This typical but well-made action movie, which spawned numerous sequels, means to combine the best elements of the disaster movie with the hard-boiled attributes of traditional action-adventures. When a plane is hijacked to the Middle East by Palestinian terrorists, the Pentagon calls into action the Delta Force, an elite squad of highly trained commandos led by tough guy mainstay Lee Marvin and karate-action-star Chuck Norris. Their mission is simple: to thwart the terrorists and rescue the hostages and the plot concentrates largely on just that, as the team uses its experience and fighting skills to get the job done. Its sometimes preachy patriotic bent occasionally gets in the way of the action and Norris is a one-dimensional figure who at times takes himself too seriously, but his rapport with easy-going veteran Marvin moves the film over some implausible rough spots. While not a groundbreaking contribution to the genre, Delta Force impresses with its straightforward tough-guy style. -Robert Lane.

This pleasant, lightweight live-action version of the popular cartoon is about as good as you might expect. The kids should love the broad humour and the Henson Studios creatures but like The Addams Family movies, the look and the cast are the best things going for it. Considering that the nature of the material is so sparse, the thinly plotted story works better than other TV-to-movie fare. Our fabulous Stone Age man is promoted per a calculated move by a scheming exec (Kyle MacLachlan, whose casting ensured at least one cute guy). As a comedy, the humour is one-note and flat for anyone older than 12. The special-effects creatures look wondrous, though not as seamless as in other movies, such as in Roger Rabbit. The most joyous moments come during the full-scale re-creations of the famous credits. The Flintstones provided a major launching pad for Halle Berry as a vamping secretary. -Doug Thomas.

Jittery camera moves and a grey-blue palette make it clear that Narc is a gritty police drama in the tradition of The French Connection and Serpico. Jason Patric plays Nick Tellis, a former undercover cop with an accidental death on his conscience, which may be why he's agreed to partner with Henry Oak (Ray Liotta), a lieutenant determined to track down the killers of his former partner. This could all be rote, but the grit sticks: writer-director Joe Carnahan takes a huge leap forward from his Tarentino-wannabe first film, Blood, Guts, Bullets & Octane. The entire cast is excellent; Patric and Liotta give rich, textured performances that make their respective obsessions vivid and sad. Narc could use more of the dark humour that occasionally bursts out, but the movie's drive and energy make it more than a bleak tale of good intentions gone bad. -Bret Fetzer.

One of David Cronenberg's most successful early films, Rabid features porn star Marilyn Chambers as a woman who becomes infected with a virus after an operation. As result she grows a kind of phallus with which she penetrates her victims as she sucks their blood and thus the disease spreads rapidly. The film displays all Cronenberg's usual horrified fascination with the human body and its sexual function. Looking back, it can be read as a kind of parable about AIDS, but it works perfectly well as an effective low-budget shocker. On the DVD: the widescreen image on the DVD is acceptable quality, as is the sound. The fairly routine extras consist of excerpts from a TV interview with Cronenberg, lasting about 10 minutes; a collection of stills from the film; some written notes by horror expert Kim Newman that give useful background, though in part reproduce what is said in the interview; full filmographies for Cronenberg and the three principal performers, including a long list of Chambers' porn credits. -Ed Buscombe.

Before he made the man-eating-lion thriller The Ghost and the Darkness and the special-effects-laden Lost in Space, director Stephen Hopkins helmed this ludicrous and critically panned thriller pitting a cop on the Boston Police bomb squad (Jeff Bridges) against a mad Irish bomber (Tommy Lee Jones) who's still holding a grudge from their early years in the Irish Republican Army (IRA). A showcase for the explosive skills of demolitions experts, Blown Away has got some impressive action sequences, although the story is somewhat convoluted and mean-spirited. Suzy Amis (Titanic) costars as Bridges's endangered girlfriend, who becomes a target of Jones's destructive scheme. - Jeff Shannon, Amazon. com.

