DVD sets don't come more generous or well-intended than The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Volume One. George Lucas' 1990s television series, inspired by his feature film collaborations with Steven Spielberg and actor Harrison Ford, used a childhood version of Jones as a catalyst for involving young viewers in the dynamics of 20th century history and thought. As much a scamp as Ford's swaggering hero-with-a-bullwhip, little Henry "Indy" Jones (Corey Carrier) gets into a great deal of mischief in his travels around the world with his disciplined father, Professor Henry Jones, Sr. (Lloyd Owen, doing a credible version of Sean Connery's voice from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade). Also accompanied by his mother (Ruth de Sosa) and imperious tutor, Miss Seymour (Margaret Tyzack), Indy ends up in various unanticipated adventures with some of the most noteworthy individuals of his age. A trip to Paris finds him cavorting with young Norman Rockwell and an ultra-arrogant Pablo Picasso (who is out to prove that the style of aging Impressionist Edgar Degas is easy to forge). A stay in India lands Indy in the company of the great guru, Krishnamurti. In Russia, he feuds with Tolstoy as if the two were in a buddy movie. In Italy, Puccini puts romantic moves on Mrs. Jones, while Indy listens carefully in Vienna to definitions of love by none other than Freud, Jung and Adler. [+]

There's nothing original in The Scorpion King, but this derivative action franchise gets off to a rousing start by cleverly stealing from a lot of better movies. Capitalising on his brief cameo in The Mummy Returns, Dwayne Johnson (a. k. a. World Wrestling Federation star the Rock) stars as Mathayus, an Akkadian assassin in the age preceding Egyptian pharaohs, who vows to avenge his brother's murder by an undefeated warlord (Steven Brand) prophesied to become the desert-ruling Scorpion King. Their battle for supremacy comprises most of the film's brisk 95-minute running time, punctuated by comic relief from Mathayus's obligatory sidekick (Grant Heslov), romance with a beautiful sorceress (Kelly Hu), and alliance with a massive Nubian (Michael Clarke Duncan) on the eve of their climactic showdown. There's no rhyme or reason to the film's depiction of ancient civilization (the costuming is particularly ludicrous), but the Rock demonstrates adequate action-star potential, and director Chuck Russell (The Mask) wraps it all in a slick, professional package. -Jeff Shannon.

Ocean's Eleven improves on the 1960's Rat Pack original with supernova casting, a slickly updated plot and Steven Soderbergh's graceful touch behind the camera. Soderbergh reportedly relished the opportunity "to make a movie that has no desire except to give pleasure from beginning to end", and he succeeds on those terms, blessed by the casting of George Clooney as Danny Ocean, the title role originally played by Frank Sinatra. Fresh out of jail, Ocean masterminds a plot to steal $163 million from the seemingly impervious vault of Las Vegas's Bellagio casino, not just for the money but to win his ex-wife (Julia Roberts) back from the casino's ruthless owner (Andy Garcia). Soderbergh doesn't scrimp on the caper's comically intricate strategy, but he finds greater joy in assembling a stellar team (including Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle and Carl Reiner) and indulging their strengths as actors and thieves. The result is a film that's as smooth as a silk suit and just as stylish. -Jeff Shannon On the DVD: Ocean's Eleven on disc is hardly swarming with special features, but just like all good heists it's quality not quantity that counts. The cast commentary is lively and it's nice to hear intelligent comments coming from Hollywood's big league for a change. However, it's the director and writer's commentary that is the real gem; it's funny, enlightening and most of all it allows Ted Griffin to put the case forward for all screenwriters across the world as to the importance of their craft. The main feature has an impressive transfer of sound and visuals, making the suits sharper and David Holmes' soundtrack even funkier. -Nikki Disney.

Let's be honest: this 1995 epic isn't nearly as bad as its negative publicity led us to expect. At the time, Waterworld was the most expensive Hollywood production in history (it had a Titanic-sized 200 million US dollars budget), and the film arrived in cinemas with so much controversy and negative gossip that it was an easy target for ridicule. The movie itself, a flawed but enjoyable post-apocalypse thriller, deserves better. Waterworld stars Kevin Costner as the Mariner, a lone maverick with gills and webbed feet who navigates the endless seas of Earth after the complete melting of the polar ice caps. The Mariner has been caged like a criminal when he's freed by Helen (Jeanne Tripplehorn) and enlisted to help her and a young girl (Tina Majorino) escape from the Smokers, a group of renegade terrorists led by Dennis Hopper in yet another memorably villainous role. It is too bad the predictable script isn't more intelligent, but as a companion piece to The Road Warrior, this seafaring stunt-fest is adequately impressive. -Jeff Shannon.

