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Ann Peebles

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Like her Hi male counterpart Al Green, Peebles came of age as a member of a travelling gospel family. Her uncompromising style took time to fit into the velvet glove of Willie Mitchell's productions. But once her poppier debut album had been put aside, her mastery of deep soul's cheating and heartbreak genres was unparalleled, the 1972 classic Straight From The Heart proving to be an album to rank with any that Mitchell produced. The quality barely dips on Volume One, with many performances to equal her crossover hit "I Can't Stand The Rain". Although Volume 2 charts the disco-era decline, the Mitchell-composed gem "You Can't Hold A Man" is a beauty, the most torrid soulstress of her generation in full flight.

Like her Hi male counterpart Al Green, Peebles came of age as a member of a travelling gospel family. Her uncompromising style took time to fit into the velvet glove of Willie Mitchell’s productions. But once her poppier debut album had been put aside, her mastery of deep soul’s cheating and heartbreak genres was unparalleled, the 1972 classic Straight From The Heart proving to be an album to rank with any that Mitchell produced.

The quality barely dips on Volume One, with many performances to equal her crossover hit “I Can’t Stand The Rain”. Although Volume 2 charts the disco-era decline, the Mitchell-composed gem “You Can’t Hold A Man” is a beauty, the most torrid soulstress of her generation in full flight.

Willie Nelson

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To Lefty From Willie (1977) is Nelson's heartfelt hat-tip to primary influence Lefty Frizzell, one of the first to incorporate jazzy phrasing into country music. Willie & Family Live captures a full 1978 Lake Tahoe concert with Willie tackling gospel, standards, and a decade-spanning batch of his own songs, demonstrating his masterful technique for shaping a song to his own unique ends. San Antonio Rose (1980) is a duet album with '60s country star Ray Price and delivers period-perfect versions of '60s country classics, a few of which were penned by Willie himself. Released that same year, Honeysuckle Rose (1980) is the soundtrack to a film in which Willie starred, and is essentially a live album as raw and satisfying as Willie & Family Live.

To Lefty From Willie (1977) is Nelson’s heartfelt hat-tip to primary influence Lefty Frizzell, one of the first to incorporate jazzy phrasing into country music. Willie & Family Live captures a full 1978 Lake Tahoe concert with Willie tackling gospel, standards, and a decade-spanning batch of his own songs, demonstrating his masterful technique for shaping a song to his own unique ends. San Antonio Rose (1980) is a duet album with ’60s country star Ray Price and delivers period-perfect versions of ’60s country classics, a few of which were penned by Willie himself. Released that same year, Honeysuckle Rose (1980) is the soundtrack to a film in which Willie starred, and is essentially a live album as raw and satisfying as Willie & Family Live.

Hollywood Homicide

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OPENS AUGUST 29, CERT 12A, 116 MINS Ron Shelton's break from macho-undercutting sports films continues with his second LAPD movie in three months. But where the James Ellroy-inspired Dark Blue exposed LA's infamous cops, this is more traditional Shelton fare: an easygoing study of male friendship, as Harrison Ford's ageing detective and callow partner Josh Hartnett investigate the shooting of a rap group. Shelton is fascinated by LA, roaming through sleepy canals, piers and ranches, turning the hidden corners of the film industry's home. Ford and Hartnett have been seduced by LA's double life: investigating killings while fielding calls about Ford's faltering property investments, and Hartnett's acting auditions. Entering LA's rap industry to find a label boss implicated in his stars' slaying, meanwhile, recalls Suge Knight's alleged muddying of showbiz and gun-play. Shapeless and over-obvious compared to Shelton's best work, this feels like an experiment before he works out what to really do next.

OPENS AUGUST 29, CERT 12A, 116 MINS

Ron Shelton’s break from macho-undercutting sports films continues with his second LAPD movie in three months. But where the James Ellroy-inspired Dark Blue exposed LA’s infamous cops, this is more traditional Shelton fare: an easygoing study of male friendship, as Harrison Ford’s ageing detective and callow partner Josh Hartnett investigate the shooting of a rap group.

Shelton is fascinated by LA, roaming through sleepy canals, piers and ranches, turning the hidden corners of the film industry’s home. Ford and Hartnett have been seduced by LA’s double life: investigating killings while fielding calls about Ford’s faltering property investments, and Hartnett’s acting auditions. Entering LA’s rap industry to find a label boss implicated in his stars’ slaying, meanwhile, recalls Suge Knight’s alleged muddying of showbiz and gun-play.

Shapeless and over-obvious compared to Shelton’s best work, this feels like an experiment before he works out what to really do next.

