Such a simple idea-yet so fiendishly complex in the execution. 24, as surely everyone knows by now, is a thriller that takes place over 24 hours, midnight to midnight, in 24 one-hour episodes (well, 45-minute episodes if you extract the ad breaks). Everything to take place in real time-on-screen and off-screen time the same-which means no flash-backs, no flash-forwards, no nice handy time-dissolves. Every strand of the plot has to be dovetailed and interlocked to make sure that things happen just when they should, in the right amount of time. Not that easy. Creator Robert Cochran and his team of writers and directors have done a pretty impressive job in putting the jigsaw together and keeping the tension ratcheted up high, as Federal Agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) hares around LA trying to stall an assassination attempt on a black Presidential candidate and rescue his wife and daughter from the clutches of the Balkan baddies. Twists, turns, revelations and cliffhangers are tossed at us with satisfying regularity. It's not perfect: we get some hokey plot devices (instant amnesia, anybody?) and the final twist, once you start thinking back, makes no sense whatsoever. There are altogether too many huggy family moments ("I love you, Dad. " "I love you, son"); and as for überbaddie Dennis Hopper's "Serbian" accent… Even so, this is undeniably mould-breaking TV. [+]

In Season 4 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sunnydale high school is left behind in smoking ruins and Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) becomes a college freshman at the (fictitious) University of California Sunnydale campus. The major arc of the season involves a semi-sinister Man from U. N. C. L. E. -type government agency known as The Initiative which has its Bond-style HQ under the campus. Their nefarious plans involve capturing vampires and demons, including the now-regular character Spike (James Marsters), and hacking them to pieces for assembly into a Frankensteinian supermonster or fitting them with chips that mute their killing urges. Buffy's plank-like new boyfriend Riley (Mark Blucas) is deadweight, Giles (Anthony Stewart Head) is shoved into new corners of irrelevance (and turns folkie!), Willow (Alyson Hannigan) breaks up with the werewolf (Seth Green) and comes out, Xander (Nicholas Brendon) whines about not being a student but starts dating a former demon (the amusing Emma Caulfield), Angel (David Boreanaz) has his own series but drops in for crossovers (you will need to buy the Angel box sets to find out how some key plot lines pay off) and previously killed or comatose semi-regulars pop in for dreams or revivals. A run of shaky episodes starts off this season, with the show seemingly uncomfortable with the new setting as it treads water with the same old monsters. [+]

There's nothing original in The Scorpion King, but this derivative action franchise gets off to a rousing start by cleverly stealing from a lot of better movies. Capitalising on his brief cameo in The Mummy Returns, Dwayne Johnson (a. k. a. World Wrestling Federation star the Rock) stars as Mathayus, an Akkadian assassin in the age preceding Egyptian pharaohs, who vows to avenge his brother's murder by an undefeated warlord (Steven Brand) prophesied to become the desert-ruling Scorpion King. Their battle for supremacy comprises most of the film's brisk 95-minute running time, punctuated by comic relief from Mathayus's obligatory sidekick (Grant Heslov), romance with a beautiful sorceress (Kelly Hu), and alliance with a massive Nubian (Michael Clarke Duncan) on the eve of their climactic showdown. There's no rhyme or reason to the film's depiction of ancient civilization (the costuming is particularly ludicrous), but the Rock demonstrates adequate action-star potential, and director Chuck Russell (The Mask) wraps it all in a slick, professional package. -Jeff Shannon.

Fresh from Stuart Little, young Jonathan Lipnicki carries on his pint-sized shoulders his every scene in The Little Vampire as eight-year-old Tony, befriender of vampires. The Scottish setting lends itself nicely to spookiness, too. A continent away from his native California, Tony's having a tough time making new friends when a band of vagabond vampires enters his life through his bedroom window. The encounter seems pure coincidence at first, but then the scary truth surfaces: Tony, though he's not a vampire himself, has "sympathy for our kind", as the dad of the bat-linked brood puts it. Visions of vampire happenings from generations past invade the kid's consciousness, and they hold the key to the clan's current gypsy-like predicament. Through his clairvoyance and, by extension, the discovery of a long-lost amulet, the mostly benevolent bloodsuckers are able to reclaim their rightful status as proper cave-dwellers in their homeland. Clueless-parent predicaments abound-Tony's mum and dad smirk at their son's vampire-obsessed imagination until the cape-draped heads of the clan drop by for a visit-and viewers of around Tony's age will find the gang's adventures eluding a bumbling vampire hunter genuinely chuckle worthy. -Tammy La Gorce.

