When it comes to ramping up to vein-bursting levels of tormented anxiety , Mel Gibson has a kind of mainstream intensity that makes him perfect for his heroic-father role in director Ron Howard's child-kidnapping thriller. When you think of Ransom, you automatically think of the scene in which Mel reaches his boiling point and yells, "Give me back my son!" to the kidnapper on the other end of a phone. Trapped in the middle of any parent's nightmare, Mel plays a self-made airline mogul whose son (played by Brawley Nolte, son of actor Nick Nolte) is abducted by a close-knit group of uptight kidnappers. But when a king's ransom is demanded for the child's safe return, Mel turns the tables and offers the ransom as reward money for anyone who provides information leading to the kidnappers' arrest. Thus begins a nerve-racking battle of wills and a test of the father's conviction to carry out a plan that could cost his son's life. The boy's mother (played by Rene Russo, reunited with Gibson after Lethal Weapon 3) disapproves of her husband's life-threatening gamble, and a seasoned FBI negotiator (Delroy Lindo) is equally fearful of disaster as the search for the kidnappers intensifies. Through it all, Howard maintains a level of nail-biting tension to match Gibson's desperate ploy, and the plot twists are just clever enough to cancel out the overwrought performances and manipulative screenplay. Ransom may not be as sophisticated as its glossy production design would suggest, but it's a thriller with above-average intelligence and an emotion-driven plot that couldn't be more urgent. Adding to the intensity is a superior supporting cast including Gary Sinise, Lili Taylor and Liev Schreiber as the kidnappers, who demonstrate that even the tightest scheme can unravel under unexpected stress. Remade from a 1956 film starring Glenn Ford, Ransom is diluted by a few too many subplots, but as a high-stakes game of cat and mouse, it's a slick and satisfying example of Hollywood entertainment. [+]

Despite its inevitable fate as a critically reviled box-office flop, Basic Instinct 2 sure has a funny way of holding your attention. It's not just Sharon Stone's trash-talk and occasional nudity that keeps you watching, but also the way she gamely earns every cent of her $14 million paycheck, vamping like a real pro in her second outing as mystery novelist and alleged serial killer Catherine Tramell. Now living in London, Catherine sets her lethal sights on Michael Glass (David Morrissey), the control-freak psychiatrist assigned to evaluate her as a risk-addicted suspect in the "accidental" killing of a star soccer player. Turns out Catherine's just getting started (or is she?), and that's bad news for Glass's ex-wife, a tabloid journalist, and the Scotland Yard detective (David Thewlis) who's desperate to put Catherine in jail. With plenty of sex, murder and salacious dialogue, BI2 is certainly never boring, especially with the morbid fascination of seeing the once formidable Stone torpedo her career in a sequel that took 14 years (and countless drafts of screenplays and at least one high-profile lawsuit) to bring to the screen. She's still impressively hot at age 47, prompting critic Roger Ebert to observe, "the Catherine Tramell role cannot be played well, but Sharon Stone can play it badly better than any other actress alive. " So, while this ill-fated sequel falls just short of being a guilty pleasure (if only because Morrissey is no match for Michael Douglas in the 1992 original), it's enjoyably absurd and slickly produced, and the hot-tub scene is guaranteed to wear out the freeze-frame function on a lot of DVD players. For some viewers, that's reason enough for multiple viewings. - Jeff Shannon.

Alfred Burke stars as private eye Frank Marker in the long running drama series featuring all 13 episodes from the final 1975 series.

Possessed of startlingly fresh performances and a visual style of genuine panache, Shallow Grave was deservedly a BAFTA Best Film winner in 1994. This was clearly a film that deserved attention. Sure enough, the principal talents involved (Director Danny Boyle, Producer Andrew Macdonald, Writer John Hodge and actors Christopher Eccleston and Ewan McGregor) have gone on to huge successes both together (Trainspotting) and apart. The thriller's plot is simple enough: three flatmates take on a fourth (Keith Allen) who unexpectedly dies, leaving a mountain of cash behind. Who are your friends? Who can you trust? How far would you go for money? These are the questions facing Juliet (Kerry Fox), David (Eccleston) and Alex (McGregor) as the scenario spirals out of control around them. Somehow no matter what they do, the decisions seem to lead to one gruesome event after another. The film's often breakneck pace-backed by tunes from Leftfield-quickly became a much-copied style. Most agree that the copies pale beside the original, and this ice-cold morality poser remains the best view of post-80s greed on screen. On the DVD: Although presented in widescreen anamorphic format, both picture and sound are not much better than an average video playback. Add a static menu and just one trailer and this release will probably disappoint today's DVD collector. [+]

