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'll need to buy the Angel box set to find out how some key plotlines 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. [+]

When it was announced that Tom Cruise would play the vampire Lestat in this adaptation of Anne Rice's bestselling novel, even Rice chimed in with a highly publicised objection. The author wisely and justifiably recanted her negative opinion when she saw Cruise's excellent performance, which perceptively addresses the pain and chronic melancholy that plagues anyone cursed with immortal bloodlust. Brad Pitt and Kirsten Dunst are equally good at maintaining the dark and brooding tone of Rice's novel. And in this rare mainstream project for a major studio, director Neil Jordan compensates for a lumbering plot by honouring the literate, Romantic qualities of Rice's screenplay. Considered a disappointment while being embraced by Rice's loyal followers, Interview with the Vampire is too slow to be a satisfying thriller, but it is definitely one of the most lavish, intelligent horror films ever made. -Jeff Shannon When it was announced that Tom Cruise would play the vampire Lestat in Interview with a Vampire, the film adaptation of Anne Rice's bestselling novel, even Rice chimed in with a highly publicised objection. The author wisely and justifiably recanted her negative opinion when she saw Cruise's excellent performance, which perceptively addresses the pain and chronic melancholy that plagues anyone cursed with immortal blood lust. Brad Pitt and Kirsten Dunst are equally good at maintaining the dark and brooding tone of Rice's novel. And in this rare mainstream project for a major studio, director Neil Jordan compensates for a lumbering plot by honouring the literate, Romantic qualities of Rice's screenplay. Considered a disappointment while being embraced by Rice's loyal followers, Interview is too slow to be a satisfying thriller, but it is definitely one of the most lavish, intelligent horror films ever made. [+]

This attempt to reunite the stars of White Men Can't Jump will most likely be remembered as the movie that allegedly inspired a number of copycat arsons in the New York subway system. In other words, the movie itself is too perfunctory to be remembered for any other reason. Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes share their established chemistry as a pair of stepbrothers who work the subway detail as undercover detectives in the NYPD. Woody's a compulsive gambler with a huge debt problem to contend with, and he's also competing with his brother for the attentions of their new and beautiful partner (Jennifer Lopez), who's been assigned to join their investigation of the subway crimes. They're also supposed to guard the daily money train (so named because it contains each day's worth of subway fares), but Woody gets the bright idea that it might be the solution to his money woes. What follows is standard-issue action fare for the mid-1990s-lots of violence, excessive profanity, and attempts at witty banter between the co-stars to make it all seem more entertaining than it really is. You'd need to be a serious Harrelson, Snipes, or Lopez fan to add this movie to your collection. For anyone else, one viewing ought to be enough. -Jeff Shannon.

The latest in a long line of successful US police dramas, the forensic cop show Crime Scene Investigation varies the formula by focusing on a team of civilian scientists who work the night shift in Las Vegas, poring over crime scenes for fingerprints, blood spatters, DNA-laced mucus and (especially) maggots. Star William Petersen plays a variation of his role from Manhunter, the cool puzzle-solving genius who can rattle off mystifying speeches with aplomb, while his contrasting partner is Marg Helgenberger, cast as a single mother/ex-stripper who is as concerned with the emotional as well as the physical mess left by crime. While most US cop shows (witness NYPD Blue) tend towards soap, neglecting the cases in favour of personal crises, CSI gives its regulars enough life to make them human but is essentially puzzle-based, with individual episodes following two or three cases à la Homicide: Life on the Street. The occasional special focuses on a major job with the team investigating the slaughter of a whole family ("Blood Drops") or a death in first class on a plane over Vegas ("Unfriendly Skies"). A few continuing threads are laid down, with a recurrent villain who gets away, but will inevitably return, but on the whole these shows play pretty well as one-offs. Very high-tech in style, with lots of zooms into microscopic examinations of hair follicles or stomach contents and distinctive visualisations of the different stories told by witnesses and evidence, this is one of the best shows currently airing. On the DVD: CSI's first DVD box set contains the show's first 12 episodes: the pilot followed by "Cool Change", "Crate & Burial", "Pledging Mr Johnson"; "Friends and Lovers", "Who Are You?", "Blood Drops"; "Anonymous", "Unfriendly Skies", "Sex Lies and Larvae"; "The I-15 Murders" and "Fahrenheit 932". In addition to inventive menus, the three-disc set offers character profiles, a trailer, some B-roll on-set footage, a subtitle option, and snippet-like interviews with the cast and creatives. -Kim Newman.

