Latest video: Back to the 60s

By Ewan McDonald

Retro is the word. New videos for hire this week include a couple of 60s television series that someone in Hollywood thought would be a good idea to make into movies for the late 90s, and that old chestnut, the high-school romance.

Fortunately, there's a pearl from Brazil and no, we're not talking about the weekend's football final. Central Station is something far from the usual screen images of Rio's carnival and samba soccer.

\EE Prime, otherwise known as the Nostalgia Network, has returned Taxi, almost the greatest sitcom ever, to our screens, which means that those who want to watch truly retro tele-vision can watch Christopher Lloyd go off the wall and round the bend every night. Or, from his later career, the offspring of his production side, Frasier and Cheers. Which is a much better idea than Lloyd's most recent project, starring in a genuinely awful remake of the 60s series My Favorite Martian, along with a cast of Hollywood middlerankers. When that robot said, "Danger, Will Robinson," this is what he was voice-morphing about. Save the $7, watch Lloyd and co free-to-air.

\EE The Mod Squad should have one of those lines that say, "Based on the TV series ... " or "From an idea by ... " It's not quite a replay of the show that ran from 1968 to 1973, although director Scott Silver starts from the same place - three young people in trouble with the law are given the chance to straighten themselves out by becoming undercover cops without even having to go to police academy. Julie (Claire Danes) has beaten a drug habit but is arrested for assault; Pete (Giovanni Ribisi), a screwed-up Beverly Hills rich kid, for robbery; and Linc (Omar Epps), for arson. The three loners are taken under the wing of tough but kindly Captain Adam Greer (Dennis Farina) of the LAPD because "they can get in a thousand places we can't."

He wants the trio to investigate drug-dealing and prostitution at a club, which puts them in danger from corrupt cops as well as crims. Their only hope of survival is to pull together. Of course, it's a late-teen version of the Secret Seven or Famous Five, but the Hip Three have enough wit and style to carry this off.

\EE Which you can't say for Never Been Kissed. Drew Barrymore follows her box-office success in The Wedding Singer in another romantic comedy as Josie, a sharp but socially inept copy-writer at the Chicago Sun-Times who longs to become a reporter. Her newsroom boss (Garry Marshall) gives her an assignment for which she has to go undercover at the high school where she had a miserable time years before.

She doesn't fit in much better this time until her slacker brother (David Arquette) helps Josie to find acceptance with the cool crowd. Oh yes, the ugly duckling will become a swan because she's so more mature and in love with the nice-guy teacher.

Expect all the standard ingredients - glamour girls (including Leelee Sobieski of Eyes Wide Shut, as the school brain), shunned nerds, testosteroneladen jocks and how prom night will determine the rest of your life - and if you're over 18, look for something else.

\EE And that something else should be Central Station, the Brazilian jewel that lost out in the Oscar bunfight to the incomparable Life Is Beautiful.

In Rio's bustling Central Station the illiterati have their letters written by Dora, a former teacher, a bitter old woman, played by Oscar best-actress nominee Fernanda Montenegro, who will later decide whether to mail their letters, bin them or shove them in a drawer. Through tragedy she is drawn reluctantly into a relationship with one of her "clients" - 9-year-old Josue (Vinicius de Oliveira). The odd couple undertake a harrowing journey across Brazil's vast, bleak countryside to find the father he has never met. And for her to find emotions she has never met, either.

This is not the Rio you want to fly down to tonight. It is somewhere, and this movie is something, far more real.

See it, understand why Montenegro won best actress at the Berlin film festival and achieved the rare distinction for a foreign language movie of an Oscar nomination for best actress, and why documentary-maker turned feature-film director Walter Salles' cinematography has been honoured far outside his home land. Be aware, though, that it is in Portuguese with subtitles and would play better on the big screen.

\EE The Rage: Carrie 2 is (bet you guessed it) the sequel to the earlier horror, with Amy Irving, the former Mrs Spielberg, restarting her career by reprising her 1976 role alongside newcomer Emily Bergl, who plays a high-school misfit (they're all out this week) who unleashes her supernatural powers against those who have crossed her.