Anybody hungering for a good old-fashioned Western needs to check out Warriors of Heaven and Earth, which-although it's set in 7th-century China-has all the valor and spectacle of a John Ford picture. It also has a goofy supernatural streak, for the chopsocky crowd. The opening 10 minutes or so offer an alarmingly convoluted plot, but it swiftly settles down. What's going on is that a long-exiled Japanese hit man (Kiichi Nakai), hired to kill a renegade Chinese warrior (Jiang Wen), temporarily teams up with his quarry in order to escort a camel caravan along the Spice Road. Of course, they are menaced by a brutal warlord, and beautiful Zhao Wei (So Close) is mixed in there too. Director He Ping (Red Firecracker, Green Firecracker) captures some magnificent vistas in the Gobi Desert, but more importantly he sketches the codes or honor and behavior essential to any such tale. -Robert Horton.

Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life may be an improvement on its 2001 predecessor, but its appeal is mostly aimed at fans of the video games that inspired both movies. That pretty much leaves you with some fun but familiar action sequences, and the ever-alluring sight of Angelina Jolie (reprising her title role) as she swims, swings, kicks, shoots, flies, jet-skis, motorcycles, and free-falls her way toward saving the world, this time by making sure that a grimacing villain (Ciaran Hinds) doesn't open Pandora's Box (yes, the actual mythological object) and unleash a deadly plague that will "weed out" the global population. Exotic locations add to Jolie's own coolly erotic appeal, but we're left wondering if this franchise has anywhere else to go. -Jeff Shannon.

There seems to be no end to "beating-the-odds" American football movies these days, but We Are Marshall, based on a true story, is in the top tier of that clutch of movies. Matthew McConaughey plays Jack Lengyel, who becomes head coach-more or less by default-of Marshall University's rebuilding varsity American football team in Huntington, West Virginia, after the school's 37-member team and coaches (and a number of others) die in a plane crash in the Appalachian Mountains on November 14, 1970. Facing an indifferent college president (David Strathairn) ready to shut the football program down, a morose assistant coach (Matthew Fox of Lost fame), and a charged-up player (Anthony Mackie) who missed the doomed flight due to an injury, Lengyel is faced with fielding a new team and putting the players through their paces. There are the usual, perhaps too-familiar, training montages and field action, but screenwriter Jamie Linden and director McG (Charlie's Angels) also draw some very good performances from the likes of Kate Mara and Ian McShane, contributing to an emotional tapestry conveying a powerful sense of how such a sizable loss affects a small community. -Sally Giles.

Despite its flaws, The Good German is a welcome gift for every film lover who laments that "they don't make 'em like they used to. " Steven Soderbergh's affectionate, knowing tribute to the black-and-white melodramas of Hollywood's golden age may lack the emotional depth and romantic passion of Michael Curtiz's Casablanca-the 1946 classic it intentionally emulates-but as Soderbergh approximates Curtiz's studio style, he delivers a shimmering, shadowy reminder that movies can be enjoyed for the sheer pleasure of their craftsmanship. Once again serving as his own cinematographer (credited as "Peter Andrews"), Soderbergh went to great lengths to technically and aesthetically re-create the look and feel of a Curtiz production, and Joseph Kanon's source novel (adapted by Quiz Show screenwriter Paul Attanasio) provides a twisting plot set around the historical Potsdam conference in post-World War II Germany. An American military journalist, Capt. Jake Geismer (George Clooney) is in rubble-strewn Berlin to cover the event, and is quickly drawn into a murder plot involving his appointed driver (Tobey Maguire), an old flame-turned-wartime prostitute (Cate Blanchett) and her missing husband, a scientist who possesses pivotal secrets coveted by Americans and Russians in a pre-Cold War bid for power. Violence, sexual content, and salty dialogue make it clear that this drama is a brashly contemporary homage to films of a bygone era, and not a slavish attempt to copy the past. This yields mixed results in terms of the film's overall appeal; it's gorgeous to look at, but the plot and performances exist in a vacuum, and the entire film feels oddly disengaged from any sense of genuine human emotion. It's probably fair to say that Soderbergh had more fun making the film than most people will have watching it. And yet, as Clooney's character is repeatedly beaten and deceived on his path to cynical enlightenment, The Good German has many qualities that make it recommendable, not the least being the pleasure of following a talented director as he indulges his penchant for bold experimentation. -Jeff Shannon.

