At his best, director John Woo turns action movies into ballets of blood and bullets grounded in character drama. Face/Off marks Woo's first American film to reach the pitched level of his best Hong Kong work (Hard-Boiled). He takes a patently absurd premise-hero and villain exchange identities by literally swapping faces in science-fiction plastic surgery-and creates a double-barrelled revenge film driven by the split psyches of its newly redefined characters. FBI agent Sean Archer (John Travolta) must play the villain to move through the underworld while psychotic terrorist Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage) becomes a perversely paternal family man, while using every tool at his disposal to destroy his nemesis. Travolta vamps Cage's tics and flamboyant excess with the grace of a dancer after his transformation from cop to criminal, while Cage plays the sullen, bottled-up agent excruciatingly trapped behind the face of the man who killed his son. His attempts to live up to the terrorist's reputation become cathartic explosions of violence that both thrill and terrify him. This is merely icing on the cake for action fans, the dramatic backbone for some of the most visceral action thrills ever. Woo fills the screen with one show-stopping set-piece after another, bringing a poetic grace to the action freakout with sweeping camerawork and sophisticated editing. This marriage of melodrama and mayhem ups the ante from cops-and-robbers clichés to a conflict of near-mythic levels. -Sean Axmaker.

With The Man Who Wasn't There the Coen brothers-those ironic geniuses of left-field bizarre-have pulled off another side-swerve into the unexpected. A movie "about a hairdresser who wants to become a dry-cleaner" as the brothers gleefully claim to have pitched it, it's set in 1949 in the small Northern California town of Santa Rosa (venue for Hitchcock's 1943 classic Shadow of a Doubt) and filmed in lustrous, deep-shadowy black-and-white-an affectionate, though never slavish, tribute to the great era of film noir. Not only in its austere monochrome but in its tone, it comes as a total contrast to the Coens' previous film, the cheerfully picaresque O Brother, Where Art Thou?. Though they toss in plenty of surreal gags, including a whole running thread about flying saucers (this is Roswell-era America, after all), the overall mood is quiet, reflective and even-something quite new for the Coens-compassionate. Their protagonist, barber Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton, proving himself one of the great chameleon actors of our time), is a man trapped by his own impassivity-inside him, a seething mass of emotion that he's utterly unable to express. In true Coen style, his frustration leads him into a fatal move that spirals disastrously out of control. Thornton is ably supported by a whole gallery of Coen regulars-Frances McDormand, Jon Polito, Tony Shalhoub-plus James Gandolfini (The Sopranos) and an amazingly assured turn from Scarlett Johansson (Ghost World). The dialogue, as you'd expect, is masterly, while the brothers' regular collaborators Director of Photography Roger Deakins and production designer Dennis Gassner work wonders of period evocation, and Carter Burwell contributes a haunting score. On the DVD: The Man Who Wasn't There comes to DVD in a sharp, clean 1. 85:1 anamorphic transfer that captures all the depth and subtlety of Deakins' superb photography, impeccably matched by the crystal-clear Dolby 5. [+]

As a tale of self-discovery, Silkwood, Mike Nichols' 1982 biopic of the plutonium factory worker who uncovered negligence and dangerous practices at the heart of her employer's company, works well enough. Karen Silkwood (Meryl Streep) is no saint. She drinks, cheerfully gets 'em out for the boys, has left her husband and kids and lives in a curious ménage à trois with her lover, (Kurt Russell) and their lesbian friend (Cher). But, through her own dawning suspicions, she is drawn into union activism and embarks on a crusade to expose the rottenness of her paymasters, only to die in a mysterious car crash. And here is the flaw. The film can't decide whether it's quirky soap opera, a campaigning blow for the anti-nuclear lobby or an allegory for the conflict between the rights of the individual and the demands of the corporate giant. It stops short of providing some important conclusions about what really happened to its central character, and why. Streep is fine though, injecting her character with a studied mixture of innate intelligence and trailer park trash. Russell offers solid support and Cher is outstanding as housemate Dolly Pelliker. Their performances give Silkwood its heart as a powerful human drama. [+]

Super-rich London toffs amuse themselves playing private detective to solve a series of smash and grab jewellery thefts.

william hurt,sigourney weaver,christopher plummer,sue pickles. Manhattan janitor Daryll Deever becomes involved in a murder investigation.

Expanded from a one-act stage play by Noel Coward, Brief Encounter is without doubt one of the true masterpieces of British film history. The story seems slight-a respectable suburban housewife has a chance meeting with a handsome married doctor, their friendship becomes romance, but they feel the pressures of convention pulling their relationship apart-but the writing, acting and direction are sublime, turning what might have been just another melodrama into a memorable and heartbreaking story of impossible love. David Lean went on to make much bigger films than this, but few of those epics packed the emotional punch of this picture, set in a mundane world of railway stations, semi-detached houses and inexpensive cafes. Trevor Howard is perfectly cast as Alec, the doctor, but the film belongs above all to Celia Johnson, as the heroine Laura. It's easy to mock her clipped ultra-English accent, but she gives one of the greatest screen performances imaginable, brilliantly evoking how an ordinary life can be turned upside down by unexpected passion. Throw in the superb use of Rachmaninov's swooning Second Piano Concerto, shrewd supporting acting from Cyril Raymond, Joyce Carey and Everley Gregg, and some of the best black-and-white photography of its era, and the result is irresistible. Anyone who isn't besotted with Brief Encounter has either never been in love, or doesn't deserve to be. -Andy Medhurst.

