Fifteen Minutes partners Robert De Niro and Saving Private Ryan's Edward Burns in a thriller satire on America's "reality TV" industry. De Niro plays celebrity detective Eddie Fleming, who must reluctantly work with arson investigator Jordy Warsaw (Burns) when a grisly fire is discovered to conceal a murder. This is the work of Emil (Karel Roden) and Oleg (Oleg Taktarov), East ...

Manufacturer: Entertainment in Video
Starring: Robert De Niro, Edward Burns, Kelsey Grammer, Avery Brooks, Kim Cattrall
Directed By: John Herzfeld

Manufacturer: Third Millennium
Starring: Eric Leffler, Tom Straw, Madeleine Kolouris
Directed By: Sherrine Reut

Such a simple idea--yet so fiendishly complex in the execution. 24, as surely everyone knows by now, is a thriller that takes place over 24 hours, midnight to midnight, in 24 one-hour episodes (well, 45-minute episodes if you extract the ad breaks). Everything to take place in real time--on-screen and off-screen time the same--which means no flash-backs, no flash-forwards, no nice handy ...

Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Starring: Kiefer Sutherland, Carlos Bernard, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Dennis Haysbert, James Morrison

A high point of Hitchcock's pre-Hollywood career, 1935's The Thirty-Nine Steps is the first and best of three film versions of John Buchann's rather stiff novel. Robert Donat plays the rancher embroiled in a plot to steal British military secrets. He finds himself on the run; falsely accused of murder, while also pursuing the dastardly web of spies alluded to in the title. With a plot whose ...

Manufacturer: ITV DVD
Starring: Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll, Lucie Mannheim, Godfrey Tearle, Peggy Ashcroft
Directed By: Alfred Hitchcock

A high point of Hitchcock's pre-Hollywood career, 1935's The Thirty-Nine Steps is the first and best of three film versions of John Buchann's rather stiff novel. Robert Donat plays the rancher embroiled in a plot to steal British military secrets. He finds himself on the run; falsely accused of murder, while also pursuing the dastardly web of spies alluded to in the title. With a plot whose ...

Manufacturer: ITV DVD
Starring: Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll, Lucie Mannheim, Godfrey Tearle, Peggy Ashcroft
Directed By: Alfred Hitchcock

An entry in the recent rash of crooks-falling-out cynical crime-comedy noirs, Four Dogs Playing Poker opens with a robbery at a wedding in Buenos Aires. Five friends pose as staff and guests to penetrate the secret collector's vault of lecherous father-of-the-bride George Lazenby and walk away with a valuable dancing-girl statue. Back in Los Angeles, the team are visited by their sponsor, ...

Manufacturer: Metrodome Distribution
Starring: Olivia Williams, Balthazar Getty, Arly Jover, Jason Cairns, Ruben Moreno
Directed By: Paul Rachman

Manufacturer: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Starring: Stephen Baldwin, Tyne Daly, Elizabeth Barondes, Brian Lee Bouck, Jenniffer Buckalew
Directed By: John Flynn

Director Clint Eastwood's 1997 box-office hit stars himself as Luther Whitney, a highly skilled thief who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, witnessing the murder of a woman involved in a secret tryst with the US president (played by Gene Hackman). Determined to clear his name, Whitney cleverly eludes a tenacious detective (Ed Harris) while investigating a corruption of power ...

Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Ed Harris, Laura Linney, Scott Glenn
Directed By: Clint Eastwood

Manufacturer: Pegasus Entertainment
Starring: John Hurt, Julian Sands, Victoria Abril, Pamela Salem, Gerd Heinz
Directed By: Dominique Othenin-Girard, Sergio Guerraz

After an obligatory prologue in which its detective hero suffers a tragic professional setback, Along Came a Spider (based on the James Patterson novel) sets about its business of luring the viewer into its nefarious plot, relying on the magician's technique of misdirection to reveal a double-whammy surprise. The clever, late-coming plot twist is a bit too mechanical but effectively ...

Manufacturer: Paramount Home Entertainment
Starring: Morgan Freeman, Michael Wincott, Monica Potter, Dylan Baker, Mika Boorem
Directed By: Lee Tamahori