How does Spider-Man 3 follow on the heels of its predecessor, which was widely considered the best superhero movie ever? For starters, you pick up the loose threads from that movie, then add some key elements of the Spidey comic-book mythos (including fan-favorite villain Venom), the black costume, and the characters of Gwen Stacy and her police-captain father. In the beginning, things have never looked better for Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire): He's doing well in school; his alter ego, Spider-Man, is loved and respected around New York City. And his girlfriend, Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst), has just taken a starring role in a Broadway musical. But nothing good can last for Spidey. Mary Jane's career quickly goes downhill; she's bothered by Peter's attractive new classmate, Gwen Stacy (Bryce Dallas Howard); and the new Daily Bugle photographer, Eddie Brock (Topher Grace), is trying to steal his thunder. Enter a new villain, the Sandman (Thomas Haden Church), who can transform his body into various forms and shapes of sand and who may be connected to Peter's past in an unexpected way. There's also the son of an old villain, Harry Osborne (James Franco), who unmasked Spidey in the previous movie and still has revenge on his mind. And a new black costume seems to boost Spidey's powers, but transforms mild-mannered Peter into a mean and obnoxious boor (Maguire has some fun here). If that sounds like a lot to pack into one 140-minute film, it is. While director Sam Raimi keeps things flowing, assisted on the screenplay by his brother Ivan and Alvin Sargent, there's a little too much going on, and it's inevitable that one of the villains (there are three or four, depending on how you count) gets significantly short-changed. [+]

The Core is high-tech Hollywood hokum at its finest; smarter than Armageddon and equally extreme. It's scientifically ridiculous, naturally, but this variant of Fantastic Voyage at least tries to be credible as it plunges deep into the Earth's inner core, where a formulaic team of experts pilot an earth-boring ship to jump-start the planet's spinning molten interior, now stalled by a military secret that could seal the fate of all humankind. It's a geophysicist's daydream, which only a fine ensemble cast could rescue from absurdity, and director Jon Amiel (Entrapment, Copycat) draws excellent work (and plenty of humorous interplay) from Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Stanley Tucci, Delroy Lindo and a host of memorable supporting players, especially DJ Qualls as the world's greatest cyber-nerd. With enough digital FX disasters to satisfy anyone's apocalyptic fantasies, this is a popcorn thriller with all the bells and whistles that its genre demands. Sit back, pump up the volume and enjoy the dazzling ride. -Jeff Shannon.

No-one will be neutral about Plunkett and Macleane. Either you go with its notion of cheeky, stylish fun or you want to grab first-time director Jake Scott by the ear and slap him silly. Your inclination may depend on whether you recall his dad Ridley's own directing debut, The Duellists (1977), and savour the correspondences. Dad took a Joseph Conrad tale of the Napoleonic Wars, cast it with the ultra-contemporary Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel, and filmed it with a swooping, mobile camera. Son Jake has made a feisty period piece about a pair of thieves (Robert Carlyle, Jonny Lee Miller) in 1748 London and filled it with blatant anachronisms. A decadent aristo (Alan Cumming), asked whether he "still swings both ways," replies, "I swing every way!" A ballroom full of revellers dances the minuet (or is it the gavotte?) while our ears-if not theirs-are filled with a trance ballad. And so forth. Is this sophomoric? Maybe. But it's also often fresh and inventive. Why shouldn't a filmmaker be allowed to speak directly to a contemporary consciousness, even flaunt it, as long as he also delivers startling imagery and convincing period detail? The solid cast includes Michael Gambon as a corrupt magistrate, Ken Stott as a very nasty enforcer named Mr Chance (who favours a thumb through the eye socket and into the brain as a mode of execution) and Terence Rigby as a philosophical jailer. [+]

