Par Toutatis ! Potion magique ou pas, Alain Chabat signe là une version plus enlevée, plus allumée et plus tonique que le premier Astérixréalisé par Claude Zidi. Après Didier, l'ex-Nul s'impose comme un réalisateur malin et efficace. Pour réussir son pari de 55 millions d'euros – plus gros budget du cinéma français, et deuxième place au box-office des films français, avec 14,5 millions d'entrées – il est revenu aux sources des albums de Goscinny et Uderzo, en y greffant son univers décalé et loufoque. Anachronismes, jeux de mots, clins d'œil fleurissent à gogo : de Matrixau Grand Pardon, en passant par Cyranoou Claude François, un festival...Ju-bi-la-toire ! ! À quoi s'ajoute une avalanche de gags irrésistibles, des dialogues épicés qui jouent avec saveur sur le décalage passé-présent – "Itineris a raison : faut pas se l'SFR" –, des décors et des costumes somptueux dessinés par le créateur de Ranxerox, Tanino Liberatore. Bref, la greffe réussie de l'humour Canal sur le comique traditionnel français, dans un esprit potache qui n'est pas sans rappeler celui qui irrigue les désopilants Y a-t-il un pilote dans l'avion ?. Autour de Clavier et Depardieu – uniques rescapés du premier opus – une légion romaine de comédiens, plus délectables les uns que les autres : Monica Belluci, Gérard Darmon en méchant d'anthologie, Dieudonné, Claude Rich, Isabelle Nanty, Alain Chabat, Mathieu Kassovitz, et même Pierre Tchernia ! ! Et puis, il y a les cas Jamel et Édouard Baer : absolument déjantés, ils dominent l'interprétation par leur tchatche et leur abattage. À revoir plusieurs fois, comme on relit sans cesse les BD originales. —Sylvain Lefort

Surnaturel, angoisse, suspense et enfance, avec l'Amérique moyenne en toile de fond : dans Signs, M. Night Shyamalan utilise les ingrédients simples mais efficaces qui ont fait le succès de ses films précédents, The Sixth Senseet Unbreakable. Mais ici, Bruce Willis a été remplacé par Mel Gibson.

Graham Hess, ancien pasteur, vit sur sa ferme, en Pennsylvanie, avec ses deux enfants et son frère. Depuis la mort de sa femme dans un accident de voiture, il a perdu la foi. Lorsqu'il découvre que le gigantesque symbole, tracé à même son champ, a également été tracé aux quatre coins de la planète, ce sont ses propres convictions et croyances qu'il devra affronter.

Les références à Hitchcock pleuvent, mais Signsn'a pas l'envergure d'une œuvre du maître du suspense. Car même si M. Night Shyamalan sait ménager ses effets de surprise, que Mel Gibson et Joaquin Phoenix sont sobres et convaincants et que le film soulève des questions philosophiques sur le rôle de la religion, Signspâtit d'un suspense créé à grands coups de sursauts et d'une finale flirtant un peu trop avec du grand guignol. Certes, c'est aussi efficace que lorsqu'on suit une recette, mais on ne peut s'empêcher de regretter le manque de finesse et d'originalité du résultat. —Helen Faradji

No one uses color like Chinese director Zhang Yimou—movies like Raise the Red Lanternor Hero, though different in tone and subject matter, are drenched in rich, luscious shades of red, blue, yellow, and green. House of Flying Daggersis no exception; if they weren't choreographed with such vigorous imagination, the spectacular action sequences would seem little more than an excuse for vivid hues rippling across the screen. Government officers Leo and Jin (Asian superstars Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro) set out to destroy an underground rebellion called the House of Flying Daggers (named for their weapon of choice, a curved blade that swoops through the air like a boomerang). Their only chance to find the rebels is a blind women named Mei (Ziyi Zhang, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) who has some lethal kung fu moves of her own. In the guise of an aspiring rebel, Jin escorts Mei through gorgeous forests and fields that become bloody battlegrounds as soldiers try to kill them both. While arrows and spears of bamboo fly through the air, Mei, Jin, and Leo turn against each other in surprising ways, driven by passion and honor. Zhang's previous action/art film, Hero, sometimes sacrificed momentum for sheer visual beauty;House of Flying Daggersfinds a more muscular balance of aesthetic splendor and dazzling swordplay. —Bret Fetzer

If you crave an over-the-top historical kung fu-fantasy epic with a good dose of voluptuous nudity, bravura machismo, and passions so intense they verge on ridiculous, then Brotherhood of the Wolfis your movie. Based (loosely) on an 18th-century legend, this French film follows a hunky scientist (Samuel Le Bihan, who's sort of a second-string Christopher Lambert) and his Iroquois sidekick/spiritual partner (Mark Dacascos) as they pursue a monstrous wolf ravaging the French countryside. Along the way Le Bihan gets entwined with a beautiful noblewoman (Émilie Dequenne) and a gorgeous prostitute (Monica Belluci) with secrets. The plot grows more and more incomprehensible, but the mix of torrid emotions, outrageous action sequences, and lurid titillation is really what the movie is about. Ignore the highbrow philosophizing and confused political intrigue; just enjoy the sensual images. —Bret Fetzer

Worth the price of purchase alone is this volume's bonus episode, "Too Many Christmas Trees," which one Avengers-appreciation Web site ranks as the best Emma Peel episode of all time. This "fascinating exercise" (to quote one devilish character) concerns a psychic experiment that gives John Steed deadly nightmares that are coming true. Among the many highlights is the girl of our dreams, Mrs. Peel, helping Steed open his Christmas cards ("Who is Boofums?"). Listen for the in-joke reference to Rigg's predecessor, Honor Blackman, who left the series to star in Goldfinger. Regarding the card from Mrs. Gale, Blackman's character, Steed ponders, "What can she be doing in Fort Knox?" And the sight of Mrs. Peel costumed as Oliver Twist may also cause some sleepless nights!

