Reviews

A patchy Italian crime thriller, the only fresh 'angle'being that the drug dealer working for the Mafia is a woman (she hides the goods in shoe boxes). Roberta Torre's direction lacks vim, but Donatella Finocchiaro is vividly compelling as the titular anti-heroine—alternately nervy and swaggering, torn between love and duty, craving affection but ultimately hard as nails. DVD EXTRAS: Stills, cast and crew biographies, trailer, BBC 4 and Edinburgh Festival promos.

Mike Figgis' brilliant experiment spawned many imitations, some by him, none as good. Against a quartered screen, four cameras show—in real time—a multi-strand narrative, played out among Tinseltown wannabes and has-beens. There's sex, murder, moral vacuums and a huge cast including Stellan Skarsgård and Saffron Burrows. Figgis' own music ices the cake. Genius.

Tom Waits, Chrissie Hynde et al join gospel veterans on Christmas album

Like everyone, I'm prone to enthuse how utterly electric the jiggling phenomenon known as Beyoncé is. Yet the honeymoon's expiring, and those first doubts are creeping in. She is mutating into Mariah Carey, or, worse, Tina Turner. She does one magic single, then we turn a blind eye to three rubbish ones. She has the cold eyes of a mugger. She has another film out, and is tapping into the profitable gospel market.

Extraordinary hotel-room musings in vinyl-only form

1989 box set rejigged again

Two-CD compilation of best of 1970-76

Slow-burning critique of modern China's crisis

Standout supernatural action movie from 1987. The tale of a poor young scholar who falls in love with a ghostly princess, it involves a journey to the underworld, a battle with a mile-long tongue, sword fights, songs, slapstick and some real shocks. Despite its evident lack of a budget, it's magical, mildly erotic and only marginally insane.

Roberto Rossellini's small-scale but infinitely moving 1953 masterwork plucks two stars from Hollywood—Rossellini's wife Ingrid Bergman and the magnificent George Sanders—and smashes them down on the road as a crisis-hit couple coming apart during a trip in Italy. Rossellini gave his actors the bare bones of a situation, then left them to improvise; they stumble beautifully, trying to discover their own story. The random feel anticipates the French new wave.