some minor print damage. The sound is a revelation for a low-budget 1970s film originally released in mono. Given a full Dolby Digital 5.1 remix the tremendously detailed, rich and involving soundscape really brings Gilliam's world alive and puts many much more recent and expensive titles to shame. —Gary S Dalkin

Gilliam, Terry Arthurian mythology and modern-day decay seem perfect complements to each other in Terry Gilliam's drama/comedy/fantasy The Fisher King. Shock jock Jack Lucas (Jeff Bridges) makes an off-handed radio remark that causes a man to go on a killing spree, leaving Lucas unhinged with guilt. His later, chance meeting with Parry (Robin Williams), a homeless man suffering from dementia, gets him involved in the unlikely quest for the Holy Grail. The rickety and patently unrealistic stand that insanity is just a wonderful place to be and that the homeless are all errant knights wears awfully thin, but, there are numerous moments of sad grace and violent beauty in this film. The screenplay by Richard LaGravenese launched his successful career and his smart wordplay helped garner Mercedes Ruehl an Oscar as Lucas' girlfriend. —Keith Simanton

Gilliam, Terry

Burton, Tim The significance of Ed Wood, both man and movie, on the career of Tim Burton cannot be emphasised enough. Here Burton regurgitates and pays homage to the influences of his youth, just as he would continue to do with Mars Attacks! and Sleepy Hollow. Everything is just right, from the decision to shoot in black and white, the performances of Johnny Depp (as Ed) and Martin Landau (as Bela Lugosi), the re-creation of 1950s Hollywood and the evocative score by Howard (Lord of the Rings) Shore. The plot struck a poignant familiar chord with Burton, who saw the relationship between the Ed and Lugosi mirroring his own with Vincent Price. Most importantly Burton responded to the story of the struggling, misunderstood artist. For all Burton's big-budget blockbusters (Batman, Planet of the Apes), he still somehow retains the mantle of the kooky niche director. And in the mid-90s, this film actually represented the last vestiges of his independent film production. Fans can only hope he'll soon return to those roots soon.

On the DVD: Ed Wood on disc has a good group commentary in which Burton is interviewed rather than expected to hold forth on his own, making his insights alongside the screenwriters, Landau, and various production heads very worthwhile. Also worthy are the featurettes on Landau's Oscar-winning make-up, the FX and the Theremin instrument employed in the score. Best of all is an extremely exotic Music Video based on that score. This doesn't seem to be a new transfer of the film, but in black and white you're less likely to notice. —Paul Tonks

Burton, Tim Director Tim Burton’s take on Roald Dahl’s classic story is undeniably more faithful to the source material than the 1975 musical retelling of the same story. His Charlie & The Chocolate Factory is also a slightly darker, visually inventive film, and is ultimately a tasty treat that the whole family can enjoy.

Filling the coat of Willy Wonka is frequent Burton collaborator Johnny Depp—the pair have previously worked together on the likes of Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood and Sleepy Hollow—and what fun he clearly had. His Wonka is a kooky, isolated figure, extremely distrusting and clearly uncomfortable around the children who win a golden ticket to look round his factory. Burton invests time in his main character, giving him a rounded back story that pays dividends, and while some will inevitably prefer Gene Wilder’s edgier take on the same role all those years ago, Depp nonetheless is on strong form. The cast around him also perform well, particularly Freddie Highmore in the title role.

The story is as you’ll likely remember it, with five children given the chance to visit Willy Wonka’s mysterious chocolate factory. And what a visual treat that factory is, bursting with colour and vibrancy. Along the way, they encounter chocolate lakes, industrious squirrels and the infamous oompa loompas, and truthfully, it’s fun to be along for the ride.

