Reviews

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From Rickshaw With Love

A 10-disc box set focusing on the modern master of dumb-but-fun action flicks

The Fall are here brilliantly captured in their early-'80s heyday. First released on video in 1983, this is an amateurish but energetic send-up of pop promos, with Mark E Smith on hilarious form, whether skulking around an empty football ground, miming into a beer can on the video for "Kicker Conspiracy", or dancing like a basket case for "Eat Y'Self Fitter".

Danish director Annette K Olesen's acutely observed tragicomedy about a morose widower (Jørgen Kill) struggling to cope with the sudden death of his wife and the messy sex lives of his grown-up children. Semi-improvised and shot docu-drama style, Minor Mishaps is another slight but engaging addition to Denmark's healthy school of bleakly comic post-Dogme realism.

Meaty debut from Tartan Tarantino

Steve Martin darkens his usual screwball comic persona for Novocaine, playing a suburban dentist implicated in drugs and murder charges in a noir-tinged comedy thriller which turns increasingly Hitchcockian as it unfolds. Helena Bonham Carter's femme fatale, Laura Dern's dental assistant and Kevin Bacon's hilarious cameo appearance lend extra clout to a patchy but commendably accomplished feature debut from writer-director David Atkins.

Two years ago, Bill Wyman published a superbly researched history of the blues. Now bearing the same name comes an unmissable visual companion to the book. The commentary is instructive, and Wyman's knowledge and passion for his subject is palpable. But the real thrill lies in the archive footage. There's Leadbelly and Bessie Smith, John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson and Jimmy Reed and lots of evocative footage of the Delta.

Jonathan Miller's 1966 adaptation of Carroll's fantasy masterpiece has a sitar soundtrack from Ravi Shankar, a dreamlike Victorian atmosphere and a cast to die for (Peter Cook, John Gielgud, Peter Sellers). Totally far out.

Loungy electronic sophisti-pop