Wild Wild West, directed by Barry Sonnenfeld (Men in Black, Get Shorty), was one of the box-office smashes of the summer of 1999 but was raked by critics and embraced by audiences. Based on the 1960s TV adventure show that starred Robert Conrad, this film re-imagined Secret Service agent James West as Will Smith, adding Oscar-winner Kevin Kline as his sidekick, agent-inventor Artemus Gordon. President Ulysses S. Grant puts West and Gordon on the trail of malign genius (and former Confederate soldier) Dr. Arliss Loveless (Kenneth Branagh) in a story about racism, partnership and world domination. The special effects are lavish, even garish, but not all that special; they're not enough to elevate a mundane and familiar plot. Even Branagh, playing a man who only exists from the waist up-literally-can't find the juice in this lumbering affair. Still, the fast-talking team of Smith and Kline is a nimble one. Smith's affable charm and Kline's subversive wit win many points, though not nearly enough. -Marshall Fine.

One of TV's more interesting tough-girl action shows, Dark Angel is a distinctive blend of the personal, the adventurous and the politically aware. Cocreators James Cameron (yes, that James Cameron) and Charles Eglee present a complex scenario of biological super-science and social collapse in which their gene-manipulated heroine and hacker/journalist hero can genuinely make a difference. In this first series they also provide an adversary who is a lot more than just a conventional villain. Jessica Alba is impressive as Max, bred and trained as a super-soldier but reclaiming her individual humanity; Michael Weatherly is scruffily attractive as Eyes Only, who sits semi-paralysed in his eyrie above Seattle uncovering crime, corruption and other skulduggeries and sending the woman whom he hopelessly loves out on deadly errands. Jon Savage has real authority as Lydeker, a man who has stretched his conscience to breaking point, but is not personally corrupt. Some of the best episodes here-"Prodigy" for example-are ones in which Lydeker and Max are forced into temporary alliance. Early on the relationship between Max and the other workers at Jam Pony-the courier firm that provides her with a cover identity-is a little forced, but later on the two parts of Max's life are more successfully integrated: "Shorties in Love", for example, is a genuinely touching tale about Diamond, the doomed criminal ex-lover of Max's lesbian roommate. Dark Angel was never a perfect show, but at its occasional best it manages to be simultaneously funny and dramatic. On the DVD: Dark Angel, Series 1's Region 2 DVD is ungenerous with special features, providing only short interviews with James Cameron and Charles Eglee and with the stars, and giving us a preview of the Dark Angel computer game. The episodes are presented in widescreen and have excellent Dolby Digital sound which gives vivid presence to both the dialogue and the hard-driving contemporary rock score that is part of the show's style. [+]

The Matrix Reloaded delivers added amounts of everything that the first film had, with the exception of surprises. We see more of the "real world" in the "last human city" of Zion and we go back to the 1999-look urban virtual reality of the Matrix for more encounters with artificially-intelligent baddies and-the real reason you've turned up-a lot more martial arts superheroics. The downside is that this is just part one of a two-pack of sequels, with Revolutions required to tie up the story and sort out a great deal of plot confusion. There are other problems: none of the stars have much good material to work with outside the fights and stunts, which makes the film sorely miss the mix of science fiction thrills and character interplay of the original instalment. However, the Wachowski Brothers still deliver more than enough stand-alone instant classic action sequences to make you ignore their duff script: in particular, Reeves and Hugo Weaving square off in a rumble that gets dicey, as more and more identical Weavings come out of the woodwork to pile on the lone hero; and a full quarter of an hour is devoted to a chase through the Matrix that lets Laurence Fishburne shoulder the heroic business. A last-reel encounter with a virtual God, the architect of the Matrix, finally delivers some major plot advances, but the scene is so brilliantly shot and designed-with Reeves framed against a wall of TV screens that show multiple versions of himself-that it's easy to be distracted by the decor and miss the point of what's being said. -Kim Newman On the DVD: The Matrix Reloaded two-disc set amazingly has very little in-depth stuff on this physically impressive movie; there's not even a commentary track. Perhaps the Wachowski Brothers want to keep their enigmatic aura, or perhaps there's a better DVD coming after the trilogy ends? Best here is the 30-minute feature on the incredible freeway chase: here you get the inside scoop on how the titanic 12-minute sequence was put together. There's plenty of material on the second disc, but it's just filler, with the actors talking about how great it is to work again with the Matrix team and plenty of quick edits of explosions and other "cool" things. There's a segment on product placement, 30 minutes on how the video game was created and the MTV Movie Awards parody. [+]

