A truly perfect movie, the 1942 Casablanca still wows viewers today, and for good reason. Its unique story of a love triangle set against terribly high stakes in the war against a monster is sophisticated instead of outlandish, intriguing instead of garish. Humphrey Bogart plays the allegedly apolitical club owner in unoccupied French territory that is nevertheless crawling with Nazis; Ingrid Bergman is the lover who mysteriously deserted him in Paris; and Paul Heinreid is her heroic, slightly bewildered husband. Claude Rains, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, and Conrad Veidt are among what may be the best supporting cast in the history of Hollywood films. This is certainly among the most spirited and ennobling movies ever made. -Tom Keogh This generously filled two-disc special edition presentation of Casablanca features the film itself in an impressively clean new digital transfer on the first disc, with hiss-free mono sound. It's prefaced by a rather pointless introduction from Lauren Bacall (it would surely be churlish to point out that Casablanca was made two years before Bacall met Bogart) and accompanied by two full-length and fact-packed audio commentaries, one from film critic Roger Ebert, who hardly pauses to take a breath, and the other from film historian Rudy Behlmer, who provides in-depth background detail. The second disc features a plentiful collection of sundry archival features and more from Bacall, who hosts the two documentaries: You Must Remember This: The Making of Casablanca and a retrospective of Bogie's career, Bacall on Bogart. Of minor interest are two very short deleted scenes-Laszlo and Rick at the jail, and a German officer's pratfall-which in lieu of any surviving audio track have been subtitled from the original script; there's also five minutes of silent outtakes. An audio-only sample of Max Steiner's music-scoring sessions features Dooley Wilson singing "Knock on Wood" and "As Time Goes By". [+]

Based on Neil Simon's own play, 1967's Barefoot in the Park is a perennially joyous film starring carefree Jane Fonda and staid lawyer Robert Redford as young newlyweds setting up home in Greenwich Village. Although the opening credits are fragrantly idyllic (aided by Neal Hefti's soundtrack, you can almost smell the blossom in Central Park), the film doesn't idealise apartment living in New York, à la Friends, far from it: Fonda and Redford's apartment is up several flights of stairs; there's a hole in the skylight and the bedroom is the size of a cupboard. All of this puts some strain on the marriage. When Fonda introduces fellow free spirit and ageing, behind-on-the-rent Lothario (Charles Boyer) to her somewhat inhibited mother (Mildred Natwick), the hapless Redford in particular is forced to come to terms with his own inhibitions. Although the second half of the film moves at a less cracking pace than the first, Barefoot in the Park is as exhilarating as a romantic weekend city break. Directo r Gene Saks, scriptwriter Neil Simon and composer Hefti would regroup in 1968 to make the similarly wonderful The Odd Couple. On the DVD: With the aid of filtering, the DVD recaptures the almost unreal colour quality common to films of this period, while the sound is faithful to the nuances of Hefti's soundtrack. The special features are miserly-subtitles, a choice of languages and the original trailer, though this at least conveys the engaging naiveté of the period-("The rarest, unsquarest, happiest motion picture in many a year!"). -David Stubbs.

There have been many film and TV adaptations of Oliver Twist but this 1948 production from director David Lean remains the definitive screen interpretation of the Charles Dickens classic. From the ominous symbolism of its opening storm sequence (in which Oliver's pregnant, ill-fated mother struggles to reach shelter before childbirth) to the mob-scene climax that provokes Bill Sikes's dreadful comeuppance, this breathtaking black-and-white film remains loyal to Dickens while distilling the story into its purest cinematic essence. Every detail is perfect-Lean even includes a coffin-shaped snuffbox for the cruel Mr. Sowerberry-and as young Oliver, eight-year-old John Howard Davies (who would later produce Monty Python's Flying Circus for the BBC) perfectly expresses the orphan's boyish wonderment, stern determination and waifish vulnerability. Best of all is Alec Guinness as Fagin, so devious and yet so delightfully appealing under his beak-nosed (and, at the time, highly controversial) make-up. (Many complained that Fagin's huge nose and greedy demeanour presented an anti-Semitic stereotype, even though Lean never identifies Fagin as Jewish; for this reason, the film wasn't shown in the US until three years after its British release. ) Likewise, young Anthony Newley is artfully dodgy as Fagin's loyal accomplice, the Artful Dodger. Guinness's performance would later provide strong inspiration for Ron Moody's equally splendid portrayal of Fagin in the Oscar-winning Oliver! and while that 1968 musical remains wonderfully entertaining, it is Lean's film that hews closest to Dickens' vision. The authentic recreation of 19th-century London is marvellous to behold; Guy Green's cinematography is so shadowy and stylised that it almost qualifies as Dickensian film noir. Lean is surprisingly blunt in conveying Dickens's theme of cruelty but his film never loses sight of the warmth and humanity that Oliver embodies. [+]