Hulk

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DIRECTED BY Ang Lee STARRING Eric Bana, Jennifer Connelly, Nick Nolte Opened July 18, Cert 12A, 137 mins On the face of it, Ang Lee?director of sensitive, tasteful films like Sense And Sensibility and The Ice Storm?isn't the first name that springs to mind when considering who could successfully bring to life Marvel Comics' rampaging, 20-foot-tall green monster. But, surprisingly, Hulk works?just. After a '60s-set prologue, where we learn the Hulk is the product of genetic experiments conducted by Bruce Banner's deranged scientist father David, Lee jumps forward to the present to find Bruce has followed in his father's footsteps and is now working alongside former beau Betty (Connelly) at a secret research facility. Both have issues with their parents?Bruce holds his long-absent father responsible for his mother's death, while Betty has a dysfunctional relationship with her own dad, General "Thunderbolt" Ross (Sam Elliott), the man who, 30 years back, tried to shut down David Banner's experiments. Bruce is a bundle of barely repressed rage and frustration and, after exposure to gamma radiation, this deep-seated fury finds shape and form as the Hulk. Bana, who impressed as the cheery psychopath in Chopper, pinpoints Banner's sense of simmering anger and emotional confusion. But Banner isn't quite as interesting as his alter ego. Nor is he quite as entertaining as Nolte, playing David Banner, who returns to check in with his son, eager to see the experiments he began 30 years previously through to their sinister conclusion. Nolte hams it up as Banner Snr, a ragged loon raging away like a cross between King Lear and Baron Frankenstein. The Hulk itself doesn't appear until nearly an hour into the movie, and it's only in the final showdown against the might of the US military when the creature's full powers get unleashed. The CGI is impressive?watching the Hulk trash a squadron of helicopters is a real delight. But the build-up is slow, as Lee attempts to inject psychological gravitas to the story before bowing to the inevitable multiplex spectacle. Lee's Hulk movie tries too hard to bring highbrow ideals to a comic-book movie.

DIRECTED BY Ang Lee

STARRING Eric Bana, Jennifer Connelly, Nick Nolte

Opened July 18, Cert 12A, 137 mins

On the face of it, Ang Lee?director of sensitive, tasteful films like Sense And Sensibility and The Ice Storm?isn’t the first name that springs to mind when considering who could successfully bring to life Marvel Comics’ rampaging, 20-foot-tall green monster. But, surprisingly, Hulk works?just.

After a ’60s-set prologue, where we learn the Hulk is the product of genetic experiments conducted by Bruce Banner’s deranged scientist father David, Lee jumps forward to the present to find Bruce has followed in his father’s footsteps and is now working alongside former beau Betty (Connelly) at a secret research facility. Both have issues with their parents?Bruce holds his long-absent father responsible for his mother’s death, while Betty has a dysfunctional relationship with her own dad, General “Thunderbolt” Ross (Sam Elliott), the man who, 30 years back, tried to shut down David Banner’s experiments. Bruce is a bundle of barely repressed rage and frustration and, after exposure to gamma radiation, this deep-seated fury finds shape and form as the Hulk.

Bana, who impressed as the cheery psychopath in Chopper, pinpoints Banner’s sense of simmering anger and emotional confusion. But Banner isn’t quite as interesting as his alter ego. Nor is he quite as entertaining as Nolte, playing David Banner, who returns to check in with his son, eager to see the experiments he began 30 years previously through to their sinister conclusion. Nolte hams it up as Banner Snr, a ragged loon raging away like a cross between King Lear and Baron Frankenstein.

The Hulk itself doesn’t appear until nearly an hour into the movie, and it’s only in the final showdown against the might of the US military when the creature’s full powers get unleashed. The CGI is impressive?watching the Hulk trash a squadron of helicopters is a real delight. But the build-up is slow, as Lee attempts to inject psychological gravitas to the story before bowing to the inevitable multiplex spectacle. Lee’s Hulk movie tries too hard to bring highbrow ideals to a comic-book movie.

The Man Who Sued God

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OPENS AUGUST 22, CERT 15, 102 MINS The Lotto ads and tired TV shows may give Connolly the air of a sell-out these days, but when he stars in a film, he's memorably fierce. As the hot-blooded but comically baffled Steve (a lawyer turned fisherman in Australia who, when a lightning strike on his boat is deemed an Act of God by his insurance company, chooses to sue God instead), Connolly's working-class rage burns the screen. Around him and Judy Davis?the media pundit who backs then beds him?screenwriter Don Watson explores the suit's implications, for God and man, with rare intelligence. Steve brings Australia's religious leaders and insurance companies into the dock, facing down their oily lawyer to prove Acts of God are a con. But the media that loves then tramples him, and the financial pressures that cripple his court case, are further evidence of balanced big ideas in a human-scale comedy, let down only by last-reel soppiness

OPENS AUGUST 22, CERT 15, 102 MINS

The Lotto ads and tired TV shows may give Connolly the air of a sell-out these days, but when he stars in a film, he’s memorably fierce. As the hot-blooded but comically baffled Steve (a lawyer turned fisherman in Australia who, when a lightning strike on his boat is deemed an Act of God by his insurance company, chooses to sue God instead), Connolly’s working-class rage burns the screen.

Around him and Judy Davis?the media pundit who backs then beds him?screenwriter Don Watson explores the suit’s implications, for God and man, with rare intelligence. Steve brings Australia’s religious leaders and insurance companies into the dock, facing down their oily lawyer to prove Acts of God are a con. But the media that loves then tramples him, and the financial pressures that cripple his court case, are further evidence of balanced big ideas in a human-scale comedy, let down only by last-reel soppiness

Floating Weeds (Ukigusa)

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OPENED AUGUST 1, CERT PG, 119 MINS It's hard not to like Yasujiro Ozu. His films are infuriatingly samey, his heroes interchangeable, his shot selection rigid and schematic, and his narratives hewn from the same melodramatic family turf. But damn, if he isn't good at it. Here, in 1959's Floating Weeds (a remake of his own 1934 flick, The Story Of Floating Weeds), he plants us in a tiny fishing village in southern Japan during a heatwave. Enter ageing travelling thespian Komajuro (Ganjiro Nakamura) and his troupe of demoralised kabuki performers ('Floating Weeds' is a Japanese term for itinerant actors). The village's sleepy equilibrium is instantly ruptured, and when Komajuro's mistress Sumiko (Machiko Kyo) discovers that Komajuro's ex-girlfriend and love-child run a local saki bar, she forces a world of harsh hidden truths to the surface. And, as with all Ozu films, this is just the start. For Floating Weeds unfolds with sumptuous cinematography, relentless low-angle camera work and artfully arranged character positions. All you can do is sit back and submit.

