But why would anyone want to do a thing like that?" Ultimately, Trainspotting's wised-up, dead-beat inhabitants reject mainstream society in favour of a headlong rush to destruction. It makes for an exhilarating, energised and frequently terrifying trip that blazes with more energy and passion than a thousand more ostensibly life-embracing movies. -Xan Brooks.

In either case, it's a film that deserves to be taken seriously, and it's likely to be one that will be talked about for a long time to come. -Dan Vancini.

Production notes and biographies are very adequate, though the theatrical trailer reproduction is notably inferior. No matter, this is a major film, well worth the transfer to DVD. -Richard Whitehouse.

The new material obviously lacks authenticity, but looks about 1000 times better. Disc Two offers an abundance of extras including an amusing extract from Blue Peter (6 min) showing how to make edible Daleks. There is a photo gallery and some very poor quality Rehearsal Footage, but most fun of all is a 27 minute 1994 BBC spoof radio documentary which asks Whatever Happened to Susan Foreman?. Jane Asher plays Susan in an SF comedy as ingenious as it amusing and irreverent. This is a remarkable set, which belongs in any Who fan's collection. Gary S Dalkin.

When Grace MacLean (12-year-old Scarlett Johansson) suffers a shockingly well-staged riding accident her New York magazine editor mother drives daughter and horse, both carrying physical and emotional trauma, to the Booker farmstead. What unfolds is a 162-minute film in which little happens, yet which is lyrical, deeply moving and richly atmospheric. Inevitably both girl and horse start to heal, while the mother, Annie (Kristin Scott Thomas), who in the early scenes seems disconcertingly to have modelled her performance on Anne-The Weakest Link-Robinson, comes to reassess her life. The adulterous affair of Nicholas Evans' novel is reduced to temptation and treated with much greater maturity than in Scott Thomas' previous English-language film, The English Patient (1996). Indeed, The Horse Whisperer is everything that Oscar winner was hailed as: an intimate sweeping romance in the tradition of David Lean, with superlative cinematography by Robert Richardson and a career-best musical score by Thomas Newman. Thematically echoing Redford's own multi-Oscar winning directorial debut, Ordinary People (1980), The Horse Whisperer is one of the finest films of the 1990s. On the DVD: Shot at 2. 35:1 against very similar landscapes to Legends of the Fall (1994), The Horse Whisperer has a real epic visual sweep and the anamorphically enhanced image captures the endless landscapes and ever-changing skies well. However, there is more than expected grain, and some scenes show obvious compression artefacting. The Dolby Digital 5. 1 sound is largely confined to the front three speakers, though creates some wonderfully atmospheric ambiences when called for; Thomas Newman's score is served particularly well in several key scenes. The extras are the American theatrical trailer and a music video for Allison Moorer's New Country ballad "A Soft Place to Fall", both crawling with compression artefacts. Also included are three "featurettes" on the production, Redford, and real-life "horse whisperer" Buck Brannaman, though each runs less than two minutes. The lack of any substantial extras is explained by Redford's comment in his "featurette" that wanting to know about how everything is done ruins the magic of the movies. -Gary S Dalkin.

Mendes' stark and, at times, apocalyptic visuals add a lot and strike the right tone: wide shots of inky-black oil raining down on the vast, empty desert from flaming oil wells contrasted with close-ups of crude-soaked faces struggling through the mire vividly bring to life the meaning of the tagline "welcome to the suck. " But much of the second half of the movie will probably leave some viewers feeling disappointed in the cinematic experience, while others might appreciate its microcosmic depiction of modern chaos and aimlessness. Jarhead is one of those examples where the book is better than the movie, but not for lack of trying. -Dan Vancini.

1 soundtrack sharp; some cracking dialogue has to share the sound waves with thumping hits of the day and, over the final credits, Cher's global smash hit rendering of "It's in His Kiss". But apart from a multilingual choice of soundtracks and subtitles and the original theatrical trailer, there are no extras. -Piers Ford.