Reviews

Black artists reinterpret the Fabs

DIRECTED BY Roger Donaldson STARRING Al Pacino, Colin Farrell, Bridget Moynahan Opens March 28, Cert 12A, 114 mins When Colin Farrell signs up as a trainee CIA operative in Roger Donaldson's slick spy caper, he has more to deal with than weapons instruction, role-play exercises and psychological evaluation. He also has to cope with shameless grandstanding from Al Pacino giving another of those shouty, screen-hogging, over-the-top performances that have now become his trademark.

Set at the death of the samurai age, Japanese master Nagisa Oshima's first feature in 13 years charts the disruption of a militia barracks by the arrival of Ryuhei Matsuda's androgynously beautiful young swordsman. A partial return to the erotic obsession of In The Realm Of The Senses, it's a bleak but mesmerically beautiful movie where realism balances with dreamy stylisation.

The clinically style-obsessed Tony Scott might not have been everybody's choice to helm a Tarantino script just as St Quentin was white-hot (seems a while ago now, huh?), but he made a splendid 1993 pulpy pot-boiler which, in sum, outshines its pithy but disjointed parts. Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette are the doomed Detroit lovers-on-the-run with a suitcase of coke, negotiating baroque badlands after Slater kills sleazoid pimp Gary Oldman and his comedy dreadlocks. Everyone who's anyone turns up to harass the couple and their sad dad Dennis Hopper.

Glam's loveable Black Country bovver boyz expose the grim realities of the rock'n'roll lifestyle

This month's New Strokes. Disappointing

Follow-up to MTV-friendly Gran Turismo

Bob Mould alter-ego gets heavy on the dancefloor

Powerful debut after a decade's tough luck from hard-bitten New Jersey singer-songwriter

Doom-laden noodling from NYC's latest press darlings