Let's face it, sometimes you just want to watch some fluff. The ever-expanding subgenre of cheerleader cinema offers dependable fluff, of which Man of the House is a shiny, frivolous example. After a multiethnic cheerleading squad witnesses a mob execution, Texas Ranger Roland Sharp (Tommy Lee Jones) is assigned to protect them. That's all you need to know-a formulaic plot follows, but the filmmakers recognizes that the formula is known by all so they doesn't waste time with unnecessary exposition. Instead, we go straight to amusing scenes of Sharp teaching the unruly (and scantily clad) girls some discipline and the girls teaching Sharp to loosen up and forge a better relationship with his estranged daughter. It's a one-joke movie, but thanks to Jones' leathery hound-dog face and cowpoke gravitas, the contrast between the girls and Sharp keeps being funny. Of its kind, Man of the House isn't in the same league as Bring It On (pretty much the ne plus ultra of cheerleader movies), but it's head and shoulders over the likes of Sugar & Spice. -Bret Fetzer, Amazon. com.

Jackie Chan looks spiffy in The Tuxedo, but the movie needs a tailor. No Jackie Chan movie could be a total misfire, however, and he's charmingly self-effacing here as a hapless chauffeur who inadvertently replaces his injured super-agent boss (Jason Issacs) and foils a madman (Ritchie Coster) who plans to infect the world's water supply and reap a fortune selling pure bottled water. Jackie's a bumbling superhero after donning his boss's high-tech, Inspector Gadget-like tuxedo (it even has a "Mambo" setting), and curvaceous co-agent Jennifer Love Hewitt coaches him in crime fighting while closing in on the bad guys. It's all as routinely ridiculous as it sounds-Jackie's faux James Brown act is the only real highlight-and as critic Roger Ebert observed, the climax hinges on an insect queen that doesn't exist in nature! So, while Jackie and Jennifer provide a few moments of stellar stunts and random amusement, you can blame this mess on screenwriters who didn't do their homework. -Jeff Shannon.

It was directed with energetic skill by Top Gun Tony Scott, but this breathtaking 1993 thriller (think of it as an adolescent crime fantasy on steroids) has Quentin Tarantino written all over it. True Romance is really part of a loose trilogy that includes Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, with a crackling Tarantino screenplay that rides a fine line between raucous comedy and violent excess. Christian Slater plays Clarence, the comic-book lover who meets a beguiling prostitute named Alabama (Patricia Arquette), confronts her vicious pimp (Gary Oldman), and embarks on a cross-country odyssey with $5 million worth of Mafia cocaine. Mayhem ensues, culminating in a favourite Tarantino climax-the "Mexican standoff"-in which a roomful of guys are pointing guns at each other, waiting to see who shoots first. Brutal, profane, and totally outrageous, True Romance is not for everyone, but with a supporting cast that includes Dennis Hopper, Christopher Walken, Brad Pitt, and Val Kilmer (as the ghost of Elvis!), you can be sure this movie will never be boring. -Jeff Shannon Written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by Tony Scott, True Romance is hilarious, violent and strangely moving. It's part homage to Terence Malick's Badlands, part autobiography, part nerdy male fantasy-and it's Tarantino's first and, some say, finest work. Although it fared poorly at the box office at the time it soon became an established cult classic, with a supporting cast that beggars belief: Brad Pitt, Christopher Walken, James Gandolfini, Val Kilmer, Dennis Hopper, Samuel L Jackson and Gary Oldman all play minor roles, all to devastating effect. Christian Slater stars as Clarence, the video-store clerk who's set up with Patricia Arquette's hooker Alabama on his birthday. They fall in love for real but have to hit the road when Clarence, egged on by the ghost of Elvis, kills Alabama's pimp Drexl (Oldman) and makes off with a consignment of neat cocaine, mistaking it for a suitcase of Alabama's clothes. [+]

The 2004 version of Around the World in 80 Days is an entertaining hodge-podge of adventure, comedy, and scenery from across the globe. Phileas Fogg (Steve Coogan, 24 Hour Party People), an obsessively precise inventor, bets that he can circumnavigate the planet in 80 days-considered impossible in the Victorian era. In this version, Jackie Chan plays a Chinese peasant who retrieves a stolen idol from the Bank of England, then convinces Fogg to hire him as a French valet so that Chan can get back to his village. Chan supplies numerous spectacular fights against the forces trying to stop Fogg or get the idol, while Coogan is both funny and a surprisingly appealing romantic lead (he flirts with a fetching French painter who joins them). The various episodes-featuring cameos by Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Cleese, Owen Wilson, and Sammo Hung-are uneven, but a goofy good cheer prevails. -Bret Fetzer.

