Reviews

Perverse, politically incorrect 'romance'

Robert Mitchum plays the world-weary captain of a US destroyer patrolling the South Atlantic, who becomes involved in a chess-like battle of wits with noble U-Boat commander Curt Jürgens. Dick Powell's tense 1957 WWII movie is notable as one of the first to accord the Germans some respect, unfolding as a game of cat and mouse that will be played to the death.

After a series of stunning cameo performances and a flamboyant turn opposite Robert De Niro in Flawless, Philip Seymour Hoffman makes full use of his first unopposed lead, running the gamut of grief as a successful techie crushed and drawn to petrol-sniffing by his wife's suicide. Fraught, funny, hysterical and truly touching.

George Romero's ecological thriller from 1973 combines the social awareness of his zombie trilogy with horror that's much more effective because it's much more believable: when a biochemical weapon is accidentally released in a small Pennsylvania town, it sends the inhabitants insane, so the military are sent in to mop up. Genuinely unforgettable.

Double live album by perennial sideman with star quality

Debut album from French graphic designer and film-maker

Emotive album from London-Irish laptop folkie

Beats'n'ballads nu-folk fusion

The poet laureate of hooliganism returns

To some, the Captain's 1982 No 1 romp through Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Happy Talk" was the ultimate punk sell-out. Silly beggars! It was, of course, a hilarious act of screwball subversion. Either way, its Goonish novelty was unrepresentative of the two albums that followed. As the best bits collated here show, solo Sensible traded in the same satirical Englishness as The Kinks and Madness ("Croydon", "A Nice Cup Of Tea").