A loose (very loose) Japanese TV adaptation of Wu Ch'eng-en's 16th-century collection of Chinese fables, Monkey! was re-dubbed into English in the early 1980s and became required viewing for a whole generation of school children. The titular monkey (played with great enthusiasm, not to mention athleticism by Japanese comic actor and former rock star Masaaki Sakai) accompanies boy-monk Tripitaka (confusingly, a pretty actress called Masako Natsume) on his/her quest for the Indian Sutras. They pick up Sandy (Shiro Kishibe), Pigsy (Toshiyuki Nishida) and a dragon that becomes a horse along the way. The appeal of Monkey! is easier to experience than explain. It's an occasionally surreal blend of Oriental fable, knock-about martial arts, pop Buddhism and slapstick comedy. The frequent comic fight scenes are accompanied by a 70s disco-fusion soundtrack, and a narrator (English voice: Frank Duncan) uses gaps in the action to deliver inscrutable snippets of wisdom ("Even a starving camel is still bigger than a horse", "Does love mean labour even for the carp-hearted?"). Best of all, though, is the dialogue: without regard to any lip-synch niceties the English script (by David Weir) is full of idiomatic delights, jokes and double entendres. All are delivered by British actors in hilarious cod-Japanese accents (distinguished thesp Miriam Margolyes is the voice of Tripitaka). Bad special effects crown the show's cheesy, retro appeal. On the DVD: Monkey! volume 1 on DVD features the same first three episodes as the VHS incarnation-"Monkey Goes Wild About Heaven", "Monkey Turns Nursemaid" and "The Great Journey Begins"-but also a bonus previously unseen episode from the second season, "You Win Some You Lose Some", which is subtitled not dubbed, so if nothing else is an opportunity to hear the actors' real voices. [+]

There's no getting around it: there was simply no better summer blockbuster in 2007 than the astonishing The Bourne Ultimatum. It's a film that defies expectations in many ways. Firstly, it's a third entry in a trilogy that by some distance in the best in an already-compelling franchise. Secondly, whenThe Bourne Ultimatum kickstarts with a ferocious energy and pace, you sit there and rightly expect it not to keep the momentum going. But it does. And does it astonishingly well. Just witness the breathless sequence through Waterloo Station, convince yourself that the film has peaked then, then go and watch them top it later on in the movie. The film itself has many trump cards, not least its leading man. Matt Damon fits the character of reluctant lead Jason Bourne perfectly, but the trick is to give him some excellent supporting players to work against. Thus, The Bourne Ultimatum also stars the excellent pair of David Straitharn and a returning Joan Allen, along with Albert Finney, Paddy Considine and Julia Stiles too. [+]

Steven Spielberg and George Lucas's 1981 resurrection of the Saturday-matinee adventure genre was deservedly popular, and kicked off a successful trilogy. Set in 1936, this first feature introduces Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, an archaeologist and adventurer whose quests for rare antiquities frequently find him running from one menace or another. Raiders Of The Lost Ark finds Dr. Jones in the middle of a Nazi plot to use the mysterious powers of the Ark of the Covenant to win the war. Karen Allen plays the love interest with an old-fashioned "man's woman" appeal (she can drink anybody under the table and is free with her fists). The constant, cliffhanger appeal of the movie is great fun-one is always wondering how Indy will get out of one scrape after another-and Ford's career got a big boost with his self-effacing but masculine portrayal of the hero. -Tom Keogh.

