After several years as the hottest musical director on Broadway, Bob Fosse made his film directorial debut with this movie version of his Broadway hit, which was based on Fellini's Nights of Cabiria. Shirley MacLaine is terrific as the proverbial hooker with the heart of gold, one who is convinced that she will find the right man if she just turns enough tricks. The Cy Coleman score is a solid one; the film is at its best when Fosse lets his cast of singer-dancers (which includes Chita Rivera, Paula Kelly, and Sammy Davis Jr) unleash his leggy brand of choreography. While the film suffers from stylistic excesses of the period, you can see the seeds being planted for Fosse's future musical film forays in Cabaret and All That Jazz. -Marshall Fine.

Anyone looking for any kind of realistic consideration of the problem of climate change is in completely the wrong place with The Day After Tomorrow. Employing scientific conventions and explanations that you could rightly describe as `ropey', it nonetheless does manage to deliver an entertaining slice of science fiction, and some high concept blockbuster fun. Directed by Roland Emmerich, whose previous examples of spectacle cinema include Independence Day and Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow sees a new ice age dawning on the Earth, and in double quick time too. Caught in the midst of it all are Jake Gyllenhaal and Dennis Quaid, as a separated son and father, with the former in New York and the latter in Washington. Quaid's climatologist sets off to find and rescue his offspring, across a desperate ice-laden wasteland replete with umpteen threats along the way. Taken as a slice of easy blockbuster entertainment, it's hard not to glean some enjoyment out of The Day After Tomorrow. You may sit there trying to work out why some things freeze and some things don't, but you can't help but marvel at the terrific special effects, and the breezy pace of it all. In high definition, as you'd hope and expect, it all looks even better, and gives a meaty workout for any 1080p-ready display. Just don't take it all that seriously… -Jon Foster Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Ian Holm, Emmy Rossum, Arjay Smith, Austin Nicholls.

Based on a memoir by former undercover cop Joe Pistone (whose daring and unprecedented infiltration of the New York Mob scene earned him a place in the federal witness protection program), Donnie Brasco is like a de-romanticised, de-mythologised version of The Godfather. It offers an uncommonly detailed, privileged glimpse inside the world of organised crime from the perspective of the little guys at the bottom of Mafia hierarchy rather than from the kingpins at the top. Donnie Brasco is not only one of the great modern-day gangster movies to put in the company of The Godfather films and GoodFellas, but it is also one of the great undercover police movies-arguably surpassing Serpico and Prince of the City in richness of character, detail and moral complexity. Donnie (Johnny Depp, a splendid actor) is practically adopted by Lefty Ruggiero (Al Pacino), a gregarious, low-level "made" man who grows to love his young protégé like a son. (Pacino really sinks into this guy's skin and polyester slacks and creates his freshest, most fully realised character since his 1970s heyday. ) As Donnie acclimates himself to Lefty's world, he distances himself from his wife (a terrific Anne Heche) and family for their own protection. Almost imperceptibly his sense of identity slips away from him. Questioning his own confused loyalties, unable to trust anybody else because he himself is an imposter, Donnie loses his way in a murky and treacherous no-man's land. The film is directed by Mike Newell, who also headed up Four Weddings and a Funeral and the gritty, true crime melodrama Dance with a Stranger. -Jim Emerson.

