Shot in the rough, 16-millimeter style of a low-budget documentary, Tigerland marked director Joel Schumacher's welcomed return to simplicity after a slew of bloated blockbusters such as Batman & Robin. In revitalising Schumacher's directorial talent, Tigerland-which is partially inspired by the Danish Dogme 95 movement of no-frills filmmaking-suggested that one solution to Hollywood's moribund "product" was to abandon excess, focus on essentials, and assemble a fine cast of unknown actors to make it all worthwhile. To that end, Tigerland also marked the deserving arrival of Irish actor Colin Farrell as Hollywood's hottest new discovery. Its story never leaves US soil, so Tigerland differs from such in-country Vietnam films as Platoon and Full Metal Jacket. Instead, it's about the anxieties and moral dilemmas that arise from the anticipation of death and killing. These roiling emotions are focused on the character of Private Bozz (Farrell), whose insubordination betrays a singular knack for leadership during infantry training at Fort Polk, Louisiana, in 1971. Part RP McMurphy and part Cool Hand Luke, Bozz is a defiant maverick, barely tolerated by his superiors, challenged or revered by his fellow grunts and ultimately honed into a soldier of remarkable promise. An intense final week in the live-ammo training ground nicknamed "Tigerland" galvanises the platoon and Bozz's place in it, and although the film (partially based on co-writer Ross Klavan's own experience) lacks the emotional impact of Platoon, it deals quite poignantly with the internal conflicts that must be waged before external warfare can be endured. -Jeff Shannon, Amazon. com.

The Man from Laramie is the last of five remarkable Westerns Anthony Mann made with James Stewart (starting with Winchester '73 and peaking with The Naked Spur). Only John Ford excelled Mann as a purveyor of eye-filling Western imagery, and Mann's best films are second to no one's when it comes to the fusion of dynamic action, rugged landscapes and fierce psychological intensity. This collaboration marked virtually a whole new career for Stewart, whose characters are all haunted by the past and driven by obsession-here, to find whoever set his cavalry-officer brother in the path of warlike Indians. The Man from Laramie aspires to an epic grandeur beyond its predecessors. It's the only one in CinemaScope, and Stewart's personal quest is subsumed in a larger drama-nothing less than a sagebrush version of King Lear, with a range baron on the verge of blindness (Donald Crisp), his weak and therefore vicious son (Alex Nicol) and another, apparently more solid "son", his Edmund-like foreman (Arthur Kennedy). There are a few too many subsidiary characters, and the reach for thematic complexity occasionally diminishes the impact. But no one will ever forget the scene on the salt flats between Nicol and Stewart-climaxing in the single most shocking act of violence in 50s cinema-or the final, mountain-top confrontation. For decades, the film has been seen only in washed-out, pan-and-scan videos, with the characters playing visual hopscotch from one panel of the original composition to another. It's great to have this glorious DVD-razor-sharp, fully saturated (or as saturated as 50s Eastmancolor could be) and breathtaking in its CinemaScope sweep. -Richard T Jameson, Amazon. [+]

One of the most widely-watched of all the '60s-era Doctor Who serials, The Web Planet (1965) puts the first Doctor (William Hartnell) and his companions in the middle of a war between two alien races-the moth-like Menoptra and a hostile race of ant creatures known as Zarbi-for possession of the planet Vortis. With the help of a grub-esque people called the Optera, the Doctor discovers the Zarbi's hidden weapon-the seductively voiced spider creature the Animus, which plans to ensnare the Time Lord and thwart his assistance to the Menoptra. An estimated 13. 5 million viewers tuned in to watch all six episodes of The Web Planet, which manages to overcome its unfortunately awkward creature costumes (which are grim even by Doctor Who standards) to deliver a dramatic and suspenseful story with a subtle touch of social commentary; Hartnell is at his flinty best as the Doctor, and gets solid support from William Russell, Jacqueline Hill, and Maureen O'Brien as his fellow time travelers. The DVD includes the usual abundance of new and archival extras: in addition to commentary by Russell, Martin Jarvis (who played Menoptra prince Hilio), producer Verity Lambert, and director Richard Martin, there is a 40-minute making-of featurette (with Hill, Lambert, and others among the many interviewees), and Russell provides the narration for "The Lair of the Zarbi Supremo," a short story based on the serial that was taken from the first Doctor Who Annual (that periodical is also included on the disc in PC-ROM format). A crudely illustrated but historically interesting film strip version of the serial, as well as the usual text-only production notes track and photo gallery, round out the supplemental features. -Paul Gaita.