Buster Keaton's 1926 masterpiece The General shows the great stone-faced comedian at the height of his powers. Buster is a train driver from the South who's caught up in the American Civil War. The film is basically an extended chase, with trains pursuing each other up the track. The level of stuntwork (including a huge train wreck) has to be seen to be believed, but it's the deftness and elegance of Keaton's comedy that is ultimately most memorable. For many, Buster Keaton is the greatest comedian of the silent era rated even above Chaplin, and College (1927) is one of his finest films. A poor student who has to work his way through college, Buster is desperate to win the attention of a pretty girl so takes up sports. Through every disaster, the great "stone face" as he was nicknamed betrays not a flicker of emotion, enduring all humiliations with aplomb. College shows Keaton at the top of his form. Steamboat Bill Jr dates from 1928 and is the last great film Buster Keaton made before he gave up his independence. Buster is the rather fey son of an elderly steamboat owner who is being driven out of business by a wealthy competitor. [+]

Filmmaker Robert Zemeckis topped his breakaway hit Romancing the Stone with this joyous comedy with a dazzling hook: what would it be like to meet your parents in their youth? Billed as a special-effects comedy, the imaginative film (the top box-office smash of 1985) has staying power because of the heart behind Zemeckis and Bob Gale's script. High schooler Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox, during the height of his TV success) is catapulted back to the '50s where he sees his parents in their teens, and accidentally changes the history of how Mom and Dad met. Filled with the humourous ideology of the '50s, filtered through the knowledge of the '80s (actor Ronald Reagan is president, ha!), the film comes off as a Twilight Zone episode written by Preston Sturges. Filled with memorable effects and two wonderfully off-key, perfectly cast performances: Christopher Lloyd as the crazy scientist who builds the time machine (a DeLorean luxury car) and Crispin Glover as Marty's geeky dad. Followed by two sequels. -Doug Thomas.

Rush Hour 2 retains the appeal of its popular predecessor, so fans will enjoy the antics of the returning stars, Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan. The action-and there's plenty of it-starts in Hong Kong, where Detective Lee (Chan) and his LA counterpart Detective Carter (Tucker) are attempting a vacation, only to get assigned to sleuth a counterfeiting scheme involving a Triad kingpin (John Lone), his lethal henchwoman (Zhang Ziyi, from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and an American billionaire (Alan King). Director Brett Ratner simply lets his stars strut their stuff, so it hardly matters that the plot is disposable, or that his direction is so bland he may well have directed the film from a phone in a Jacuzzi. At its best, Rush Hour 2 compares favourably to Chan's glossiest Hong Kong hits, and when the action moves to Las Vegas (where Don Cheadle makes an unbilled cameo), the film goes into high-pitched hyper-drive, riding an easy wave of ambitious stunt-work and broad, derivative humour. However, echoes of Beverly Hills Cop are easy to see and stale ideas (including a comedic highlight for Jeremy Piven as a gay clothier) are made even more aggravating by dialogue that's almost Neanderthal in its embrace of retro-racial stereotypes. Of course, that's what makes Rush Hour 2 a palatable dish of mainstream comedy: it insults and comforts the viewer at the same time, and while some may find Tucker's relentless hamming unbearable, those who enjoyed Rush Hour are sure to appreciate another dose of Chan-Tucker lunacy. -Jeff Shannon, Amazon. com.