The latest in a long line of successful US police dramas, the forensic cop show Crime Scene Investigation varies the formula by focusing on a team of civilian scientists who work the night shift in Las Vegas, poring over crime scenes for fingerprints, blood spatters, DNA-laced mucus and (especially) maggots. Star William Petersen plays a variation of his role from Manhunter, the cool puzzle-solving genius who can rattle off mystifying speeches with aplomb, while his contrasting partner is Marg Helgenberger, cast as a single mother/ex-stripper who is as concerned with the emotional as well as the physical mess left by crime. While most US cop shows (witness NYPD Blue) tend towards soap, neglecting the cases in favour of personal crises, CSI gives its regulars enough life to make them human but is essentially puzzle-based, with individual episodes following two or three cases à la Homicide: Life on the Street. The occasional special focuses on a major job with the team investigating the slaughter of a whole family ("Blood Drops") or a death in first class on a plane over Vegas ("Unfriendly Skies"). A few continuing threads are laid down, with a recurrent villain who gets away, but will inevitably return, but on the whole these shows play pretty well as one-offs. Very high-tech in style, with lots of zooms into microscopic examinations of hair follicles or stomach contents and distinctive visualisations of the different stories told by witnesses and evidence, this is one of the best shows currently airing. On the DVD: CSI's first DVD box set contains the show's first 12 episodes: the pilot followed by "Cool Change", "Crate & Burial", "Pledging Mr Johnson"; "Friends and Lovers", "Who Are You?", "Blood Drops"; "Anonymous", "Unfriendly Skies", "Sex Lies and Larvae"; "The I-15 Murders" and "Fahrenheit 932". In addition to inventive menus, the three-disc set offers character profiles, a trailer, some B-roll on-set footage, a subtitle option, and snippet-like interviews with the cast and creatives. -Kim Newman.

Winner of seven Academy Awards including Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay, this critical and box-office hit from 1973 provided a perfect reunion for director George Roy Hill and stars Paul Newman and Robert Redford, who had previously delighted audiences with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in 1969. Set in 1936, The Sting features a pair of Chicago con artists (Newman and Redford) who find themselves in a high-stakes game against the master of all cheating mobsters (Robert Shaw) when they set out to avenge the murder of a mutual friend and partner. Using a bogus bookie joint as a front for their con of all cons, the two feel the heat from the Chicago Mob on one side and encroaching police on the other. But in a plot that contains more twists than a treacherous mountain road, the ultimate scam is pulled off with consummate style and panache. It's an added bonus that Newman and Redford were box-office kings at the top of their game, and while Shaw broods intensely as the Runyon-esque villain, The Sting is further blessed by a host of great supporting players including Dana Elcar, Eileen Brennan, Ray Walston, Charles Durning, and Harold Gould. Thanks to the flavourful music score by Marvin Hamlisch, this was also the movie that sparked a nationwide revival of Scott Joplin's ragtime jazz, which is featured prominently on the soundtrack. One of the most entertaining movies of the early 1970s, The Sting is a welcome throwback to Hollywood's golden age of the 30s that hasn't lost any of its popular charm. -Jeff Shannon, Amazon. com.

The second series of Marion & Geoff had an awful lot to live up to. That it might be as good as the mini masterpieces of pathos (and bathos) that made up the first series was all any viewer could reasonably expect; that it actually surpasses them is testament to the achievement of cowriters Rob Brydon and Hugo Blick. These six episodes (plus an hour-long special on the second disc) provide a window into an all-too-painfully familiar world of betrayal, deceit and family disintegration, as seen through the eternally optimistic eyes of Keith, a man who against all the evidence of his own senses somehow manages to retain his respect for the dignity of human nature. Keith has put his mini-cab days behind him, and is now gainfully employed as a chauffeur to a wealthy American family. In between his duties delivering the young boy to school-and dodging the family's two Dobermans on the lawn-Keith unwittingly forms a personal bond with the boy's mother, Catherine. Slowly Keith is awakened to the truth about her unhappiness, and the activities of her wayward husband Peter, a self-proclaimed film producer much given to auditioning young actresses on his casting couch. Simultaneously, relations with Marion and his "little smashers" are improving, thanks to regular family meetings at motorway service stations. Mirroring events with his employers, Marion and Geoff are heading for trouble too, though once again Keith is the last person to realise what's really going on. Poignant personal revelations follow, leaving Keith with a surprisingly difficult choice at the end. As before, the joy in Brydon's deadpan monologues to camera as he drives around the streets of London is not what he tells you, but what is revealed by implication. [+]

