What would Hitchcock have done if he had had modern digital effects? The answer is almost certainly: something very like What Lies Beneath, Robert Zemeckis' technically accomplished supernatural thriller that pays open homage to Suspicion, Rear Window and Psycho, to name but three. Michelle Pfeiffer delivers one of the finest, most nuanced performances of her career as a woman in an ideal relationship whose perfect life begins to unravel with terrifying consequences. Harrison Ford plays sympathetically against type as her husband who may or may not be telling her the truth. Although made in the middle of his filming Cast Away, while the director waited for Tom Hanks to shed some pounds, this is no quickie throwaway picture. Zemeckis loads this character-driven story with genuinely scary suspense, using subtle camera moves, mirrored reflections and red-herrings in a classic Hitchcockian manner-the difference here is that he has access to the most up-to-date digital effects and employs them with characteristic imagination, creating seemingly impossible camera angles that only enhance the tension. The Production Design is equally carefully considered, as even the idyllic household setting with its pristine bathroom is gradually transformed into an object of terror. Composer Alan Silvestri's score winds up the drama several notches further with an appropriate Bernard Herrmann pastiche. On the DVD: The principal attraction of this disc is the pin-sharp anamorphic picture and 5. 1 soundtrack-superb picture and sound quality contribute greatly to the enjoyment here, since Zemeckis is one of the few contemporary directors who remains acutely sensitive to the composition of each and every scene. The brief featurette is a little misleadingly titled, as it's essentially a profile of Zemeckis' career with a few comments about this film thrown in for good measure. [+]

Fritz Lang's first sound movie, the serial-killer film M, has often been voted the best German film of all time, but, until now, most of us have never seen it properly. What we have seen is a heavily cut 1950s re-edit with extra sound and music patched in, where Lang was deliberately economical with the new technology. This new "Ultimate Edition" is dominated by a marvellous restoration which is true to his intentions and oft-voiced complaints about what had been done to his best film. The young Peter Lorre is terrifyingly ordinary as the child-murderer whom police and criminals hunt down in what is still one of the best forensic police procedurals ever made, while Gustaf Grundgens has effortless charisma as the chief gangster. Lorre's Hollywood exile and decay, and Grundgens' betrayal of old friends and principles under the Nazis, merely add a layer of irony to all this. Lang's ironic cuts-a gangster's gesture is completed by his police equivalent-and dark, studio-bound cinematography make this one of the great precursors of American film noir. Simply, seen without cracks and pops and lines running down the screen, M is revealed as a true classic-a film that shames everything made in its genre since. On the DVD: M on disc has a great deal of documentary material featuring scholars and technicians telling us just how clever they have been in preparing this splendid restoration. The film also comes with a detailed commentary into which has been spliced interview material with Lang talking in English about specific sequences. There is a German-language film interview with Lang in which he talks through his career and re-enacts the interview with Goebbels that led to his exile; an audio interview with Peter Bogdanovich; and an intelligent video critical essay by film historian R Dixon Smith. [+]

SCOTT GLENN ,THERESA RUSSELL. UNDERCOVER AGENT CODE NAME THE DOVE. SHE SELLSSEX IN EXCHANGE FOR MILITARY SECRETS. SHE WANTS OUT BUT KNOWS TOO MUCH TO BE ALLOWED TO LIVE.

Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito are reunited for a third time to fabulous effect in The War of the Roses. This is a dark, disturbing comedy of marital trauma and revenge, which couldn't be more different from their sunnier outings in Romancing the Stone and The Jewel of the Nile. Douglas and Turner, in career-best performances, are the materialistic, consumer-driven Roses of the title (Oliver and Barbara) whose seemingly perfect marriage has soured beyond repair; their only point of contact is their meticulously maintained dream house, which Douglas bought and Turner decorated to perfection. When Turner gets a taste of financial independence, she asks Douglas for a divorce-all she wants is the house and everything in it (aside from his clothes and shaving kit). He laughs at her and she punches him in the face. Things only get worse from there, as nasty divorce proceedings (with DeVito as Douglas's lawyer) give way to insults, threats, ruined dinner parties and pet abuse. And through it all, the Roses begin destroying their beloved home and its contents, just to spite each other. DeVito, who also directed, takes Michael Leeson's blacker-than-black screenplay and gives it a hyper-stylised spin, complete with skewed camera angles and wonderfully expressionistic cinematography (by Stephen Burum) as Douglas and Turner barricade themselves in their house, both refusing to give an inch. Shocking for a mainstream studio picture, with its unsympathetic protagonists, escalating bitterness and disturbing finale, Roses is a poisonously funny valentine to both marriage and 1980s materialism, tempered only by its framing device as a cautionary tale. -Mark Englehart, Amazon. [+]