One of the greatest screen biographies ever produced, Patton is a monumental film that won seven Academy Awards and gave George C Scott the greatest role of his career. It was released in 1970 when protest against the Vietnam War still raged in the States and abroad. Inevitably, many critics and filmgoers struggled to reconcile the events of the day with the film's glorification of US General George S Patton as a crazy-brave genius of World War II; how could a film so huge in scope and so fascinated by its subject be considered an anti-war film? The simple truth is that it's not-Patton is less about World War II than about the rise and fall of a man whose life was literally defined by war and who felt lost and lonely without the grand-scale pursuit of an enemy. George C Scott embodies his role so fully, so convincingly, that we can't help but be drawn to and fascinated by Patton as a man who is simultaneously bound for hell and glory. The film's opening monologue alone is a masterful display of acting and character analysis and everything that follows is sheer brilliance on the part of Scott and director Franklin J Schaffner, aided in no small part by composer Jerry Goldsmith's masterfully understated score. Filmed on an epic scale at literally dozens of European locations, Patton does not embrace war as a noble pursuit, nor does it deny the reality of war as a breeding ground for heroes. Through the awesome achievement of Scott's performance and the film's grand ambition, General Patton shows all the complexities of a man who accepted his role in life and (like Scott) played it to the hilt. -Jeff Shannon, Amazon. comOn the DVD: The widescreen print of the movie (which was originally filmed using a super-wide 70mm process called "Dimension 150") is handsomely presented on the first disc, with a remastered Dolby 5. 1 soundtrack. [+]

John Huston (The Maltese Falcon) directed this smart thriller about a gangster (Edward G. Robinson) who holds a number of people hostage in a hotel on the Florida keys during a tropical storm. Humphrey Bogart is the returning war veteran who takes on the villains, and Lauren Bacall is on hand as one of the people on the wrong end of Robinson's gun. Somewhat similar in tone to Howard Hawks's To Have and Have Not (which also featured Bogart and Bacall), Key Largo is a moody movie which captures a certain despair offset by the bond between individuals united by common purpose. Claire Trevor won an Academy Award for her part as Robinson's alcoholic girlfriend. -Tom Keogh.

Legend has it that Orson Welles more or less conned studio boss Harry Cohn over the phone into making The Lady from Shanghai by grabbing the title from a nearby paperback. In any case, this is one of Welles's most fascinating works, a bizarre tale of an Irish sailor (Welles) who accompanies a beautiful woman (Rita Hayworth) and her handicapped husband (Everett Sloane) on a cruise and becomes involved in a murder plot. But never mind all that (the aforementioned legend also claims that Cohn offered a reward to anyone who could explain the plot to him). The film is really a dream of Welles's driving preoccupations both on and off-screen at the time: the elusiveness of identity, the mystique of things lost, and most of all the director's faltering marriage to Hayworth. In the tradition of male filmmakers who indirectly tell the story of their love affairs with leading ladies, Welles tells his own, photographing Hayworth as a deconstructed star, an obvious cinematic creation, thus reflecting, perhaps, a never-satisfied yearning that leads us back to the mystery of Citizen Kane. -Tom Keogh.

It was always going to be a risk for the BBC to revamp Doctor Who-few television programmes inspire as much rabid and cultish adoration. With the 2005 series, however, the BBC have really outdone themselves. Their updated Doctor Who is a revelation: a cult science fiction series that has real mass appeal, and works for both children and their parents. Christopher Eccleston is an inspired and charismatic Doctor-he leaps around the sets with an unrestrained glee, like he's a child running amok in a toy shop. His enthusiasm in downright infectious. His sidekick Rose (Billie Piper) adds a real human touch, particularly as she gradually and believably matures from in-over-her-head city kid to tough-minded interplanetary hero. Much of the credit must go to writer Russell Davies, who has a much-practiced knack for finding popular appeal without dumbing-down his ideas, and who appears to have let his imagination run riot. Even the special effects, whilst not of a big-budget cinematic quality, still manage to strike a balance between cheesiness and realism. Thrilling, funny and thoroughly entertaining, this Doctor Who is a hero for the new millennium. -Robert Burrow.