Robert De Niro stars as an American intelligence operative adrift in irrelevance since the end of the Cold War-much like a masterless samurai, aka "ronin". With his services for sale, he joins a renegade, international team of fellow covert warriors with nothing but time on their hands. Their mission, as defined by the woman who hires them (Natascha McElhone), is to get hold of a particular suitcase that is equally coveted by the Russian mafia and Irish terrorists. As the scheme gets underway, De Niro's lone wolf strikes up a rare friendship with his French counterpart (Jean Reno), gets into a more-or-less romantic frame of mind with McElhone and asserts his experience on the planning and execution of the job-going so far as to publicly humiliate one team member (Sean Bean) who is clearly out of his league. The story is largely unremarkable-there's an obligatory twist midway through that changes the nature of the team's business-but legendary filmmaker John Frankenheimer (Seconds, The Manchurian Candidate) leaps at the material, bringing to it an honest tension and seasoned, breathtaking skill with precision-action direction. The centrepiece of the movie is an honest-to-God car chase that is the real thing: not the how-can-we-top-the-last-stunt cartoon nonsense of Richard Donner (Lethal Weapon) but a pulse-quickening, kinetic dance of superb montage and timing. In a sense, Ronin is almost Frankenheimer's self-quoting version of a John Frankenheimer film. There isn't anything here he hasn't done before but it's sure great to see it all again. -Tom Keogh Robert De Niro, Jean Reno, Natascha McElhone, Sean Bean, Jonathan Pryce.

A model for dozens of action films to follow, this box-office hit from 1967 refined a die-hard formula that has become overly familiar, but it's rarely been handled better than it was in this action-packed World War II thriller. Lee Marvin is perfectly cast as a down-but-not-out army major who is offered a shot at personal and professional redemption. If he can successfully train and discipline a squad of army rejects, misfits, killers, prisoners, and psychopaths into a first-rate unit of specialised soldiers, they'll earn a second chance to make up for their woeful misdeeds. Of course, there's a catch: to obtain their pardons, Marvin's band of badmen must agree to a suicide mission that will parachute them into the danger zone of Nazi-occupied France. It's a hazardous path to glory, but the men have no other choice than to accept and regain their lost honor. What makes The Dirty Dozen special is its phenomenal cast including Charles Bronson, Donald Sutherland, Telly Savalas, George Kennedy, Ernest Borgnine, John Cassavetes, Richard Jaeckel, Jim Brown, Clint Walker, Trini Lopez, Robert Ryan, and others. Cassavetes is the Oscar-nominated standout as one of Marvin's most rebellious yet heroic men, but it's the whole ensemble-combined with the hard-as-nails direction of Robert Aldrich-that makes this such a high-velocity crowd pleaser. The script by Nunnally Johnson and Lukas Heller (from the novel by E. M. Nathanson) is strong enough to support the all-star lineup with ample humour and military grit, so if you're in need of a mainline jolt of testosterone, The Dirty Dozen is the movie for you. [+]

Director Martin Brest rocketed to the top of Hollywood's A list with the blockbuster success of Beverly Hills Cop, and this 1988 follow-up is even better. Midnight Run is a genuine rarity-an action comedy that's dramatically satisfying-thanks to a sharp script by George Gallo, the superb teaming of Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin, and Brest's consummate skill in combining suspense and humour with well-developed characters. De Niro plays a maverick bounty hunter whose latest assignment is Grodin, an accountant accused of embezzling from the Mob. De Niro thinks he's in for an easy job, transporting Grodin (who's afraid to fly) from New York to Los Angeles, but soon discovers that both the FBI and the Mafia are hot on Grodin's trail. Equal parts road trip, action thriller, and a quirky character study, Midnight Run moves at a breakneck pace but still gives De Niro and Grodin time to create rich, memorable performances as two men who seem to be opposites, but gradually develop mutual respect and admiration. Mainstream entertainment at its best. -Jeff Shannon.

