Considering how lame this sequel could have been, The Santa Clause 2 makes for a pleasant seasonal diversion. It's got the familiar smell of Disney marketeering, and more than a few parents will object to this further embellishment of the St Nick legend, but Tim Allen's amiable presence provides ample compensation. As a divorced dad who inherited the jolly man's job in The Santa Clause, Allen now faces another Yuletide challenge. According to the "Missus Clause" in his North Pole contract, he can't continue to be the real Santa until he gets married. As luck and five credited screenwriters would have it, Allen falls for the Scroogey principal (Elizabeth Mitchell) of his son's school, while a phoney, power-hungry duplicate Santa wreaks havoc on the North Pole's overworked elves. It's all as sweet as spiced eggnog, with that warmed-over feel of a mandated sequel, but the Christmas spirit does prevail with the sound of sleigh bells and Allen's rosy-cheeked "Ho, ho, ho!". -Jeff Shannon.

What can two little mice possibly do to save an orphan girl who's fallen into evil hands? With The Rescuers anything is possible! As members of the mouse-run International Rescue Aid Society, Bernard and Miss Bianca respond to orphan Penny's call for help. The two mice search for clues and with the help of an old cat named Rufus they track Penny to the clutches of the evil Madame Medusa in a dilapidated ship in Devil's Bayou. It turns out that Medusa is using Penny to locate and retrieve the Devil's Eye Diamond-a stone she'll stop at nothing to possess. With a cunning plan, courageous acts, cooperation from local animal life and lots of faith, Bernard and Miss Bianca try to help Penny find the diamond and escape from Medusa. This somewhat dark, classic 1977 animated Disney film is based on Margery Sharp's book, The Rescuers and Miss Bianca, and features the Academy Award-nominated song "Someone's Waiting for You". Voice talents include Eva Gabor as Miss Bianca, Bob Newhart as Bernard, Geraldine Page as Madame Medusa and Jim Jordan as Orville Albatross. The sequel is The Rescuers Down Under. (Ages 5 to 11) -Tami Horiuchi, Amazon. com.

The Railway Children (1970) and Swallows and Amazons (1974) are perfect bedfellows: two classic children's novels, simply and faithfully adapted for the big screen. Together they evoke a poignant nostalgia for the periods in which they are set-Edwardian and 1920s England, respectively-and for the childhood of anyone who has grown up watching them. Sentimentality reigns, of course, but it's never cloying. The truthfulness of the juvenile performances, balanced with restrained sympathy from the adults, sees to that. Flourishing under Lionel Jeffries' delicate direction, Jenny Agutter dominates The Railway Children as the oldest daughter of a family thrown on hard times when their father is wrongly sent to prison. They avert a train disaster, save an imperilled steeple chaser and reunite an exiled Russian with his wife, all with equal enterprise. Happy endings prevail after every crisis. And no number of repeat viewings can ever diminish the impact of father's return. One of the most expert tear-duct work-outs in film history, it hits the spot every time. Perhaps the lack of such a pivotal scene has kept Swallows and Amazons in the relative shade. [+]

The seventh series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer begins with a mystery: someone is murdering teenage girls all over the world and something is trying hard to drive Spike mad. Buffy is considerably more cheerful in these episodes than we have seen her during the previous year as she trains Dawn and gets a job as student counsellor at the newly rebuilt Sunnydale High. Willow is recovering from the magical addiction which almost led her to destroy the world, but all is not yet well with her, or with Anya, who has returned to being a Vengeance demon in "Same Time, Same Place" and "Selfless", and both women are haunted by their decisions. Haunting of a different kind comes in the excellent "Conversations with Dead People" (one of the show's most terrifying episodes ever) where a mysterious song is making Spike kill again in spite of his soul and his chip. Giles turns up in "Bring on the Night" and Buffy has to fight one of the deadliest vampires of her career in "Showtime". In "Potential" Dawn faces a fundamental reassessment of her purpose in life. This is a spectacular start to Buffy's last year as the consequences of earlier actions unfold in a string of surprises and shocks punctuated as always by some of the funniest lines on television. -Roz Kaveney.

