Technically ambitious but artistically underwhelming, this 1961 epic by Anthony Mann (Man of the West) stars Charlton Heston as an 11th-century hero who drives the Moors from Spain. The film has been described as "glum," and that is indeed apt for a story that focuses so much on its central character's losses in the face of his simultaneous, mythic approbation. Then again, Mann has always been interested in the hidden weaknesses in prevailing myths, so that's not unusual. What is unusual in El Cid is the degree to which technology takes over his filmmaking, as it does here with so many grandiose and bravura moments with a roving camera that don't add up to anything beyond spectacle. As an achievement of Hollywood's technical advancements in the postwar years, and also as part of the filmographies of Mann and Heston, the film is well worth a look. But it is not the artistic equal of other epics of its day, such as Lawrence of Arabia. -Tom Keogh.

Every 15 minutes there's a flabbergasting sword fight. All the warriors can fly over, or dismember, their opponents with a flick of the wrist. (The action was staged by Ching Siu-tung, the director of A Chinese Ghost Story. ) Eyeballs are extracted, wrists snap, heads explode. The caffeine-rush editing style and its tendency to scream and throw things (usually right at our heads) is almost alienating; it distracts us from a story line that would be difficult to parse even at normal speeds. A scroll known as the Sacred Volume, offering the secret to a powerful martial arts technique, has been filched from the imperial library in Beijing, and the snippy eunuchs assigned to guard it are waxing wroth. An amiable wandering swashbuckler known as Fox, Ling Hu-ching (Sam Hui), from the Wah Mountain School of Swordsmen, gets tagged with the hopeless assignment of retrieving the lost scroll. Wu Ma and Lin Zheng-ying, as noble old martial artists, sing a song together and then die staunchly. Various other factions of fighters, including the glorious women of the rebel Sun and Moon Society of broad-hatted "Highlanders" (who make their living smuggling salt) also express an interest in the scroll-and their principle modes of expression are all fiercely martial. Adapted from the novel The Laughing Swordsman, by Louis Cha (a. [+]

White Crane History, Fundamental Stances, Hand Techniques and Stepping This comprehensive training video explores White Crane Gong Fu, (Kung Fu) one of the most famous martial styles developed in China. In addition to fundamental stances, movements and hand techniques, Dr. Yang, Jwing-Ming gives an introduction to the history of Shaolin White Crane Gongfu. It is commonly recognized that Shaolin White Crane is the root of Okinawan Karate, and has heavily influenced Japanese martial arts. From this video, any martial artist can gain profound comprehension of empty-handed styles. • fundamental stances • fundamental Qi Xing stepping • Four Golden Points hand techniques • repelling and covering practice • Bridge Hands and its applications Directed by Dr. Yang, Jwing-Ming and David Silver Performed by Dr. Yang, Jwing-Ming, Aaron Damus, Richard Krupp, Tracy Stouck, Nick Yang and Kathy Yang. Video Production by MediaManic VHS NTSC - 60 minutes.

Martin Sheen's 1991 directorial debut features Sheen as the disturbed head of a military stockade where the prisoners include a troublemaking Army misfit played by his son Charlie. Private Bean (Charlie Sheen) is thrown into the stockade with a group of five blacks calling themselves the Soul Patrol, and gradually learns teamwork from the men, including their leader Stokes (Laurence Fishburne). Eventually the tug of war between Bean and the bigoted commander reaches a boiling point with tragic conclusions, and Bean learns the meaning of compassion and the difference between right and wrong. The film is nothing particularly inspiring or insightful, but the supporting players, including Fishburne, give solid performances, and Cadence affords the audience a chance to see the father and son team work together in an earnest and well-meaning drama. -Robert Lane.

With a tantalizing "what-if?" scenario and a respectable cast of Hollywood veterans, The Final Countdown plays like a grand-scale episode of The Twilight Zone. It's really no more than that, and time-travel movies have grown far more sophisticated since this popular 1980 release, but there's still some life remaining in the movie's basic premise: What if a modern-era Navy aircraft carrier-in this case the real-life nuclear-powered U. S. S. Nimitz-was caught in an anomalous storm and thrust 40 years backwards in time to the eve of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor? Will the ship's commander (Kirk Douglas) interfere with history? Will the visiting systems analyst (Martin Sheen) convince him not to? Will a rescued senator from 1941 (Charles Durning) play an unexpected role in the future of American politics? Veteran TV director Don Taylor doesn't do much with the ideas posed by this potentially intriguing plot; he seems more interested in satisfying aviation buffs with loving footage of F-14 "Jolly Roger" fighter jets, made possible by the Navy's generous cooperation. That makes The Final Countdown a better Navy film than a full-fledged time-travel fantasy, but there's a nice little twist at the end, and the plot holes are easy to ignore. James Cameron would've done it better, but this popcorn thriller makes an enjoyable double-bill with The Philadelphia Experiment. -Jeff Shannon.