At his best, director John Woo turns action movies into ballets of blood and bullets grounded in character drama. Face/Off marks Woo's first American film to reach the pitched level of his best Hong Kong work (Hard-Boiled). He takes a patently absurd premise-hero and villain exchange identities by literally swapping faces in science-fiction plastic surgery-and creates a double-barrelled revenge film driven by the split psyches of its newly redefined characters. FBI agent Sean Archer (John Travolta) must play the villain to move through the underworld while psychotic terrorist Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage) becomes a perversely paternal family man, while using every tool at his disposal to destroy his nemesis. Travolta vamps Cage's tics and flamboyant excess with the grace of a dancer after his transformation from cop to criminal, while Cage plays the sullen, bottled-up agent excruciatingly trapped behind the face of the man who killed his son. His attempts to live up to the terrorist's reputation become cathartic explosions of violence that both thrill and terrify him. This is merely icing on the cake for action fans, the dramatic backbone for some of the most visceral action thrills ever. Woo fills the screen with one show-stopping set-piece after another, bringing a poetic grace to the action freakout with sweeping camerawork and sophisticated editing. This marriage of melodrama and mayhem ups the ante from cops-and-robbers clichés to a conflict of near-mythic levels. -Sean Axmaker.

It's not quite as clever as it tries to be, but The Game does a tremendous job of presenting the story of a rigid control freak trapped in circumstances that are increasingly beyond his control. Michael Douglas plays a rich, divorced, and dreadful investment banker whose 48th birthday reminds him of his father's suicide at the same age. He's locked in the cage of his own misery until his rebellious younger brother (Sean Penn) presents him with a birthday invitation to play "The Game" (described as "an experiential Book of the Month Club")-a mysterious offering from a company called Consumer Recreation Services. Before he knows the game has even begun, Douglas is caught up in a series of unexplained events designed to strip him of his tenuous security and cast him into a maelstrom of chaos. How do you play a game that hasn't any rules? That's what Douglas has to figure out, and he can't always rely on his intelligence to form logic out of what's happening to him. Seemingly cast as the fall guy in a conspiracy thriller, he encounters a waitress (Deborah Unger) who may or may not be trustworthy, and nothing can be taken at face value in a world turned upside down. Douglas is great at conveying the sheer panic of his character's dilemma, and despite some lapses in credibility and an anticlimactic ending, The Game remains a thinking person's thriller that grabs and holds your attention. -Jeff Shannon.

Not enough people went to see True Crime in cinemas. Wasn't Clint Eastwood too old to be playing a guy who a variety of glorious women, from the middle-aged Diane Venora and Laila Robins to the young Mary McCormack and Lucy Liu, find attractive? Could the onetime Man with No Name credibly play a brilliant crime reporter, Steve Everett, with an ironic turn of phrase and an incurable habit of screwing up both his personal and professional lives? The respective answers to those questions are: hell no and hell yes. True Crime features one of Eastwood's best and most entertaining performances-and his work as director is utterly assured. The story (from Andrew Klavan's bestselling novel) gives Everett the last-minute assignment of interviewing a condemned man (Isaiah Washington) on the eve of his execution. The prisoner, a born-again Christian and exemplary family man, has everything the reporter lacks except a shot at seeing the next sunrise. Everett sets out to get him that, yet far from making a beeline to the exculpatory evidence that will save the life of his "client," this very tarnished hero has to spend a lot of the next 24 hours contending with the baggage he's accumulated through drinking, wenching and familial neglect. (A Pirandellian note: Everett's daughter is played by Eastwood's own daughter, Francesca Fisher-Eastwood, and her mother, Frances Fisher, returns for a feisty cameo as a prosecutor. ) This is a good one that got away. Don't let it happen again. -Richard T Jameson.

Peter Berg's dark comedy about a bachelor party gone horribly awry is highly ambitious in its attempts to satirise suburbia, male bonding, and self-help philosophy, and for the most part it does succeed in hitting its targets with a malicious, misanthropic glee. When five buddies arrive in Las Vegas for some pre-wedding shenanigans, things quickly spiral out of control when the requisite prostitute falls victim to a grisly accident, igniting a spark in an already unstable powder keg of personalities. Following the lead of real estate agent and self-help guy Robert (Christian Slater), the men warily agree on a cover-up and covert desert burial. A couple hours and another corpse later, however, they're already at each other's throats, and their escalating breakdowns threaten to disrupt the highly prized wedding of hard-as-nails bride Laura (a stunning Cameron Diaz). Berg, like most actor-turned-directors (this is The Last Seduction star's filmmaking debut) helms the film with a wildly sliding tone and tends to weigh its strengths heavily on its performers. Slater's psycho turn is by far his most inventive yet (he's more in control than ever before), Diaz effectively mixes sunshine with poison, and Jon Favreau is effective and understated as the hapless bridegroom; the rest of the cast, however, tends to play up the histrionics. Be warned, though: Those expecting a sunny-style There's Something About Mary gross-out comedy will probably be shocked by Berg's take-no-prisoners agenda; this is comedy at its absolute blackest, and no one is spared. -Mark Englehart.

