Heavy on atmosphere and light on everything else, From Hell is visually impressive while lacking the depth of the acclaimed graphic novel it's based upon. Making their third feature since 1993's Menace II Society, twins Allen and Albert Hughes approach the Jack the Ripper case with physical precision, re-creating the gritty Whitechapel district of 1888 London in meticulous detail. What they've forgotten is the sheer terror that gripped Whitechapel in the wake of the Ripper's slaying of five prostitutes, investigated here by a Scotland Yard sleuth (Johnny Depp) who uses opium, laudanum and absinthe to fuel his semi-prescient visions of the slayings. Heather Graham attempts a slippery Cockney accent as a would-be victim, while Ian Holm steals the show as a has-been surgeon with devilish delusions of grandeur. Violence is obliquely suggested or briefly graphic, but no matter how you cut it, From Hell is only marginally thrilling as it treads familiar territory. -Jeff Shannon On the DVD: From Hell on disc is presented in widescreen 16:9 glory with atmospheric DTS or Dolby Digital 5. 1 sound options. The animated menus look nice but are more than a little confusing. The 23 deleted scenes, including an alternative ending, are all offered in black and white with commentary and justification for the cuts by Albert Hughes. Film commentary is offered by Albert Hughes, screen writer Rafael Yglesias, cinematographer Peter Deming and Robbie Coltraine. [+]

Layer Cake As its title suggests, Layer Cake is a crime thriller that cuts into several levels of its treacherous criminal underworld. The title is actually one character's definition of the drug-trade hierarchy, but it's also an apt metaphor for the separate layers of deception, death, and betrayal experienced by the film's unnamed protagonist, a cocaine traffic middle-man played with smooth appeal by Daniel Craig (whom you probably don't need reminding is the latest James Bond). Listed in the credits only as "XXXX," the character is trapped into doing a favour for his volatile boss, only to have tables turned by his boss's boss (Michael Gambon) in a twisting plot involving a stolen shipment of Ecstasy, a missing girl, duplicitous dealers, murderous Serbian gangsters, and a variety of lowlifes with their own deadly agendas. As adapted by J. J. Connolly (from his own novel) and directed by Matthew Vaughan (who earned his genre chops as producer of Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch), Layer Cake improves upon those earlier British gangland hits with assured pacing, intelligent plotting, and an admirable emphasis on plot-moving dialogue over routine action. Sure, it's violent (that's to be expected) and not always involving, but it's smarter than most thrillers, and Vaughan's directorial debut has a confident style that's flashy without being flamboyant. This could be the start of an impressive career. -Jeff Shannon Snatch Snatch, the follow-up to the Guy Ritchie's breakthrough film-the high-energy, expletive-strewn cockney-gangster movie Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels -hardly breaks new ground being, well, another high-energy, expletive-strewn cockney-gangster movie. Okay, so there are some differences. [+]

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.

One would think that after the aquatic horror of the previous three Jaws films the remnants of the beleaguered Brodie family would be happily nursing their hydrophobia somewhere in Kansas. However, in Jaws 4-The Revenge, we find that Ellen (Lorraine Gary) is still living on a tiny island and her eldest son Michael (Lance Guest) has become, of all things, a marine biologist. Even when yet another giant shark slaughters her younger son, all Ellen can do to take her mind off it is go to the Bahamas and gaze at the sea. There she embarks on a romantic affair with salty sea-pilot Hoagie (a nice turn from Michael Caine), but this peace is shattered as the shark begins to target her grandchildren and friends. Where this monster-with-a-grudge comes from, bearing in mind that the sharks in each of the previous films got blown up or electrocuted, is something of a conundrum. But logic is clearly not a concern in a script that demands only that this film should bear some tenuous relation to its predecessors. The ghost of the far-superior original looms large here-in the form of Ellen's flashbacks (which actually use footage from the earlier films), scenes that overtly refer to moments from the series (Michael's son mimics him at the dinner table, as Michael once did to his own father) and a set littered with conspicuously large photos of Roy Scheider. There are nice touches-Michael and his Jamaican partner Jake (Mario Van Peebles) fit the shark with a heart monitor which lets off an eerie blipping sound when it approaches, it is nice to see a romance between more "mature" characters portrayed so warmly and when the maternal Ellen forms the resolve to protect her family it even looks like she may briefly become a sort of geriatric Ripley character (à la Aliens). But with a shark that has never looked more rubbery, set pieces that lack suspense and invention and a short running time (only 86 minutes) it is hard to shake off the sensation that this is a made-for-TV film. Those wanting a dose of tongue-in-cheek killer-creature action would be better off avoiding this wet fish and taking in a Jaws rip-off with a little more bite, such as Deep Blue Sea or Deep Rising. [+]

One of the very best Stephen King film adaptations, The Dead Zone is imbued with an ever-present atmosphere of dread. Shot in a permanently wintry Canada (standing in for New England), the icy backdrops are subtly employed by director David Cronenberg to accentuate the story's fatalistic tone. Cronenberg's welcome emphasis for the most part on psychological terror over physical shocks (something of a change of direction for him after The Brood and Scanners) is further enhanced by composer Michael Kamen's marvellously chilly music score and Christopher Walken's understated yet dominating central performance as high school teacher Johnny Smith, who wakes from a coma following a car crash to learn that he has been cursed with the gift of second sight. That his uncanny ability is indeed a curse and definitely not a blessing is made abundantly clear: even when Johnny is able to save people's lives, there is always a price to pay. The cosmic law of Karma is grimly unforgiving. Herbert Lom, as Johnny's sympathetic doctor, sums up the character's plight, "Some things just weren't meant to be. " And even when Johnny learns the terrible secret of future Presidential candidate Greg Stillson (a villainous Martin Sheen), he knows he cannot act without accepting the fatal consequences. Brooke Adams, as the love of Johnny's life, and Tom Skerrit, as the quietly desperate sheriff on the trail of a serial killer, are excellent in support. On the DVD: this disc comes with a chunky accompanying booklet with background notes on the film, cast and director, as well as a script excerpt for the originally planned pre-credits sequence (in the finished film we assume Johnny's second sight is a result of the car accident-this earlier screenplay follows the book more closely). The movie itself-which features the "scissor-suicide" scene uncut-is accompanied by a chatty and informative commentary from film critics Stephen Jones and Kim Newman (a regular Amazon. [+]