A semi-pretentious urban sleaze film, Shadow Hours offers Balthazar Getty-sporting a "BZAR" knuckle tattoo and a Charlie Sheen look as a recovering drug addict working nights in a Los Angeles filling station to support an angelic pregnant wife (Rebecca Gayheart). Getty is tempted to the wild side by sharp-suited mystery man Peter Weller, who takes him on a tour of nocturnal weirdsville: piercing clubs, bare-knuckle boxing arenas and big-money Russian roulette parlours. Getty comes to suspect that Weller is a perhaps-demonic serial killer who has been turning women's heads (literally) and calls in cop Peter Greene. But he also goes back to dealer Frederic Forrest to get back on drugs and is stuck with get-in-the-way boss Brad Dourif. The film has a good cast and the germ of an interesting idea, but ends up as just another drama about a backsliding rehab guy and nighttime folks. It works hard on being shocking without going all the way into Clive Barker territory, despite advice on extreme underground culture from shock-tactics queen Lydia Lunch and some nasty fishhook facial sculpture. The ending suggests Weller might be a semi-supernatural character, but cops out of dragging Getty all the way down to hell. Weller, who grabs most of the best lines ("I've seen things in this city make Dante's Inferno read like Winnie the Pooh"), is an interesting, ambiguous villain, but everyone else is very standardised. Writer-director Isaac H Eaton clearly has a large collection of David Lynch videos and watched Fight Club several times. On the DVD: Sound is presented in both 2. [+]

Pandora couldn't resist opening the forbidden box containing all the delusions of mankind, and let's just say in Mulholland Drive David Lynch indulges a similar impulse. Employing a familiar film noir atmosphere to unravel, as he coyly puts it, "a love story in the city of dreams", Lynch establishes a foreboding but playful narrative in the film's first half before subsuming all of Los Angeles and its corrupt ambitions into his voyeuristic universe of desire. -Fionn Meade David Lynch's Lost Highway is one of the most puzzled-over movies of the 1990s. But there are no straight answers. This film is "about" a lot of things: obsession, the impossible notion of owning a partner, why tailgating is wrong. Beyond that, it's about nothing more than enjoying just how sensually delicious everything looks and sounds on Lynch's Highway. -Paul Tonks Eraserhead is a horror movie unlike any other. A fuzzy-haired young man, trapped in his apartment, has a series of nightmarish experiences, among which is a scene in which his head is used to make the rubbers that fit on the ends of pencils. -Nikki Disney.

It is impossible to have a neutral opinion about the Austrian thriller Funny Games-a movie so relentless in its ability to shock that it gained pariah status on the film festival circuit in 1997. In the warped tradition of A Clockwork Orange, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and Blue Velvet, this is a film-directed with electrifying audacity by Munich-born Michael Haneke-that addresses the controversy of screen violence by making the viewer as guilty as the Leopold and Loeb-like killers who terrorise a young family of three during their summer vacation. They arrive as friendly neighbours, seducing the family with phoney congeniality, but soon Funny Games reveals its devious strategy, turning savage and appalling. and completely captivating for those who can endure the terror. There's actually less violence than you'd see in a typical American horror flick such as Scream, but Haneke's forceful staging effectively fulfils his agenda of viewer complicity; we vividly experience this doomed family's fate and feel helpless to save them. So helpless, in fact, that Haneke dares to offer a hint of respite by giving a victim the upper hand, only to "replay" the same scene with the darkest of outcomes. Funny Games is guaranteed to outrage some viewers with its manipulative schemes, but there's no denying the film's visceral impact, generated by Haneke's expert handling of a superior cast. Don't even think of allowing anyone under age 18 to watch this film; all others should proceed with caution. [+]

Essentially a cautionary tale of slightly futuristic cyber-terrorism, Netforce carries Tom Clancy's heavyweight name as the executive producer (but not writer). Don't expect a drama on the level of Patriot Games, however: Netforce is a blunt and somewhat rushed thriller with little time for character or relationship development. What it does offer is a scenario for the prospect of organised crime uniting with computer geeks and malevolent industrialists to sabotage national security through attacks on the Internet. Scott Bakula plays the FBI agent in charge of the Netforce division of the bureau; he takes charge after his mentor (Kris Kristofferson) is murdered and the investigation points to the involvement of a Web pioneer (Judge Reinhold). The hero's romance with a colleague (Joanna Going) grows a little trickier after he promotes her to the number two spot behind himself, but with the president's chief of staff (Brian Dennehy) breathing down their necks, that's the least of their professional problems. The action bounces around from good guys to sundry bad guys, but there's no question that a creeping paranoia about Net vulnerability and its disastrous implications grows on this production-and the viewers. -Tom Keogh, Amazon. com.

With good production values and a load of suspense, the direct-to-video thriller Atomic Train delivers the goods-ahead of schedule. A rich bureaucrat with a Porsche, a goatee and a defective sense of morality places a defective Russian nuclear warhead aboard a defective American train for cheap disposal but the engine loses its brakes and hurls out of control toward Denver. Will it explode? Will it wipe out half the city? Will the thoughts and prayers of the President-played by Edward Herrmann, in his best Chrysler-salesman mode-do any good? Will Rob Lowe, the major hero of this epic, ever be able to save his career? Atomic Train hauls along every disaster-flick formula you can think of: an estranged couple bonding again during a time of crisis; urban rioting and mayhem; government officials wearing headsets and breathlessly watching video monitors; trigger-happy military men; high-speed stunts; escapes by helicopter; clean-up crews in white spacesuits; many scenes of families being reunited after sub-plot cliffhangers, to major-key crescendos on the soundtrack. The only stereotypical element missing is a dog saved from a fire at the last minute. But, you have to admit, what Atomic Train does it does with pizzazz, a post-Armageddon tone of overly heroic but ultimately disposable machismo and explosions. lots of explosions. -Robert Burns Neveldine, Amazon. com.

Based on James Lee Burke's bestseller, Heaven's Prisoners is a sweaty revenge thriller with a twist. On the Louisiana rivers, Dave Robicheaux (Alec Baldwin) is an ex-cop and ex-alcoholic with a boat business hiding him and his wife Annie (Kelly Lynch) away from the world. When a light airplane crashes into the water right in front of them, and Dave rescues the surviving little girl who happens to be an illegal immigrant, all the peace and quiet is dashed away. Embroiled in an underground criminal element, Dave is forced to face the demons of his past all over again. Along the way he reunites with Bubba Rock (Eric Roberts), a high school classmate who turned into the local heavy, his scheming wife Claudette (Teri Hatcher), and boozy strip dancer Robin (Mary Stuart Masterson). These three character cameos are enormous fun to watch, as are the oily New Orleans street locations. Even if the revelation of who's behind all the skulduggery isn't all that much of a shock, the movie still has plenty to say about the emotions of family loyalty that drive us. On the DVD: The DVD release includes the trailer, a five-minute featurette, a brief look behind the scenes and interviews with cast and crew. -Paul Tonks.