OPENED AUGUST 1, CERT PG, 119 MINS

It’s hard not to like Yasujiro Ozu. His films are infuriatingly samey, his heroes interchangeable, his shot selection rigid and schematic, and his narratives hewn from the same melodramatic family turf. But damn, if he isn’t good at it.

Here, in 1959’s Floating Weeds (a remake of his own 1934 flick, The Story Of Floating Weeds), he plants us in a tiny fishing village in southern Japan during a heatwave. Enter ageing travelling thespian Komajuro (Ganjiro Nakamura) and his troupe of demoralised kabuki performers (‘Floating Weeds’ is a Japanese term for itinerant actors). The village’s sleepy equilibrium is instantly ruptured, and when Komajuro’s mistress Sumiko (Machiko Kyo) discovers that Komajuro’s ex-girlfriend and love-child run a local saki bar, she forces a world of harsh hidden truths to the surface. And, as with all Ozu films, this is just the start. For Floating Weeds unfolds with sumptuous cinematography, relentless low-angle camera work and artfully arranged character positions. All you can do is sit back and submit.

Less Is More

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DIRECTED BY Gus Van Sant STARRING Matt Damon, Casey Affleck Opens August 22, Cert 15, 103 mins Gus van sant has remembered recently that he was once a risky indie auteur, imbuing both this lo-fi existential road movie and his Cannes prize-winner Elephant with the kind of stylistic zing and skewed narrative drift not seen in his work since My Own Private Idaho. Conceived and largely improvised on the hoof by its stars and director, Gerry is an elegantly sparse and deadpan fable about two young men (both called Gerry) whose aimless backwoods ramble turns first into anxious farce, then absurd tragedy, under the scalding desert sun. Think Dude, Where's My Car? scripted by Samuel Beckett. It's a slight story, but also a beguiling and haunting one, with echoes of golden-age arthouse fare, from Roeg's Walkabout to Wenders' Paris, Texas by way of Antonioni's The Passenger. The slender plot certainly relies heavily on the charm of its two leads and, as usual, Damon feels a little wooden. Rising star Affleck, younger brother of Ben, brings less baggage and seems more natural. But the pair are clearly off-screen friends and their conversations are gloriously, plausibly inane. One extended scene, in which Affleck jumps down from a column of rock, borders on comic genius. Gerry is going to divide Van Sant's fanbase more sharply than anything he's made in the past decade. John Waters has proclaimed, "Don't sleep with anybody who doesn't love this film," which is funny but perhaps protesting too much. This kind of cliquey caper can easily shade into navel-gazing tedium?much like Vincent Gallo's similarly-paced road movie The Brown Bunny, which was laughed out of Cannes in May. On balance, Damon and Van Sant's return to the lo-fi darklands smacks a little of indie penance, a bracing cold shower to wash away the stink of ultra-commercial bilge like Finding Forrester, The Bourne Identity or the same duo's vastly overrated tear-jerker, Good Will Hunting. But Gerry is also a daringly minimal, serenely beautiful visual poem. In an ideal universe, every big-name star and director should have the balls to attempt this kind of personal project between formulaic mainstream outings. More please.

DIRECTED BY Gus Van Sant

STARRING Matt Damon, Casey Affleck

Opens August 22, Cert 15, 103 mins

Gus van sant has remembered recently that he was once a risky indie auteur, imbuing both this lo-fi existential road movie and his Cannes prize-winner Elephant with the kind of stylistic zing and skewed narrative drift not seen in his work since My Own Private Idaho.

Conceived and largely improvised on the hoof by its stars and director, Gerry is an elegantly sparse and deadpan fable about two young men (both called Gerry) whose aimless backwoods ramble turns first into anxious farce, then absurd tragedy, under the scalding desert sun. Think Dude, Where’s My Car? scripted by Samuel Beckett.

It’s a slight story, but also a beguiling and haunting one, with echoes of golden-age arthouse fare, from Roeg’s Walkabout to Wenders’ Paris, Texas by way of Antonioni’s The Passenger. The slender plot certainly relies heavily on the charm of its two leads and, as usual, Damon feels a little wooden. Rising star Affleck, younger brother of Ben, brings less baggage and seems more natural. But the pair are clearly off-screen friends and their conversations are gloriously, plausibly inane. One extended scene, in which Affleck jumps down from a column of rock, borders on comic genius.

Gerry is going to divide Van Sant’s fanbase more sharply than anything he’s made in the past decade. John Waters has proclaimed, “Don’t sleep with anybody who doesn’t love this film,” which is funny but perhaps protesting too much. This kind of cliquey caper can easily shade into navel-gazing tedium?much like Vincent Gallo’s similarly-paced road movie The Brown Bunny, which was laughed out of Cannes in May.

