title: Dr. Seuss' How The Grinch Stole Christmas function popUp(URL,NAME) { amznwin=window.open(URL,NAME,'location=yes,scrollbars=yes,status=yes,toolbar=yes,resizable=yes,width=380,height=450,screenX=10,screenY=10,top=10,left=10'); amznwin.focus();} document.open(); document.write(""); document.close(); studio: Warner Home Video MPAA rating: NR starring (voices): Boris Karloff, Hans Conreid release year: 1966, 1970 film rating: Three-and-a-Half Stars sound/picture: Three-and-a-Half Stars reviewed by: Abbie Bernstein As you read this, somewhere in Hollywood, Jim Carrey is on a soundstage in green makeup, playing a creation so mean that his very name is now used to denote grouchy stinginess: the Grinch. While Carrey is no slouch as a performer, he’s going to have to work hard to make people forget the animated version, since the Grinch is so very good at playing himself. This is to say that animator Chuck Jones (of Warner Bros. cartoon fame) has done an inspired job of bringing fluid movement to the famed villain of Dr. Seuss’ illustrated children’s book. We unquestioningly accept that this, of course, is what a Grinch is like when his mouth slides from pursed disapproval into a wicked ear-to-ear grin.

title: The Ultimate Toybox: Toy Story & Toy Story 2 function popUp(URL,NAME) { amznwin=window.open(URL,NAME,'location=yes,scrollbars=yes,status=yes,toolbar=yes,resizable=yes,width=380,height=450,screenX=10,screenY=10,top=10,left=10'); amznwin.focus();} document.open(); document.write(""); document.close();� studio: Disney Home Video MPAA rating: G starring: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Don Rickles, Jim Varney, Wallace Shawn, John Ratzenberger, Annie Potts, R. Lee Ermey, Annie Potts. "Toy Story 2" also features Joan Cusack, Kelsey Grammer and Wayne Knight release year: 1995, 1999 film rating: Five stars reviewed by: Bill Warren "Ultimate" is the word all right. Another of a series of dazzling DVD packages, "The Ultimate Toy Box" includes not only the wonderful "Toy Story" and its even better sequel, but shorts produced by the same Pixar team, and an array of extras so long and detailed that it would take this entire review to list them all.

title: The Nightmare Before Christmas function popUp(URL,NAME) { amznwin=window.open(URL,NAME,'location=yes,scrollbars=yes,status=yes,toolbar=yes,resizable=yes,width=380,height=450,screenX=10,screenY=10,top=10,left=10'); amznwin.focus();} document.open(); document.write(""); document.close();� studio: Disney DVD MPAA rating: PG starring (voices): Chris Sarandon, Danny Elfman, Catherine O'Hara, William Hickey, Glenn Shadix, Paul Reubens, Ken Page, Ed Ivory. release year: 1993 film rating: Four stars reviewed by: Abbie Bernstein "The Nightmare Before Christmas," conceived, designed and co-produced by Tim Burton, remains one of the most astonishing and, in its own black-comic way, one of the loveliest of all holiday movies. It's a highly stylized animated puppet musical -- actually closer to an operetta -- about Halloween and Christmas. It's both free-wheeling and tightly disciplined, ostensibly for children but really for adults, a cheerfully creepy tale of misplaced, misguided but good-hearted ambition, even if that heart is a bit black around the edges.

title: James And The Giant Peach (DTS) function popUp(URL,NAME) { amznwin=window.open(URL,NAME,'location=yes,scrollbars=yes,status=yes,toolbar=yes,resizable=yes,width=380,height=450,screenX=10,screenY=10,top=10,left=10'); amznwin.focus();} document.open(); document.write(""); document.close(); studio: Disney DVD MPAA rating: PG starring: Paul Terry, Joanna Lumley, Miriam Margolyes, Pete Postlethwaite; Voices: Richard Dreyfuss, Simon Callow, Jane Leeves, Susan Sarandon release year: 1996 film rating: Three and a half stars reviewed by: Bill Warren In 1993, the delightful, unique "A Nightmare Before Christmas" briefly re-established stop-motion animation as a major story-telling technique. Even before that film was released, its director Henry Selick had reunited much of the movie's crew to begin production on this adaptation of Roald Dahl's much-loved James and the Giant Peach. But while this one is often charming, as well as handsomely designed and animated, it lacks the excitement and novelty of "Nightmare." It's even a little plodding at times, partly because much of it -- necessarily -- takes place on top and inside of the giant peach of the title.

title: Hercules function popUp(URL,NAME) { amznwin=window.open(URL,NAME,'location=yes,scrollbars=yes,status=yes,toolbar=yes,resizable=yes,width=380,height=450,screenX=10,screenY=10,top=10,left=10'); amznwin.focus();} document.open(); document.write(""); document.close(); studio: Buena Vista Home Video MPAA rating: G starring (voices): James Woods, Tate Donovan, Susan Egan, Danny DeVito release year: 1997 film rating: Three-and-a-Half Stars reviewed by: Abbie Bernstein With its slinky, stylized characters from designer Gerald Scarfe (who did the animated sequences in ‘Pink Floyd’s The Wall’), ‘Hercules’ doesn’t physically look much like previous Disney animated films, and its boisterous, hip, kooky jumble of Greek mythology and Hollywood in-jokes would be enough to set Homer’s head spinning. This is not the legend according to Bullfinch, as even the opening sequence makes abundantly clear. A narrator - the authoritative voice of Charlton Heston, no less - is cut off mid-exposition by a quintet of singing Muses, who step off an urn to deliver their version of "The Gospel Truth" in an early musical highlight in Chapter 2.