A warm Yuletide special, A Muppet Family Christmas pairs the Muppet gang with the perennial favourite Sesame Street cast for a seasonal celebration. With a blizzard brewing outside, Fozzie's childhood farmhouse on Christmas Eve becomes the backdrop for a medley of holiday tunes--eight in all--ranging from the Muppet band's rousing "Jingle Bell Rock" to Big Bird's sweet rendition of "The Christmas Song". Though the script meanders in part, the 42-minute programme shines as a musical revue, seasoned with quick-witted interludes by the culinary comedic Swedish Chef, slapstick odd couple Ernie and Bert, and the diva-like escapades of Miss Piggy. While lacking the irresistible sizzle of The Muppet Movie, the show's finale, which includes Kermit and Piggy under the mistletoe and a cameo appearance by Jim Henson, proves that nothing can dim the Muppets' appeal. --Lynn Gibson

In the 50-minute Christmas TV Special, The Christmas Toy, Rugby the Tiger is Jamie's favourite Christmas toy from last year. Rugby is convinced that he will be wrapped up and placed under the tree again this year. When it's Christmas Eve and all the other toys try to explain to him that that is not going to happen, Rugby decides to take matters into his own paws and place himself under the tree. He makes the dangerous trip from the playroom to the living room trying not to be seen, for if a toy's secret of being able to move when humans aren't around is discovered, it becomes frozen forever. Now all his friends from the toy room must get him back before it's too late. This sweet story about friendship and loyalty is delightful, as are the songs, including "Try the Impossible" and "Old Friends". Think Toy Story with Muppetts. --Peggy Maltby-Etra

Expanding their one-joke skit from US television's Saturday Night Live, Chris Kattan and Will Ferrell are Doug and Steve Butabi, the wearers of the rayon suits and Speedo trunks who bob their heads in unison to dance music while unsuccessfully preying on women in clubs. What's funny in a three-minute piece doesn't always get funnier by expansion, but Kattan and Ferrell give it a go with fellow SNL member Molly Shannon as their ambitious neighbour. By day they work in their father's fake-plant store. By night they prowl the club scene after spraying on the cologne in their gauchely decorated bedroom. A fender-bender with Richard Grieco (playing himself) gets them into the popular club the Roxbury, but it's not all good news, as the brothers soon find themselves torn apart. Doug and Steve are pathetic but lovable, mostly due to the actors' talents for self-deprecating humour. All gifted comedians, Kattan, Ferrell, and Shannon obviously feel comfortable around each other, and their love triangle (which prompts send-ups of Say Anything and Jerry Maguire) is the funniest joke in this mostly lame comedy. Too bad, because it clocks in at about 80 minutes and could have run on television as a pretty good episode of SNL, which has been known to get a bit lame itself. --Shannon Gee

Two years after 20th Century Fox released its melodramatic disaster film Titanic in 1953, Walter Lord's meticulously researched book A Night to Remember surprised its publishers by becoming a phenomenal bestseller. Lord had an intuition that readers craved the reality of the Titanic disaster and not the romantically mythologised translations (like Fox's film, starring Barbara Stanwyck), which relied on fictional characters to "enhance" the world's worst maritime disaster. Lord's book proved that the truth was far more compelling than fiction, outlining the many "if onlys" (if only the iceberg had been spotted a few minutes earlier, etc.) that lent sombre irony to the loss of 1,500 Titanic passengers. Three years after Lord's book appeared, it was brought to the screen with the kind of riveting authenticity that Lord had insisted upon in his own research. The 1958 British production of A Night to Remember remains a definitive dramatization of the disaster, adhering to the known facts of the time and achieving a documentary-like immediacy that matches (and in some ways surpasses) the James Cameron epic released 39 years later. The film erroneously perpetuates the once-common belief that the Titanic sunk in one piece (instead of breaking in half as its bow began to plunge), but many other misconceptions are accurately corrected, and the intelligent screenplay by thriller master Eric Ambler is a model of factual suspense. By making Titanic the star of the film, director Roy Baker emphasises the excessive confidence of the booming industrial age and creates an intense you-are-there realism that pays tribute to Walter Lord's tenacious quest for truth. --Jeff Shannon

Sultry sopranos and contraltos brood in candle-lit churches or at the top of a shopping mall escalator; a shaven-headed tough menaces enemies with a knife, singing of vengeance and death in a terrifying counter-tenor rasp; a couple sing of fulfilment in the back of a limousine. Jonathan Keates remarks in his accompanying lecture that the heroes and heroines of Handel's opera are real people, whose passions transcend the baroque libretti they are singing; by taking them out of full-bottomed wigs and panniered frocks and putting them at large in contemporary London at night, this interesting documentary reminds us of the immediacy of these arias. This would not work, of course, were not the performances exemplary in their own right and presented with a driving urgency that takes us away from the pieties of the oratorio tradition and reminds us what a superb and popular man of the theatre Handel was. --Roz Kaveney

On the DVD: The DVD comes with the narration in English, French and German, and subtitles in those languages. The arias are also playable as audio only. --Roz Kaveney

Nightmare on Elm Street is the only Elm street film that falls into the "really scary" category. A dead murderer returns in the dreams of the children of his old enemies, and torments them. Wes Craven tamps down the humour that would overtake the films and goes all out for shivers. There are several memorably surreal horror sequences involving tongued telephones and bottomless baths as Craven's unhealthy imagination runs riot. With Heather Langenkamp as the plucky Nancy, John Saxon and Ronee Blakely as her dim bulb parents, Amanda Wyss and young Johnny Depp as teen victims, and Robert Englund as "Fred" Krueger. -- Kim Newman

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge was a quick follow-up no one was exactly happy with. However this deserves some credit for trying to extend rather than repeat the original storyline. As opposed to the resourceful heroines of all the other Elm Street films, this is the one about the troubled male teenager worried that Freddy is out to possess his body and make his way back to reality. It's shot through with a heavy handed gay subtext, with male bodies ogled and sliced (for a change), stuck with a few truly ridiculous moments (the exploding budgie) and lapses into incoherence, but it opens with a great school bus sequence and makes the most of the infernal boiler room of Freddy's soul. With Clu Gulager and Hope Lange. Directed by Jack Sholder (The Hidden). -- Kim Newman

Wes Craven was tempted back to the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, in partnership with writers Bruce Wagner (Wild Palms) and Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption), to script this fun, action-oriented sequel directed by Chuck Russell (The Mask). Langenkamp (as the world's only teenage psychiatrist) and Saxon return, but the heroine is debuting Patricia Arquette, who has the power to pull her friends into her dreams and thus assemble an army to take on Freddy, who begins here to spout those post-death witticisms that became a trademark. A nun reveals the villain's backstory as "the bastard son of a hundred maniacs". It's full of wild images and effects, such as the sleepwalker turned into a puppet strung on his ripped-out veins, and pays homage to Ray Harryhausen with not only an animated Freddy puppet but also his evil, walking skeleton. --Kim Newman