Is it better than that aforementioned 1975 version? Actually, it’s just different. Each film will no doubt have its legion of fans, but the bottom line here is that Roald Dahl’s classic has provided the source for an enjoyable, well pitched movie with plenty of rewatch value. Now if only they’d go and film Charlie & The Great Glass Elevator…—Simon Brew

Burton, Tim Who else but Tim Burton could make Corpse Bride, a necrophiliac's delight that's fun for the whole family? Returning to the richly imaginative realm of stop-motion animation—after previous successes with The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach, Burton, with codirector Mike Johnson, invites us to visit the dour, ashen, and drearily Victorian mansions of the living, where young Victor Van Dort, voiced by Johnny Depp, is bequeathed to wed the lovely Victoria.

But the wedding rehearsal goes sour and, in the kind of Goth-eerie forest that only exists in Burton-land, Victor suddenly finds himself accidentally married to the Corpse Bride, voiced by Helena Bonham Carter, a blue-tinted, half-skeletal beauty with a loquacious maggot installed behind one prone-to-popping eyeball.

This being a Burton creation, the underworld of the dead is a lively and colorful place indeed, and Danny Elfman's songs and score make it even livelier, presenting Victor with quite a dilemma: Should he return above-ground to Victoria, or remain devoted to his corpse bride? At a brisk 76 minutes, Burton's graveyard whimsy never wears out its welcome, and the voice casting is superbly matched the film's gloriously amusing character design, guaranteed to yield a wealth of gruesome toys and action figures for many Halloweens to come. —Jeff Shannon

Hooper, Tobe It’s been a long time coming, but at last the digitally remastered version of the original 1982 horror movie has arrived. Tobe Hooper, the director of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, teamed up with family-oriented producer Steven Spielberg to make Poltergeist, about a haunted suburban home in a development very much like the Arizona one in which Spielberg was raised. (Because it came out the same summer as Spielberg's E.T., it was tempting to see both movies as representing Spielberg's ambivalent feelings about childhood in suburbia. One was a fantasy, the other a nightmare.) Spielberg also co-wrote the screenplay, which taps into primal, childlike fears of monsters under the bed, monsters in the closet, sinister clown faces, and all manner of things that go bump in the night. At first, some of the odd happenings in the house are kind of funny and amusing, but they grow gradually creepier until the film climaxes in a terrifying special-effects extravaganza when five-year-old Carole Anne (Heather O'Rourke) is kidnapped by the spooks and held hostage in another dimension. Though not nearly as frightening as Hooper's magnum opus, or the original A Nightmare on Elm Street, which came along two years later, Poltergeist is one of the smartest and most entertaining horror pictures of its time. —Jim Emerson

Browning, Tod When Universal Pictures picked up the movie rights to a Broadway adaptation of Dracula, they felt secure in handing the property over to the sinister team of actor Lon Chaney and director Tod Browning. But Chaney died of cancer, and Universal hired the Hungarian who had scored a success in the stage play: Béla Lugosi. The resulting film launched both Lugosi's baroque career and the horror-movie cycle of the 1930s. It gets off to an atmospheric start, as we meet Count Dracula in his shadowy castle in Transylvania, superbly captured by the great cinematographer Karl Freund. Eventually Dracula and his blood-sucking devotee (Dwight Frye, in one of the cinema's truly mad performances) meet their match in a vampire-hunter called Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan). If the later sections of the film are undeniably stage bound and a tad creaky, Dracula nevertheless casts a spell, thanks to Lugosi's creepily lugubrious manner and the eerie silences of Browning's directing style. (After a mood-enhancing snippet of Swan Lake under the opening titles, there is no music in the film.) Frankenstein, which was released a few months later, confirmed the horror craze, and Universal has been making money (and countless spin-off projects) from its twin titans of terror ever since. Certainly the role left a lasting impression on the increasingly addled and drug-addicted Lugosi, who was never quite able to distance himself from the part that made him a star. He was buried, at his request, in his black vampire cape. —Robert Horton

