This big and sometimes messy movie achieves the seemingly impossible: it demythologizes the American Revolution and lets us see it in a completely new light. Hugh Hudson (Chariots of Fire) has directed a starkly beautiful, powerfully visceral portrait of war from the point of view of the little people who are swept along in its wake. Al Pacino is Tom Dobb, a poor, illiterate trapper bringing up a young son when rebellion breaks out in New York. Dobb's small boat is requisitioned for the war effort, and he and his son become reluctant conscripts. It takes six months and some truly vile treatment by the British before the conflict becomes personal for Dobb and he makes the American cause his own. The Dobb family's tale intersects that of British Sergeant Major Peasy (a formidable Donald Sutherland) and his own son. As the tide of the war turns, the enemies' fortunes are reversed. Tom's love interest, Daisy McConnahay (Nastassja Kinski), is a fiery beauty who breaks from her family of wealthy Tories (British sympathizers) to fight for freedom. Kinski is wonderful as a living Lady Liberty, and Pacino has some extraordinary moments of raw emotion as Dobb. The film's highlights include authentic, grisly re-creations of famous Revolutionary War battles, including Yorktown and Valley Forge. [+]

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.

Having developed his skill as a master of contemporary crime drama, writer-director Michael Mann displayed every aspect of that mastery in this intelligent, character-driven thriller from 1995, which also marked the first onscreen pairing of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. The two great actors had played father and son in the separate time periods of The Godfather, Part II, but this was the first film in which the pair appeared together, and although their only scene together is brief, it's the riveting fulcrum of this high-tech cops-and-robbers scenario. De Niro plays a master thief with highly skilled partners (Val Kilmer and Tom Sizemore) whose latest heist draws the attention of Pacino, playing a seasoned Los Angeles detective whose investigation reveals that cop and criminal lead similar lives. Both are so devoted to their professions that their personal lives are a disaster. Pacino's with a wife (Diane Venora) who cheats to avoid the reality of their desolate marriage; De Niro pays the price for a life with no outside connections; and Kilmer's wife (Ashley Judd) has all but given up hope that her husband will quit his criminal career. These are men obsessed, and as De Niro and Pacino know, they'll both do whatever's necessary to bring the other down. Mann's brilliant screenplay explores these personal obsessions and sacrifices with absorbing insight, and the tension mounts with some of the most riveting action sequences ever filmed-most notably a daylight siege that turns downtown Los Angeles into a virtual war zone of automatic gunfire. At nearly three hours, the film qualifies as a kind of intimate epic, certain to leave some viewers impatiently waiting for more action, but it's all part of Mann's compelling strategy. Heat is a true rarity: a crime thriller with equal measures of intense excitement and dramatic depth, giving De Niro and Pacino a prime showcase for their finely matched talents. -Jeff Shannon.

Comprehensive Applications of Shaolin Chin Na 2 'Chin Na' (Qin Na) means 'Seize and Control'. This ancient Shaolin grappling art is the study of controlling an opponent through joint locks and acupuncture cavities. Chin Na is part of almost all Chinese martial styles, and it can be a valuable addition to any other martial system. In this video, Dr. Yang Jwing-Ming and senior student Ramel Rones demonstrate nearly 200 Applications of Chin Na techniques, according to actual combat scenarios. Techniques are demonstrated against an attacker in the following categories: Knife attacks, Wrist, Arm, Shoulder, Neck, Hair, Chest and Back Grabbing, and offensive Chin Na, showing many options for various attacks to every part of your body. This video complements the book Comprehensive Applications of Shaolin Chin Na, by Dr. Yang, Jwing-Ming, corresponding to Chapters 5-7. • Learn to counter against knife attacks and grabbing. • Almost 200 Chin Na applications demonstrated. [+]

In the vastly overrated 1998 book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, author Peter Biskind puts the blame for Hollywood's blockbuster mentality at least partially on Steven Spielberg's box-office success with this adaptation of Peter Benchley's bestselling novel. But you can't blame Spielberg for making a terrific movie, which Jaws definitely is. The story of a Long Island town whose summer tourist business is suddenly threatened by great-white-shark attacks on humans bypasses the potboiler trappings of Benchley's book and goes straight for the jugular with beautifully crafted, crowd-pleasing sequences of action and suspense supported by a trio of terrific performances by Roy Scheider (as the local sheriff), Richard Dreyfuss (as a shark specialist), and particularly Robert Shaw (as the old fisherman who offers to hunt the shark down). The sequences on Shaw's boat-as the three of them realize that in fact the shark is hunting them-are what entertaining moviemaking is all about. -Marshall Fine.

It's outrageous good fun! Writer Mickey Spillane stars as his hard-boiled private detective Mike Hammer in this action-packed murder mystery. After seven years on a drunken binge over the disappearance of Velda, his former secretary, Hammer is picked up out of the gutter by the police and dropped smack-dab in the middle of a political bombshell where every lead seems to end in murder. After being told his beloved Velda is still alive, but being held by the Dragon, an infamous international assassin and leader of a spy ring, Hammer sets out to find her. With only guts and attitude to get him by, Hammer gets deeper and deeper into a conspiracy that surrounds him on all sides, threatening his and Velda's lives. Mickey Spillane plays his own creation, street-thug-turned-PI Mike Hammer, in this 1963 adaptation of his novel. The film opens with Hammer on the downside of a years-long bender, scooped out of the gutter by a bitter cop intent on prying information from a dying man. Inspired to clean up his act by the secrets he hears, Hammer hits the streets on a personal crusade to find the love of his life. Future Bond girl Shirley Earton costars as a glamorous society widow who goes slumming with Hammer. Spillane, who brings the grace of a trained monkey and the sex appeal of a Bronx cheer to the role, is less a stoic, tarnished street knight than a street bum at a cocktail party, but it works for the working-class pug. The low-budget production is a rare black-and-white CinemaScope picture, rough and messy but lacking the raw edge and gritty look of more accomplished crime pictures. [+]

There's no getting around a simple, basic truth: watching Lawrence of Arabia in any home-video format represents a compromise. There's no better way to appreciate this epic biographical adventure than to see it projected in 70 millimeter onto a huge theater screen. That caveat aside, David Lean's masterful "desert classic" is still enjoyable on the small screen, especially if viewed in widescreen format. (If your only option is to view a "pan & scan" version, it's best not to bother; this is a film for which the widescreen format is utterly mandatory. ) Peter O'Toole gives a star-making performance as T. E. Lawrence, the eccentric British officer who united the desert tribes of Arabia against the Turks during World War I. Lean orchestrates sweeping battle sequences and breathtaking action, but the film is really about the adventures and trials that transform Lawrence into a legendary man of the desert. Lean traces this transformation on a vast canvas of awesome physicality; no other movie has captured the expanse of the desert with such scope and grandeur. Equally important is the psychology of Lawrence, who remains an enigma even as we grasp his identification with the desert. [+]