Directed by stylemaster David Fincher, who went on to greater things with Sevenand Fight Club, Alien 3was the least successful of the Alienseries at the box-office. Ripley, the only survivor of her past mission, awakens on a prison planet in the far corners of the solar system. As she tries to recover, she realises that not only has an alien got loose on the planet, the alien has implanted one of its own within her. As she battles the prison authorities (and is aided by the prisoners) in trying to kill the alien, she must also cope with a distinctly shortened life span that awaits her. But the striking imagery makes for muddled action and the script confuses it further. The ending looks startling but it takes a long time—and a not particularly satisfying journey—to get there. —Marshall Fine, Amazon.com

On the DVD: The clarity of the digital picture throws light into some of Fincher's darker recesses, but is unkind to the primitive computer animation (the CGI alien is never convincing). Compared to the AlienDVD there are few extras, although a "making of" featurette that covers all three movies is included.

By transplanting the classic haunted house scenario into space, Ridley Scott, together with screenwriters Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett, produced a work of genuinely original cinematic sci-fi with Alien that, despite the passage of years and countless inferior imitations, remains shockingly fresh even after repeated viewing. Scott's legendary obsession with detail ensures that the setting is thoroughly conceived, while the Gothic production design and Jerry Goldsmith's wonderfully unsettling score produce a sense of disquiet from the outset: everything about the spaceship Nostromo—from Tupperware to toolboxes-seems oddly familiar yet disconcertingly ... well, alien.

Nothing much to speak of happens for at least the first 30 minutes, and that in a way is the secret of the film's success: the audience has been nervously peering round every corner for so long that by the time the eponymous beast claims its first victim, the release of pent-up anxiety is all the more effective. Although Sigourney Weaver ultimately takes centre-stage, the ensemble cast is uniformly excellent. The remarkably low-tech effects still look good (better in many places than the CGI of the sequels), while the nightmarish quality of H.R. Giger's bio-mechanical creature and set design is enhanced by camerawork that tantalises by what it doesn't reveal.

On the DVD: The director, audibly pausing to puff on his cigar at regular intervals, provides an insightful commentary which, in tandem with superior sound and picture, sheds light into some previously unexplored dark recesses of this much-analysed, much-discussed movie (why the crew eat muesli, for example, or where the "rain" in the engine room is coming from). Deleted scenes include the famous "cocoon" sequence, the completion of the creature's insect-like life-cycle for which cinema audiences had to wait until 1986 and James Cameron's Aliens. Isolated audio tracks, a picture gallery of production artwork and a "making of" documentary complete a highly attractive DVD package. —Mark Walker

For those who found 2004's Aliens vs. Predator too lightweight in the gore-and-guns department, Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem offers a marked improvement in both categories, as well as a respectable amount of rumbles between the title extraterrestrials. Set in the 21st century (which predates the story to all of the Alien features), Requiem sends a crippled Predator ship crashing to Earth in a small Colorado town; unbeknownst to the locals, the craft is loaded with H.R. Giger's insectoid monsters, which make quick work of most of the population. As the human cast is slowly whittled to a few hardy (if unmemorable) souls, a Predator warrior also arrives to complicate matters and do battle with the Aliens, as well as a ferocious Alien-Predator hybrid (dubbed a Predalien by the sci-fi and horror press).

Visual-effects designers and music-video helmers The Strause Brothers (who make their feature directorial debut here) keep the action on frantic throughout, which is wise, since the dialogue and characters are threadbare at best; that should matter little to teenage male viewers, who are inarguably the film's key audience. Fans of the Alien franchise, however, may find the offhanded nod to the series' mythology given during the finale its sole saving grace. —Paul Gaita, Amazon.com

The satirical sensibilities of writer Peter Shaffer and director Milos Forman (One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest) were ideally matched in this Oscar-winning movie adaptation of Shaffer's hit play about the rivalry between two composers in the court of Austrian Emperor Joseph II—official royal composer Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham), and the younger but superior prodigy Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Tom Hulce). The conceit is absolutely delicious: Salieri secretly loathes Mozart's crude and bratty personality but is astounded by the beauty of his music. That's the heart of Salieri's torment—although he's in a unique position to recognise and cultivate both Mozart's talent and career, he's also consumed with envy and insecurity in the face of such genius. That such magnificent music should come from such a vulgar little creature strikes Salieri as one of God's cruellest jokes, and it drives him insane. Amadeus creates peculiar and delightful contrasts between the impeccably re-created details of its lavish period setting and the jarring (but humorously refreshing and unstuffy) modern tone of its dialogue and performances—all of which serve to remind us that these were people before they became enshrined in historical and artistic legend. Jeffrey Jones, best-known as Ferris Bueller's principal, is particularly wonderful as the bumbling emperor (with the voice of a modern mid-level businessman). The film's eight Oscars include statuettes for Best Director Forman, Best Actor Abraham (Hulce was also nominated), Best Screenplay and Best Picture. —Jim Emerson

Note: this region two DVD is a "flipper" with a break between sides A and B.