Based on the true story of Lord Louis Mountbatten's destroyer HMS Kelly, In Which We Serve is one of the most memorable British films made during World War II. Unfolding in flashback as survivors cling to a dingy, constantly strafed by the Luftwaffe, the film recounts the history of HMS Torrin through various battles to her sinking off the coast of North Africa, interwoven with the onshore lives of her crew. The film was the inspiration of Noel Coward, who desperately wanted to do something for the war effort, and he produced, wrote the screenplay, composed the stirring musical score and starred as Captain Edward Kinross. Coward also officially co-directed, though in reality he soon handed the reigns over to David Lean, whose directorial debut this became. There is a fine performance from Celia Johnson, anticipating her character in Lean and Coward's Brief Encounter (1946) and excellent support from John Mills, as well as a star-making debut from an uncredited Richard Attenborough. The use of real navy and army personal as extras, together with lavish studio production and authentic shipboard location footage lends the film a sense of realism unusual for the time. A landmark in the careers of many of the most important names in British film, this moving and occasionally harrowing classic has a vital place in the development of British cinema. On the DVD: The image is presented in a close approximation of the original 1. 37:1 Academy ratio using a print that is good for its age but which would benefit from some restoration, several scenes showing notable damage. The sound is robust mono, though the main title music is very distorted. [+]

Stunning tropical scenery and gorgeous athletic movie stars may not make a movie great, but they sure don't hurt. Jared (Paul Walker, The Fast and the Furious) dreams of finding sunken treasure and making millions, but his girlfriend Sam (Jessica Alba, Fantastic Four, Sin City) is content with their poor but idyllic life in the Bahamas. Still, when they find artefacts from a 19th century pirate ship, she gets caught up in the excitement-until they also find a crashed plane full of smuggled cocaine. Naturally, someone's going to want that cocaine back. From there, Into the Blue is a surprisingly well-plotted action film, unpredictable in its specifics if familiar in its broader outlines. Even more pleasant, the action itself stays plausible and genuinely engaging throughout. Jared seems able to hold his breath for a preternaturally long time, but aside from that the film is meticulous about the dangers and threats the characters face and is all the stronger for it. Add to this its unabashed ogling of Alba and Walker (both of whom are astonishing physical specimens) and you have a solid romp. [+]

Men in Black This imaginative summer comedy from director Barry Sonnenfeld (Get Shorty) is a lot of fun, largely on the strength of Will Smith's engaging performance as the rookie partner of a secret agent (Tommy Lee Jones) assigned to keep tabs on Earth-dwelling extraterrestrials. There's lots of comedy to spare in this bright film, some of the funniest stuff found in the margins of the major action. (A scene with Smith's character being trounced in the distance by a huge alien while Jones questions a witness is a riot. ) The inventiveness never lets up, and the cast-including Vincent D'Onofrio doing frighteningly convincing work as an alien occupying a decaying human-hold up their end splendidly. -Tom Keogh Men in Black II More remake than sequel, Men in Black II safely repeats everything that made Men in Black the blockbuster hit of 1997. That's fine if you loved the original's fresh humour, weird aliens and loopy ingenuity, but as sequels go, it's pure déjà vu. Make-up wizard Rick Baker is the only MIB alumnus who's trying anything new, while director Barry Sonnenfeld and costars Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones (as alien-fighting agents Jay and Kay, respectively) are on autopilot with an uninspired screenplay. The quest of a multi-tentacled alien-on Earth in the form of Lara Flynn Boyle-for the light of Zartha requires Jay to deneuralize Kay, whose restored memory contains the key to saving the planet. The tissue-thin premise allows all varieties of special effects-mostly familiar, with some oddly hilarious new stuff tossed in for good measure. Certainly enjoyable as a popcorn distraction, but the MIB magic has worn a bit thin. [+]