Set in an elegant, but hectic, New York restaurant over the course of a highly eventful evening, Dinner Rush is a magnificent piece of ensemble playing--wholly satisfying from soup to nuts.

Danny Aiello stars as Louis, a bookmaker who also owns the restaurant but is dismayed that, under the aegis of his son and autocratic master chef Udo (Edoardo Ballerini) the kitchen serves up trendy nouvelle cuisine in place of the simple, hearty fare of its former "Mom and Pop" days. But that's just one of his worries. Harassed waitresses, pretentious diners, Sandra Bernhard's loud and abrasive restaurant critic all add to the stressed, overheated atmosphere. Then there's sous-chef Duncan, Louis's younger son, thousands of dollars in debt to bookies, who's got mixed up with a couple of hoods from Queens, determined to muscle in on Louis's restaurant business and have already shot dead his partner by way of an opening salvo in the negotiations. They're among tonight's diners.

And yet, much as ex-music video director Bob Giraldi beautifully orchestrates and intertwines this diverse and clashing set of stories and characters, so Louis exudes a certain quiet serenity that suggests that, despite the grease fires, tantrums, crises and strong-arming, everything¹s somehow going to turn out just fine. A minor but masterly piece of movie-making.

On the DVD: Dinner Rush contains a good number of extras. These included a (somewhat disjointed) interview with director Bob Giraldi, himself owner of ten restaurants in New York, a "making of" feature which includes the usual mutual back-slapping between cast and production team (though in this case deserved) and, most appealingly, recipes for some of the tremblingly delicious culinary dishes served up in the film. --David Stubbs

Dinosaurs come alive like never before in this costly computer-animated film from Disney. After a breathtaking opening (a dino egg is kidnapped), the film changes style; realistic dinosaurs are given human characteristics and voices. The kidnapped egg grows into an iguanodon named Aladar (voiced by DB Sweeney), who is raised by lemurs (shades of Tarzan) on a lush island void of other dinosaurs. When a meteorite destroys their island home in a thrilling sequence, the lemur family and Aladar become part of a dinosaur troop roaming the mainland deserts looking for the lush nesting grounds (shades of the fourth instalment of the Land Before Time series and Fantasia). Disney's use of cheeky modern slang (one lemur calls himself "a love monkey") is present, as is its typical capital-punishment narrative logic: anyone against our forward-thinking hero (or even disagreeing with him) ends up dead. Curiously, the meanies, a pair of carnotaurs following the group, are nameless and voiceless. This more realistic approach might have been a bigger wow, as in the BBC's Walking with Dinosaurs, which looked extraordinary with only a fraction of the budget. The complexity and scope of Dinosaur's visual scale is impressive, and group shots and a point-of-view angle are stunning. The film should be a favourite for the 6 to 11-year-old set. --Doug Thomas, Amazon.com

Dinosaurs come alive like never before in this costly computer-animated film from Disney. After a breathtaking opening (a dino egg is kidnapped), the film changes style; realistic dinosaurs are given human characteristics and voices. The kidnapped egg grows into an iguanodon named Aladar (voiced by DB Sweeney), who is raised by lemurs (shades of Tarzan) on a lush island void of other dinosaurs. When a meteorite destroys their island home in a thrilling sequence, the lemur family and Aladar become part of a dinosaur troop roaming the mainland deserts looking for the lush nesting grounds (shades of the fourth instalment of the Land Before Time series and Fantasia). Disney's use of cheeky modern slang (one lemur calls himself "a love monkey") is present, as is its typical capital-punishment narrative logic: anyone against our forward-thinking hero (or even disagreeing with him) ends up dead. Curiously, the meanies, a pair of carnotaurs following the group, are nameless and voiceless. This more realistic approach might have been a bigger wow, as in the BBC's Walking with Dinosaurs, which looked extraordinary with only a fraction of the budget. The complexity and scope of Dinosaur's visual scale is impressive, and group shots and a point-of-view angle are stunning. The film should be a favourite for the 6 to 11-year-old set. --Doug Thomas, Amazon.com