Ridiculously entertaining car chase and all, William Friedkin's brutal, dumb 1985 crime flick resembles his French Connection resprayed for the West Coast. The movie benefits from LA shimmer and deployment of under-used actors: Willem Dafoe plays a ruthless, faintly perverse counterfeiter and William Petersen is the lawman in tight jeans crossing the line in pursuit of him. Listen for the Wang Chung soundtrack! Maybe not.

It's scripted by David Mamet, but what raises Danny DeVito's 1992 biopic is Jack Nicholson's role as the irascible union boss/Mob associate who 'went missing' in the '70s. Charting five decades, from bullying rise in the trucking game in the 30s, through troubles with the Kennedys, to Hoffa's presumed assassination, it's an ambitious undertaking, often muddled. Nicholson, though, hidden behind false nose, bulldozes through like Cagney. Neglected, but one of the performances of his career.

TARANTINO RECENTLY suggested Scorsese's best days are behind him. Kundun, Bringing Out The Dead, Gangs Of New York—it's not just that these movies struggled to connect with audiences, Scorsese himself seemed unable to get a firm grasp on them. Is this still 'the greatest living American film-maker'? At least this long-overdue three-film box set reminds us how he earned that title. Check out his 1969 debut, Who's That Knocking At My Door?

Luchino Visconti's three-hour epic is a complex family saga, with Burt Lancaster as an Italian nobleman in the Garibaldi era. The colour and detail is so rich it's almost fattening. Visconti, calling in favours back in '63, wanted Lancaster (who's great), but outside Italy no one knew how to sell it, so it was hacked and dubbed. Now its sumptuous again, with a Nino Rota score and both Claudia Cardinale and Alain Delon in their prime.

Described recently as "the ultimate good-bad rock movie", this 1994 movie (along with the 10m-selling album) brought the liquid-hipped one to middle America, mutating his funk into warped guitar rock. The story? Bad boy with warring mixed-race parents, Prince takes it out on girlfriend Apollonia, till she whips her top off. Then everyone's happy, so they jam.

Another memorable yakuza thriller from the Takeshi Miike production line, this gets off to a cracking start with a hilarious dog gag, then swerves into Lynchian weirdville with the introduction of a soothsayer, a transvestite or two, a lactating innkeeper and a minotaur. Just when the movie begins to sink into a surrealist stupor, Miike lets loose with a climax outrageous even by his own prodigious standards.

Occasionally worthy slice of war-is-hell hand-wringing from pre-Hollywood Peter Weir circa 1981 is elevated by eye-popping 'scope photography from Russell Boyd and two credible central turns from Mel Gibson and Mark Lee as the Yin and Yang of Australian machismo. On the other hand, the repeated sampling of Jean-Michel Jarre's Oxygen was possibly a mistake.

Mel Brooks'gloriously tasteless 1965 comedy, with Zero Mostel's shabby producer and Gene Wilder's timid accountant hatching a plan to make a fortune from a sure-fire Broadway flop, Springtime For Hitler. Brooks' play-within-a-film structure is fiendishly clever, while Kenneth Mars' bug-eyed, paranoid Nazi playwright and Dick Shawn's way-out hippie Hitler steal the show. Superb.

Joe Dante's modern-day werewolf pulp, knowingly scripted by John Sayles. Traumatised TV reporter Dee Wallace takes refuge at a remote retreat only to discover it's a werewolf den. A treasure for horror aficionados, with memorable transformation scenes and a host of sly cameos. Scarier, smarter, sexier and funnier than the same year's An American Werewolf In London.

UNBROKEN CHAIN