Reviews

Sicilian family saga

Veteran Georgian director Otar losseliani cobbles together this amiable slice of menopausal whimsy, following middle-aged factory worker and wannabe painter Vincent (Jacques Bidou) as he breaks his blue-collar routine and flees to romantic Venice. There he encounters other eccentric middle-aged men, spies on some skirt-lifting nuns, climbs a roof, drinks some wine, and then returns home, a wiser man. DVD EXTRAS: Interview with director losseliani, trailer, filmography.

So it's a musical, it won many Oscars, and it's got Catherine Zeta-Jones in it. But that doesn't mean it sucks! Anything that's influenced by Bob Fosse is bound to have a dark undercurrent, and this crowd-pleasing tale of man-murdering molls and the common craving for publicity is witty and slick. Renée Zellweger, Richard Gere and that Jones woman sing and hoof.

Ambitious and underrated, this finds the Godfather team of Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo mired in Harlem's seedy underworld of steamy dives, bootlegging mobsters and sultry divas circa 1920. Richard Gere and Gregory Hines kick out the jazzy jams while Walter Hill fave James Remar provides a disturbing portrait of Dutch Schultz. This is Coppola at his wild and uneven post-Apocalypse Now peak.

From the same '96 sessions that produced Dowd's startling debut Wrong Side Of Memphis, these four-track recordings are the overspill. You'll find (slightly) more sanitised versions of some on Pictures From Life's Other Side (1999) and last year's The Pawnbroker's Wife, but these—in JD speak—are "the original bad seeds". It's mostly slow-stealth swamp blues, rendered fearsome and moving by his scowling delivery, sounding forever snagged on a barbed wire fence.

More eclectic Eastern punk from label that brought us Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her

Swiftly-recorded follow-up from scuzz-rock trio

Narrative 10-song cycle about a fictional clan is Young's best work in a while

Seminal rap duo makes compelling claim on cutting-edge supremacy

The Cult of Bill gathers pace, nine years after the rock'n'roll comic's death