No computer graphic can ever surpass what a real human body can do-and what the body can do is on spectacular display in Ong-Bak, a Thai action movie starring the lithe and flexible Tony Jaa. When the head is stolen from a holy statue in Jaa's rural village, he goes to Bangkok to get it back. Of course, it just so happens that the thief is connected to a bar where criminal big shots gamble over bare-knuckle brawls, and Jaa is-despite his virtuous efforts-drawn into the game. But that's only the beginning; a chase through the city streets rivals the ingenious acrobatics of Jackie Chan, with Jaa leaping between panes of glass, over a bicycle in motion, and through a wreath of barbed wire. Jaa's fighting prowess has been compared to Bruce Lee, Jet Li, and just about every other martial arts master, but he has an equal degree of charisma as well. He won't win acting awards, but his engaging presence carries the movie. One word of warning: The numerous fights will make you wince as much as gape in astonishment. Ong-Bak follows the action-flick tradition that the hero needs to be as battered as possible before he ultimately triumphs, and the battering is intense. -Bret Fetzer, Amazon. com.

As a producer, Roger Corman has always loved to make low-budget rip-offs of hit movies, and Piranha is his typically cheeky take on Jaws-and, as so often with Corman, in many ways it's funnier and more entertaining than the original. Directed with gusto by schlock-horror specialist Joe Dante and sharply scripted by John Sayles, it replaces one huge underwater toothy monster with dozens of little ones and ups the body count by a factor of 10 or so. Two hapless teenagers, hiking in a remote mountain region, stumble on a secret US military research lab. They don't last long, but their intrusion leads to the release into the local river system of a huge shoal of super-intelligent piranha, originally specially bred for use in Vietnam. Downstream from the virulent little munchers lie a kiddies' holiday camp and a tacky new waterfront theme park. Lunch time, fellas! Sayles, with his staunch left-wing credentials, slips in some mordant political satire at the expense of the military-industrial complex, and authority figures of any kind come off pretty badly, but the satire never gets in the way of the gleeful black humour. The two leads, Bradford Dillman and Heather Menzies, are fairly pallid, but there are ripe cameos from such cult horror-movie icons as Kevin McCarthy, Dick Miller and Barbara Steele. Pino Donaggio's score impudently borrows aspects of John Williams' famous Jaws theme while never quite infringing copyright. The movie was successful enough to spawn a much-inferior sequel, Piranha II: The Spawning (1982), which marked the inauspicious directing debut of one James Cameron. On the DVD: Piranha on disc comes with just the theatrical trailer as an extra. [+]

Richard Burton stars in Alexander the Great, a middling entry in the 1950s CinemaScope epic cycle. The film boasts excellent production values and a fine cast-including Frederic March, Claire Bloom, Harry Andrews, Stanley Baker, Peter Cushing and Michael Hordern-but it rarely comes to life other than as a big fat ancient Greek wedding of the talents of Burton and Bloom. They strike real dramatic sparks together, so much so they would be reunited in Look Back in Anger (1958) and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965). The film's failures must be laid at the feet of writer, director and producer Robert Rossen, who never before or after helmed anything remotely on this scale; his best work would follow with the intimate The Hustler (1961). Rossen simply shows little sensibility for the epic, staging lavish but brief and rather pedestrian battles and somehow drawing from the usually mesmerising Burton a performance lacking the charisma essential to a great military commander. Burton fans can enjoy him at his epic best as Marc Anthony in Cleopatra (1963). On the DVD: Alexander the Great is presented anamorphically enhanced at 2. 35:1, although the picture is still obviously cropped at either side of the screen throughout. The print is very variable, in places quite grainy and soft with some serious flickering blotchiness, but otherwise it has strong colours, detail and contrast. The sound is primitive stereo. [+]

For 1992's Twin Dragons Jackie Chan resurrects the old Corsican Brothers chestnut of identical twin brothers separated at birth who meet up as adults and discover that they share more than blood ties. Poor boy Chan is a mechanic and race-car driver whose black-market activities have made him the target of some nasty mobsters, while jet-setting Chan is a world-famous conductor back in Hong Kong for a concert. In the same vicinity for the first time in years, they can suddenly feel each other's pain, and more. As one Chan jumps a jet boat for a wild escape, the other becomes a victim of the furious ride, thrown around a posh restaurant while drenching his date with drinking water. The whole thing is overloaded with silly slapstick, Chan's incessant mugging and cartoonish mistaken-identity gags as the boys swap girlfriends and dance. But wade through the crude comedy and you're rewarded with a gymnastic free-for-all climax in a car-testing workshop, where Chan leaps over, under and through cars while taking on an army of gangsters before split-screen brothers team up for a bit of marionette martial arts. Tsui Hark and Ringo Lam co-direct, Tsui taking the comedy and Lam handling the action, and John Woo makes a cameo as a priest in the wedding finale. -Sean Axmaker, Amazon. com.