Tony Kushner's prize-winning play Angels in Americabecame the defining US theatrical event of the 1990s, an astonishing mix of philosophy, politics, and vibrant gay soap opera that summed up the Reagan era for an entire generation of theatre-goers. Post-9/11 would seem to be too late for a film version—philosophy and politics don't always age well—but this 2003 HBO adaptation, ably directed by Mike Nichols, provides a time capsule of the '80s and reveals the deep emotional subcurrents that will give the play lasting power.

The story centers around Prior Walter (Justin Kirk) and Louis Ironson (Ben Shenkman), a gay couple that falls apart when Prior grows ill as a result of AIDS. But cancer is not the only thing invading Prior's life: He begins to have religious visions of an angel (Emma Thompson) announcing that he is a prophet. Louis, who doesn't cope well with disease and suggestions of mortality, leaves and starts a relationship with Joe Pitt (Patrick Wilson), a closeted Mormon who works for Roy Cohn (Al Pacino)—the real-life right-wing lawyer, notorious for his ruthless behind-the-scenes machinations. Add in Joe's depressed and hallucinating wife Harper (Mary Louise Parker), his determined but open-minded mother Hannah (Meryl Streep), a fierce drag queen/nurse named Belize (Jeffrey Wright, reprising his celebrated performance from the Broadway production), and you've still only begun to discover the wealth of characters and storylines in Kushner's ambitious work.

The powerhouse cast (also featuring James Cromwell, Michael Gambon, and Simon Callow) is uniformly superb. The script has its weaknesses—some of the fantastic elements, including Prior's journey to Heaven towards the end, fall flat—but even what doesn't work is bristling with ideas and a ferocious desire to capture human existence in this time and place. —Bret Fetzer

Forget any off-screen impressions you may have of Mel Gibson, and experience Apocalypto as the mad, bloody runaway train that it is. The story is set in the pre-Columbian Maya population: one village is brutally overrun, its residents either slaughtered or abducted, by a ruling tribe that needs slaves and human sacrifices. We focus on the capable warrior Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), although Gibson skillfully sketches a whole population of characters—many of whom don't survive the early reels. Most of the film is set in the dense jungle, but the middle section, in a grand Mayan city, is a dazzling triumph of design, costuming, and sheer decadent terror. The movie itself is a triumph of brutality, as Gibson lets loose his well-established fascination with bodily mortification in a litany of assaults including impalement, evisceration, snakebite, and bee stings. It's a dark, disgusted vision, but Gibson doesn't forget to apply some very canny moviemaking instincts to the violence—including the creation of a tremendous pair of villains (strikingly played by Raoul Trujillo and Rodolfo Palacias). The film is in a Maya dialect, subtitled in English, and shot on digital video (which occasionally betrays itself in some blurry quick pans). Amidst all the mayhem, nothing in the film is more devastating than a final wordless exchange of looks between captured villager Blunted (Jonathan Brewer) and his wife's mother (Maria Isabel Diaz), a superb change in tone from their early relationship. Yes, this is an obsessive, crazed movie, but Gibson knows what he's doing. —Robert Horton

This 1998 testosterone-saturated blow-'em-up from producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Michael Bay (The Rock, Bad Boys) continued Hollywood's millennium-fuelled fascination with the destruction of our planet. There's no arguing that the successful duo understand what mainstream audiences want in their blockbuster movies—loads of loud, eye-popping special effects, rapid-fire pacing, and patriotic flag waving. Bay's protagonists—the eight crude, lewd, oversexed (but, of course, lovable) oil drillers summoned to save the world from a Texas-sized meteor hurling toward the earth—are not flawless heroes, but common men with whom all can relate. In this huge Western-in-space soap opera, they're American cowboys turned astronauts. Sci-fi buffs will appreciate Bay's fetishising of technology, even though it's apparent he doesn't understand it as anything more than flashing lights and shiny gadgets. Smartly, the duo also try to lure the art-house crowd, raiding the local indie acting stable to populate the film with guys like Steve Buscemi, Billy Bob Thornton, Owen Wilson, and Michael Duncan, all adding needed touches of humour and charisma.

When Bay applies his sledgehammer aesthetics to the action portions of the film, it's mindless fun; it's only when Armageddontackles humanity that it becomes truly offensive. Not since Mississippi Burninghave racial and cultural stereotypes been substituted for characters so blatantly—African Americans, Japanese, Chinese, Scottish, Samoans, Muslims, French ... if it's not white and American, Bay simplifies it. Or, make that white male America; the film features only three notable female characters—four if you count the meteor, who's constantly referred to as a "bitch that needs drillin'". Sadly, she's a hell of a lot more developed and unpredictable than all the other women characters combined. Sure, Bay's film creates some tension and contains some visceral moments, but if he can't create any redeemable characters outside of those in space, what's the point of saving the planet? —Dave McCoy