Tracklisting details not advised.Starring: ; Dean Martin

An adaptation of the José Luis Borges short story, Death and the Compass is a baroque murder mystery with a comic touch. Plagued by his involvement in a prior investigation, weary and embittered Police Commissioner Treviranus (played by Cox regular Miguel Sandoval, Straight to Hell, Three Businessmen) attempts to set a peculiar history straight. When his star detective Lonnrot (Peter Boyle), an intuitive, blue-suited Buddhist, is stumped as to the motive behind a series of unsolved psycho-geographical murders with Kabbalistic overtones, Treviranus suspects master criminal Scharlach (Christopher Eccleston), at large in the city. But Lonnrot rejects this thesis and, with the aide of enthusiastic, atheist journalist, Zunz (Chistopher Eccleston), he is lead to believe that the crimes are allied to points on the compass. Drawn fatefully to where he believes a final crime will be committed, Lonnrot and Zunz search for the solution within a mysterious deserted mansion to the South of the city.

Shot with a comic book sensibility (like a 1930s movie serial) on richly coloured modernist sets with futurist flourishes, Cox's film looks sumptuous and follows the style of Borges' labryinthine scenario to the letter without losing the plot. The three leads all acquit themselves admirably. Boyle's mystical detective is awkward and aloof in contrast to Sandoval's cunning, career-minded police inspector, while Ecceleston shape-shifts between three roles with alarming ease.

On the DVD: An audio commentary by Alex Cox and composer Dan Wool of Pray for Rain (who also scored Cox's Straight to Hell and Three Businessmen) primarily examines the relationship between sound and setting. Paul Miller's "Spiderweb", the featurette advertised on the sleeve and liner notes, does not appear on this disc. --Chris Campion

If Robert Zemeckis's mega-hit Forrest Gump was too sweet for your taste, you may enjoy the undiluted bitterness of his previous movie, a cynical black comedy that was ahead of its time. Death Becomes Her, an outlandish parable about America's obsession with youth and vanity, exposes the corrosive side of Zemeckis's comic sensibility, the sort of scathing satirical edge he gleefully flourished in his overlooked 1980 Used Cars, which has developed a cult following.

Meryl Streep has a ball as the deliciously vicious Madeline Ashton, a flamboyantly mannered actress who makes Bette Davis's formidable Margo Channing in All About Eve look like a wallflower. Goldie Hawn is also in razor-sharp comedic form as Madeline's long-time "best friend," Helen. Sensing a bargain she just can't resist, Madeline steals Helen's meek, plastic-surgeon husband Ernest (Bruce Willis) for her own convenience, and the two women become sworn enemies. But the real complications arise when the two are introduced to a secret anti-aging formula by a mysterious and exotic woman (Isabella Rossellini, delightfully ridiculous) that not only smoothes away wrinkles but actually guarantees immortality. As their undying bodies are twisted and mutilated by violent attacks on each other, both women grow increasingly dependent on Ernest for cosmetic repair. The pioneering digital effects inflicted on Streep and Hawn are as grotesque as they are imaginative and hilarious. Like James Cameron (The Abyss, Titanic), Zemeckis loves a technical challenge, and the new visual tools developed for this movie made his later work (in Forrest Gump and Contact) possible. The digital video disc includes a short feature on the movie's production. --Jim Emerson, Amazon.com