Latest on video

Reviewed by Ewan McDonald

London's mean streets have given rise to just as many thugs and crims as Chicago or New York, and almost as many movies of villainy. What side of the Atlantic were Hitchcock and the Krays born on, after all?

As it ends a lengthy cinema run that began before Christmas, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels has been released on video.

Story goes like this: streetwise charmer Eddie walks into the biggest card game of his life carrying a stake into which he and his three mates have put all their hard-earned cash. He loses the lot.

Turns out the game was rigged by the local gentleman and scholar, Hatchet Harry. Harry gives Eddie a week to pay up or Harry will get his fingers on ... well, Eddie's and his mates' fingers.

Trying to steal, con and double-cross about half a million quid from the local drug barons, armed gangs and dear old Hatchet Harry, the lads unwittingly set off a gang war in what publicists are pleased to call "the seedy underbelly of the London back streets."

It all sounds rather like just another episode of Minder, but this black comedy-cum-crime flick has been one of the biggest hits on the New Zealand, Aussie and British cinema circuits in recent months.

Sure, it hasn't done so well in the United States but they did have to subtitle some of the local slang for those Yanks who don't understand the Queen's English.

Few of the leads are established stars - Jason Flemyng as Eddie, Dexter Fletcher, Nick Moran and Jason Statham are hardly household names.

But soccer fans will recognise hard man Vinnie Jones showing a great deal of relish, and no small talent, in his part. Mind you, it's not such a great stretch from his playing style with Wimbledon's Crazy Gang - he's only added an extra weapon to his arsenal. Mr and Mrs Sting get some work to help out with the housekeeping, too.

It wasn't only the audiences who loved Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. It's hard to disagree with the Melbourne commentary - "The end is even better than the beginning and everything in between sizzles." The New Weekly's "the best movie of the decade" is going a little over the top, though. Just don't tell Vinnie I said that.

• Teenage girls - or, more likely, their slightly younger sisters - will be lining up for Ever After, a 90s version of the Cinderella fairytale with Drew Barrymore, Anjelica Huston and hey, look, there's our very own Melanie Lynskey, all the way from New Plymouth.

Barrymore plays Danielle, who lost her countess mum at an early age and whose dad dies of a heart attack just after bringing home a new stepmother (a splendidly over-acting Huston) and her two supposed-to-be-but-not-quite-ugly stepdaughters (Megan Dodds and Lynskey as the nicer, younger one).

Stepmum sends Danielle to work on the farm and tries to set up No 1 daughter as the bride of Crown Prince Henry (Dougray Scott), who keeps dropping in on his frequent trips past the front gate.

With help from a passing Leonardo da Vinci, Danielle becomes the tomboy who rescues the prince and steals his heart - in a 1990s rather than a 1490s kind of way, but concepts of time and history don't apply here - and they do live happily ever after. Oh, sorry for giving away the ending but most of the target audience will have figured it out.

• With his CV boasting such thespian triumphs as Heartbreak High, young Aussie actor Alex Dimitriades has appeared to be a Down Under clone of the Baywatch or Melrose Place himbos.

No more. Dimitriades throws that image out of the window with his performance in every scene of Head On, a rough-edged debut feature by director Ana Kokkinos that has won 15 international awards.

Dimitriades plays Ari - young, confused, gay and from a strict Greek family. His father wants him to get a job, a house, and settle down with a nice Greek girl. The conflict, the pressures, send Ari on a 24-hour bender.

Be warned, though: this film earns its R18 certificate. It has explicit gay sex scenes, drug-taking, household ... er, exchanges of opinion, and the Melbourne police's interviewing methods aren't seen in a particularly good light.

• The First To Go is a romantic comedy about the first of a tight group of school friends to get married.

Adam (Zach Galligan), who has a history of making impulsive and disastrous romantic decisions, becomes engaged to Carrie (Laurel Holloman), whom he's known for two weeks. Friends talk him into taking a final holiday as a single man at a parent's house on the island of Catalina. The mates plan to sabotage the relationship; the fiancee arrives and proves their match.

• Niagara, Niagara is an offbeat love story about two shoplifters: Seth (Henry Thomas), a petty thief, and Marcy (Robin Tunney), an impulsive misfit with a rare obsessive-compulsive disorder. During a frantic day, they encounter "reckless adventure, eccentric characters and eventually love and acceptance."