Dashing Errol Flynn is the definitive Robin in 1938's The Adventures of Robin Hood, the most gloriously swashbuckling version of the legendary story. Warner Brothers reunited Michael Curtiz, their top-action director, with the winning team of Flynn and Olivia de Havilland (Maid Marian) and perennial villain Basil Rathbone as the aristocratic Sir Guy of Gisbourne, and pulled out all stops for the production. It became their costliest film to date, a grandly handsome, glowing technicolour adventure set to a stirring, Oscar-winning score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold--music that became a template for countless later movies, notably John Williams' Star Wars and Indiana Jones scores.

The decadent Prince John (a smoothly conniving Claude Rains) takes advantage of King Richard's absence to tax the country into poverty but meets his match in the medieval guerrilla rebel Robin Hood and his Merry Men of Sherwood Forest, who rise up and, to quote a cliché coined by the film, "steal from the rich and give to the poor". Stocky Alan Hale Sr plays Robin's loyal friend Little John (a part he played in Douglas Fairbanks' silent version), Eugene Palette plays the portly Friar Tuck and Melville Cooper is the bumbling Sheriff of Nottingham. Flynn's confidence and cocky charm makes for a perfect Robin and his easygoing manner is a marvellous counterpoint to Rathbone's regal bearing and courtly diction. The film climaxes in their rousing battle-to-the-finish sword fight, a magnificently choreographed scene highlighted by Curtiz's inventive use of shadows cast upon the castle walls. --Sean Axmaker

The strange combination of two fairy tale characters generates a witty adventure for the whole family. When they grow up Tom Thumb and Thumbelina combine to fight an evil giant who destroyed their village long ago.

Widely ridiculed on its cinematic release, The Affair of the Necklace is a fascinating mixture of the spectacular, the romantic and the simply dreadful. Director Charles Shyer--best-known for mediocre comedies like Father of the Bride--leaps perhaps unwisely into the bodice-ripping palace intrigue genre. Admittedly Shyer does have an eye for spectacle--many of the Versailles scenes were shot there and Prague does its usual excellent service as pre-Revolutionary Paris--but he fumbles when it comes to telling the complicated story. The real-life scandal of Jeanne de la Motte-Valois, whose machinations crippled the French monarchy, was complicated enough, but Shyer manages to make it incomprehensible. Even the excellent Brian Cox cannot make the leaden narrative work successfully and some complicated, misleading games with time simply fail to do anything other than irritate.

Hilary Swank--excellent in Boys Don't Cry and Insomnia--is weirdly doll-like and passive as the con-woman La Motte-Valois and only excels in her role when she is pulling pistols on people. As her husband and lover, Adrian Brody and Simon Baker respectively have rather more chemistry, and Jonathan Pryce sweeps around as a depraved gullible cardinal. But the scene-stealers are Christopher Walken, who hams it up spookily as the psychic crook Cagliostro, and Joely Richardson, who plays Marie-Antoinette as an icy, charismatic bitch. The score is an irritating pot-pourri that avoids French music in favour of Bach, Handel and the just-about contemporary Mozart. The gorgeous frocks appear to be where most of the budget was blown--if only a little more was invested into making sense of the script.

On the DVD: The Affair of the Necklace is presented in a 2.35:1 widescreen visual aspect and has sumptuous Dolby 5.1 sound that does full justice to both dialogue and score. The film has generous extras, including a "making of" documentary and an intelligent piece on the show's design, as well as a director's commentary and deleted scenes which reveal more than we wanted to know about the hesitation and changes that mar the story-telling. --Roz Kaveney

The African Queen, John Huston's 1951 classic set in Africa during World War I, garnered Humphrey Bogart an Oscar for his role as a hard-drinking riverboat captain who provides passage for a Christian missionary spinster (Katharine Hepburn). Taking an instant, mutual dislike to one another, the two endure rough waters, the presence of German soldiers, and their own bickering to fall finally into one another's arms. Based on CS Forester's novel, this is classic Huston material--part adventure, part quest--but this time with a pair of characters who'd all but given up on happiness. Bogart (a long-time collaborator with Huston on such classics as The Maltese Falcon and Key Largo) and Hepburn have never been better, and support from frequent Huston crony Robert Morley adds some extra dimension and colour. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