On balance, Damon and Van Sant’s return to the lo-fi darklands smacks a little of indie penance, a bracing cold shower to wash away the stink of ultra-commercial bilge like Finding Forrester, The Bourne Identity or the same duo’s vastly overrated tear-jerker, Good Will Hunting. But Gerry is also a daringly minimal, serenely beautiful visual poem. In an ideal universe, every big-name star and director should have the balls to attempt this kind of personal project between formulaic mainstream outings. More please.

Veronica Guerin

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OPENED AUGUST 1, CERT 18, 96 MINS There seemed to be a fascination with Dublin's criminal underworld during the 1990s?to date, two films have been made about the notorious Martin Cahill, aka The General, a peripheral character in this film. And this is the third movie to be inspired by the story of crusading Irish journalist Veronica Guerin, after a made-for-TV drama and the worthy and best-forgotten Joan Allen vehicle When The Sky Falls. So despite being a superior film to most of the others (The General excepted), Joel Schumacher's competent drama suffers from source material that's been picked over too many times already. Cate Blanchett gives a strong lead performance although, to be fair, she has a better script to work with than Joan Allen did. The Guerin that we see in this version is a less varnished character?an absentee mother, a journalist with a half-baked grasp of grammar and a rash, foolhardy woman. And for this flawed complexity, she's far more likeable than Allen's saintly incarnation, and probably closer to the truth.

OPENED AUGUST 1, CERT 18, 96 MINS

There seemed to be a fascination with Dublin’s criminal underworld during the 1990s?to date, two films have been made about the notorious Martin Cahill, aka The General, a peripheral character in this film. And this is the third movie to be inspired by the story of crusading Irish journalist Veronica Guerin, after a made-for-TV drama and the worthy and best-forgotten Joan Allen vehicle When The Sky Falls. So despite being a superior film to most of the others (The General excepted), Joel Schumacher’s competent drama suffers from source material that’s been picked over too many times already. Cate Blanchett gives a strong lead performance although, to be fair, she has a better script to work with than Joan Allen did. The Guerin that we see in this version is a less varnished character?an absentee mother, a journalist with a half-baked grasp of grammar and a rash, foolhardy woman. And for this flawed complexity, she’s far more likeable than Allen’s saintly incarnation, and probably closer to the truth.

Roger Dodger

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OPENS AUGUST 15, CERT 15, 105 MINS A Terrific study of masculinity under fire, this is an impressive calling card for debuting writer/director Dylan Kidd. Thirty something copywriter Roger (Campbell Scott) reckons he's irresistible to women, but he seems to be losing the knack. We meet him as his sexual relationship with his boss (Isabella Rossellini) hits the skids. This is the moment his nephew Nick (Jesse Eisenberg) chooses to turn up at his office unannounced, requesting help in the business of losing his virginity. Roger's idea of charm school is to list the ways of looking at girls' breasts without them noticing, and a field test in a bar involves chatting up two girls (Elizabeth Berkley and Jennifer Beals) and immediately prying into their sex lives. Strangely, this works for the nephew, who gets his first snog, but Roger isn't satisfied and drags the boy first to a works party and then to a brothel, with mixed results. Initially Roger comes across as arrogant and obnoxious, but by the end you realise he's tired, hitting the end of his bachelor years just as the nephew hits the beginning. Scott?who's skirted the fringes of stardom since Singles and Mrs Parker And The Vicious Circle?gives an electric performance as the verbose, ageing Lothario. Kidd, meanwhile, has written a script that's both achingly funny and deeply touching. Definitely a name to watch.

OPENS AUGUST 15, CERT 15, 105 MINS

A Terrific study of masculinity under fire, this is an impressive calling card for debuting writer/director Dylan Kidd. Thirty something copywriter Roger (Campbell Scott) reckons he’s irresistible to women, but he seems to be losing the knack. We meet him as his sexual relationship with his boss (Isabella Rossellini) hits the skids. This is the moment his nephew Nick (Jesse Eisenberg) chooses to turn up at his office unannounced, requesting help in the business of losing his virginity.

Roger’s idea of charm school is to list the ways of looking at girls’ breasts without them noticing, and a field test in a bar involves chatting up two girls (Elizabeth Berkley and Jennifer Beals) and immediately prying into their sex lives. Strangely, this works for the nephew, who gets his first snog, but Roger isn’t satisfied and drags the boy first to a works party and then to a brothel, with mixed results. Initially Roger comes across as arrogant and obnoxious, but by the end you realise he’s tired, hitting the end of his bachelor years just as the nephew hits the beginning.

Scott?who’s skirted the fringes of stardom since Singles and Mrs Parker And The Vicious Circle?gives an electric performance as the verbose, ageing Lothario. Kidd, meanwhile, has written a script that’s both achingly funny and deeply touching. Definitely a name to watch.

Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday

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OPENS AUGUST 8, CERT 12, 86 MINS I first saw Monsieur Hulot's Holiday in the '70s, when our French teacher, looking to ingratiate himself with us, took us to a screening, assuring us we'd be rolling in the aisles. We did not laugh once. A semi-visible Jacques Tati (star and director) loped around a holiday resort getting into scrapes. Hardly any dialogue. A running gag about a door that went "spoink". We made paper aeroplanes and went back home to The Goodies. More fool us. The secret of Monsieur Hulot's Holiday, a near-silent masterpiece, is to reconfigure both your laugh muscles and your expectations. Jacques Tati is often tritely cited as a precursor to Mr Bean, but there's way more to him than that. This is a plotless anthology of incidents, visual gags, recurring motifs and eccentric characters. It's a sort of 'ambient' comedy, a strangely pleasurable mixture of the warmly familiar and the ingeniously unexpected, a wonderful piece of deliberately malfunctioning cinematic clockwork. Relax into it and you'll love it.