Let's be honest: this should be titled Wretched Excess' Frankenstein. Swooping, wild, bloody, and energetic, this is bad moviemaking from the best, which makes it all the more loveable. Kenneth Branagh plays Victor Frankenstein, a man so obsessed with conquering death that he decides to create life. What he gets, after a protoplasmic mud wrestle, is a Mean Streets monster (Robert De Niro) that isn't particularly happy to be back from the dead or thrilled about all the stitches. Helena Bonham Carter may, at several points in this film, actually be channelling Ramtha. The supporting cast couldn't be peopled with better performers (Tom Hulce, John Cleese, Ian Holm) but they all look like they're ringside at some Ultimate Fighting competition. A must for any midnight movie collector for the shock factor alone. A hoot. -Keith Simanton.

Thanks to the ambitious vision of director Tim Burton, the blockbuster hit of 1989 delivers the goods despite an occasionally spotty script, giving the caped crusader a thorough overhaul in keeping with the crime fighter's evolution in DC Comics. Michael Keaton strikes just the right mood as the brooding "Dark Knight" of Gotham City; Kim Basingerplays Gotham's intrepid reporter Vicki Vale; and Jack Nicholson goes wild as the maniacal and scene-stealing Joker, who plots a take over of the city with his lethal Smilex gas. Triumphant Oscar-winning production design by the late Anton Furst turns Batman into a visual feast, and Burton brilliantly establishes a darkly mythic approach to Batman's legacy. Danny Elfman's now-classic score propels the action with bold, muscular verve. -Jeff Shannon.

This splendid adventure-fantasy from 1990 was adapted from Roald Dahl's book, The Witches, and directed by maverick British filmmaker Nicolas Roeg, who turned out to be a perfect (if seemingly unlikely) interpreter of Dahl's fiendishly clever tale of witchcraft in contemporary England. Scary, funny, and wildly entertaining, it's all about a young boy named Luke (Jasen Fisher) whose parents have died in a tragic accident, and whose grandmother (Mai Zetterling) takes him to a posh hotel in England, where a secret coven of witches is holding its annual convention. The Grand High Witch (Anjelica Huston, in a scene-stealing performance) has decreed that all children in England be turned into mice, and Luke and his pal Bruno (Charles Potter) are the first victims on the list. That's when the movie magicians from Jim Henson's creature shop have their work cut out for them, turning Luke and Bruno into clever little rodents and The Witches into a dazzling display of imaginative special effects, using a seamless combination of real mice and superb animatronic puppets. Director Roeg doesn't compromise the sinister edge of Dahl's story, but comedy gets equal time from the brilliant cast including Brenda Blethyn (from Secrets and Lies and Little Voice), Rowan Atkinson (of Black Adder and Mr. Bean fame), and Jane Horrocks (Little Voice) as the Grand High Witch's beleaguered assistant. Although it was largely neglected during its brief theatrical release, this wonderful movie has since enjoyed a thriving appreciation on video-see it and you'll understand why. -Jeff Shannon.

A cultish horror favourite, 1962's What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? will make you think twice before hungrily unveiling a covered plate of food. Bette Davis stars as Jane Hudson, a onetime child actress and singer. As an elderly woman, she wishes to revive her vaudevillian career, but she has become a grotesque caricature of her former self. Over the years as her star faded, the star of her older sister Blanche (Joan Crawford) rose, outshining the career of the has-been Baby Jane. Jane was relegated to minor roles, which she only won when Blanche demanded that she be awarded them. The film opens years after a calamitous car accident leaves Blanche in a wheelchair, with no one to care for her except the increasingly insane and sadistic Jane and their servant, Norman. Trying to punish Blanche for her years of success, Jane tortures the house-bound woman, slowly trying to starve her to death, all the while attempting to recapture the fame of her youth. This dark drama also stars Victor Buono as the hefty pianist who answers Jane's ad for an accompanist, hoping to milk some money off the demented old woman. Both Buono and Davis were nominated for Oscars for their roles in this suspenseful and somewhat sick thriller that exploited well the real-life antagonism between Davis and Crawford, while at the same time rejuvenating both their careers. -Jenny Brown.

