Pulse

Full of brilliant musical charicatures, this TV-series about a New Zealand two-man rock band takes the cultural pulse of our day. Our two New Zealander friends experience life, love, friendship, all the usual stuff, while trying to make their lives as a rock band. A rock band that can only schedule a performance at the local aquarium, is run by an eager and overambitious New Zealand buddy, and has only one fan.

As an aging widower begins suffering from heart trouble, his greedy heirs hope to speed him on his way by hiring a super-seductive nurse to get his pulse racing. Their plan backfires, though, as the young beauty begins to fall in love with the old man.

Juliet (Academy Award-winner Hilary Swank, Million Dollar Baby), a beautiful doctor, has found the perfect New York apartment to start a new life after separating from her husband. It's got spacious rooms, a spectacular view, and a handy, handsome landlord. But there are secrets behind every wall and terror in every room as Juliet gets the unnerving feeling that she is not alone. She is being watched. She is being stalked. And no one is safe when she discovers the relentless horror on her doorstep. But how do you stop an evil that you can't see…until it's too late? Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Grey's Anatomy) and screen legend Christopher Lee (The Lord of the Rings) costar in this pulse-pounding shocker from famed horror studio Hammer Films (Let Me In).

Escape From L.A. (also known as John Carpenter's Escape From L.A.) is a 1996 film directed by John Carpenter. The sequel to the action film Escape from New York, the film follows war hero Snake Plissken, played by Kurt Russell. It co-stars Steve Buscemi, Stacy Keach, Bruce Campbell, and Pam Grier.

This film captures people looking for something in various frames; a woman searching for her missing sister, a wandering animator, and people at a highway stop. That is not the only information recorded on the screen, but also the pulse of life.

The acclaimed BBC4 Britannia series moves into the world of British reggae. Showing how it came from Jamaica in the 1960s to influence, over the next 20 years, both British music and society, the programme includes major artists and performances from that era, including Big Youth, Max Romeo, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Jerry Dammers and the Specials, the Police, UB40, Dennis Bovell, lovers rock performers Carroll Thompson and Janet Kay, bands like Aswad and Steel Pulse and reggae admirers such as Boy George and Paul Weller.

Apocalypse Now is one of the great films. Photography, score, acting and direction are without flaw. Coppola never scaled such heights subsequently. It seems the sheer effort to produce such a work extinguished much of his creative spark. Stravinsky frightened himself with the awesome force of his Sacre Du Printemps, and changed directions after, never to match this achievement; Richard Strauss fled into Neo-romanticism after writing the disturbing Elektra and Salome, unable to equal their innovation and power. But these seminal works (Le Sacre, Salome, Elektra, Apocalypse Now) remain as peaks of Art. Like the great classics of literature, each viewing of this film reveals deeper levels of meaning. It's stupid to even apply an arbitrary rating to this work. It would be like writing, "Brothers Karamazov gets 5 out of 5." It cannot be rated.

Could this be the funniest movie ever made? By any rational measure of comedy, this medieval romp from the Monty Python troupe certainly belongs on the short list of candidates. According to Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide, it's "recommended for fans only," but we say hogwash to that–you could be a complete newcomer to the Python phenomenon and still find this send-up of the Arthurian legend to be wet-your-pants hilarious. It's basically a series of sketches woven together as King Arthur's quest for the Holy Grail, with Graham Chapman as the King, Terry Gilliam as his simpleton sidekick Patsy, and the rest of the Python gang filling out a variety of outrageous roles.