Legendary silent film director Cecil B. DeMille didn't much alter the way he made movies after sound came in, and this 1956 biblical drama is proof of that. While graced with such 1950s niceties as VistaVision and Technicolor, The Ten Commandments (DeMille had already filmed an earlier version in 1923) has an anachronistic, impassioned style that finds lead actors Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner expressively posing while hundreds of extras writhe either in the presence of God's power or from orgiastic heat. DeMille, as always, plays both sides of the fence as far as sin goes, surrounding Heston's Moses with worshipful music and heavenly special effects while also making the sexy action around the cult of the Golden Calf look like fun. You have to see The Ten Commandments to understand its peculiar resonance as an old-new movie, complete with several still-impressive effects such as the parting of the Red Sea. -Tom Keogh.

The best of the James Bond adventures starring Roger Moore as tuxedoed Agent 007, this globe-trotting thriller introduced the steel-toothed Jaws (played by seven-foot-two-inch-tall actor Richard Kiel) as one of the most memorable and indestructible Bond villains. Jaws is so tenacious, in fact, that Moore looks genuinely frightened, and that adds to the abundant fun. This time Bond teams up with yet another lovely Russian agent (Barbara Bach) to track a pair of nuclear submarines that the nefarious Stromberg (Curt Jürgens) plans to use in his plot to start World War III. Featuring lavish sets designed by the great Ken Adam (Dr. Strangelove), The Spy Who Loved Me is a galaxy away from the suave Sean Connery exploits of the 1960s, but the film works perfectly as grandiose entertainment. From cavernous undersea lairs to the vast horizons of Egypt, this Bond thriller keeps its tongue firmly in cheek with a plot tailor-made for daredevil escapism. -Jeff Shannon.

Years before he became a genuine Hollywood action star in Rush Hour, Jackie Chan played a daredevil secret agent out to recover a lost cache of Nazi gold, in this globe-trotting 1990 action comedy-with a trio of beautiful women at his side (one Chinese, one Japanese, and one German) and a stereotyped bumbling Arab terrorist hot on his heels. Condor is still one of the most expensive Hong Kong movies ever made, and looks it: there are actual Spanish castles and huge vistas of North African desert sand. (Months later, several planeloads of the stuff were shipped back to Hong Kong for some pick-up shots). A full-size set depicting an underground German wind tunnel was constructed on a Hong Kong sound stage. But there's also an extended car-and-motorcycle chase that employs an obvious stunt double, and episodes of bawdy farce (trimmed for the U. S. release) that feel like padding. Chan was already 36 when he directed this superstar vehicle, and he'd sensibly decided to soft-peddle the hard action stunt work-until the finale, that is, an all-out head-kicking kung-fu battle that moves back and forth across huge seesawing slabs of clockwork machinery. Chan seems to be working harder than ever in other areas, too; he's never given a more energetic or engaging comic performance. For pure mind-boggling entertainment value, the peak Jackie experiences are still Project A Part II, and the original Police Story and its semi-sequel, Supercop, in which Chan costarred with Tomorrow Never Dies Bond girl Michelle Yeoh. [+]

On Christmas Eve 1999, two employees of the New York water company fall into a long-closed tomb beneath a water main. A Native American archaeologist (Françoise Robertson) discovers that the tomb contains the bones of a Templar, a sect of religious knights charged with protecting a golden key-the key to the bottomless pit in which the Antichrist is imprisoned. She's promptly attacked by the minion of the Antichrist, an ancient demon that possesses human bodies. Just as swiftly, she's defended by a hunky contemporary Templar, played by the increasingly craggy Dolph Lundgren. They concoct a plan to sink the key into a pit of toxic waste, and take off to a storage facility on her native reservation with the demon in hot pursuit, hopping from body to body. The Minion wastes little time in getting the action under way, but there's not a lot of imagination and almost no special effects. Lundgren intones such statements as "There is no joy in sin" and "Every human being I touch, I may have to kill," while a heavy-metal guitar wails on the soundtrack. Something of a cross between The Hidden and End of Days. -Bret Fetzer.

Henri-Georges Clouzot's gripping 1953 thriller throws four men into a primal struggle against the jungle armed with modern machinery and their own nerves and endurance. The squalid, isolated South American town of Las Piedras is a veritable refuge turned prison for criminals from all over the world. When an oil fire ignites 300 miles away, dozens of desperate volunteers apply for the dangerous job of driving highly volatile nitroglycerin across rugged jungle roads-for a $2,000 payday. The bulk of the film charts the slow, grueling trek over bumpy, pothole-dotted dirt roads and worse. A dangerous cutback forces the trucks to back over a rotting wooden platform built over a cliff, a boulder in the road must be blasted away, and a river of oil (gushing from a broken pipeline) must be forded-all with one ton of explosive nitro resting in the back of each truck. The ordeal forges a tough-guy trust between German Bimba (Peter Van Eyck) and Italian Luigi (Folco Lulli) but tears apart Frenchmen Mario (Yves Montand) and Jo (Charles Vanel). Former gangland hotshot Jo finds his once-fearless exterior cracked, while Mario discovers in himself a new grit and tenacity. Clouzot's stark, simple imagery and painstaking attention to detail create a riveting tension that never lets up, intensified by the ruthless drive of Mario, who proves he will do anything-anything-to get his truck through. William Freidkin remade the film in 1977 as the stylish Sorcerer. -Sean Axmaker.