Field, Todd Kate Winslet operates at a galaxy-class level in Little Children, Todd Field's gratifyingly grown-up look at unhappy suburbia. Winslet is magnificent, in an Oscar-nominated performance, as a stroller-pushing mother who becomes attracted to a passive househusband (Patrick Wilson). Their slow-burning infidelity (Field wisely allows time to pass in this unhurried film) is contrasted with a more sensational subplot, about a convicted pedophile (Jackie Earle Haley, also Oscar nominated) returning to the neighborhood to live with his mother (Phyllis Somerville). Field, who brought his civilized approach to In the Bedroom, uses a deliberately literary style here, including a device with a narrator who sounds as though he's sitting at our side as he reads from Tom Perotta's novel. (The narrator is a superb touch—his cultivated voice distances us from the sloppy passions of the characters.) The film's biggest miscalculation is a self-appointed neighborhood vigilante (Noah Emmerich) determined to make life miserable for the paedophile. But Wilson is appropriately nebulous, Jennifer Connelly solid as his wife, and Haley (child star of the Bad News Bears movies), as the creepy, childlike molester, found himself rediscovered after a long career layoff. There's decent acting here, but Winslet is in a zone of her own, with so much emotional honesty and subtlety of expression that she transforms a good movie into a must-see. —Robert Horton

Solondz, Todd

Valerii, Tonino, Leone, Sergio

Magnusson-Norling, Tova Denmark released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: LANGUAGES: Swedish ( Dolby Digital 5.1 ), Danish ( Subtitles ), English ( Subtitles ), Finnish ( Subtitles ), Norwegian ( Subtitles ), Swedish ( Subtitles ), ANAMORPHIC WIDESCREEN (1.78:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Biographies, Commentary, Featurette, Interactive Menu, Music Video, Photo Gallery, Trailer(s), SYNOPSIS: Moa is in her early 20s, works at a factory and lives by herself in a cottage in the forest. She is a vegan and follows her friends and demonstrations, mostly to fit in. But at home, by herself, she listens to pop music and use make-up.

Perelman, Vadim

Schlöndorff, Volker This Oscar-winning adaptation of Günter Grass's novel is an absurdist fantasy about a little German boy (David Bennent) who wills himself at the age of three not to grow up in protest of the Nazi regime. Despite acquiring a certain level of notoriety for its m ore salacious moments the film is more startling and surreal than obscene. Bennent is very good, and while the 1979 film doesn't meet the high standards of the best work from the the n-renaissance of German film, it has a special place in the hearts of many who saw it upon its release. Directed by Volker Schlöndorff (The Handmaid's Tale). —Tom Keogh

Schlöndorff, Volker

Salles, Walter The beauty of the South American landscape and of Gael Garcia Bernal (Y Tu Mama Tambien, Bad Education) gives The Motorcycle Diaries a charisma that is decidedly apolitical. But this portrait of the young Che Guevara (later to become a militant revolutionary) is half buddy-movie, half social commentary—and while that may seem an unholy hybrid, under the guidance of Brazillian director Walter Salles (Central Station) the movie is quietly passionate. Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado (Rodrigo de la Serna, a lusty and engaging actor) set off from Buenos Aires, hoping to circumnavigate the continent on a leaky motorcycle. They end up travelling more by foot, hitchhiking, and raft, but their experience of the land and the people affects them profoundly. No movie could affect an audience the same way, but The Motorcycle Diaries gives a soulful glimpse of an awakening social conscience, and that's worth experiencing. —Bret Fetzer

Herzog, Werner

Herzog, Werner

Herzog, Werner Australia released, PAL/Region 0 DVD: LANGUAGES: English ( Mono ), German ( Dolby Digital 5.1 ), English ( Subtitles ), WIDESCREEN, SPECIAL FEATURES: Biographies, Commentary, Interactive Menu, Scene Access, Trailer(s), SYNOPSIS: Director Werner Herzog, as usual, has spared no one — especially himself — in bringing this story of 19th-century African slave trading to the screen. Klaus Kinski plays an enterprising young Brazilian who after impregnating the three daughters of his plantation-owning employer, is sent to West Africa to round up slaves. Kinski goes to great lengths to befriend the very people he hopes to enslave and he eventually manages to overthrow a mad monarch and set himself up as king. As the years pass, Kinski grows wealthy — and careless. However, despite enslaving the tribe, he does show some signs of humanitarian benevolence. Though the title translates literally as Green Cobra, Cobra Verde was released in the U.S. as Slave Coast.

