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Four former prostitutes set themselves up in the restaurant business in Italian director Antonio Petrangeli's vintage 1961 prize-winner, which stars Simone Signoret and Marcello Mastroianni. The tone wavers between bittersweet comedy and stark social commentary, with sumptuous monochrome shots of handsome Roman vistas, plus two ravishingly beautiful stars looking furrowed and soulful as middle age looms. With its downbeat note of gritty realism, Adua And Company is classy and compelling Euro-drama.

Futuristic tale of corporate industrial espionage from Cube director Vincenzo Natali, with Jeremy Northam convincing as a nerdy salesman drawn into a world of brainwashing and betrayal who ends up questioning his own identity while falling for mysterious temptress Lucy Liu. It's Phil Dick meets Alias, but enjoyably undemanding.

Twenty years and one truly awful TV remake later, David Lynch's adaptation of Frank Herbert's unfilmable sci-fi epic looks miraculously good. Kyle MacLachlan makes an impressive debut as the young desert messiah, the supporting cast are great (except Sting), and the amazing visuals more than outweigh the unwieldy script.

Susan Strasberg is a deaf Carole Caplin döppelganger in 1968 Haight-Ashbury in this hilariously inept 'look' at the counterculture. Jack Nicholson is guitarist Stoney, beneficiary of lines such as "it don't sound so good without acid". Strasberg is searching for The Seeker, aka her big brother Steve (Bruce Dern). Dean Stockwell intones Manson-esque platitudes about "head games". The Strawberry Alarm 'Schlock' sing "Incense And Peppermints" and Sky Saxon plays in the park. It's that good, and it's that bad.

Predictably brash big-screen version of unremarkable '70s TV show, with Samuel L Jackson knocking a rogue SWAT team into shape and making unlikely heroes of them. There's more gunfire than dialogue, so Jackson isn't asked to do more than shout a lot, while Colin Farrell squints manfully and kills everyone in sight.

Novelist Alexander Trocchi's uneasy blend of Beat existentialism and pseudo porn continue to gnaw in this stylish adaptation of his 1954 whodunnit. Ewan McGregor is suitably dour as the sinister drifter while director David Mackenzie proves himself a master of sustained gloom. But it's the sex scenes, progressing from erotic to self-conscious to simply absurd, that continually corrode.

Following the success of Jean De Florette and Manon Des Sources, interest was sufficiently stirred in author Marcel Pagnol to fuel two features based on his childhood memoirs in a sun-drenched Provence. Picture-postcard landscapes figure prominently in Yves Robert's polished recreation of the summer of 1900, although the human drama goes no deeper than minor family arguments and slender rites-of-passage rituals. This was hugely successful, but adds up to little more than an oppressively tasteful tourist-board panorama.

Subtle seafaring actioner set during the Napoleonic wars

First part of Tarantino's kick-ass grindhouse homage testifies to his awesome directorial development

When we rave about the force of nature that is James Woods, we tend to neglect this cautionary 1988 Harold Becker tale of how cocaine destroys the careers and marriage of a silver-tongued salesman and his wife (Sean Young, with whom, notoriously, Woods had a history). We shouldn't: it absolutely rocks, with Woods in his element as a cocky crack-up waiting to happen. And then, explosively, happening. Electric.