One of the most beloved of all British films, A Canterbury Tale marks yet another occasion to celebrate the Criterion Collection's growing DVD legacy of Powell and Pressburger classics. Originally conceived as good-natured propaganda to support the British-American alliance of World War II, the film became something truly special in the hands of the Archers (a. k. a. writer/director/producers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger). Taking its literary cues from Chaucer's titular classic, it begins with a prologue that harkens back to Chaucer's time before match-cutting to present-day August of 1943, with the night-time arrival of U. S. Army Sgt. Bob Johnson (played with folksy charm by John Sweet, an actual American GI) on the shadowy platform of Canterbury station in the magically rural county of Kent (where Powell was born and raised). He is soon joined by two fellow train passengers: Alison Smith (Sheila Sim), a brashly independent recruit in the British Woman's Land Army; and Peter Gibbs (Dennis Price), a sergeant in the royal Army, and before long they're tracking clues to find "the glue man", a mysterious figure who's been pouring "the sticky stuff" on unsuspecting women as the midnight hour approaches. [+]

Robert Bolt's successful play, A Man for All Seasons, was not considered a hot commercial property by Columbia Pictures-a period piece about a moral issue without a star, without even a love story. Perhaps that's why Columbia left director Fred Zinnemann alone to make the film as long as he stuck to a relatively small budget. The results took everyone by surprise, as the talky morality play became a box-office hit and collected the top Oscars for 1966. At the play's heart is the standoff between King Henry VIII (Robert Shaw, in young lion form) and Sir Thomas More (Paul Scofield, in an Oscar-winning performance). Henry wants More's official approval of divorce, but More's strict ethical and religious code will not let him waffle. More's rectitude is a source of exasperation to Cardinal Wolsey (Orson Welles in a cameo), who chides, "If you could just see facts flat on without that horrible moral squint". Zinnemann's approach is all simplicity, and indeed the somewhat prosaic staging doesn't create a great deal of cinematic excitement. But the language is worth savouring, and the ethical politics are debated with all the calm and majesty of an absorbing chess game. -Robert Horton, Amazon. com.

In the opening scene of Hamlet, Laurence Olivier describes the play in a voice-over as "the tragedy of a man who couldn't make up his mind". But Olivier's screen adaptation is considerably more thoughtful and complex than this thesis would suggest. The contradictions and ambiguities of the title character, who prowls cavernous sets filled with vast, ancient corridors and winding staircases, emerge as if from a dream. The plethora of tracking shots-precise enough to impress Stanley Kubrick-encircle Olivier and his tightly constructed geometry of demise. Drawing on his experience playing the Prince on stage at Elsinore in 1937, the legendary thesp provides the film with the patina of greatness and shows how the constitution of the formerly cheerful Prince weakens increasingly under the burden of his own thoughts and inability to accept his mother's o'er-hasty marriage to uncle Claudius (Basil Sydney). Indeed, if emotions could possess ghosts, Olivier's Hamlet shows how they would manifest themselves. There is even a dollop of Freud, suggesting that Queen Gertrude (Eileen Herlie) has perhaps loved her offspring too closely-thus providing the fuel for Hamlet's actions. As Ophelia, Jeans Simmons captures the character's early spirit better than her gradual disintegration (Helena Bonham Carter fares better in Franco Zeffirelli's fine 1990 remake). Purists may bemoan the loss of Fortinbras, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, but these choices allow Olivier to focus more squarely on Hamlet's plight. His monologues, many held in secret enclaves, glow with the dramatic markedness of a Dostoevski novel, with all of the master's irony, allusions and witticisms in place. [+]

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 MASH-a 1970 comedy-drama set among surgeons drafted into the Korean war-was a breakthrough not just for director Robert Altman but for movie-making in general. Although set in the 50s, there are few who did not realise that the film's anti-war messages were directed at the US involvement in Vietnam. Indeed, the Pentagon banned US servicemen from seeing the film. [+]

Bringing together the trio of adventures featuring Doctor Who's most famous underwater foes, the Beneath The Surface boxset has Sea Devils, Silurians, and adventures from both the Jon Pertwee and Peter Davison eras. It's perhaps logical to get past the weakest of the three adventures in this set first, and that honour falls to the Peter Davison story, Warriors of the Deep. It's not too bad though, even if it does display some of the silliness and budget constraints that helped define 1980s Doctor Who. It's still fun, however, and worth a spin. The two Pertwee adventures are terrific, though, and the real highlights of the set. The Silurians finds Jon Pertwee relatively new to the role, and blessed with an adventure that boasts excitement, adventure and a very good script. But our favourite is nonetheless the second story, The Sea Devils, which also brings Roger Delgado's take on The Master into the mix. It's a tense, involving adventure, and one of the finest of the Jon Pertwee area. That's not something to be said lightly, either. As is the norm with Doctor Who special edition DVDs, the set is then backed up with some terrific archive extras, along with commentary tracks and documentaries that all but justify the asking price alone. [+]