OPENS AUGUST 8, CERT 12, 86 MINS

I first saw Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday in the ’70s, when our French teacher, looking to ingratiate himself with us, took us to a screening, assuring us we’d be rolling in the aisles. We did not laugh once. A semi-visible Jacques Tati (star and director) loped around a holiday resort getting into scrapes. Hardly any dialogue. A running gag about a door that went “spoink”. We made paper aeroplanes and went back home to The Goodies.

More fool us. The secret of Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday, a near-silent masterpiece, is to reconfigure both your laugh muscles and your expectations. Jacques Tati is often tritely cited as a precursor to Mr Bean, but there’s way more to him than that. This is a plotless anthology of incidents, visual gags, recurring motifs and eccentric characters. It’s a sort of ‘ambient’ comedy, a strangely pleasurable mixture of the warmly familiar and the ingeniously unexpected, a wonderful piece of deliberately malfunctioning cinematic clockwork. Relax into it and you’ll love it.

Petites Coupures (Small Cuts)

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OPENS AUGUST 29, CERT 15, 92 MINS Bruno (Daniel Auteuil), a communist journalist, is having a midlife crisis. He's not sure he still believes in the cause he's supported all his life, and is flailing between his wife (Emmanuelle Devos) and girlfriend (Ludivine Sagnier). Bouncing off a string of odd...

OPENS AUGUST 29, CERT 15, 92 MINS

Bruno (Daniel Auteuil), a communist journalist, is having a midlife crisis. He’s not sure he still believes in the cause he’s supported all his life, and is flailing between his wife (Emmanuelle Devos) and girlfriend (Ludivine Sagnier). Bouncing off a string of oddball characters, he’s lost his bearings. Delivering a message for his uncle, who’s fighting a re-election battle as communist mayor of a small Grenoble town, Bruno really loses his way, in deep fog, in a forest. He meets the mysterious, mercurial B

Angel On The Right

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OPENS AUGUST 29, CERT 15, 89 MINS An ex-con, Hamro (Maruf Pulodzoda), sporting a scowl that could shatter granite and fierce, wolfish eyes, returns to his Tajikistan village after 10 years in a Moscow jail. Convinced his mother is dying, he starts repairs to their dilapidated house. So begins an often grim look at life on the remote edges of the former Soviet empire. Money is tight here, and relief comes from a vodka bottle or the scratchy Bollywood movies shown at a ramshackle outdoor cinema. When Moscow gangsters arrive demanding money owed to them, things only get grimmer for Hamro. Not that this is an excessively depressive movie. There are moments of deadpan humour and amusing cameos from the village eccentrics. As Hamro grows closer to his mother and long-lost son, his tough-guy exterior reveals a tender side, and what starts out as gloomy social realism turns into a fable about familial responsibility. Built from small, sharply observed incidents rather than big dramatic showdowns, Angel... requires some patience. But the rewards are rich and touching.

OPENS AUGUST 29, CERT 15, 89 MINS

An ex-con, Hamro (Maruf Pulodzoda), sporting a scowl that could shatter granite and fierce, wolfish eyes, returns to his Tajikistan village after 10 years in a Moscow jail. Convinced his mother is dying, he starts repairs to their dilapidated house. So begins an often grim look at life on the remote edges of the former Soviet empire. Money is tight here, and relief comes from a vodka bottle or the scratchy Bollywood movies shown at a ramshackle outdoor cinema. When Moscow gangsters arrive demanding money owed to them, things only get grimmer for Hamro.

Not that this is an excessively depressive movie. There are moments of deadpan humour and amusing cameos from the village eccentrics. As Hamro grows closer to his mother and long-lost son, his tough-guy exterior reveals a tender side, and what starts out as gloomy social realism turns into a fable about familial responsibility.

Built from small, sharply observed incidents rather than big dramatic showdowns, Angel… requires some patience. But the rewards are rich and touching.

Vendredi Soir

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OPENS AUGUST 22, CERT TBC, 90 MINS If you like your drama pared to the bone, then this sparse tone poem about a Parisian one-night stand is for you. Quintessentially French, it might as well have been titled?in tribute to Claude Lelouch's 1966 film?A Man And A Woman And A Peugeot. The film opens w...

OPENS AUGUST 22, CERT TBC, 90 MINS

If you like your drama pared to the bone, then this sparse tone poem about a Parisian one-night stand is for you. Quintessentially French, it might as well have been titled?in tribute to Claude Lelouch’s 1966 film?A Man And A Woman And A Peugeot.