The film boasts the best of the Bond title songs (this one sung on a dreamy track by Nancy Sinatra), but the movie itself is one of the weaker ones of the Sean Connery phase of the 007 franchise. The story concerns an effort by the evil organisation SPECTRE to start a world war, but the not-so-super villain behind the plot is the awfully civilised Donald Pleasence. The thin script is by Roald Dahl (shouldn't we have expected a better Bond nemesis from the creator of mad genius Willy Wonka?), and direction is by British veteran Lewis Gilbert (Alfie). But the movie can't hold a candle to Dr. No, From Russia with Love, or Goldfinger. -Tom Keogh, Amazon. comOn the DVD: This was another troubled production according to the insightful "making of" documentary: director and producers luckily avoided boarding a plane out of Tokyo that crashed and killed everyone on board; the Japanese actresses couldn't speak English and one threatened suicide if she was dropped from the part; and the aerial cameraman filming the helicopter fight had his leg sliced off by a rotor blade. Maurice Binder's evocative main title designs are the subject of the second documentary, "Silhouettes", in which his colleagues voiceboth their admiration of his art and frustration at his chaotic working practices. The commentary is another edited selection of interviews with principal cast and crew. An animated storyboard sequence, trailers, radio spots and a handsome booklet add up to another winning entry in this series. [+]

Trapped by his image in 1976, Clint Eastwood resurrected his Dirty Harry character for a third go-round (out of a total of five) in The Enforcer, a potboiler of a story in which the San Francisco detective takes on a group of revolutionary kids. Tyne Daly costars as a female cop who partners with the reluctant Harry Callahan, and she does very well by a role created merely to underscore and articulate the hero's various virtues. It's a dull package all around, but inside the wrapping are good performances by the two leads. -Tom Keogh.

David Lynch peeks behind the picket fences of small-town America to reveal a corrupt shadow world of malevolence, sadism and madness. From the opening shots Lynch turns the Technicolor picture postcard images of middle-class homes and tree-lined lanes into a dreamy vision on the edge of nightmare. After his father collapses in a preternaturally eerie sequence, college boy Kyle MacLachlan returns home and stumbles across a severed human ear in a vacant lot. With the help of sweetly innocent high school girl (Laura Dern), he turns junior detective and uncovers a frightening yet darkly compelling world of voyeurism and sex. Drawn deeper into the brutal world of drug dealer and blackmailer Frank, played with raving mania by an obscenity-shouting Dennis Hopper in a career-reviving performance, he loses his innocence and his moral bearings when confronted with pure, unexplainable evil. Isabella Rossellini is terrifyingly desperate as Hopper's sexual slave who becomes MacLachlan's illicit lover, and Dean Stockwell purrs through his role as Hopper's oh-so-suave buddy. Lynch strips his surreally mundane sets to a ghostly austerity, which composer Angelo Badalamenti encourages with the smooth, spooky strains of a lush score. Blue Velvet is a disturbing film that delves into the darkest reaches of psycho-sexual brutality and simply isn't for everyone. But for a viewer who wants to see the cinematic world rocked off its foundations, David Lynch delivers a nightmarish masterpiece. -Sean Axmaker.

Written by Karen Walton and directed by John Fawcett, Ginger Snaps combines horror and pubescent angst in a thoughtful portrayal of female teenage development both socially and physically. The Fitzgerald sisters are alienated to the point of discussing honouring the suicide pact they made when they were eight, and producing disturbing mock-up photographs of their violent deaths. Then the slightly older Ginger is bitten by a werewolf and starts developing hair in odd places and feeling more alive than she has ever felt-but it's not entirely clear whether this is sexual maturity or monstrosity creeping up on her until she starts developing canines and a tail. The look and feel of the movie is a cross between Grimms's Fairytales and Neil Jordan's A Company of Wolves, while the influence of Buffy the Vampire Slayer runs through both script and cinematography-which means it occasionally looks like an extended episode of Buffy, minus the Vampire slayer herself. The performances of Emily Perkins as the nervy Goth Brigitte and of Katherine Isabelle as the extrovert charismatic Ginger are more or less faultless; we are taken to the heart of this claustrophobic relationship just as it starts to implode. Mimi Rogers as their ditzy mother and Kris Lemke as the stoner who tries to help Brigitte are almost equally excellent. On the DVD: The DVD includes as special features some impressive screen tests by Perkins and Isabelle in which we see them evolving their final takes on the characters; we also get a mildly interesting documentary on the construction of the werewolf Ginger becomes and a featurette that has some snappy one-liners from the cast, as well as production notes and cast notes. The Dolby sound catches the nervy grungy world of the film, which is presented in 16:9 ratio. -Rox Kaveney.