Coyote Ugly is either a girls' film for boys or a boys' film for girls. Either way, it's undemanding tosh that remixes 80s "classics" like Fame, Cocktail, Flashdance and Dirty Dancing for the turn of the century. The main attraction is Coyote Ugly itself, a raucous New York bar run by tough-on-the-outside softie Lil (Maria Bello) where the drinks and the customers are straight and the girls who serve have to be skilled at lightning-fast mental maths when adding up complex rounds as well as a sort of clothed stripping as they line-dance, karaoke-wail or pole-hug on top of the often-flaming bar itself. The plot is a trifle about a shrinking violet actually called Violet (Piper Parabo) who comes to the big city to do one-better than her showbiz near-miss deceased mother and make it as a songwriter but is paralysed by a stage-fright she only overcomes after a couple of energetic nights working the crowds at Coyote Ugly. There's the usual on-off romance, with a sensitive Australian bloke (Adam Garcia) and some soap with an estranged Dad (always-good-value John Goodman) who is hospitalised at just the right moment to prompt a family revelation and a reunion that pays off with a not-unexpected happy ending. It all boils down to a 12-certificate teenage magazine romance set in what amounts to a nudie bar where there's no actual nudity. Both the men in the heroine's life seriously question whether writhing suggestively for drunken lechers is an empowering activity for an independent girl but since that's more or less the film's strongest visual effect the script has to come down on the side of the girls-if not the customers. The supporting babes-Russian blonde Cammie (Izabella Miko), ferocious brunette Rachel (Bridget Moynahan) and upwardly-mobile Zoe (Tyra Banks)-gyrate and model Spice Girls cast-off gear, but make less of an impression than Melanie Lynskey (the "other one" from Heavenly Creatures) as the devoted, slightly dumpy best friend back home. Like most Jerry Bruckheimer products, it's slickly put-together, at once exciting and predictable, cut like a commercial or a pop promo, directed by a non-entity (David McNally), fantastical yet blue-collar "real" and self-destructs in the mind after viewing. -Kim NewmanOn the DVD: The disc is jammed with special features and bonus material: "Search for the Stars" outlines the quest to find the young cast members; "Inside the Song" offers an analysis of the tunes, a voiceover by LeAnn Rimes and the thoughts of songwriter Diana Warren; "Coyote 101"describes the ins and outs of the bar itself, from the drink mixes to the dancers; while "Action Overload" simply shows full-force action sequences from the film. [+]

Thunderbirds Are Go followed the remarkable success of the Thunderbirds television series, bringing the three-dimensional puppet animation adventures of International Rescue to the big screen. Set in the 21st century, there is no attempt to explain the background story: as in the TV show International Rescue is a private family organisation who use hi-tech craft to rescue anyone in peril. Here it is the first manned flight to Mars which is in danger, as International Rescue foils a sabotage attempt at the launch, then race to avert disaster when the spaceship returns to earth. What could have made a 50-minute TV episode is expanded to feature length with Martian "rock monsters" and a surreal dream-sequence involving Alan Tracy, Lady Penelope and "Cliff Richard Jnr" & the Shadows, with a new song performed by the real Cliff and the Shadows. In the cinemas this was competing against another British children's TV SF spin-off, the equally colourful Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150AD, and would be followed by Thunderbird 6 (1968). Yet apart from more complex model work, a bigger orchestra and even bigger explosions, on TV this plays like a widescreen double-length episode. On the DVD: The mono sound is powerful, with Barry Gray's stirring music suffering intermittent distortion. Presented in anamorphic widescreen the picture is very good, with strong colours and only minimal grain, though the print does show occasional damage. Unfortunately the original extremely wide 2. 74:1 Techniscope image is cropped to more conventional 2. [+]

Baby Einstein: Language Nursery is from the award-winning infant-developmental media company of the same name, whose goal and philosophy is the satisfaction of a child's curiosity through sight and sound. In the main "Theatre" section of this disc you'll find lots of simple shapes, primary colours and favourite toys passing across the screen. Everything is accompanied by soothing and tinkling nursery-rhyme tunes. Every so often, a narrating female voice will move from English into another language-all of which is designed to expose your child to the wider world of languages. A video tutorial explains things just in case the parent is scratching their head as to what they're meant to do. It really is as simple as plonking junior down for half an hour to be colourfully distracted in a manner designed to educate as well as entertain. This is the simplest of the company's releases, making for an ideal introduction to what they're about. Others in the series focus on musical or artistic themes to expand upon all the ideas contained here. -Paul Tonks.