The film opens with Laure (Val

Respiro

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OPENS AUGUST 8, CERT 12A, 90 MINS Emanuele Crialese's languid study of life on a remote fishing village on the sun-scorched island of Lampuseda, off the coast of Sicily, revolves around Pietro, a fisherman, Grazia, his emotionally troubled wife (Valeria Golino of Indian Runner, Frida and Rain Man fame) and their rough-housing but sensitive son Pasquale. The story, by writer-director Crialese, retells an old Lampuseda myth?that of a woman driven to desperate ends by local villagers. Suffice to say, the film operates as a slow-burning fable. With many scenes of men fishing out on boats, their sons helping out on shore and women packing fish in a cannery, comparisons with Visconti's 1948 neo-realist fishing village classic La Terra Trema are inevitable. But, in truth, Respiro has more in common with Antonioni's L'Avventura?there's the same measured pacing, the same cascade of stunning images. At the heart of this striking, sumptuous film, though, is Golino's mesmerising performance as a woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

OPENS AUGUST 8, CERT 12A, 90 MINS

Emanuele Crialese’s languid study of life on a remote fishing village on the sun-scorched island of Lampuseda, off the coast of Sicily, revolves around Pietro, a fisherman, Grazia, his emotionally troubled wife (Valeria Golino of Indian Runner, Frida and Rain Man fame) and their rough-housing but sensitive son Pasquale. The story, by writer-director Crialese, retells an old Lampuseda myth?that of a woman driven to desperate ends by local villagers. Suffice to say, the film operates as a slow-burning fable. With many scenes of men fishing out on boats, their sons helping out on shore and women packing fish in a cannery, comparisons with Visconti’s 1948 neo-realist fishing village classic La Terra Trema are inevitable. But, in truth, Respiro has more in common with Antonioni’s L’Avventura?there’s the same measured pacing, the same cascade of stunning images. At the heart of this striking, sumptuous film, though, is Golino’s mesmerising performance as a woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

Kirikou And The Sorceress

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OPENED AUGUST 1, CERT U, 74 MINS A jerky, episodic, two-dimensional cartoon about a diminutive warrior and his isolated African village, Kirikou And The Sorceress seems hysterically quaint in a global animation market defined by ironic CGI behemoths from Disney and DreamWorks (Toy Story, Shrek and the up'n'coming Finding Nemo). Still, French animator Michel Ocelot adapts this west African legend with seductive simplicity, illustrating the adventures of supernaturally gifted homunculus Kirikou (Theo Sebeko) and his skirmishes with the baby-killing, man-eating, water-stealing sorceress Karaba (Antoinette Kellermann) via a stark formal palette that's somewhere between Namibian pictogram and Chris Ofili collage. And yet, for all its ostensible simplicity, this is a cartoon with a wealth of intriguing subtext, including the spectre of drought and casual infanticide, and the ubiquitous banality of death. Elsewhere, the tiny pre-pubescent protagonist is driven by his blatantly Oedipal desire for the scary, castrating, big-breasted Sorceress. The Disney remake should be just around the corner.

OPENED AUGUST 1, CERT U, 74 MINS

A jerky, episodic, two-dimensional cartoon about a diminutive warrior and his isolated African village, Kirikou And The Sorceress seems hysterically quaint in a global animation market defined by ironic CGI behemoths from Disney and DreamWorks (Toy Story, Shrek and the up’n’coming Finding Nemo).

Still, French animator Michel Ocelot adapts this west African legend with seductive simplicity, illustrating the adventures of supernaturally gifted homunculus Kirikou (Theo Sebeko) and his skirmishes with the baby-killing, man-eating, water-stealing sorceress Karaba (Antoinette Kellermann) via a stark formal palette that’s somewhere between Namibian pictogram and Chris Ofili collage. And yet, for all its ostensible simplicity, this is a cartoon with a wealth of intriguing subtext, including the spectre of drought and casual infanticide, and the ubiquitous banality of death. Elsewhere, the tiny pre-pubescent protagonist is driven by his blatantly Oedipal desire for the scary, castrating, big-breasted Sorceress. The Disney remake should be just around the corner.

Arnie Dreamer

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DIRECTED BY Jonathan Mostow STARRING Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nick Stahl, Claire Danes, Kristanna Loken Opened August 1, Cert 12A, 109 mins So far, 2003 has been heaving with lacklustre sci-fi epics. Enter the joker in the mega-budget pack: Terminator 3, the sequel no one wanted to see, starring an ageing icon 10 years past his best and directed by someone nobody's heard of. It could only end badly, right? Wrong?T3 is the balls-out, gag-fuelled thrill ride of the summer, 109 minutes of outrageous apocalyptic carnage heaving with back-to-basics Arnie one-liners and franchise-undermining humour. Eight years has elapsed since John Connor and his indefatigable robot nanny dodged Judgement Day. Since then, mommy Sarah Connor has died of leukaemia and Edward Furlong has morphed into In The Bedroom's nervy but heroic Nick Stahl. Stahl's Connor lives on the streets, trying to avoid another visit from his machine opponents. But 20 minutes in, they've tracked him down and he's on the run from the new, improved, deliciously female T-X (Loken)?just as deadly as Robert Patrick's T-1000, with the added ability of being able to control machines. Connor hooks up with old flame Kate (Danes) and yet another copy of Arnie's good ol' T-800 (sent back once again to save Connor's arse) before trying to escape T-X and prevent the US military from launching Skynet and bringing about armageddon. U-571's Jonathan Mostow (whose 1997 suspense debut, Breakdown, is an Uncut favourite) turns out to be an inspired choice for director. The film matches its predecessors in terms of relentless pacing and full-on action sequences, but it's devoid of James Cameron's pompous, epic touch, replacing portentous myth-building ruminations on the relationship of man to machine with sly, sight gags and sardonic dialogue. And Arnold seems to be thoroughly enjoying himself, back in his signature role after nearly a decade of howlers. It's easy to write him off as a relic of the '80s action hero genre, but seeing him here in leather and shades reminds you of how iconic the Terminator is, even now. Against the odds, this is 100 per cent rollercoaster fun.