According to critic Pauline Kael Straw Dogs was "the first American film that is a fascist work of art". Sam Peckinpah's only film shot in Britain is adapted from a novel by Gordon M Williams called The Siege of Trencher's Farm which Peckinpah described as a "lousy book with one good action-adventure sequence". The setting is Cornwall, where mild-mannered US academic David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman) has bought a house with his young English wife Amy (Susan George) in the village where she grew up. David is mocked by the locals (one of whom is Amy's ex-boyfriend) and treated with growing contempt by his frustrated wife, but when his house comes under violent siege he finds unexpected reserves of resourcefulness and aggression. The movie, Peckinpah noted, was much influenced by Robert Ardrey's macho-anthropological tract, The Territorial Imperative. Its take on Cornish village life is fairly bizarre-this is a Western in all but name-and many critics balked at the transposition of Peckinpah's trademark blood-and-guts to the supposed peace of the British countryside. A scene where Amy is raped caused particular outrage, not least since it's hinted she consents to it. Not for the first time in Peckinpah's movies there are disquieting elements of misogyny, and it doesn't help that the chemistry between Hoffman and George is non-existent. (Impossible to believe these two would ever have clicked, let alone married. ) But taken as a vision of irrational violence irrupting into a civilised way of life Straw Dogs is powerful and unsettling, and the action sequences are executed with all Peckinpah's unfailing flair and venom. [+]

Dear Mom, The camp director is dead. The counselors are locked up. And the kids are out of control. Having a wonderful time. Love, Marvin. chuck connors,charles stratton,harold pruett.

Pandora couldn't resist opening the forbidden box containing all the delusions of mankind, and let's just say in Mulholland Drive David Lynch indulges a similar impulse. Employing a familiar film noir atmosphere to unravel, as he coyly puts it, "a love story in the city of dreams", Lynch establishes a foreboding but playful narrative in the film's first half before subsuming all of Los Angeles and its corrupt ambitions into his voyeuristic universe of desire. Identities exchange, amnesia proliferates and nightmare visions are induced, but not before we've become enthralled by the film's two main characters: the dazed and sullen femme fatale, Rita (Laura Elena Harring), and the pert blonde just-arrived from Ontario (played exquisitely by Naomi Watts) who decides to help Rita regain her memory. Triggered by a rapturous Spanish-language version of Roy Orbison's "Crying", Lynch's best film since Blue Velvet splits glowingly into two equally compelling parts. -Fionn Meade.

Dreamlike and nightmarishly surreal, Vertigo is Hitchcock's most personal film because it confronts many of the convoluted psychological issues that haunted and fascinated the director. The psychological complexity and the stark truthfulness of their rampant emotions keeps these strangely obsessive characters alive on screen, and Hitchcock understood better than most their barely repressed sexual compulsions, their fascination with death and their almost overwhelming desire for transcendent love. James Stewart finds profound and disturbing new depths in his psyche as Scotty, the tortured acrophobic detective on the trail of a suicidal woman apparently possessed by the ghost of someone long dead. Kim Novak is the classical Hitchcockian blonde whose icy exterior conceals a churning, volcanic emotional core. The agonised romance of Bernard Herrmann's score accompanies the two actors as a third and vitally important character, moving the film along to its culmination in an ecstasy of Wagnerian tragedy. Of course Hitch lavished especial care on every aspect of the production, from designer Edith Head's costumes (he, like Scotty, was most insistent on the grey dress), to the specific colour scheme of each location, to the famous reverse zoom "Vertigo" effect (much imitated, never bettered). The result is Hitch's greatest work and an undisputed landmark of cinema history. On the DVD: This disc presents the superb restored print of this film in a wonderful widescreen (1. 85:1) anamorphic transfer, with remastered Dolby digital soundtrack. There's a half-hour documentary made in 1996 about the painstaking two-year restoration process, plus an informative commentary from the restorers Robert Harris and James Katz, who are joined by original producer Herbert Coleman. [+]

Falling Down, about a downsized engineer (Michael Douglas) who goes ballistic, triggered a media avalanche of stories in the USA about middle-class white rage when it was released in 1993. In fact, it's nothing more than a manipulative, violent melodrama about one geek's meltdown. Douglas, complete with pocket protector, nerd glasses, crewcut and short-sleeved white shirt, gets stuck in traffic one day near downtown LA and proceeds to just walk away from his car-and then lose it emotionally. Everyone he encounters rubs him the wrong way-and a fine lot of stereotypes they are, from threatening ghetto punks to rude convenience store owners to a creepy white supremacist-and he reacts violently in every case. As he walks across LA (now there's a concept), cutting a bloody swath, he's being tracked by a cop on the verge of retirement (Robert Duvall). He also spends time on the phone with his frightened ex-wife (Barbara Hershey). Though Douglas and Duvall give stellar performances, they can't disguise the fact that, as usual, this is another film from director Joel Schumacher that is about surface and sensation, rather than actual substance. -Marshall Fine This film, about a downsized engineer (Michael Douglas) who goes ballistic, triggered a media avalanche of stories about middle-class white rage when it was released in 1993. In fact, it's nothing more than a manipulative, violent melodrama about one geek's meltdown. Douglas, complete with pocket protector, nerd glasses, crewcut and short-sleeved white shirt, gets stuck in traffic one day near downtown LA and proceeds to just walk away from his car-and then lose it emotionally. [+]