Jack Bauer is having another one of his "very bad days" in the second series of the ground-breaking real-time thriller 24. Once again the hours are ticking by with more guaranteed cliffhangers than a convention of mountain climbers. Holed up in a Los Angeles condo and estranged from his daughter, Jack is no longer on the government payroll; unfortunately for him, this small fact doesn't seem to matter to President David Palmer and the NSA who call him back in to the CTU and give him 24 hours to infiltrate a terrorist organisation who are planning to detonate a dirty bomb in the city of angels. All Jack wants is to get his daughter out of the city, unfortunately Kim's new employer, the abusive father of the child she is nannying, has other ideas. Fans of the original won't be disappointed, as there are more than enough shock moments in the first few hours to hint at the climactic build-up to come, while newcomers can quickly get involved in the lives of Jack and his family. There are some new characters to bolster the veteran cast and, interestingly (although not surprisingly given the outcome of the first series), Jack's character has taken an altogether darker, more psychopathic turn. The danger the characters find themselves in also has a much more global impetus, grounded as it is in the war against terrorism. Although the territory is more familiar this time around, this second series is just as much a high-tension, taut, adrenaline-fuelled ride as the first series, and one that will have you glued to your TV for the next 24 hours. -Kristen Bowditch.

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.

During the Second World War, Britain's women were asked to help out the farming industry by joining The Women's Land Army (The Land Girls). Three city gals make their way to the Lawrence farm in Dorset, and find themselves taking to the work easily enough. The only problem between them is each want young Joe (Steven Mackintosh) for their own reasons. Ag (Anna Friel) is the fiery sort who'll take pleasure where she finds it; Prue (Rachel Wiesz) just wants a lesson in the ways of the world; while Stella (Catherine McCormack) is looking for a way out of the private trap she's set in motion back home, but her feelings are the most sincere of the bunch. The film is Stella's story really (as adapted from the novel by Angela Huth), and has her affecting the on-off decision by Joe to join the RAF, the fight with the government to keep the East Meadow as it is and the paths the two other girls end up taking. Everything is very sweet-natured, especially when played out against a backdrop of rolling green hills, chuffing steam engines and knee-high socks tucked into Wellington boots. There's no comment on the effects of war as such, instead this film is more about the reasons why we make choices in life. -Paul Tonks.

A genuinely epic achievement, the 10-part World War II drama Band of Brothers is a television series that makes big-screen Hollywood war movies look small in comparison. Based on the book by historian Stephen Ambrose, the series follows the US 101st Airborne Division's "Easy" E-Company from initial training through D-Day and across Holland, Belgium, Germany and Austria until the end of the war. Coproduced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks the series takes its initial inspiration from Saving Private Ryan and borrows that film's visceral visual approach to combat scenes too. But where Band of Brothers scores over Ryan and almost every other war movie is in its scrupulous attention to historical detail and the unprecedented accuracy of its depiction of military life (retired Marine Captain Dale Dye, who also costars, is the man to credit). Helping the verisimilitude is the absence of big-name stars and the constant emphasis on the company not the individual-Easy saw some of the fiercest action of the war and suffered some of the worst casualties of any Allied unit and this terrible attrition is seen unflinchingly from the soldiers' own point of view. After the high drama of the parachute drop on D-Day, Easy's greatest trial comes during the Battle of the Bulge when they are besieged at Bastogne in the depths of winter. In one of the most harrowing and credible depictions of war ever committed to film we see the men enduring the repeated artillery attacks of the German forces and experience, if only vicariously, some of the sheer terror of the assault while being humbled by the soldiers' courage and determination. Such feelings are enhanced by the series' masterstroke-bookend interviews with the surviving members of Easy Company who talk with barely suppressed emotion of the experiences we see recreated. The endorsement of these veterans elevates Band of Brothers beyond any mere "war film"-its extraordinary achievement is that it shows the horror and savagery of war without gloss or jingoism and yet celebrates the fraternal bonds and dogged heroism of the men who fought. -Mark Walker.

This film adaptation of a critically acclaimed stage production of Shakespeare's historical drama stars Ian McKellen in the title role. The setting is a comic-book vision of 1930s London: part art deco, part Third Reich, part industrial-age rust and rot. The play's force is turned into a synthetic high by art directors and storyboard sketchers, all of whom have a field day condensing the material into disposable pop imagery. Richard III is a fun film, more than anything, so infatuated with its own monstrous stitchery that even the most awkward casting (Annette Bening and Robert Downey Jr. ) seems a part of the ridiculous design. McKellen is the best thing about the movie, his mesmerising portrayal of freakish despotism and poisoned desire a thing to behold. Directed by Richard Loncraine (Bellman and True). -Tom Keogh.