DIRECTED BY Jonathan Mostow

STARRING Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nick Stahl, Claire Danes, Kristanna Loken

Opened August 1, Cert 12A, 109 mins

So far, 2003 has been heaving with lacklustre sci-fi epics. Enter the joker in the mega-budget pack: Terminator 3, the sequel no one wanted to see, starring an ageing icon 10 years past his best and directed by someone nobody’s heard of. It could only end badly, right?

Wrong?T3 is the balls-out, gag-fuelled thrill ride of the summer, 109 minutes of outrageous apocalyptic carnage heaving with back-to-basics Arnie one-liners and franchise-undermining humour.

Eight years has elapsed since John Connor and his indefatigable robot nanny dodged Judgement Day. Since then, mommy Sarah Connor has died of leukaemia and Edward Furlong has morphed into In The Bedroom’s nervy but heroic Nick Stahl. Stahl’s Connor lives on the streets, trying to avoid another visit from his machine opponents. But 20 minutes in, they’ve tracked him down and he’s on the run from the new, improved, deliciously female T-X (Loken)?just as deadly as Robert Patrick’s T-1000, with the added ability of being able to control machines. Connor hooks up with old flame Kate (Danes) and yet another copy of Arnie’s good ol’ T-800 (sent back once again to save Connor’s arse) before trying to escape T-X and prevent the US military from launching Skynet and bringing about armageddon.

U-571’s Jonathan Mostow (whose 1997 suspense debut, Breakdown, is an Uncut favourite) turns out to be an inspired choice for director. The film matches its predecessors in terms of relentless pacing and full-on action sequences, but it’s devoid of James Cameron’s pompous, epic touch, replacing portentous myth-building ruminations on the relationship of man to machine with sly, sight gags and sardonic dialogue. And Arnold seems to be thoroughly enjoying himself, back in his signature role after nearly a decade of howlers. It’s easy to write him off as a relic of the ’80s action hero genre, but seeing him here in leather and shades reminds you of how iconic the Terminator is, even now.

Against the odds, this is 100 per cent rollercoaster fun.

So Squalid Crew

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DIRECTED BY James Foley STARRING Ed Burns, Dustin Hoffman, Rachel Weisz, Andy Garcia Opens August 22, Cert 15, 98 mins If the notion of (yet) another bunch of fast-talking eccentric conmen pulling off a daring heist with a twist doesn't fill you with thrills, be assured this more than makes up in pizzazz what the concept might lack in originality. The inconsistent but sometimes spot-on Foley's drawn the best from some great actors, and Doug Jung's debut script is a peach, if peaches were funny and cool. Everyone involved's having a blast, in a thinking person's blast kind of way, and it comes across. Confidence swaggers through every second, with just cause. The opening sequence is a gem. Smooth grifter Jake (Burns) and his crew are enacting a quite ingenious con: we whoop along with them when it's over. The catch is they only now realise they've ripped off creepy crime lord Winston King (aka "The King"), who's played by Hoffman as an hilariously camp yet violent sleazeball. Auditioning strippers for his club, he explodes, "If you're gonna eat each other, do it tastefully!" More significantly, he's soon sizing Jake up: "Hmm, you're good, I can't tell when you're lying. But I'm getting there." It's Hoffman's most Ratso-like role for an eternity, and he rocks. Set a challenge by The King, the likeable Jake enlists vampish pickpocket Lily (Weisz) to his gang, but is less keen on The King's henchmen tagging along. Corrupt cops and a mysterious "agent" (Garcia) also scramble the suspenseful equation, as the mission to put the sting on a big-time bank unfolds. Suffice to say there are many, many double-crosses, twists, cons and counter-cons, and a complex flashback structure in there just to keep you on your toes. Better, the jokes are plentiful and slightly mad. "The gig is up," sighs one crew member. "It's jig, guy," corrects another. "It's the jig that you say is up." Like Ocean's Eleven with added irony, Confidence, admittedly a good-looking film, relies on the noun of its title to charm and engage. The final flurry of twists may be a dozen too many for some, but by then you're happily prepared to let it slide. You trust it: ergo, it works. Often dazzling.

DIRECTED BY James Foley

STARRING Ed Burns, Dustin Hoffman, Rachel Weisz, Andy Garcia

Opens August 22, Cert 15, 98 mins

If the notion of (yet) another bunch of fast-talking eccentric conmen pulling off a daring heist with a twist doesn’t fill you with thrills, be assured this more than makes up in pizzazz what the concept might lack in originality. The inconsistent but sometimes spot-on Foley’s drawn the best from some great actors, and Doug Jung’s debut script is a peach, if peaches were funny and cool. Everyone involved’s having a blast, in a thinking person’s blast kind of way, and it comes across. Confidence swaggers through every second, with just cause.

The opening sequence is a gem. Smooth grifter Jake (Burns) and his crew are enacting a quite ingenious con: we whoop along with them when it’s over. The catch is they only now realise they’ve ripped off creepy crime lord Winston King (aka “The King”), who’s played by Hoffman as an hilariously camp yet violent sleazeball. Auditioning strippers for his club, he explodes, “If you’re gonna eat each other, do it tastefully!” More significantly, he’s soon sizing Jake up: “Hmm, you’re good, I can’t tell when you’re lying. But I’m getting there.” It’s Hoffman’s most Ratso-like role for an eternity, and he rocks.