A movie with an impeccable pedigree, Road to Perdition is director Sam Mendes' impressive follow-up to American Beauty, and features remarkable contributions from veteran cinematographer Conrad Hall, composer Thomas Newman and a cast of thespian brilliance led by Tom Hanks, Paul Newman and Jude Law. Unfortunately, all their fine efforts have been lavished on an essentially predictable story, adapted from the graphic novel, which here unfolds in an overly leisurely fashion. The result is a movie that looks wonderful but feels a little too much like a contrived morality play. Hanks plays Michael Sullivan, a family man but also a hit man in the employ of mob boss John Rooney (Newman). A surrogate father-figure to Sullivan, Rooney also has a wayward real son, Connor (Daniel Craig), whose duplicity leads to a deadly alienation between the Rooney family and Sullivan. Forced to go on the run with his own 12-year-old son, Michael junior (Tyler Hoechlin), Sullivan seeks both revenge and a way to prevent his boy from one day taking the same dark road as himself. Thus the Road to Perdition becomes both a literal and metaphorical journey for the protagonists. It wouldn't matter that there's little tension or doubt about the outcome, except that Hanks' character is all too clearly a decent chap at heart, thus undermining from the outset any sense of a real "journey" towards redemption. It remains a delight to see all the principals acting at their peak and so capably directed, but ultimately Road to Perdition seems like a series of magnificently staged set-pieces that doesn't quite add up to the sum of its parts. On the DVD: Road to Perdition is presented in an anamorphic version of its original theatrical 2. [+]

The second season of The West Wing takes up literally where the first season left off and, after a few moments of patriotic sentimentalism, maintains the series' astonishingly high standards in depicting the everyday life of the White House staff of a Democratic administration. The two-part opener covers the immediate aftermath of the assassination attempt on President Bartlet (Martin Sheen), switching between the anxious wait on the injured and flashbacks to Bartlet's campaign for the Presidency. Other peaks in a series exceedingly short on lows include "Noel," the episode in which Alan Arkin's psychiatrist forces Josh Lynam to confront his post-traumatic stress disorder and the episodes in which President Bartlet, following a tragic car accident, rails angrily against God in Latin. Other new aspects include the introduction of Ainsley Hayes, a young Republican counsel hired after she beats communications deputy Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe) in a TV debate ("Sam's getting his ass kicked by a girl!" crow his colleagues), as well as the revelation that the President has been suffering from multiple sclerosis. Tensions grow between him and the First Lady (Stockard Channing) as she realizes, in the episode "Third State of the Union," that he intends to run for a second term in office. It becomes clear to Bartlet that he must go public with his MS, and his staff is forced to come to terms with this, as well as deal with the usual plethora of domestic and international incidents, which apparently preclude any of them from having any sort of private lives. These include crises in Haiti and Columbia, an obstinate filibuster, and a Surgeon General's excessively frank remarks about the drug situation. Thankfully, the splendid Lord John Marbury (Roger Rees) is on hand to make chief of staff Leo McGarry's life more of a misery in "The Drop-In. " These episodes, though occasionally marred by a sentimental soundtrack and an earnest and wishfully high regard for the Presidential office, are master classes in drama and dialogue, ranging from the wittily staccato to the magnificently grave, capturing authentically the hectic pace of political intrigue and the often vain efforts of decent, brilliant people to do the right thing. The West Wing is one of the all-time great TV dramas. [+]

Released in 1987, Babette's Feast is a film which depicts so little, yet says so much. Set in a rural Danish community, it centres around the twin sisters of the village pastor and the French women who serves them after fleeing the 1871 revolution. On winning the lottery she plans a feast to mark the centenary of the sisters' father, bringing a dimension of fine living into the lives of the God-fearing Lutherans and healing festering personal animosities in the process. Director Gabriel Axel captures the rugged timelessness of the Jutland landscape, and draws inspired performances from Stéphane Audran as Babette, and Bodil Keyer and Birgitte Federspiel as the sisters Filippa and Martine. Per Norgard's sparse but affecting score captures the mood of the film perfectly. Altogether it's a heart-warming and affecting experience. On the DVD: Babette's Feast on disc reproduces the vivid colour photography well in widescreen. There's dubbing and subtitles in English, French and Italian. Both the trailers for the English- and Danish-speaking markets are included, the latter an effective summary of the film. -Richard Whitehouse.