One of the rarest of the early Doctor Who series, with William Hartnell as the crusty old Doctor, "Edge of Destruction" is entirely based in the Tardis, which has stopped somewhere between worlds and times. The Doctor blames Ian and Barbara, the two teachers who came aboard in search for answers about his granddaughter, Susan, assuming they have committed sabotage in an attempt to return to their own time. They, in turn, in spite of recent shared escapes from Cavemen and Daleks, have no particular reason to trust his sanity. Something is causing one after another of them to act with violent irrationality, and the clock is ticking towards their destruction. This is a claustrophobic two-episode plot in which the series examines closely some of its more beloved assumptions. For example, who, in this situation, is good and who dangerous-the restriction to a single set may have started as an economy measure but virtue is made of necessity. Also included is the original pilot episode, "An Unearthly Child", with several retakes. -Roz Kaveney.

Action-packed Season Three develops major characters and plot lines brewing over the last couple of years (see below). The Mayor, this season's major baddie, wants to become an invincible demon by slaughtering everyone at Sunnydale High's graduation ceremony, but he's going to torture them all by giving his speech first. Bad-girl vampire-slayer Faith wants to best Buffy and gets ever more rotten. Angel comes back from hell but isn't sure what to do about his girlfriend. Willow meets her evil gay vampire duplicate from another dimension. Xander loses his virginity, but still has to contemplate his essential uselessness. Cordelia gets less whiny and has to work in a dress-shop when her father becomes bankrupt. Giles wears tweed and drinks tea, though it is revealed that he used to be a warlock and in a punk band. Besides the soap opera, there are monsters, curses, and vampires (inevitably). -Kim Newman.

In this 1942 melodrama, founded on the novel by Olivia Higgins Prouty (who also wrote the novel on which Stella Dallas was based), Bette Davis stars as Charlotte Vale, a dowdy, repressed woman who, overwhelmed by her domineering mother, is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She finds help at a sanatorium from a kind psychiatrist (Claude Rains), who turns her into a beautiful, confident woman. As a new person, she takes a pleasure cruise, where she meets Jerry (Paul Henreid), an architect trapped in an unhappy marriage, saddled with a troubled daughter. The two fall in love but, of course, the romance is doomed. Yet their paths cross on occasion, and, despite their feelings, Charlotte finds satisfaction in helping Jerry's depressed child. The film will seem familiar to new viewers-the campy style was the pattern for many tearjerkers to come and its most famous line has been oft repeated ("Don't ask for the moon-we have the stars"). But the heartstrings are tugged and as Paul Henreid chivalrously lights two cigarettes and hands one over to the doleful-eyed Davis, pull out the box of tissues-you're gonna need 'em. -Jenny Brown.

An old, old story as told circa 1980, Breaking Glass, written and directed by Brian Gibson, follows the path of Stardust not to mention A Star is Born and most other films about showbusiness, by following the rise of a talented young hopeful who learns that success comes with strings. Kate Crowley (Hazel O'Connor) begins as a bleached New Wave ranter, fly-posting on the tube and yelling songs about dehumanisation over fascist chants in rowdy pubs, but ends up a stoned glam zombie dressed as a robot, packaging her anger for the benefit of corporate music biz baddies and retreating to a sanatorium. The plot may be familiar, but the film still works, thanks to persuasive central performances from O'Connor, who wrote her own songs and shows real acting muscle that sadly didn't lead to anything like a film career, and Phil Daniels as her hustling manager/boyfriend/conscience. The fine supporting cast includes Jon Finch and Jonathan Pryce as a Bond villain-style record producer and a deaf junkie sax player, with glimpses of later perennials such as Jim Broadbent and Richard Griffiths. Made and set at the start of the 1980s, it catches its times exactly: a "Rock Against 1984" outdoor gig that turns into a riot, a routine police harrassment of a band rehearsal, a power cut that transforms a concert into a before-its-time "unplugged" session. Credits trivia: the executive producer was Dodi al Fayed. On the DVD: A nice letterboxed transfer looks a bit soft and grainy-but that's the way it's supposed to be. The only extras are cribbed-from-the-IMDB filmographies, a trailer with a wonderfully unconvincing narration and an image gallery (posters, ads and stills). -Kim Newman.