In "Ghost Ship," MacGyver's boss, Pete (Dana Elcar), is asked to define what makes Mac (Richard Dean Anderson) so special. He replies, "You know, I've known him for eight years now, and I've never quite been able to put my finger on it. He just always comes through, no matter what. " And that he does. MacGyver's third season begins with a blast from the past when Mac runs into Lisa (Elyssa Davalos), a woman he thought he had killed (unintentionally, of course). Turns out Lisa's just fine, but she did do a little time in a Russian gulag, proceeding to marry the ex-KGB operative who set her free. The two-part season opener ("Lost Love") allows Mac to make it up to his former flame with a little help from pal Jack (Bruce "D-Day" McGill), AKA "The Great Sheldrake," whose latest career move is magician. The producers must have felt that Anderson and Davalos had chemistry as she returns a few episodes later ("Fire and Ice")-sans Russian accent-as Nikki, a different, recurring character (oddly enough, Mac fails to note the resemblance). Like Teri Hatcher's Penny, who doesn't appear in the third season, Nikki isn't a love interest, but a friend (and Phoenix Foundation colleague). While Penny will return the following year, Nikki will not. [+]

Thematically ambitious and emotionally complex, Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers is an intimate epic with much to say about war and the nature of heroism in America. Based on the non-fiction bestseller by James Bradley (with Ron Powers), and adapted by Million Dollar Baby screenwriter Paul Haggis (Jarhead screenwriter William Broyles Jr. wrote an earlier draft that was abandoned when Eastwood signed on to direct), this isn't so much a conventional war movie as it is a thought-provoking meditation on our collective need for heroes, even at the expense of those we deem heroic. In telling the story of the six men (five Marines, one Navy medic) who raised the American flag of victory on the battle-ravaged Japanese island of Iwo Jima on February 23rd, 1945, Eastwood takes us deep into the horror of war (in painstakingly authentic Iwo Jima battle scenes) while emphasizing how three of the surviving flag-raisers (played by Adam Beach, Ryan Phillippe, and Jesse Bradford) became reluctant celebrities - and resentful pawns in a wartime publicity campaign - after their flag-raising was immortalized by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal in the most famous photograph in military history. As the surviving flag-raisers reluctantly play their public roles as "the heroes of Iwo Jima" during an exhausting (but clearly necessary) wartime bond rally tour, Flags of Our Fathers evolves into a pointed study of battlefield valor and misplaced idolatry, incorporating subtle comment on the bogus nature of celebrity, the trauma of battle, and the true meaning of heroism in wartime. Wisely avoiding any direct parallels to contemporary history, Eastwood allows us to draw our own conclusions about the Iwo Jima flag-raisers and how their postwar histories (both noble and tragic) simultaneously illustrate the hazards of exploited celebrity and society's genuine need for admirable role models during times of national crisis. Flags of Our Fathers defies the expectations of those seeking a more straightforward war-action drama, but it's richly satisfying, impeccably crafted film that manages to be genuinely patriotic (in celebrating the camaraderie of soldiers in battle) while dramatising the ultimate futility of war. Eastwood's follow-up film, Letters from Iwo Jima, examines the Iwo Jima conflict from the Japanese perspective. -Jeff Shannon.