Herzog, Werner

Friedkin, William Director William Friedkin was a hot ticket in Hollywood after the success of The French Connection, and he turned heads (in more ways than one) when he decided to make The Exorcist as his follow-up film. Adapted by William Peter Blatty from his controversial best-seller, this shocking 1973 thriller set an intense and often-copied milestone for screen terror with its unflinching depiction of a young girl (Linda Blair) who is possessed by an evil spirit. Jason Miller and Max von Sydow are perfectly cast as the priests who risk their sanity and their lives to administer the rites of demonic exorcism, and Ellen Burstyn plays Blair's mother, who can only stand by in horror as her daughter's body is wracked by satanic disfiguration. One of the most frightening films ever made, The Exorcist was mysteriously plagued by troubles during production, and the years have not diminished its capacity to disturb even the most stoical viewers. —Jeff Shannon

Allen, Woody Skadinavian Edition, PAL/Region 2 Blu-Ray 1080p High Definition Widescreen DTS-HD Master Audio: Subtitles: Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish. Set in contemporary London, Cassandra's Dream is a powerful and thrilling story about two brothers who are desperate to better their troubled lives. Colin Farrell is Terry, a chronic gambler in debt over his head. Ewan McGregor is Ian, a young man in love with a beautiful actress (Hayley Atwell) he has recently met. Their lives gradually become entangled into a sinister situation with intense and dangerous results, when their rich uncle offers them a way to get everything they want - at a price. Written and directed by Woody Allen, the film also stars Tom Wilkinson and Sally Hawkins (Happy Go Lucky), with a score by Phillip Glass.

Zhang, Yimou Director Zhang Yimou brings the sumptuous visual style of his previous films (Raise the Red Lantern, Shanghai Triad) to the high-kicking kung fu genre. A nameless warrior (Jet Li, Romeo Must Die, Once Upon a Time in China) arrives at an emperor's palace with three weapons, each belonging to a famous assassin who had sworn to kill the emperor. As the nameless man spins out his story—and the emperor presents his own interpretation of what might really have happened—each episode is drenched in red, blue, white or another dominant color. Hero combines sweeping cinematography and superb performances from the cream of the Hong Kong cinema (Maggie Cheung, Irma Vep, Comrades: Almost a Love Story; Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, In the Mood for Love, Hard Boiled; and Zhang Ziyi, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). The result is stunning, a dazzling action movie with an emotional richness that deepens with every step. —Bret Fetzer

Chahine, Youssef, Gitai, Amos, Iñárritu, Alejandro González, Imamura, Shôhei, Lelouch, Claude, Loach, Ken, Makhmalbaf, Samira, Nair, Mira, Ouedraogo, Idrissa, Penn, Sean, Tanovic, Danis

Braff, Zach Zach Braff (from the TV show Scrubs) stars in his writing/directing debut, Garden State—normally a doomed act of hubris, but Braff pulls it off with unassuming charm. An emotionally numb actor in L.A., Andrew (Braff) comes back to New Jersey after nine years away for his mother's funeral. Andrew avoids his bitter father (Ian Holm) and joins old friends (including the superb Peter Sarsgaard) in a round of parties. Along the way he meets a girl (Natalie Portman) with demons of her own; bit by bit the two offer each other a little healing. Plotwise, Garden State is familiar stuff, a cross between The Graduate and a Meg Ryan movie, but Braff has an eye for goofy but resonant visual images, an ear for lively dialogue, and a great cast. The result is surprisingly fresh and funny. —Bret Fetzer, Amazon.com

Ommundsen, Arild Østin

Sandberg, Øyvind