Space Cowboys is a slice of cornball Americana that's so much fun you'll be tempted to stand up and salute. Director and co-star Clint Eastwood manages to turn what might have been ludicrous into a jubilant tribute to age and experience, and Space Cowboys succeeds as two movies in one-a comedy about retired pilots given one last shot at glory and an Apollo 13-like thriller with all the requisite heroics. With a dream cast of Hollywood vets playing old farts described in tabloids as "The Ripe Stuff", the movie jumps from a 1958 prologue (establishing their lost bid for space travel) to 40-plus years later, when the retired Air Force aces (Eastwood, James Garner, Donald Sutherland, Tommy Lee Jones) volunteer to rescue a falling Russian satellite that only Eastwood's character can repair. It turns out that Russkie bird is a Cold War leftover equipped with live nuclear warheads, and the movie revs up to a rousing climax in which our heroes prove their mettle. But first the comedy: watching these codgers struggle to pass NASA's physical tests is a total hoot, with running gags about wrinkles, dentures, and oysters for sagging libidos. (Sutherland is the scene-stealer, but they're all having a blast. ) Once in space, the movie gets down to business, and the visual-effects wizards at Industrial Light and Magic provide stunning vistas from Earth's orbit; a shot looking down at the boot of Italy is particularly beautiful. A sub-plot involving a weasely NASA administrator (James Cromwell) is rather perfunctory, but it hardly matters. Space Cowboys earns its wings, once again demonstrating Eastwood's comfort with any genre he chooses. -Jeff Shannon, Amazon. [+]

In Rumble in the Bronx Jackie Chan plays a visitor to America who agrees to fend off a biker gang's designs on his uncle's market in the Bronx. If you can get past the Vancouver skyline substituting for the New York City neighbourhood, and the cheesy dubbing job, this is another of Chan's startling, balletic takes on martial arts action. (It's also his first breakthrough American film. ) Even if you don't have an interest in fight films, this is worth seeing just for Chan's endless grace as a body in motion. -Tom Keogh, Amazon. com.

This enjoyable thriller, written and directed by Phil Alden Robinson (the screenwriter of Field of Dreams), follows a raggedy group of corporate security experts who get in over their heads when they accept an assignment poaching some hot hardware for the National Security Agency. Robert Redford plays the group's guru, an ageing techno-anarchist who has been hiding from the feds since the early 1970s; his companionable gang of freaks includes Dan Aykroyd, David Strathairn, Mary McDonnell, the late River Phoenix, and Sidney Poitier, as a veteran CIA operative turned "sneaker. " The technological black box that everybody is after, an array of computer chips that can decode any encrypted message, isn't a very plausible invention, but it's a serviceable McGuffin, and the megalomania of the master plotter played by Ben Kingsley has more resonance than most. Modest inferences can be drawn about the very latest high-tech threats to civil liberties. -David Chute, Amazon. com.

Modern blockbuster cinema came of age with the release of three huge science fiction/fantasy extravaganzas in the late 1970s. In 1978 Superman was the last of these, a gigantic hit unfairly overshadowed by Star Wars (1977) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). Christopher Reeve is completely convincing as both Superman and mild-mannered alter ego Clarke Kent, sparking real chemistry with Margot Kidder's fellow reporter Lois Lane. Very much a film of two halves, the opening tells the origin of Superman from the apocalyptic fate of Krypton to his nostalgically rendered boyhood in the mid-West. After a wonderful sequence introducing the Fortress of Solitude the film changes gear as the adult Clarke Kent arrives in Metropolis and Superman battles arch-nemesis Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman). Though the tone becomes lighter and introduces comedy, Superman succeeds because Donner plays the titular character straight. From Marlon Brando's heavyweight cameo to the surprisingly wrenching finale, Superman unfolds as an epic modern myth, a spiritual fable for a secular age and a fantastic entertainment for the young at heart. With breathtaking production design, still special effects, gorgeous cinematography, thrilling set-pieces, wit, romance and John Williams' extraordinarily rich music score, Superman has the power to make you believe a man can fly. On the DVD: Superman is presented in an extended director's cut which adds eight minutes to the theatrical original. The restored material is so artfully integrated many viewers may not even notice, but it would have been nice to at least have the opportunity to watch the original via seamless branching. [+]