This 1988 comedy starred and was scripted by John Cleese and directed by Charles Crichton, veteran Ealing Comedy director. After 1986's Clockwise-in which he played a manic loser similar to Basil Fawlty-A Fish Called Wanda saw Cleese opting for a more sympathetic lead role. Cleese plays Archie Leach (Cary Grant's real name), a barrister living a typically English life of quiet desperation, who falls prey to the American charms of Jamie Lee Curtis. Posing as a law student, she's actually involved in a diamond robbery with psychotic but occasionally clueless Kevin Kline ("The London Underground is not a revolutionary movement!") and Michael Palin, an animal rights' activist. A Fish Called Wanda is, typically of Cleese, well constructed but the romantic heart of the movie softens it a little. It was intended as a satire on Anglo-American differences but most people remember it for a running joke involving squashed dogs, the chips up Palin's nose and the scene where Cleese is hung out of a window by his ankles. The same cast reassembled for 1997's vastly inferior Fierce Creatures. -David Stubbs A Fish Called Wanda was the blockbuster which proved that John Cleese could be a movie star in his own right. Directed by the Veteran Charles Crichton, who made the 1951 Ealing Comedies classic The Lavender Hill Mob, Wanda combined Ealing-comedy capers and Basil Fawlty-esque farce with contemporary big-screen swearing and black comedy. The plot develops in classic film noir style as Cleese's lawyer, Archie Leech, gets sucked into the double-crossing aftermath of a London diamond heist. [+]

When you get lost between the moon and New York City (ahem), chances are you'll find yourself taking another look at this hit comedy starring Oscar-nominated Dudley Moore as the charmingly witty, perpetually drunken millionaire Arthur Bach. Arthur falls in love with a waitress (Liza Minelli) who doesn't care about his money but unfortunately Arthur's stern father wants him to marry a Waspy prima donna. The young lush turns to his wise and loyal butler (Oscar-winner John Gielgud) for assistance and advice. Arthur was a huge hit when released in 1981, as was its Oscar-winning theme song by Christopher Cross. Few remember that the movie was,sadly, the only one ever made by writer-director Steve Gordon, who died less than a year after the film's release. Consistently funny and heartwarming, Arthur was hailed as a tribute to the great romantic comedies of the 1930s. -Jeff Shannon.

It's hard to believe, but for the first three seasons nobody really knew that Seinfeld was about, well, you know. It wasn't until season 4-unleashed here in a four-disc set that's equal in scope, quality, and quantity of bonus material to its predecessors-that the show really became something. In a series which can claim every installment as classic, the two-parter on disc 1 titled "The Pitch/The Ticket" truly stands out as a defining episode and, in retrospect, marked Seinfeld 4 as the breakthrough season. It's the one where (fake) NBC executives express their interest in working with Jerry Seinfeld on a TV show, then moves to the who's-on-first shtick of George successfully pitching Jerry on creating "a show about nothing. " Scattered throughout the discs in commentaries by cast and creators and in numerous "Inside Look" documentaries, nearly everyone expresses some anxiety about the season having a story "arc" depicting Jerry and his "real" life becoming a sitcom. The show had been only marginally successful up to that point anyway, and with the edict, "no hugging, no learning," still in place, maybe messing with nothing was a bad idea. What makes the arc so arch is the self-reflexive way it details the reality of Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David coming up with the concept and pitching it to (real) NBC executives as a show that really was about, well, you know. In one of the many informally informative interview segments, Jerry remembers hitting a stride during this time when a lot of crazy ideas started to make sense. "Everything was just a wild guess," he says, "and it takes a while to get confident that you're guessing pretty good. I think sometime in season 4 we realized we were guessing pretty good. [+]

A pampered socialite (Goldie Hawn) is so distraught after the wedding-ni ght death of her husband (Albert Brooks) that she up and joins the Army. She whines, she pouts, she brings the corps down, until, of course, she gets with it. Eileen Brennan received a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her role as the butch Captain Doreen Lewis, Benjamin's nemesis. Funny and winning, the film takes an odd turn when Benjamin is assigned to the international theatre and gets involved with a dour Frenchman (Armand Assante). Of course, it's all part of Benjamin's growth as a person, and the part confirmed that Hawn had gone from a go-go girl to a "you go" girl. -Keith Simanton, Amazon. com.