Retelling a story that has made it onto the silver screen more than most, this latest adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo makes yet another swashbuckling attempt to win over a new generation of cinema goers. A dashing James Caviezel takes the role of the Count, who is driven by a desire for revenge after being betrayed by his best friend Fernand (played by a dishevelled Guy Pearce) and landed with 16 years of solitary confinement in Chateau D'If, a damp cavernous prison. Thus the scene is set for a good old-fashioned romp. The trouble with this "re-imagining" (to borrow a phrase from Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes) is that it's never quite sure whether to take itself seriously or not. Alexandre Dumas's original story is a traditionally melodramatic tale of deceit and double-crossing, with clear-cut bad guys and a moral lesson to be learned at the end. Here, director Kevin Reynolds appears unsure about whether to stick with tradition or bring the story up to date and turn it into a post-modern play on the old Victorian values and style. When the Count and his heavy-breathing loved one are reunited, their kiss is actually framed as a cameo. Both lead actors are also prone to heavy bouts of overacting, garnishing their performances with exaggerated baroque gestures. Clearly this is a film in which the actors could over-indulge themselves and (almost) get away with it, were it not for the fact that-bar Richard Harris as the "Priest"-none of them seem to have the faintest idea about how to conduct themselves in a period drama. This Count of Monte Cristo will leave the audience a little confused as to whether they should cry along with the story or laugh along with the actors. [+]

John Milius charts a decade of social change as three surfing buddies use the sport as a personal touchstone for their lives whilst growing up in the turbulent 1960s. Irresponsible hot-dogging legend Matt (Jan-Michael Vincent),serious and stable Jack (William Katt) and mad misfit Leroy, aka "Masochist" (Gary Busey), are teenage surf bums in 1963, living at the beach in a perpetual summer under the sway of surfboard-maker Bear (Sam Melville), guru, mentor, and keeper of the lore. But times are changing and boys grow up in the shadow of Vietnam while adulthood pushes them into hard decisions. John Milius mixes the nostalgia of American Graffiti with the reverence of a John Ford cavalry drama. Surfing becomes a kind of spiritual quest spoken of in awed mythic tones and photographed with the epic grandeur of a rite of passage. Milius's heavy-handed direction andr everent attitude slows the films and will turn off some viewers but Milius fans will appreciate his macho stylings and philosophical musings, and surfing fans will love the spectacular surfing footage, including the dazzling stylings of world champion Gerry Lopez (who Milius later cast in Conan the Barbarian). Lee Purcell costars as Matt's supportive wife, with Patti D'Arbanville, Barbara Hale and Robert Englund in supporting roles. Look for Ford stock player Hank Worden in a small role and Milius himself in a cameo role selling marijuana in Tijuana. -Sean Axmaker John Milius charts a decade of social change in Big Wednesday as three surfing buddies use surfing as a personal touchstone for their lives while growing up in the turbulent 1960s. Irresponsible hot-dogging legend Matt (Jan-Michael Vincent), serious and stable Jack (William Katt), and mad misfit Leroy, aka "Masochist" (Gary Busey), are teenage surf bums in 1963, living at the beach in a perpetual summer under the sway of surfboard-maker Bear (Sam Melville), guru, mentor, and keeper of the lore. [+]

The weirdness of actor Nicolas Cage and the weirdness of science-fiction author Philip K. Dick seem like a natural fit. The premise, taken from a short story by Dick, is a good one: A mediocre Las Vegas magician named Chris Johnson (Cage) can see into the future-but only about two minutes at the most. Just enough to pull off his act and to make some money at the gambling tables, so long as he's discreet. Unfortunately, he hasn't been discreet enough; a government agent (Julianne Moore) has sussed out his precognitive talent and wants to use him to track down terrorists. But all Johnson cares about is a beautiful young woman (Jessica Biel, The Illusionist) that he can see in his future-much further in his future than he's ever seen before. Next has flashes that point to a much, much better movie than it turned out to be. A sequence in which Johnson, clairvoyantly explores all the different permutations of how he might approach his mystery woman is both funny and thought-provoking, and when Johnson avoids pursuers by knowing just the right moment to turn a corner or duck his head, it's smart and suspenseful. Unfortunately, the terrorist part of the plot is utterly perfunctory and precognition is reduced to an action movie gimmick. Somewhere in there is the kernel of a romantic comedy about precognition that's just waiting to be made. [+]