Now perhaps the most beloved American film, It's a Wonderful Life was largely forgotten for years, due to a copyright quirk. Only in the late 1970s did it find its audience through repeated TV showings. Frank Capra's masterwork deserves its status as a feel-good communal event, but it is also one of the most fascinating films in the American cinema, a multilayered work of Dickensian density. George Bailey (played superbly by James Stewart) grows up in the small town of Bedford Falls, dreaming dreams of adventure and travel, but circumstances conspire to keep him enslaved to his home turf. Frustrated by his life, and haunted by an impending scandal, George prepares to commit suicide on Christmas Eve. A heavenly messenger (Henry Travers) arrives to show him a vision: what the world would have been like if George had never been born. The sequence is a vivid depiction of the American Dream gone bad, and probably the wildest thing Capra ever shot (the director's optimistic vision may have darkened during his experiences making military films in World War II). Capra's triumph is to acknowledge the difficulties and disappointments of life, while affirming-in the teary-eyed final reel-his cherished values of friendship and individual achievement. It's a Wonderful Life was not a big hit on its initial release, and it won no Oscars (Capra and Stewart were nominated); but it continues to weave a special magic. -Robert Horton.

Frank Capra's work should need no introducton: simply on of the best directors of all time and here are three classic Oscar-winning movies from the master, on two top-quality tapes.

Murder by Numbers is a satisfying, if hardly earth-shattering, addition to Sandy Bullock's CV and the thriller genre in general. While director Barbet Schroeder ratcheted up the tension in his Single White Female, here the action coasts along at a more sedate pace with a tale of teenage murderers that's loosely based on a real incident. (The same incident was the basis for two other movies: Rope and Compulsion. ) Bullock plays seasoned cop Cassie Mayweather, who links the murder of a young woman in Los Angeles to two high-school students. Cassie and her partner (Ben Chaplin) engage in the obligatory game of cat-and-mouse with the two teenagers before the ludicrous finale. It could have been a good film, but Murder by Numbers continually misses the interesting point that this was a crime committed by highly intelligent young men simply for the intellectual thrill of it; instead, it serves up a by-the-numbers thriller with all the trappings of a TV movie. The performances are solid (especially that by Ryan Gosling, who plays one of the murderous teens) but there are so many gaping holes in both plot and logic that the film pretty much manages to disappear into them. On the DVD: Murder by Numbers gets a by-the-numbers DVD release. The normally commentary-friendly Ms Bullock is absent from the chit-chat here, and the director and editor really don't throw up anything of significant interest beyond discussing an extra scene that they claim is included on the DVD but in fact seems absent and giving the reasons why they couldn't use the high school locations originally planned. The DVD also includes the trailer. [+]