DVD, Blu-ray and TV

Romeo And Juliet

When compared to Baz Luhrmann's hysterical synapse-splitting kitsch, there's something strangely reassuring about Franco Zeffirelli's stodgy '68 classicist version of Romeo And Juliet. Here, the many pleasures include Michael York's fantastic cheekbones as Tybalt, a cherubic Bruce Robinson as Benvolio, and a plethora of badly choreographed sword-fights. Even the infamous shots of Olivia Hussey's 17-year-old breasts seem quaint rather than smutty.

Saturday Night And Sunday Morning – The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner

Arguably the two most powerful kitchen-sink dramas of the early '60s were both adapted from the works of author Alan Sillitoe. Saturday Night And Sunday Morning (1960), directed by Karel Reisz, provided British cinema with an equivalent to Brando thanks to Albert Finney's electrifying performance as marriage-wrecking factory-hand Arthur Seaton ("I'm a fighting pit-prop of a man who wants a pint of beer, that's me!"). But Finney perhaps lacked the surly sophistication of borstal boy Tom Courtenay in Tony Richardson's later The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner (1962).

Alligator – Alligator II

John Sayles scripted this Jaws-onland rip-off, with Robert Forster as the cop chasing a giant man-eating monster down in the sewers. Forster's dogged, and some of the set pieces are pretty nifty, but the plot's farcical, and this isn't strong on intellectual content despite its obligatory eco-message. The sequel is a made-for-TV retread, of practically zero interest.

Shampoo

Hal Ashby's deceptively sunny direction of Robert Towne and Warren Beatty's sex-comedy screenplay is brimful of Barbie hair, open shirts and Triumph motorcycles, as libidinous pompadour George (Beatty) juggles four Beverly Hills sirens with his own nascent career plans. Yet the oppressive setting (Nixon's '68 election night), Beatty's stunningly lugubrious performance and his eventual comeuppance all feed a brash vein of cynicism that shapes the entire movie.

Lantana

Watching the ripples set in motion through the suburbs of Sidney by the murder of therapist Barbara Hershey, Ray Lawrence's movie is the most unfashionably mature murder mystery of the past decade. There may be something too neat about how everything fits together, but it's a film that understands life at its messiest. As the cop brooding at the centre, Anthony LaPaglia gives the performance of his career.

Cream—Strange Brew

This includes much of the surviving live footage of Clapton, Bruce and Baker, including extracts from Cream's farewell Royal Albert Hall performance. All three band members are interviewed, and the inclusion of Hendrix's cover of "Sunshine Of Your Love" on Lulu's TV show is a bonus. But while Cream's own songs have stood the test of time well, the extended blues jams sound tedious today.

The Three Musketeers – The Four Musketeers

Dick Lester's faithful two-part version of Dumas' adventure tale has truly imaginative action sequences, a cracklingly witty screenplay by George MacDonald Fraser, swashbuckling heroes (Oliver Reed, Frank Finlay), OTT villains (Faye Dunaway, Christopher Lee), a fantastic supporting cast (everyone from Charlton Heston to Spike Milligan) and a visibly huge budget. Wonderful stuff.

Kissing Jessica Stein

Riding the ever-popular straight-man-gay-world comedy wave (see Happy, Texas, Three To Tango, In And Out), debut writers, actors and co-producers Jennifer Westfeldt and Heather Juergensen add a distaff twist with their tale of a bi-curious gallery manager and her impulsive fling with a neurotic Jewish copy editor. The lines are witty, the nods to Annie Hall ubiquitous, though the resolution is strangely conservative.

Yes—Yes Years

Yes Years chronicles the band's career from the late '60s through to their '90s reunion via two hours of archive footage and interviews. Greatest Video Hits is more focused and concentrates on the late '70s and '80s when Trevor Horn and Buggles bizarrely joined the line-up. It's easy to scorn Yes' pretension, but Yes Years reminds us that the early material at least boasted some great tunes.

Peter Cook—A Post-Humorous Tribute

Screened on TV last Christmas, this celebrity fundraiser for the Peter Cook Foundation features a host of comedians including Michael Palin, Rik Mayall, Angus Deayton and Dom Joly (reprising the one-legged Tarzan sketch) and, unfortunately, Josie Lawrence and Griff Rhys-Jones. A fitfully amusing parade of the old and new, worth purchasing if only for the excellent, pithily epigrammatic Jimmy Carr.
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