This volume also contains "The Man-Eater of Surrey Green," a bit of straight-faced silliness about, yes, a man-eating plant from outer space. More down-to-earth is "Two's a Crowd," in which "king of the spies" Colonel Pesev (pronounced "Zev") comes to town. Patrick Macnee does extra duty as Steed and his double, a fashion model ("wearing slacks built for action") named Webster, who is recruited by the Russians to infiltrate a vital meeting of the defense chiefs. Will the unwitting Mrs. Peel be able to tell the difference between the two? In "Dial a Deadly Number," six "dynamic, indispensable" company chairmen have suddenly keeled over. Who ya gonna call? Steed and Mrs. Peel, who make a connection between the untimely deaths, a "bleeper" (pager) pocket pen, and Fitch, a sinister "backroom boy" and mechanical genius. The umbrella-toting Steed actually fires a gun in this episode. The most taut suspense is reserved for the scene in which Steed engages in a duel of palates at a wine tasting. To paraphrase one character, do not deprive yourself of this DVD's company. —Donald Liebenson

Ted Neeley makes for a wimpy looking Jesus in Norman Jewison's screen adaptation of the Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice "rock opera," which was a smash on stage in the early '70s. Jewison (Other People's Money) adds some good exterior settings in the desert, but Webber and Rice's dialogue-free story (everything is sung, as in a real opera), with its quasi-profundities about the inner demons of principal figures in the life of Christ, is the real hook. Yvonne Elliman sings the show's best-known song, "I Don't Know How to Love Him."—Tom Keogh

"Sentries have come in from the hill, sir.... They report Zulus to the southeast. Thousands of them." One of the best pure action movies ever made, this rousing adventure recounts the true story of a small 18th-century regiment of British troops (including a very blue-blooded turn by a young Michael Caine) endlessly besieged by an seemingly unceasing number of fierce attackers. Although the basic premise has since been executed with more technical skill and panache (most notably by Aliensand Michael Mann's The Last of the Mohicans), it's unlikely that anything will ever top the utter spectacle and, above all, sheer unbelievable sizeof the combat scenes that almost wholly comprise the last half of this film. A gloriously exhilarating essential for anyone looking to get lost in the heat of cinematic battle, topped off with a healthy dose of gallows humor. Not to be missed. Richard Burton voiced the stirring narration. Zuluwas followed by a slightly dry but still recommended prequel, Zulu Dawn. —Andrew Wright

On the strength of his Hitchcockian-thriller debut, Mute Witness, writer-director Anthony Waller was hired to direct this belated sequel to the 1981 horror comedy An American Werewolf in London, but lycanthropy in the City of Light just ain't what it used to be. The movie offers plenty of gruesome makeup and special wolf-transformation effects, and there are some effectively spooky moments in the plot involving an underground population of hungry Parisian werewolves. One of them is seductively played by Julie Delpy, who is rescued from attempted suicide by an American tourist (Tom Everett Scott, from That Thing You Do!) but ultimately can't hide her dual identity when darkness falls and the full moon shines. The movie begins well, but gradually succumbs to nonsense and mayhem, prompting critic Roger Ebert to observe that "here are people we don't care about, doing things they don't understand, in a movie without any rules." In other words, you'd have to be a die-hard horror buff to give this one the benefit of the doubt. —Jeff Shannon

Like the Greenwich Village courtyard view from its titular portal, Alfred Hitchcock's classic Rear Windowis both confined and multileveled: both its story and visual perspective are dictated by its protagonist's imprisonment in his apartment, convalescing in a wheelchair, from which both he and the audience observe the lives of his neighbors. Cheerful voyeurism, as well as the behavior glimpsed among the various tenants, affords a droll comic atmosphere that gradually darkens when he sees clues to what may be a murder.

Photographer L.B. "Jeff" Jeffries (James Stewart) is, in fact, a voyeur by trade, a professional photographer sidelined by an accident while on assignment. His immersion in the human drama (and comedy) visible from his window is a by-product of boredom, underlined by the disapproval of his girlfriend, Lisa (Grace Kelly), and a wisecracking visiting nurse (Thelma Ritter). Yet when the invalid wife of Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr) disappears, Jeff enlists the two women to help him to determine whether she's really left town, as Thorwald insists, or been murdered.

Hitchcock scholar Donald Spoto convincingly argues that the crime at the center of this mystery is the MacGuffin—a mere pretext—in a film that's more interested in the implications of Jeff's sentinel perspective. We actually learn more about the lives of the other neighbors (given generic names by Jeff, even as he's drawn into their lives) he, and we, watch undetected than we do the putative murderer and his victim. Jeff's evident fear of intimacy and commitment with the elegant, adoring Lisa provides the other vital thread to the script, one woven not only into the couple's own relationship, but reflected and even commented upon through the various neighbors' lives.

At minimum, Hitchcock's skill at making us accomplices to Jeff's spying, coupled with an ingenious escalation of suspense as the teasingly vague evidence coalesces into ominous proof, deliver a superb thriller spiked with droll humor, right up to its nail-biting, nightmarish climax. At deeper levels, however, Rear Windowplumbs issues of moral responsibility and emotional honesty, while offering further proof (were any needed) of the director's brilliance as a visual storyteller. —Sam Sutherland