This includes much of the surviving live footage of Clapton, Bruce and Baker, including extracts from Cream's farewell Royal Albert Hall performance. All three band members are interviewed, and the inclusion of Hendrix's cover of "Sunshine Of Your Love" on Lulu's TV show is a bonus. But while Cream's own songs have stood the test of time well, the extended blues jams sound tedious today.
Yes Years chronicles the band's career from the late '60s through to their '90s reunion via two hours of archive footage and interviews. Greatest Video Hits is more focused and concentrates on the late '70s and '80s when Trevor Horn and Buggles bizarrely joined the line-up. It's easy to scorn Yes' pretension, but Yes Years reminds us that the early material at least boasted some great tunes.
One of the last spasms from the gross-out "wave", this National Lampoon effort has—among the boobs, belching and frat-boy self-fingering—moments of comic charm from Ryan Reynolds. He has a knack for letting us know he's above it all while throwing himself into the stench. Bet he sleeps nights by telling himself Tom Hanks began his career in such muck.
Made for HBO, John Frankenheimer's final film shows how the US stumbled into the Vietnam war. Alternating choppy chaos with slow control, it considers the view from the White House during Lyndon B Johnson's troubled administration. An ambitious three hours in length, with Michael Gambon's LBJ backed by an incredible cast including Donald Sutherland, Alec Baldwin and Philip Baker Hall.
Someone seems to have decided that Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman are a marketable team, and their umpteenth crime thriller together is brought to you by the estimable Carl Franklin. Judd's a perky lawyer whose husband (a wooden Jim Caviezel) may or may not be a mass murderer. Freeman's an amusing drunk, but sadly the plot's the last word in generic, and the 'twists' wear neon signs on their heads.
A Bosnian and a Serb share a trench in this Oscar-winning anti-war film which uses farce and satire to convey its message. The director's an experienced documentary maker; there's truth in his portrayal of an absurd conflict. Sadly the late, great British actress Katrin Cartlidge, ever one to support worthy causes, is miscast as an egocentric reporter.
Tim Robbins is Jacob, a Vietnam Vet trying to adjust to civilian life in New York but suffering from horrific, nightmarish visions. The after-effects of a military drug experiment, or something more sinister and supernatural? Even if Adrian Lyne's film makes a lot of confused choices, it's still an interesting—and genuinely scary—ride.
Psychiatric patient Prot (Kevin Spacey) seems remarkably sane, except for his assertion that he's really an alien visitor from a distant planet named K-Pax. It's Starman meets One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (in a nicely ironic piece of casting, Jeff Bridges plays the psychiatrist determined to discover Prot's real identity), and works nicely even if it does err on the side of sentimentality.
Heavy metal pioneers certainly, but as this appealing history shows, Deep Purple also had the knack of turning a great riff into a decent pop song. There's a dated feel to the lengthy interviews with the likes of Jon Lord, Ian Paice and Ritchie Blackmore, all conducted in the early '90s. But as all but two of the live performances in the archival footage come from 1968-74, it hardly matters.
