From the wonderful mind and eye of PT Anderson (Boogie Nights) comes this quirky tale that doesn't run like your average rom-com, and thats what makes it so original. Adam Sandler proves he can act serious, as well as funny, and joins a stellar cast.

A 97-minute Paul Thomas Anderson picture, Punch-Drunk Love concentrates on a tight little story that might have made a subplot for earlier PTA epics such as Boogie Nights or Magnolia. Adam Sandler has a break-out art film lead not by abandoning his usual persona, but by playing his familiar man-child-out-of-control with far more depth than he has shown in Big Daddy.

Though prone to fits of terrifying rage, oddball entrepreneur Barry Egan (Sandler) is essentially sweet and timid, alternately nagged and cajoled by his seven sisters, and intent on exploiting a loophole in a supermarket promotion to convert piles of cheap puddings into unlimited free flights, though he has never actually been anywhere. Over the course of a day Barry enters into two unusual relationships: with a phone-sex girl (Ashley Clark) who runs a scam with "mattress man" (Philip Seymour Hoffman)--by getting Barry's credit card information and declaring a war of extortion--and with hesitant nice girl Lena (Emily Watson), whom he impulsively follows to Hawaii while trying desperately to seem more like a dedicated romantic than a psycho stalker. Anderson's trademark use of loud background music (including a Shelley Duvall track from Popeye) and obsessively repeated bits of dialogue and business make for a controlled film that still seems on the edge of madness. The result is magical, romantic, comic and creepy. --Kim Newman

At the height of the stand-up comedy boom of the 1980s, Punchline offered the revelation that many comedians were, in fact, rather psychologically unstable individuals for whom performing was an outlet for hostility and aggression. Wow--who would have guessed? This film focuses on two who meet and forge an unlikely friendship: Tom Hanks plays a caustic, self-destructive comic looking for his big break and Sally Field plays a more Roseanne-like comedian who begins neglecting her husband (John Goodman) and children because she gets such a kick out of performing. The offstage stuff is strictly soap opera, but Hanks and Field both develop solid comedic rhythms once they get behind a microphone. --Marshall Fine, Amazon.com

While Punk & Disorderly is a haphazard compilation and hardly the definitive document of punk the sleeve notes would have one believe, it does serve a couple of useful purposes. The first is to emphasise how far punk reached beyond the time (the late 70s) and place (England) of its origins among the live clips here are UK Subs performing in Los Angeles in 1984 and the eternally risible Sham 69 to a bizarrely enthusiastic crowd in Japan as late as 1991. The second, almost certainly unintentional, purpose served by Punk & Disorderlyis an overdue de-romanticising of punk, accomplished by the simple expedient of demonstrating how many wholly worthless groups the movement produced.

It is difficult to believe that anyone bar the band members and their children will derive much joy from the ill-shot, badly-recorded caperings of such rank nonentities as The Business, Vice Squad, One Way System and Chaos UK. Nor are more established names in the punk pantheon, such as Chelsea, The Lurkers and The Exploited, done many favours by their contributions. In the deplorable absence of anything by The Sex Pistols or The Clash, it is left to The Buzzcocks, with a spirited slap at their immortal "Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn¹t Have)" to argue the case that punk rock in general, and this DVD in particular, are not a complete waste of everyone's time. --Andrew Mueller