Reviews

Following the success of Jean De Florette and Manon Des Sources, interest was sufficiently stirred in author Marcel Pagnol to fuel two features based on his childhood memoirs in a sun-drenched Provence. Picture-postcard landscapes figure prominently in Yves Robert's polished recreation of the summer of 1900, although the human drama goes no deeper than minor family arguments and slender rites-of-passage rituals. This was hugely successful, but adds up to little more than an oppressively tasteful tourist-board panorama.

Third album from Scottish indie four-piece has roughly accurate title

Bruised, beautiful no-wave angst from NY underground

Smog/Palace mucker meets (and matches) his mentors

Stirring story-so-far set from inspired indieniks

Timely portrait of a Haitian human rights activist

Cynical lapsed communist Daniel Auteuil gets lost driving through a dark forest, and encounters haughty bilingual seductress Kristin Scott Thomas. An episodic shaggy dog story ensues, sprayed with romance and bleak jokes. Pascal Bonitzer writes/directs a unique, odd mystery which is splendidly acted by all. Let's face it, if you're casting a haughty bilingual seductress, Kristin's your woman.

Just when you thought that Pixar had colonised the universe of Western kids' imaginations, here came something fabulously rich and strange from the East. Spirited Away is an apt title for an animation classic that literally transports the viewer into a parallel visual world of gods and magic. Whether it's an allegory of greed and innocence or merely a psychedelic feast, this implicitly anti-Disney epic is never cosy or sanitised. And its decorative detail is breathtaking.

Subtle seafaring actioner set during the Napoleonic wars

Third fantastic album by the Swiss glitch situationists