Sometimes grace and hope come in surprising packages. The title character of Hedwig and the Angry Inch-a would-be glam-rock star from East Germany-undergoes a botched gender-change operation in order to escape from the Soviet bloc, only to watch the Berlin Wall come down on TV after being abandoned in a trailer park in middle America. Hedwig gets involved with Tommy, an adolescent boy who steals her songs and becomes a stadium-filling musical act. Suffering from a broken heart and a lust for revenge, Hedwig follows Tommy's tour, playing with her band (The Angry Inch) at tacky theme restaurants. Into this simple storyline, writer-director-star John Cameron Mitchell packs an astonishing mix of sadness, yearning, humour and kick-ass songs with a little Platonic philosophy tucked inside for good measure. A visually dazzling gem of a movie. -Bret Fetzer, Amazon. com.

First aired in 1990-91, the second series of The Simpsons proved that, far from being a one-joke sitcom about the all-American dysfunctional family, it had the potential to become a whole hilarious universe. The animation had settled down (in the first series, the characters look eerily distorted when viewed years later), while Dan Castellaneta, who voiced Homer, decided to switch from a grumpy Walter Matthau impression to a more full-on, bulbous wail. The series' population of minor characters began to grow with the inclusion of Dr Hibbert, McBain and attorney Lionel Hutz, while the writers became more seamless in their ability to weave pastiche of classic movies into the plot lines. While relatively "straight" by later standards (the surreal forays of future seasons are kept in check here), Season Two contains some of the most memorable episodes ever made, indeed some of the finest American comedy ever made. These include "O Brother, Where Art Thou?", in which Homer is reunited with, and ruins the business of, his long-lost brother ("He was an unbridled success-until he discovered he was a Simpson"), "Dead Putting Society", in which Homer lives out his rivalry with neighbour Ned Flanders through a crazy-golf competition between the sons ("If you lose, you're out of the family!") and one of the greatest ever episodes, "Lisa's Substitute", which not only features poor little Lisa's crush on a supply teacher voiced by Dustin Hoffman but also Bart's campaign to become class president. "A vote for Bart is a vote for anarchy!", warns Martin, the rival candidate. By way of a retort, Bart promises faithfully, "A vote for Bart is a vote for anarchy!". -David Stubbs On the DVD: The Simpsons, Season 2, like its DVD predecessor, has neat animated menus on all four discs as well as apparently endless copyright warnings, but nothing as useful as a "play all" facility. The discs are more generously filled than Season 1, however, and each episode has an optional group commentary from Matt Groening and various members of his team. The fourth disc has sundry snippets including the Springfield family at the Emmy Awards ceremony, Julie Kavner dressed up as Bart at the American Music Awards and videos for both "Do the Bartman" and "Deep, Deep Trouble" (all with optional commentary). [+]

This gentle comedy almost seems like something out of Hollywood's Golden Age, a movie that might have been made by a talented contract director, perhaps featuring Don Ameche and Claudette Colbert. But in fact One Fine Day stars George Clooney as an investigative columnist for a New York newspaper and Michelle Pfeiffer as an architect. Both single parents, the two meet and bicker and develop a relationship over the course of a day while their young children play together. Michael Hoffman (Restoration) directs with a good sense of what's funny about harried caretakers and kids who do whatever they want to do. The story stretches out of shape a bit when Clooney's character has to rally to prove some point of corruption at City Hall; nobody involved seems quite up to making that subplot believable, but all that really matters about this very nice movie is the winning love story. -Tom Keogh.

Expanding their one-joke skit from US television's Saturday Night Live, Chris Kattan and Will Ferrell are Doug and Steve Butabi, the wearers of the rayon suits and Speedo trunks who bob their heads in unison to dance music while unsuccessfully preying on women in clubs. What's funny in a three-minute piece doesn't always get funnier by expansion, but Kattan and Ferrell give it a go with fellow SNL member Molly Shannon as their ambitious neighbour. By day they work in their father's fake-plant store. By night they prowl the club scene after spraying on the cologne in their gauchely decorated bedroom. A fender-bender with Richard Grieco (playing himself) gets them into the popular club the Roxbury, but it's not all good news, as the brothers soon find themselves torn apart. Doug and Steve are pathetic but lovable, mostly due to the actors' talents for self-deprecating humour. All gifted comedians, Kattan, Ferrell, and Shannon obviously feel comfortable around each other, and their love triangle (which prompts send-ups of Say Anything and Jerry Maguire) is the funniest joke in this mostly lame comedy. Too bad, because it clocks in at about 80 minutes and could have run on television as a pretty good episode of SNL, which has been known to get a bit lame itself. -Shannon Gee.