Audio commentary

The famous Humphrey Bogart punishment picture! After years of complaining about his one-dimensional gangster roles, it was said that Jack Warner decided to teach Bogie a lesson and put him in the role of a vampiric lab assistant who needs freshly drained blood in order to stay alive. Bogart is a hoot in pasty-faced white makeup and a grey streak through his hair. Wayne Morris play the wise-cracking reporter who exposes Bogie as the killer. (Tough job considering the makeup). Look for Olin Howard (Jensen the drunk in Them! and the Blob's first victim) as the undertaker.

Mark Of The Vampire is Tod Browning's remake of his "London After Midnight" with Bela Lugosi as the vampire, Count Mora, and Lionel Atwill as Inspector Newman. In the original, both roles were played by Lon Chaney. The plot concerns the death of Sir Karell Borotyn, who appears to have been killed by vampire Count Mora. Fearing that the vampire's next victim will be Borotyn's daughter, Irena (Elizabeth Allan), vampire expert Professor Zelen (Lionel Barrymore) is called I to protect her and shed some light on the goings-on.

One of the great plots in horror film history, and one that has been repeated many times. Colin Clive plays the brilliant concert pianist Stephen Orlac, whose hands are crushed in a train accident. His wife, Yvonne, is a noted stage actress whose ardent admirer is Dr. Gogol (Peter Lorre). Although she rejected Gogol previously, she is forced to seek his help in restoring her husband's hands. Gogol replaces Orlac's hands with those of executed knife thrower Rollo, and the fun begins. Clive is his usual tortured, neurotic self and Lorre is brilliant as the oily monomaniacal Gogol.

That TV commercial actress is so seductive she could sell you anything. Sheís only a computer generated illusion. What about the real beauty who was the computer's model? Sorry, you can't meet her: she and others like her have been murdered. Writer/director Michael Crichton (ER, Coma) reaches into his brain-teasing bag of tricks for a mesmerizing thriller full of unfriendly persuasion generated by high-tech trickery. Albert Finney stars as a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon whose supermodel clients start dying mysteriously. Susan Dey plays his latest patient, also now in peril.

As a pleasant dose of holiday cheer, The Holiday is a lovable love story with all the Christmas trimmings. In the capable hands of writer-director Nancy Meyers (making her first romantic comedy since Something's Gotta Give), it all begins when two successful yet unhappy women connect through a home-swapping website, and decide to trade houses for the Christmas holiday in a mutual effort to forget their man troubles.

First screened in Europe and scheduled for limited release in the U.S., Bandidas can now be viewed by all fans of the visually stunning duo, Penelope Cruz and Salma Hayek. Set in Mexico 1888, Bandidas is a Western spoof about two women, Maria Alvarez (Penelope Cruz) and Sara Sandoval (Salma Hayek), who seek to avenge the tragedies befallen both their fathers under robber baron, Tyler Jackson (Dwight Yoakam). Jackson, employed by the Bank of New York, is sent to Mexico to buy land and open banks to the detriment of local culture.

The otherworldly landscape of Iceland lends an appropriate touch of dark fantasy to this modern retelling of Beowulf, the oldest epic poem in the English language. Gerard Butler (The Phantom of the Opera) brings the right balance of physicality and world-weariness as the Swedish hero Beowulf, who travels to Denmark to fight the monstrous troll Grendel (Icelandic superstar Ignvar Sigurdsson), which has been plaguing the house of King Hrothgar (Stellan SkarsgÂrd, buried under a mound of prosthetic hair).

Based on the novel by Sidney Sheldon, this riveting story of love and revenge boasts dazzling portrayals by Marie-France Pisier, John Beck and Susan Sarandan in one of her career-making roles. Although American WWII pilot Larry Douglas (Beck) promises to marry French femme fatale Noelle Page (Pisier), he instead returns Stateside and marries well-to-do Catherine Alexander (Sarandon). And once Noelle takes a Greek multi-millionaire (Raf Vallone) as a lover, she plots to shame Larry by arranging for him to be the tycoon's private pilot.

You wouldn't think a movie that uses the game of golf as a metaphor for class struggle could be so entertaining. The Greatest Game Ever Played stars the charming Shia LaBeouf (Holes) as Francis Ouimet, a golfer who, in 1913, rose from caddy to U.S. Open champion at the age of 20--despite the resistance of the powers that be, who thought it unseemly for a lower-class plebian to play the sport of gentlemen. Ouimet's main competitor is Harry Vardon (Stephen Dillane, The Hours), a British professional, still considered one of the greatest players of all time, who fought his own class battles.

Bend It Like Beckham is true girl power. This glorious comedy centers on Jess (Parminder Nagra), an Indian girl born in England whose only desire is to become a football--or, as we say on this side of the Atlantic, soccer--star like her idol, David Beckham; but her traditional family refuses to even consider it. With the help of her new friend Juliet (Keira Knightley), Jess secretly joins a girls' team under the guidance of a male coach (Jonathan Rhys Meyers). As the team starts to gain some attention, Jess's secret can't be kept forever.