Ben-Hur scooped an unprecedented 11 Academy Awards in 1959 and, unlike some later rivals to this record-breaking win, richly deserved every single one. This is epic filmmaking on a scale that had not been seen before, and is unlikely ever to be seen again. It cost a staggering 15 million dollars and was one of the largest film productions ever undertaken: the Circus Maximus set alone covered 18 acres and was filled with 40,000 tons of Mediterranean sand. But it's not just running time or a cast of thousands that makes an epic, it's the subject-matter that counts and in Ben-Hur the subject is rich, detailed and sensitively handled. Despite both the original novel's and the film's subtitle, "A Tale of the Christ", this is really a parallel life, that of Prince Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston) and his estrangement from old Roman pal Messala (Stephen Boyd). The eponymous character's journey of self-discovery through bitterness and hate to eventual redemption has many deliberate echoes of Christ's life (at one point, Judah is mistaken for Jesus, much as Brian would be later in Monty Python's masterful satire), and the multi-layered script from (uncredited) literary titans Gore Vidal and Christopher Fry wrings out every nuance and every possible shade of meaning. Director William Wyler, who had been a junior assistant on MGM's original silent version back in 1925, never sacrifices the human focus of the story in favour of spectacle (he had the good sense to leave the great chariot race to second-unit director and experienced stuntman Yakima Canutt), and it is his concentration on human drama and fully rounded characters that gives Wyler's epic its heart. In this he is aided immeasurably by Miklós Rózsa's majestic musical score, arguably the greatest ever written for a Hollywood picture, in which the development of character-driven leitmotifs produces the effect of grand opera. The Christian theme concentrates on the central character's love and compassion for his family (evoked by the discovery of their leprosy) rather than any heavy-handed sermonising (the figure of Christ is seen but never heard-his presence signalled by a serene musical motif instead). On the DVD: this long-awaited release presents the film's original theatrical aspect ratio of 2. [+]

One of the finest stories of the classic Doctor Who age, Genesis Of The Daleks finds Tom Baker at his peak in the lead role, and ultimately facing one of the most significant moral dilemmas of his era as the Time Lord. That's alongside the small matter of his most infamous enemies. This is the adventure that goes right back to the roots of the Daleks, from their humble beginnings to the point where they become the Doctor's most fearsome foes. Across the six episodes, we find that the Doctor has been sent to the planet Skaro, where he discovers the evil genius Davros, who is about to fully unleash his deadliest creations into the universe. Accompanied by Harry and Sarry, The Doctor also finds himself stuck in the middle of an ongoing war between the Thals and The Kaleds, in a story packed with danger and adventure. It's also grounded in the kind of excellent storytelling that has frequently allowed classic Doctor Who to overcome its low budget roots. And Genesis Of The Daleks is one of the finest examples of just how it manages it. Thanks to a tightly woven script, and a strong cast led by Tom Baker at his finest in the lead role, Genesis Of The Daleks is rightly regarded as one of the best Doctor Who stories of all time. It really isn't hard to see why. -Simon Brew.

Producer Danny Boyle (Trainspotting) is behind this decadent comedy about a pair of lowlife but oddly intelligent Welsh brothers who generally make a pain of themselves in their small community, but who get serious about exacting revenge for a family tragedy. Director Kevin Allen succeeds at turning the entire film into a jacked-up freak show, with petty terrorism, cops on the take, a young virgin getting it on with a middle-aged creep and a male choir inexplicably singing Mungo Jerry's ancient hit "In the Summertime". Twin Town is loony, nasty stuff all around, but the only good laughs in the movie are top loaded into the first few minutes. After that, it's sheer tedium. -Tom Keogh.

Director Zhang Yimou brings the sumptuous visual style of his previous films (Raise the Red Lantern, Shanghai Triad) to the high-kicking kung fu genre. A nameless warrior (Jet Li, Romeo Must Die, Once Upon a Time in China) arrives at an emperor's palace with three weapons, each belonging to a famous assassin who had sworn to kill the emperor. As the nameless man spins out his story-and the emperor presents his own interpretation of what might really have happened-each episode is drenched in red, blue, white or another dominant color. Hero combines sweeping cinematography and superb performances from the cream of the Hong Kong cinema (Maggie Cheung, Irma Vep, Comrades: Almost a Love Story; Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, In the Mood for Love, Hard Boiled; and Zhang Ziyi, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). The result is stunning, a dazzling action movie with an emotional richness that deepens with every step. -Bret Fetzer.