Directed with consummate skill by Terence Young, the second James Bond spy thriller is considered by many fans to be the best of them all. Certainly Sean Connery was never better as the dashing Agent 007, whose latest mission takes him to Istanbul to retrieve a top-secret Russian decoding machine. His efforts are thwarted when he gets romantically distracted by a sexy Russian double agent (Daniela Bianchi), and is tracked by a lovely assassin (Lotte Lenya) with switchblade shoes, and by a crazed killer (Robert Shaw), who clashes with Bond during the film's dazzling climax aboard the Orient Express. From Russia with Love is classic James Bond, before the gadgets, pyrotechnics and Roger Moore steered the movies away from the more realistic tone of the books by Ian Fleming. —Jeff Shannon

John Travolta is the standout in this somewhat cartoonish adaptation of Elmore Leonard's novel about a smalltime Miami enforcer (Travolta) who decides to get into the movie business in LA. The cast sparkles—Gene Hackman as a failing cut-rate-movie producer, Rene Russo as a failed actress, Danny DeVito as a vain thespian, Delroy Lindo as a mobster who wants a cut of Travolta's film action—and the script is clever. But not clever enough: this isn't Robert Altman's The Player, as far as satires about Hollywood go. But director Barry Sonnenfeld (Men in Black) keeps Get Shorty cute and brisk and that makes for an enjoyable experience. Travolta is great as a vaguely dangerous, supremely self-confident man whose love of movies makes him almost cuddly. —Tom Keogh

Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis wrote the script, but Bill Murray gets all the best lines and moments in this 1984 comedy directed by Ivan Reitman (Meatballs). The three comics, plus Ernie Hudson, play the New York City-based team that provides supernatural pest control, and Sigourney Weaver is the love interest possessed by an ancient demon. Reitman and company are full of original ideas about hobgoblins—who knew they could "slime" people with green plasma goo?—but hovering above the plot is Murray's patented ironic view of all the action. Still a lot of fun, and an obvious model for sci-fi comedies such as Men in Black. —Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

Ridley Scott's glossy historical epic Gladiator revitalised the classic sword 'n' sandal genre, bringing both a modern pop-culture sensibility and state-of-the-art computer-generated special effects to what had seemed like a worn-out formula. Essentially a remake of Anthony Mann's stodgy 1964 Fall of the Roman Empire, Gladiator also borrows heavily from Saving Private Ryan in its stunning opening sequence, and employs Ridley's brother Tony Scott's rapid-fire editing style for the remarkably staged Colosseum fights. The overall effect is a hugely impressive but emotionally empty spectacle complemented by Hans Zimmer's bestselling but derivative score.

Russell Crowe cements his star status with a brooding, muscular performance helped along by lots of pithily quotable mock-Shakespearean dialogue. But Crowe's Maximus, along with everyone else in the film, is a disappointing two-dimensional stereotype: there's also the ridiculously melodramatic villain (Joaquin Phoenix), the old flame who's still in love with her hero (Connie Nielsen) and the trusty companion (Djimon Hounsou—who seems stuck in these roles). Richard Harris lacks the gravitas to convince as the philosopher-king Marcus Aurelius, and only Oliver Reed, in his very last film, brings some depth to his world-weary ex-gladiator. Still, if Scott's film lacks the profundity of Ben-Hur, Spartacus or even Cleopatra, it remains a kinetic, exciting thrill ride that gives us some sense of what it must have been like to fight and die with a gladius in hand.

On the DVD:Gladiator's two-disc set quickly became a must-have on its first release and remains one of the absolute essential DVD purchases. It set the standard both for picture and sound quality (Dolby 5.1 or DTS) as well as providing a second disc fully loaded with excellent special features. Scott's audio commentary is on the first disc, and the second has documentaries about both the history and the film, deleted scenes, storyboards, hidden "Easter Eggs" and more. —Mark Walker

Pierce Brosnan assumed the role of James Bond for the first time in Goldeneye, the 17th entry in the series. Brosnan looks a little light on the big screen under any circumstances, and he does take some getting used to as 007. But this busy film keeps him hopping as freelance terrorists from the former Soviet Union get their hands on super-high-tech weapons. The film's challenge is to bring free-spirited Bond up to date in the age of AIDS and in the aftermath of the cold war: director Martin Campbell (The Mask of Zorro) succeeds on both counts with a cheeky hint of irony. The best moment in the film is a chase scene that finds Bond tearing up the streets of Moscow in a tank. But Brosnan's most interesting contributions are reminiscent of the dark streak that occasionally showed up in Sean Connery's Bond. —Tom Keogh

Dry as ice, dripping with deadpan witticisms, only Sean Connery's Bond would dare to disparage the Beatles, that other 1964 phenomenon. No one but Connery can believably seduce women so effortlessly, kill with almost as much ease, and then pull another bottle of Dom Perignon 53 out of the fridge. Goldfinger contains many of the most memorable scenes in the Bond series: gorgeous Shirley Eaton (as Jill Masterson) coated in gold paint by evil Auric Goldfinger and deposited in Bond's bed; silent Oddjob, flipping a razor-sharp bowler like a Frisbee to sever heads; our hero spread-eagled on a table while a laser beam moves threateningly toward his crotch. Honor Blackman's Pussy Galore is the prototype for the series' rash of man-hating supermodels. And Desmond Llewelyn reprises his role as Q, giving Bond what is still his most impressive car, a snazzy little number that fires off smoke screens, punctures the tyres of vehicles on the chase, and boasts a handy ejector seat. Goldfinger's two climaxes, inside Fort Knox and aboard a private plane, have to be seen to be believed.—Raphael Shargel, Amazon.com—

