Reviews

While Matchbox 20 have been a byword for AOR, director Hamish Hamilton's concert film has a sense of scale and occasion that makes Rob Thomas and friends look like a group with something almost thrilling to say. Caught in Atlanta during their 2003 tour, the band build a head of steam banging through hits like "Push", "3 AM" and "Bent".

Remastered and expanded recordings from Paisley Underground pioneers

LA's 35-year-old singer/songwriter nearly jacked in the solo stuff last year, so Return In Kind, though a covers record, is something of a reaffirmation. Where Casal has sometimes been victim of a too-perfect voice, here (as in recent work with side project Hazy Malaze) he adds grit to the mix.

The Beeb are hoping for a kind of Our Friends In The North success with this 1963-79-spanning Soho crime drama. Its author, Jake Arnott, has written sleevenotes for this 44-song double album, which moves from buoyant '60s hits from James Brown and Dusty to '70s landmarks by T. Rex and The Jam. R Dean Taylor's "There's A Ghost In My House" is exhilarating, Rod Stewart's "Reason To Believe" is moving, and Bowie's "London Boys" is seedily weird.

Ethereal North Carolina quintet's difficult third full-length album

The punk-jazz leviathan's 'hits' compiled and annotated by the man himself, with bonus live CD

Brad Pitt grabs a shield and gets all mythological

Ten-year-old Paul (Harry Eden) is at home in a world of pimps and pushers, bargain basement hookers and fly-blown market cafés. He has to be—since his widowed mother traded mourning for a regular numbing dose of heroin, it's been Paul who has kept the family running, even if that means fetching Mummy her 'medicine'. Gillies Mackinnon's drama is admittedly bleak, but excellent performances and restrained direction make this a rewarding, if heart-wrenching, experience.

A triple bill of iconic horror: Boris Karloff's Frankenstein's monster, Bela Lugosi's Dracula and Lon Chaney Jr's Wolfman. Admittedly creaky, these black-and-white chillers from the '30s and '40s still boast amazing gothic sets, mesmerising atmosphere and some riveting performances. More enchanting than scary, the best of them—James Whale's 1931 Frankenstein—appears here in its uncut form.

Timely reminder, in the midst of all the Kill Bill hyperbole, of true balls-to-the-wall Tarantino talent—that sickly mint-green warehouse, those black suits, that red blood, the infectious music, the terrifying Hawksian machismo and, mostly, that dialogue: witty and crude, poignant and allusive, naturalistic and downright poetic. Nothing less than genius.