Reviews

Veteran Japanese director Yoji Yamada's 77th film recasts the Samurai epic with a fin-de-siècle cynicism reminiscent of the revisionist westerns of the '60s and '70s. In the dying days of 19th-century Japan's Edo period, a reluctant Samurai (Hiroyuki Sanada) fulfils his duties while dreaming of settling down. A beautiful, moving deconstruction of national folk myths.

It's very long and extremely po-faced, and most of the performances are pretty wooden, Yul Brynner's imperious pharaoh aside. Even so, Cecil B DeMille's 1956 account of the life of Moses (Charlton Heston) still has some impressive sequences-notably the Exodus from Egypt, with 60,000 extras—and remains the definitive Biblical epic.

Melodiously laid-back adult pop

1975 album from the late teacher turned crooner

Brilliant session from Baker's tragically short-lived quartet

Tenth anniversary "upgrade" with six bonus tracks from the undervalued Ben Stiller film which caught the narcissism of Generation X nicely. These include New Order's "Confusion" and The Trammps' "Disco Inferno", with which there's no arguing. Also, less happily, songs from Ethan Hawke and Lisa Loeb, whose "Stay", from here, was one of the biggest US hits of the mid-'90s. Fine flurries, too, from The Posies, Dinosaur Jr, U2 and Crowded House, plus The Knack's utterly brilliant (you know it) "My Sharona".

Comeback from woman who should have been Madonna

Cali pop from Beach Boys' hometown

OPENS AUGUST 27, CERT 15, 93 MINS Here's Colin Firth, trying to banish forever the memory of being "television's Mr Darcy", teaming up with Resurrection Man and My Little Eye director Marc Evans to make something edgy and intense, a dark psychological thriller. With ants. Oh, dear. Colin plays Ben, left comatose following a car crash in which his wife died. Recently awoken, he now lives in a Gothicky converted hospital in grim old east London, with nothing but an ant farm for company and Mena Suvari as his neighbour. Ben starts having visions of his dead wife.

Stiller/Black pairing fails to rescue lacklustre yarn