The third series of The League of Gentlemen takes the portmanteau horror approach of their Christmas Special and extends it daringly across the entire six episodes. Here, each half-hour instalment is a self-contained story featuring various familiar and less well-known inhabitants of Britain's most accursed town, Royston Vasey. But each individual tale leads-horribly, inevitably-towards a single shocking event, the full circumstances of which are only realised in a final, macabre twist. It's all far too bleak to be called comedy, just too damn funny to be anything else. This is a team who have always defined their own rules, nowhere more boldly than here. Opening with a funky new theme tune, the six episodes feature-among others-ex-con Pauline and Mickey in a touching tale of transvestisism; Lance the one-armed comedy shop owner yearning for a new limb; foul-tempered Geoff Tipps trying to make it as a stand-up comic in "Lundun"; some eye-popping fetishist behaviour at the local B&B; seedy goings-on in the massage parlour; and, most horrendously of all, the dreaded return of Papa Lazarou. It all proved too much for some viewers-too grotesque, too offbeat, too surreal. Packed with knowing references to obscure movies and filled with the most unpleasant characters ever to grace a "sitcom", this is certainly an uncompromising series, and one that invites fascinated speculation on what dark delights await in their upcoming movie. On the DVD: The League of Gentlemen, Series 3 two-disc set maintains the high standard of extra features established by the previous series. Here there's more raucous "Local Gossip" with the four gents on the first disc, plus a second disc of insightful background material including: a 30-minute making of documentary by Adam Buxton (of Adam and Joe); a candid video diary from Steve Pemberton; a truly dire magic tutorial from Dean Tavalouris (Reece Shearsmith); Joby Talbot's music score; an interview with costume designer Yves Barre; outtakes and deleted scenes; plus a Mike King Enterprises editing suite, enabling you to muck about with the ending sequence and ruin it completely. [+]

As a depiction of the computer-hacker underground, Hackers is bogus to the bone. As a thriller, it's cartoonish and conventional. The premise (computer-happy kids hack into the wrong system, and the Forces of Repression come after them) is recycled from John Badham's 1983 War Games. And the corporate-creep bad guy, played by Fisher Stevens, steeples his fingers and growls mossy villainous clichés. ("By the time they realise the truth, we'll be long gone with all the money. ") For all its postmodern trappings the movie is working with sub-prehistoric storytelling tools. But it does succeed on one level, as a movie about adolescent bonding and alienation. The director, Iain Softley, helmed the Beatles-in-Hamburg biopic Backbeat, and he seems to have an instinct for the emotions that pull kids together around common interests and the insecurities that drive them apart. The familiar crises of loyalty and betrayal have an ache of real loneliness. It doesn't hurt that the two stars, Jonny Lee Miller (Sick Boy Williamson in Trainspotting) and Angelina Jolie (Girl, Interrupted), are just about equally gorgeous and charismatic; their longing glances steam up the screen. [+]