Based on a screenplay from Nick Cave, The Proposition is a slow, thoughtful, brutal and diligent western, that rightly mopped up numerous awards back in its native Australia. It starts when Ray Winstone's Captain Stanley makes an unpopular deal with a much-wanted outlaw, Charlie Burns, played by Guy Pierce. Charlie has two brothers: an innocent younger sibling (Mikey), and a heavily wanted older one (Arthur). The Captain takes the younger one into custody on threat of hanging, giving Charlie a matter of days to bring his older brother in. That's the core proposition that gives the film its title, yet what really makes the film is its willingness to explore the details. How do the townsfolk feel when they find out Captain Stanley has let a wanted gangster go? What will Stanley's wife do when she finds out he's willingness to play a dangerous game with an innocent young man as the stakes? And what will Charlie actually do when confronted by his deadly brother? The beauty of Cave's script too is that it doesn't speed through any of this, consequently building up notable moments of tension, brutality and genuine shock. The performances throughout are strong, with Pierce and Winstone spearheading the cast with skill, yet finding tremendous support in the shape of John Hurt, Emily Watson and Danny Huston. Married up to the subtle and thoughtful direction of John Hillcoat, The Proposition is, quite simply, one of the finest films of the year, and the latest resurrection for a genre that rightly refuses to remain dormant. -Simon Brew.

Trapped by his image in 1976, Clint Eastwood resurrected his Dirty Harry character for a third go-round (out of a total of five) in The Enforcer, a potboiler of a story in which the San Francisco detective takes on a group of revolutionary kids. Tyne Daly costars as a female cop who partners with the reluctant Harry Callahan, and she does very well by a role created merely to underscore and articulate the hero's various virtues. It's a dull package all around, but inside the wrapping are good performances by the two leads. -Tom Keogh.

"Filmed in VIDECOLOR [explosions, drum roll, music builds to a climax] and SUPERMARIONATION"! The opening sequence of Thunderbirds is itself a masterclass in Gerry Anderson's marionette hyperbole: who else would dare to make a virtue out of the fact that (a) the show is in colour and (b) it's got puppets in it? But everything about this series really is epic: Thunderbirds is action on the grandest scale, pre-dating such high-concept Hollywood vehicles as Armaggedon by 30 years and more (the acting is better, too), and fetishising gadgets in a way that even the most excessive Bond movies could never hope to rival. Unsurprisingly, it transpires that the visual effects are by Derek Meddings, whose later contributions to Bond movies like The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker echo his pioneering model work here. As to the characters, the clean-cut Tracey boys take second place in the audiences' affections to their cool machines-the real stars of the show-while comic relief is to be found in the charming company of Lady Penelope and her pink Rolls (number plate FAB1), driven by lugubrious chauffeur Parker, whose "Yes, milady" catchphrase resonated around school playgrounds for decades. (Spare a thought for poor old John Tracey, stuck up in space on Thunderbird 5 with only the radio for company. ) The puppet stunt-work is breathtakingly audacious, and every week's death-defying escapade is nailbitingly choreographed in the very best tradition of disaster movies. First shown in 1964 and now digitally remastered, Thunderbirds is children's TV that still looks and sounds like big-budget Hollywood. On this DVD: International Rescue's very first adventure provides a template for all the rest: in "Trapped in the Sky" an experimental new aircraft becomes the target of an evil Bond-style megalomaniac who wants to get his hands on all the neat pieces of kit operated by the Tracey siblings. The show introduces, in fetishistic detail, the recurring set-pieces: Thunderbird 1 taking off from the roll-back swimming pool, which pod will Thunderbird 2 use this week-the mole or the submarine perhaps?-and so on. Nostalgia fans will be pleased to learn that despite digital remastering the puppet strings are still in evidence, and no amount of high-tech restoration could remove the clunky expository dialogue: Stewardess: "It's the maiden flight of the new atomic-powered Fireflash. " Passenger: "Isn't that the new aircraft that flies six times the speed of sound?" Stewardess: "That's right, but don't worry: it's perfectly safe. [+]

2002's popular video-game-derived hit Resident Evil didn't inspire confidence in a sequel, but Resident Evil: Apocalypse defies odds and surpasses expectations. It's a bigger, better, action-packed zombie thriller, and this time Milla Jovovich (as the first film's no-nonsense heroine) is joined by more characters from the popular Capcom video games, including Jill Valentine (played by British hottie Sienna Guillory) and Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr, from 1999's The Mummy). They're armed and ready for a high-caliber encounter with devil dogs, mutant "Lickers," lurching zombies, and the leather-clad monster known only as Nemesis, unleashed by the nefarious Umbrella Corporation responsible for creating the cannibalistic undead horde. Having gained valuable experience as a respected second-unit director on high-profile films like Gladiator and The Bourne Identity, director Alexander Witt elevates this junky material to the level of slick, schlocky entertainment. -Jeff Shannon.