The Hot Spot is best known to lecherous film buffs for Jennifer Connelly's topless scene, but this sultry southern noir deserves more than prurient interest. It's arguably Dennis Hopper's best directorial effort (OK, so that's not saying much), and Charles Williams' source novel Hell Hath No Fury finds Hopper in a comfortable B-movie milieu, riffing on Double Indemnity with an overripe tale of sex, greed and blackmail in an unnamed Texan town. Fresh from the final season of Miami Vice, Don Johnson stars as a shifty drifter, conning his way into a salesman job on a used-car lot, where the boss's insatiable wife (Virginia Madsen) offers him sexual favours and a lovely secretary's (Connelly) innocence is threatened by a percolating scandal. Nobody's really innocent, of course, and Hopper spices this languid web of secrets with enough trashy misbehaviour to qualify The Hot Spot as a bona fide guilty pleasure. -Jeff Shannon.

The Croupier sees Clive Owen suffering from a bad case of writer's block as author Jack Manfred. Sitting in his London flat staring at an empty computer screen, trying to find the words to narrate his meandering life, he reluctantly accepts a job from his absentee father (Nicholas Ball) in a second rate casino as a dealer, or croupier, a job he once held in South Africa. His immersion back into this world is intoxicating, thanks primarily to the power he holds over his nightly clientele. Jack is a straight arrow on the floor (unlike his co-workers) but the whisper of an inside-job robbery makes his life suddenly more intriguing, as do the women who begin to drift into his life: a fellow croupier (Kate Hardie) and an alluring gambler (Alex Kingston). Suddenly, Jack finds his own life is his best book material. There's something visceral about watching the world of gambling, and director Mike Hodges (the original Get Carter) taps into this allure; Jack's simple croupier tryout-handling cards and chips with skill and grace-is as captivating as most action scenes in big popcorn films. In the end, this little film, which went on to become an art-house hit, is as unpredictable as a roll of the dice. -Doug Thomas, Amazon. com A classic slow burner of a film, Croupier has risen from a lowly status on release to recognition as one of the best British movies of the 1990s. Certainly, there are few better examples of how to combine a genuinely original premise with an eye for the mainstream market. [+]

Ripley's Game is a well-appointed star vehicle in which the slippery protagonist of The Talented Mr Ripley returns in another deadly guise. The star this time is John Malkovich, whose older Tom Ripley has settled into an Italian villa and a life of aesthetic contemplation (a little like Hannibal Lecter in Hannibal). A former partner (Ray Winstone) drags an innocent frame-maker (Dougray Scott), dying of leukaemia, into the role of unexpected hit man. Ripley, for his own enigmatic reasons, helps. Liliana Cavani, of The Night Porter notoriety, directed this handsome if nebulous film (which has no connection to the Matt Damon picture, other than a Patricia Highsmith source novel). Malkovich exudes his usual oily disenchantment with the world; Lena Headey, like the location footage, is gorgeous. The same novel was adapted in very different style by Wim Wenders for his brilliant 1977 film, The American Friend, with Dennis Hopper and Bruno Ganz. -Robert Horton.

Paul Newman and Julie Andrews star in Torn Curtain, what must unfortunately be called one of Alfred Hitchcock's lesser efforts. Still, sub-par Hitchcock is better than a lot of what's out there, and this one is well worth a look. Newman plays cold-war physicist Michael Armstrong, while Andrews plays his lovely assistant-and-fiancée Sarah Sherman. Armstrong has been working on a missile defence system that will "make nuclear defence obsolete", and naturally both sides are very interested. All Sarah cares about is the fact that Michael has been acting awfully fishy lately. The suspense of Torn Curtain is by nature not as thrilling as that in the average Hitchcock film-much of it involves sitting still and wondering if the bad guys are getting closer. Still, Hitchcock manages to amuse himself: there is some beautifully clever camera work and an excruciating sequence that illustrates the frequent Hitchcock point that death is not a tidy business. -Ali Davis.

Superior to Martin Scorsese's punishing 1991 remake, this 1962 thriller directed by J. Lee Thompson (The Guns of Navarone) stars Robert Mitchum as a creepy ex-con angry at the attorney (Gregory Peck) whom he believes is responsible for his incarceration. After Mitchum makes clear his plans to harm Peck's family, a fascinating game of crisscrossing ethics and morality takes place. Where the more recent version seemed trapped in its explicitness, Thompson's film accomplishes a lot with a more economical and telling use of violence. The result is a richer character study with some Hitchcockian overtones regarding the nature of guilt. -Tom Keogh.