The edge of cheesy

Renee Zellweger dutifully cracked open the Guinness to get up to a real person's weight for Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason but sadly this sequel wasn't really worth the yo-yo-ing. Bridget is now blissfully coupled up with dreamy Colin Firth but that, predictably, doesn't last - not with Hugh Grant still on the cast list. The shame is that the formerly chirpy, put-upon Chardonnay addict is now a parody of her former self: a self-destructive, man-obsessed girl who is, quite frankly, rather stupid. Even a Thai beach and Grant's six-pack abs can't compensate for the lack of decent jokes: by the time Bridget ends up in a foreign jail on drugs charges, I was all set to leave her there. Sure sign of failed spark: the film's highlight is an inept fight between Grant and Firth, which is a straight, unblushing copy of the fight in the first film, only with a pond instead of a window.
Extras: Deleted scenes and lots of featurettes.

Jude Law just doesn't have the rough edges to bring off this bumbling remake of Alfie and he's not helped by the script. Michael Caine's brutishness (which, back in 1966, eventually left Alfie lonelier than any of the many women he treated so badly) is substituted for a snappy-dressing chauffeur who doesn't really have anything to bitch about. Unlike his predecessor's clingy 'birds', Jude's women run their own lives: he's just a spoilt pretty boy with too much totty and too few morals - and Caine's radical asides to camera here look like special pleading. If they were really going to update Alfie for the modern era, the title should have gone to the most obvious category of conflicted commitment-phobes: women.
Extras: None.

Delightful, terrifying James Cagney, with his urchin's smile and his knockout punch, was a star who deserved a box set if ever one did - and since he made most of his films at Warners, they have plenty to choose from. The Public Enemy made his name and his persona: the tough little gangster with a melodramatic streak and a nasty habit of beating up his women (but we have to forgive him - it was 1931 and he was playing a hood). Angels With Dirty Faces is one of his greatest roles: he's the kid who went bad, of course, while his buddy (Pat O'Brien) became a priest and now the two must fight for the souls of a new generation of street kids. The Roaring Twenties is a fine Raoul Walsh gangster flick about a war veteran turned bootlegger, while 1949's White Heat, where he's a mother-fixated thug, is a ringing last hurrah to the gangster genre.
Extras: Plenty, including film historians' commentaries and new featurettes.

If anyone knew how to make camp tender or melodrama beautiful, director Douglas Sirk was the man, as 1956's Written On The Wind demonstrates. The story is pure all-star tosh, a sort of early Dynasty compressed to featurelength, but it's so flamboyant and Technicolored that you just get swept along. Sirk regular Rock Hudson is the nice guy who loses Lauren Bacall to rat-fink boozer Robert Stack, whose sexy sister Dorothy Malone is crazy for Rock; this set-up is an excuse for fights, strops, drinking binges and even impotence - and all of it jewel bright. If you like this, head for Todd Haynes's recent homage Far From Heaven, which is just as coloured and nearly as emotional.

Extras: None.