What's interesting about this video is also what makes it seem amateurish at first: it is neither endorsed nor authorised by 20th Century Fox or Lucasfilm. The result: a montage of interviews with everybody of importance to the Star Wars world-from George Lucas and Liam Neeson to Samuel L. Jackson and Harrison Ford, with intelligently written voice-over narration, and a unique exploration of Star Wars and Star Trek together. This is at once an homage to the Star Wars trilogies and a documentary of its sci-fi precursors, from silent film to Star Trek. Since this collection of interviews isn't authorised by Lucasfilm, you won't find footage of the Star Wars movies here, although you will find terrific snippets from sci-fi milestones such as Fritz Lang's Metropolis. A youthful Carrie Fisher talk about the interplanetary appeal of the original Star Wars, while a 20-years-older Fischer talks about the films' fairytale-like grasp across generations. Young and older Harrison Fords and Mark Hamill give interesting perspectives as well; the video also sports one of the longer interviews recorded with the man inside C-3PO. Besides the actual cast and crew of the Star Wars movies, including The Phantom Menace, there are interviews here with stars as fans, famous people who love the movies as much as anyone: Sharon Stone, Gary Busey, Hugh Hefner, Magic Johnson, Christina Ricci and William Shatner. A fun and provocative look through uncensored interviews across the spectrum at all that is Star Wars, worthy of any fan's archive, this is a must for any serious collection. -Erik Macki.

The Great Escape image of Steve McQueen (as "The Cooler King") astride his motorcycle has entered silver-screen iconography, alongside Brando on his bike from The Wild One. Based on a true story about a group of POWs who mount a daring breakout from a supposedly inescapable Nazi prison camp, this rousing and suspenseful World War II epic features an all-star cast, including James Garner, Richard Attenborough, Charles Bronson, Donald Pleasence, James Coburn and David McCallum. -Jim Emerson A stirring example of courage and the indomitable human spirit, for many John Sturges' The Great Escape is both the definitive World War II drama and the nonpareil prison escape movie. Featuring an unequalled ensemble cast in a rivetingly authentic true-life scenario set to Elmer Bernstein's admirable music (who writes contrapuntal march themes these days?), this picture is both a template for subsequent action-adventure movies and one of the last glories of Golden Age Hollywood. Reunited with the director who made him a star in The Magnificent Seven Steve McQueen gives a career-defining performance as the laconic Hilts, the baseball-loving, motorbike-riding "Cooler King". The rest of the all-male Anglo-American cast-Dickie Attenborough, Donald Pleasance, James Garner, Charles Bronson, David McCallum, James Coburn and Gordon Jackson-make the most of their meaty roles (though you have to forgive Coburn his Australian accent). Closely based on Paul Brickhill's book, the various escape attempts, scrounging, forging and ferreting activities are authentically realised thanks also to the presence on set of technical advisor Wally Flood, one of the original tunnel-digging POWs. Sturges orchestrates the climactic mass break out with total conviction, giving us both high action and very poignant human drama. Without trivialising the grim reality, The Great Escape thrillingly celebrates the heroism of men who never gave up the fight. On the DVD: The Great Escape special edition is indeed a special event. [+]

Roman Polanski's Death and the Maiden, a film adaptation of Ariel Dorfman's stunning play about the legacy of torture, has more in common with the director's first film, Knife in the Water (with all the latter's unnerving ambiguities about power, sexual transgression and confused alliances among three people) than a straightforward political parable. Sigourney Weaver (a bit underwhelming in this role, but good overall) plays a former political prisoner in an unnamed South American country that has turned democratic. She is married to a government official (fine work by Stuart Wilson) heading up official inquiries into the practice of torture under the former regime. Still shattered by her experience, Weaver's character seeks safe haven in closets of the cliff-top house she shares with her husband. But when her other half returns home with a seemingly nice fellow (a brilliant Ben Kingsley), she believes she recognises the stranger as the interrogator who raped her repeatedly in prison. She violently takes him hostage, and what ensues is a hurricane of fury and confusion, as Kingsley's terrified character denies all accusations, Wilson's guilt-ridden spouse can't decide whom to defend and Weaver turns her psychosexual rage into a weapon of humiliation. Dorfman adapted the screenplay himself, but there's no question that Polanski is leading us down the familiar path of human betrayal and terror that he crossed in such films as Rosemary's Baby, Repulsion and Bitter Moon. At times stunning in its bluntness and compelling to the last, Death and the Maiden literally takes us to the edge of oblivion where-in Polanski's films-the hardest truths always seem to fall into a heretofore unknown perspective. -Tom Keogh, Amazon. com.