Released to box-office indifference in 1986, Manhunter introduced Hannibal Lecter and established the rules of the modern race to find serial killer thriller five years before The Silence of the Lambs packed cinemas everywhere. This was Michael Mann's third feature, reuniting William L Petersen and Dennis Farina from his debut Thief (1981) as FBI agents hunting the killer dubbed "The Tooth Fairy". Petersen's Will Graham is the man who put Lecktor (as it is spelt here) behind bars, and as in Lambs consults with the Doctor, played with understated malevolence by Brian Cox. Manhunter is an exceptionally well-photographed film: Mann's regular cinematographer Dante Spinotti created sparse, elegantly framed, often mono-chromatically lit compositions which are essential to the shifting psychological moods. The performances are very good, and the typically 1980s, Vangelis-esque electronic score effectively sustains tension. Once the killer is introduced the scenes with Joan Allen have a genuinely unsettling, almost surreal quality. There is at least one serious plot flaw-how does "The Red Dragon" get his letter to Lecktor? Manhunter never packs the sheer excitement of Lambs, nevertheless, it is a powerful and compelling thriller which remains far superior to the third instalment in the series, Hannibal (2001). On the DVD: In addition to the trailer there is a revealing 10-minute conversation with Dante Spinotti in which he explains how he created the very distinctive look of Manhunter. Also included is a more general 17-minute retrospective "making-of" documentary. This is good but too short, the extras failing to live up to the wealth of material on the Lambs and Hannibal DVDs. [+]

This is the first (it dates from 1957) of the many films which were to identify Christopher Lee with Bram Stoker's undead anti-hero and, in many ways, it remains the best. Tied reasonably closely to that of Stoker's novel, the plot sees the English academic Jonathan Harker (Van Eyssen) entering the employ of Dracula, secretly aware that the nobleman is a vampire and with every intention of destroying him. Sadly, it doesn't work out and Harker, in one of the film's several gentle structural conceits, becomes Dracula's servant in more senses than one, prompting one Doctor Van Helsing (Peter Cushing, of course) to investigate his disappearance. The rest, of course, is a slightly wobbly version of history. This is the only film of the series to retain its roots in theatrical melodrama-the clipped, "ack-torly" exchanges between Lee and Van Eyssen are a joy-but it remains gripping in spite, or because of that. Best of all, it allows Lee to present Dracula as a real character-a haunted, tragic figure, impatient with the mortal world and its trivia-before camp tomfoolery, likeable enough in its own way, came to dominate the series. -Roger Thomas.

Inferno, Dario Argento's sequel to Suspiria (1977), is an even more incoherent nightmare fantasy. Laden with symbolic imagery and fantastic explosions of death shot in candy-coloured hues, it's a blood feast for the eyes. Mark (Leigh McCloskey), an American music student in Rome, rushes home to New York after a frantic phone call from his sister only to find an empty apartment and obscure clues about a supernatural presence in her spooky building. It all has something to do with the mysterious Mater Tenebrarum, one of the "Three Mothers" of Argento's murky mythology, and the funhouse of an apartment house she inhabits, complete with a fully furnished underwater ballroom, miles of secret tunnels flooded in red and blue light, and hidden passageways under the floorboards. Meanwhile there's a killer running around stabbing beautiful women for who knows what reason, and a crippled bookseller attacked by rats and a homicidal hot dog vendor in Central Park. Why? It's best not to ponder such mysteries-Argento obviously isn't as concerned with making sense of his meticulously staged murders as he is with lighting them with just the right hue. Dramatically it's inert, a parade of quirky but faceless victims dispatched with elaborate care, but it's beautifully designed and executed, a spectacle of elaborate set pieces and magnificent decor orchestrated with a complete disdain for narrative logic. -Sean Axmaker.