Reviews

San Francisco, 1969: do enough acid and anything is possible. A gaggle of (mostly) gay freaks and flower children (and latterly, disco diva-to-be Sylvester) become the Cockettes, a utopian, ragged-arsed theatre troupe who wow the West Coast but flop in NY. This funny, moving doc eventually unravels in a roll call of deaths, both drug and AIDS-related. They were stardust, but all too briefly.

Candid 1994 documentary about iconic, sexually dysfunctional artist

From 1968, two post Mike Bloomfield albums by groundbreaking Chicago blues merchants on one CD

Intelligently compiled selection of mellow magic

Acoustic re-recordings from lovelorn Factory Records refugees

First solo album in 20 years from UFO-spotting ex-Kink

Chilled debut from soft-rock-sampling young Scot

David Lean's 1955 romance, restored by the BFI

Krzysztof Kieslowski's trilogy is one of the standard bearers for 'arthouse' cinema. And though the movies occasionally hint at self-importance (in Zbigniew Preisner's intrusive scores and the colour-coded shooting style), Kieslowski's steely control of storytelling always keeps the narratives fiercely compelling

This made Edward Burns' name as an actor-writer-director when it won Sundance back in '95 on a matchstick budget. He plays one of three Irish-American siblings trying to understand each other and the women in their lives. Straight-talking, romantic yet unsentimental, it's the kind of comedy we wish Woody Allen still made. Or, for that matter, Burns himself.