Woody Allen's Celebrity-a portrait of the celebrity life as seen through the eyes of a newly divorced couple-is a black-and-white, New York-style La Dolce Vita that's a chillier flip side to Allen's earlier New York valentine, Manhattan. Despite a few missteps, though, it's an admirable (if dark) and worthy addition to the Allen pantheon. Kenneth Branagh and Judy Davis (both boasting American accents) star as the ex-couple, each struggling to build new, separate lives in a media-saturated, celebrity-driven world. Branagh tries his hand at celebrity profiles (while peddling a screenplay to any star that will listen) and falls into the lap of a bosomy starlet (Melanie Griffith), the first in a long line of briefly attainable women. Davis runs into a producer (Joe Mantegna) who offers her a job as a TV personality as well as a loving relationship. This seemingly simple double plot is punctuated with twists and turns in the form of flashbacks and innumerable side trips, all ravishingly photographed in black and white by the legendary Sven Nykvist, and populated by one of Allen's largest casts ever; if you blink you'll miss countless cameos by Isaac Mizrahi, Donald Trump, Hank Azaria, Leonardo DiCaprio and a host of others. While Davis is splendid as usual (aside from the requisite nervous breakdown scene she's done one too many times), somebody should have told Branagh to put a kibosh on his Woody Allen imitation. His failure in the role, however, isn't entirely his fault, as it's another in a long line of unlikable male protagonists which Allen has created, as if daring audiences to hate his main characters after loving them in such movies as Manhattan and Annie Hall. Far more enjoyable misadventures with Branagh include Charlise Theron in the film's best performance as a libidinous supermodel with a penchant for Echinacea; a stunning Famke Janssen as a successful book editor; and Winona Ryder, acting like an adult for the first time, as an aspiring actress. But they all manage to slip through Branagh's fingers by the end of the film. [+]

The original co-writer and director of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was Alex Cox, whose earlier film Sid and Nancy suggests that Cox could have been a perfect match in filming Hunter S Thompson's psychotropic masterpiece of "gonzo" journalism. Unfortunately Cox departed due to the usual "creative differences", and this ill-fated adaptation was thrust upon Terry Gilliam, whose formidable gifts as a visionary film-maker were squandered on Thompson's ether-fogged narrative. The result is a one-joke movie without the joke-an endless series of repetitive scenes involving rampant substance abuse and the hallucinogenic fallout of a road trip that's run crazily out of control. Johnny Depp plays Thompson's alter ego, "gonzo" journalist Raoul Duke, and Benicio Del Toro is his sidekick and so-called lawyer Dr Gonzo. During the course of a trip to Las Vegas to cover a motorcycle race, they ingest a veritable chemistry set of drugs, and Gilliam does his best to show us the hallucinatory state of their zonked-out minds. This allows for some dazzling imagery and the rampant humour of stumbling buffoons, and the mumbling performances of Depp and Del Toro wholeheartedly embrace the tripped-out, paranoid lunacy of Thompson's celebrated book. But over two hours of this insanity tends to grate on the nerves-like being the only sober guest at a party full of drunken idiots. So while Gilliam's film may achieve some modest cult status over the years, it's only because Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is best enjoyed by those who are just as stoned as the characters in the movie. -Jeff Shannon, Amazon. com.

Inspired script, great cast-what could be a better recipe for a true classic amid the soul-sapping morass of straight-to-tape? Storywise, Suicide Kings goes something like this: when wealthy straight-arrow college kid Max (Sean Patrick Flanery) learns his girlfriend has been kidnapped for a $2 million ransom, he panics big-time. Roping in his friends-T. K. (Jeremy Sisto); a strangely steely medical student named Brett (Jay Mohr from Go), a loud-mouthed ball of machismo; and Avery (Henry Thomas), the elder brother of the girl in peril-Max organises another kidnapping to raise the ransom, this time of neighbourhood ganglord Christopher Bartlett (Christopher Walken). Bartlett is understandably is rather piqued about the whole business, particularly when he's inadvertently shot while being spirited back to the summer home of the Ira (Johnny Galecki), another pal of Max's, much of whose time is spent fretting about his parents' soft furnishings. But the real intrigue has only just started. Much to his credit and the film's benefit, first-time director Peter O'Fallon avoids the Tarantino-like excesses of violence his storyline could have fallen back on. Instead, he summons up a blackly comic tone which veers masterfully between understated farce and noir-ish melodrama without once losing its footing. Remarkably, the maze of plot twists which could have capsized the entire project actually work, while the innumerable one-liners which pepper the script stay snappy and vital throughout. ("I'm not asking for dinner and dancing", remarks an avuncular Walken, having asked to be momentarily cut free to use the bathroom. [+]

A Bumper bundle of over FIFTEEN hours of one of the most loved shows ever. the incredible MUPPETS!! With more guest stars than you can shake a green frog at!.

Cats Don't Dance is typical fare: a dancing cat who wants to be a Hollywood star circa 1939. Of course, animals only play animal roles in the movies but our hero Danny (a cat) won't accept that as an answer. Plenty of big laughs for adults here but there are also some wonderful characters including the bratty baby starlet Darla Dimple (Shirley Temple meets Baby Herman) and her Schwarzenegger-type bodyguard Max. There's also a jittery hippo, a cute penguin and a keen elephant who helps Danny fulfil his dream and land the girl-err, cat. Randy Newman's songs are just as inspired as the film: a pleasant, kid-friendly picture with lots to satisfy the older crowd as well. -Doug Thomas.

Season 1: When the first series of Friends debuted in September 1994, it was immediately obvious there would be no need for the show to find its feet. "The One Where Monica Gets a Roommate" was a confident introduction to the six lead characters, opening in the middle of an everyday conversation with the soon-to-be uncharacteristic line: "There's nothing to tell". In fact, the soap opera-style plot got complicated pretty quickly, with spoiled brat Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) moving on from her failed wedding to feelings toward nerdy/heartthrob Ross (David Schwimmer). However, no love life was more complicated than Joey's (Matt LeBlanc), with an endless stream of girlfriends that annoyed the hell out of wisecracking roommate Chandler (Matthew Perry), who only seemed to be able to connect with Janice (Maggie Wheeler), the shrillest voice in the city. Bouncing all manner of neuroses around them were Ross' obsessive sister Monica (Courteney Cox) and endearingly ditzy Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow). Premise established, Series 1 matured the characters by providing a monkey and a son for Ross. We met also meet Ross and Monica's parents Jack (Elliott Gould) and Judy (Christina Pickles), Chandler's mother (Morgan Fairchild) and Phoebe's twin sister Ursula (Kudrow, naturally). Fans loved cameos from George Clooney, Jay Leno and show creators Kevin Bright, Marta Kauffman and David Crane. But really the focus was on building to "T. O. [+]