Focusing on a few trauma-packed days in the life of a misanthropic French horse-meat butcher who has plans that just might be murderous, Gasper Noé's Seul Contre Tous is an incendiary exercise in the cinema of cruelty. Shocking, abrasive and, admittedly, a smidgen pretentious, it is none the less one of the boldest and most memorable films to emerge from the European art-house scene in the last 10 years. The opening series of still photographs accompanied by voice-over tell us the story which formed Noé's first 40-minute feature Carné: working-class anti-hero Jean Chevalier (played by brute-featured Phillippe Nahon) has done time for killing a man he thought had raped his autistic daughter Cynthia (Blandine Lenoir). Now back out and living with his shrewish pregnant mistress, his self-loathing and contempt for what life has dealt him boil up into a rage that leads to violence. Hitchhiking to Paris with a gun in his pocket, he unsuccessfully seeks work, watches a porn film (digitally blurred by the British censors to spare viewers' sensibilities) and then finds the daughter he left behind years before. It all leads up to a traumatic climax that Noé flags with a title-card countdown warning us we have 30 seconds to leave the cinema (read switch off the VCR or DVD player if you are planning to watch it home). What follows is indeed nauseating and disturbing, but ultimately redemptive and moving as well. As if that weren't warning enough, throughout the film the blast of a shotgun echoes from the film's future, accompanied by shock-cut jump-zooms lurching us further into the frame, one of the film's most arresting techniques. You could easily tease out the influences at work here: the abject poetry of writers such as Céline and Beckett; the alienated lone-gunman psychology of Scorsese's Taxi Driver; the stylistic, neo-Brechtian flourishes of the French New Wave. But if Noé steals, he steals from the best, and in the process has crafted something wholly original and bracingly against the grain. [+]

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.

Although you never really fear for Mrs "lop-sided" Wilberforce or General Gordon (her parrot) in The Ladykillers, the criminal gang who come to stay are clearly dangerous. Alec Guinness is extraordinary as the buck-toothed mastermind, and once the hijacked lolly is stowed in their digs it's a joy to watch him scheme to eliminate the other crooks and abscond with it all. Herbert Lom's thuggishness, Peter Seller's nervy twitching, and Danny Green's lumbering cloddishness are a treat, but are wickedly done away with one by one under cover of locomotive smoke plumes. So many set-pieces make this a classic: sending the landlady to collect the stolen money at the station, Frankie Howerd's boisterous fruit seller cameo, and keeping alive the idea that the gang's a musical troupe with a penchant for Boccherini and Haydn. Some inspired set design and camera work even add an expressionistic quality. -Paul Tonks.

Val Kilmer stars in The Ghost and the Darkness as Lt Col John Patterson, a 19th-century Irish engineer drafted by Britain's railroad bosses to build a trestle bridge over an African river, thus expanding the empire a tiny bit more. In Tsavo, Patterson is instantly hailed for killing a man-eating lion that had been making life hell for native workers. But morale sinks when two more unstoppable big cats devour more men and destroy the project. Along comes an, expatriate American hunter (Michael Douglas) to help Patterson face the almost preternatural powers of the two killers. The script by William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) is based on fact, though the film owes more to Steven Spielberg (specifically to Jaws) than history. There are also suggestive echoes of Kipling and Conrad in the material and characters, and there are hints of emotional complexity and psychological nuance that make one wish this could have been a great film instead of a merely fun one. -Tom Keogh, Amazon. com.

The second sequel to the mould-making action film Die Hard brings Detective John McClane (Bruce Willis) to New York City to face a better villain than in Die Hard 2. Played by Jeremy Irons, he's the brother of the Germanic terrorist-thief Alan Rickman played in the original film. But this bad guy has his sights set higher: on the Federal Reserve's cache of gold. As a distraction, he sets McClane running fool's errands all over New York-and eventually, McClane attracts an unintentional partner, a Harlem dry cleaner (Samuel L Jackson) with a chip on his shoulder. Some great action sequences, though they can't obscure the rather large plot holes in the film's final 45 minutes. -Marshall Fine.