On the DVD: Featuring interviews with Honor Blackman, Shirley Eaton, the late Desmond Llewelyn and most of the surviving core cast and crew members, great on-set footage (Blackman and Connery look like they clearly had the hots for each other even when the camera weren't rolling) and a strong argument about how this firmed up the gadget-orientated, thrills-and-spills formula for the franchise, John Cork's "making of" featurette for this DVD is one of the most rewarding in this series. The two commentary tracks have moderately interesting observations by director Guy Hamilton, the cast and crew (many of their comments recycled from the documentary), and on both Bond superfan-and-author Lee Pfeiffer filling in blanks and explaining in exhaustive detail the history of the Aston Martin DB5 that first appeared in this film. Also included is an open-ended 1964 interview with Sean Connery, designed so that American radio disc jockeys could pretend they had an exclusive interview with the star, in which he extols the series' "sadism for the family" among other things. —Leslie Felperin

Gone with the Wind is a sprawling mosaic of a picture, one of the best-loved and most successful in movie history, but also one of the most frustrating. Wonderfully epic in scope, the decline and fall of the antebellum South as seen through the eyes of feisty, independent and wilful heroine Scarlett O'Hara makes the first half of the picture an absolutely riveting spectacle. From the aristocratic old world of Tara to the horrors of Atlanta under siege, Gone with the Wind features any number of indelible scenes and images: the genteel girls taking an enforced siesta during the Twelve Oaks barbecue, a horrified Scarlett walking through the wounded, the flight from burning Atlanta, and Scarlett's moving pledge against a burnished sunset set to Max Steiner's glorious music score. But the second half shifts gear, the melodramatic quotient is upped yet further as tragedy piles upon tragedy, and despite its unwieldy length everything feels rushed. Add to that the central problem that the audience never really understands, why Scarlett could ever fall for weak-chinned Ashley in the first place, and the picture begins to unravel unsatisfactorily. Behind the scenes problems doubtless contributed, with directors coming and going, Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable apparently barely able to stand the sight of each other, and producer David O Selznick's endless rewrites and interference. Nonetheless, this 1939 box-office smash remains one of Hollywood's finest achievements, an irresistible spectacle chock-full of the finest stars in the filmic firmament striking sparks off one another. They really don't make 'em like this anymore.

On the DVD: No extra features on this DVD, which is a pity given the amount of material that must be available, but it has to be admitted this disc is worth the asking price simply to drink in the astonishing quality of the picture, sumptuously presented in its original 1.33:1 "Academy" ratio. The mono sound is vivid, too, showcasing Max Steiner's headily romantic score. —Mark Walker

Decent, lighthearted and fully amusing slapstick is hard to come by these days, and 1993's Groundhog Day manages to also be genuinely wise about the human condition. All this and belly laughs too! Bill Murray stars as Phil, a bored, petulant news reporter, who is ordered to give his annual live report from Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania on February 2. Though desperate to get out of the one-horse town and the appallingly sentimental assignment, Phil finds himself reliving the same day over and over again until he finally mends his ways. The film takes an absurd situation and explores its every imaginable comic possibility. Because none of the other characters are aware that Groundhog Day is continually repeating itself, Phil goes through a repertoire of responses, from conniving lust for Rita (Andie MacDowell) to gleeful nihilism to a Zen resignation worthy of Buster Keaton. Murray is reliably good, and this flick gives him a chance to be warm (though never fuzzy).

A major British hit, a lorryload of laughs and some sparkling action? We'll have some of that. It's fair to say that Hot Fuzz proves that Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's brilliant Shaun Of The Dead was no one-off, serving up a superbly crafted British homage to the Hollywood action movie.

Deliberately set in the midst of a sleepy, quaint English village of Sandford, Pegg's Nicholas Angel is sent there because, bluntly, he's too good at his job, and he's making his city colleagues look bad. The proverbial fish out of water, Angel soon discovers that not everything in Sandford is quite as it seems, and joins forces with Nick Frost's lumbering Danny Butterman to find out what's what.

Hot Fuzz then proceeds to have a rollicking good time in both tipping its hat to the genre films that are clearly its loving inspiration, and coming up with a few tricks of its own. It does comedy better than action, with plenty of genuine laugh-out-loud moments, but it's no slouch either when the tempo needs raising. One of the many strong cards it plays is its terrific cast, which includes former 007 Timothy Dalton, Bill Nighy, Bill Bailey, Paddy Considine, Edward Woodward and Jim Broadbent.

Hot Fuzz, ultimately, just falls short of Shaun Of The Dead, but more than does enough to warrant many, many repeat viewings. It's terrific fun, and in the true hit action movie style, all-but-demands some form of sequel. That said, with Pegg and Wright now with two excellent, and suitably different, genres ticked off, it'll be interesting to see what they do next. A period drama, perhaps...? —Simon Brew