On the DVD: A trailer, a gallery of contemporary posters and stills, plus some text biographies of the principals, simply whet the appetite for the main extra feature here: an audio commentary by veteran cinematographer Jack Cardiff. The man responsible for the lush, albeit studio-bound jungle textures of Black Narcissus faced innumerable challenges lighting real Borneo jungle in the heart of the Congo for Huston's ambitious project, and here he relates all the behind-the-scenes anecdotes of disease, infestation and disaster that plagued the production. It's a real treat to hear one of the last survivors of the Golden Age filmmaking happily reminiscing about one of cinema's classic pictures, talking companionably of Huston, Bogie and Katie Hepburn and what everyone--cast and crew alike--endured to finish the picture, from lepers carrying their gear to the location, Huston fishing while directing, hornets stinging the crew, to terrible sickness brought on by drinking unfiltered lake water (except Bogie and Huston, who stuck religiously to the whisky!). The movie itself, in its original 1.33:1 ratio, looks just fine, and the sound is an unfussy digitally remastered mono. --Mark Walker

Martin Scorsese does not sound like the logical choice to direct The Age of Innocence, an adaptation of Edith Wharton's novel about the manners and morals in New York society in the 1870s. But these are mean streets, too, and the psychological violence inflicted between characters is at least as damaging as the physical violence perpetrated by Scorsese's usual gangsters. At the centre of the tale is Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis), a somewhat diffident young man engaged to marry the very respectable May Welland (Winona Ryder). But Archer is distracted by May's cousin, the Countess Olenska (a radiant Michelle Pfeiffer), who has recently returned from Europe. As a married woman seeking a divorce, the Countess is an embarrassment to all of New York society. But Archer is fascinated by her quick intelligence and worldly ways. Scorsese closely observes the tiny details of this world and this impossible situation; this is a film in which the shift of someone's eyes can be as significant as the firing of a gun. The director's sense of colour has never been keener, and his work with the actors is subtle. --Robert Horton, Amazon.com

The Ages of Lulu is a gruelling sexual odyssey from Spanish director Bigas Luna, made immediately prior to his popular trilogy Jamón, jamón (1992), Golden Balls (1993) and The Tit and the Moon (1994). Starting as the somewhat queasy story of the young Lulu's affair with the manipulative Pablo (Oscar Ladoire), the movie takes a much darker turn once they are wed. It is conventional cinematic wisdom that there's no such thing as sex after marriage, but here Lulu's husband incomprehensibly leads her into blindfolded incest, then is heartbroken when she reacts with disgust.

Soon Lulu (superbly played by Francesca Neri from ingénue to hardened 30-something), is paying gay men for group sex, eventually becoming an unwilling attraction in a commercial sado-machochistic orgy. The closest most UK audiences will have come to this before is in Ken Russell's The Devils (1971) and Crimes of Passion (1984), and it is surely one of the most gut-churningly nightmarish scenes ever passed for home viewing. While Ages of Lulu may function as a reactionary warning against the wilder shores of sex, Luna's intention remains unsatisfyingly enigmatic, since the script is under-written and psychologically unconvincing. The end result is pretentious, repellent pornography which degrades human beings of any sexual persuasion.

On the DVD: The Ages of Lulu is transferred at an anamorphically enhanced 1.78:1 and image quality is very good, though in some scenes very slightly soft. The film can be watched with or without English subtitles, and the sound is unremarkable stereo. The main extras are a seven-page essay on Bigas Luna and five pages detailing the now restored 110 seconds of cuts made to the 1998 video release. The main title still contains 65 seconds of alternate footage to the cinema original for legal reasons. Also included are filmographies of Lunas and Oscar Ladoire, two trailers plus trailers for six other films. --Gary S Dalkin