Set a challenge by The King, the likeable Jake enlists vampish pickpocket Lily (Weisz) to his gang, but is less keen on The King’s henchmen tagging along. Corrupt cops and a mysterious “agent” (Garcia) also scramble the suspenseful equation, as the mission to put the sting on a big-time bank unfolds. Suffice to say there are many, many double-crosses, twists, cons and counter-cons, and a complex flashback structure in there just to keep you on your toes. Better, the jokes are plentiful and slightly mad. “The gig is up,” sighs one crew member. “It’s jig, guy,” corrects another. “It’s the jig that you say is up.” Like Ocean’s Eleven with added irony, Confidence, admittedly a good-looking film, relies on the noun of its title to charm and engage. The final flurry of twists may be a dozen too many for some, but by then you’re happily prepared to let it slide. You trust it: ergo, it works. Often dazzling.

Pirates Of The Caribbean—The Curse Of The Black Pearl

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OPENS AUGUST 8, CERT 12A, 140 MINS You wouldn't expect a movie based on a theme park attraction to be the summer's surprise blockbuster hit, but producer Jerry Bruckheimer and Mouse Hunt director Gore Verbinski have delivered a multiplex gem, thanks largely to Johnny Depp's inspired performance as pirate captain Jack Sparrow, blatantly?and hilariously?impersonating Keith Richards circa 1972. Sparrow is hired by a dashing but sensitive blacksmith (Orlando Bloom) to rescue his girlfriend (Keira Knightley) from the clutches of evil pirate Captain Barbarossa (Geoffrey Rush), whose taken her prisoner aboard his ship, The Black Pearl. The Black Pearl is Sparrow's old ship, and Barbarossa has doomed its crew to damnation as zombies by stealing cursed Aztec gold. Sparrow, naturally, wants revenge. The bad news is that, at 140 minutes, this is way too long and drags in the middle. The good news is that when it's under full sail, it'll swash yer buckle.

OPENS AUGUST 8, CERT 12A, 140 MINS

You wouldn’t expect a movie based on a theme park attraction to be the summer’s surprise blockbuster hit, but producer Jerry Bruckheimer and Mouse Hunt director Gore Verbinski have delivered a multiplex gem, thanks largely to Johnny Depp’s inspired performance as pirate captain Jack Sparrow, blatantly?and hilariously?impersonating Keith Richards circa 1972.

Sparrow is hired by a dashing but sensitive blacksmith (Orlando Bloom) to rescue his girlfriend (Keira Knightley) from the clutches of evil pirate Captain Barbarossa (Geoffrey Rush), whose taken her prisoner aboard his ship, The Black Pearl.

The Black Pearl is Sparrow’s old ship, and Barbarossa has doomed its crew to damnation as zombies by stealing cursed Aztec gold. Sparrow, naturally, wants revenge. The bad news is that, at 140 minutes, this is way too long and drags in the middle. The good news is that when it’s under full sail, it’ll swash yer buckle.

The Great Dictator

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OPENS AUGUST 22, CERT U, 124 MINS Charlie Chaplin's 1940 Hitler satire The Great Dictator follows an amnesiac Jewish barber (Chaplin, speaking on film for the first time, with shamefully bland range) from his persecution by the stormtroopers of Adenoid Hynkel (Chaplin too), leader of Tomania, to his part in the eventual triumph of pacifism during a climactic Hynkel rally. It's an excruciating viewing experience. Over-long and over-indulgent, everything here is overkill. Chaplin's oft-seen and oft-praised impersonation of Hitler's guttural delivery is funny in nostalgic bites, but after the fourth lengthy set-piece comedy rant it becomes ineffably grating. His penchant for irrelevant clownish shtick here slips into extraordinary tedium and his clarion call for a utopian world of brotherly love reeks of vanity and hypocrisy (Chaplin, after all, was an arch bully and on-set tyrant). And finally, politically, there's nothing here that wasn't said or done with immeasurably more wit and invention seven years earlier by the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup.

OPENS AUGUST 22, CERT U, 124 MINS

Charlie Chaplin’s 1940 Hitler satire The Great Dictator follows an amnesiac Jewish barber (Chaplin, speaking on film for the first time, with shamefully bland range) from his persecution by the stormtroopers of Adenoid Hynkel (Chaplin too), leader of Tomania, to his part in the eventual triumph of pacifism during a climactic Hynkel rally. It’s an excruciating viewing experience.

Over-long and over-indulgent, everything here is overkill. Chaplin’s oft-seen and oft-praised impersonation of Hitler’s guttural delivery is funny in nostalgic bites, but after the fourth lengthy set-piece comedy rant it becomes ineffably grating. His penchant for irrelevant clownish shtick here slips into extraordinary tedium and his clarion call for a utopian world of brotherly love reeks of vanity and hypocrisy (Chaplin, after all, was an arch bully and on-set tyrant). And finally, politically, there’s nothing here that wasn’t said or done with immeasurably more wit and invention seven years earlier by the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup.

Van Gogh

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OPENS AUGUST 8, CERT 12, 158 MINS Biopics of great artists have a way of turning into ripe melodramas about tormented geniuses. And they don't get much more tormented than ear-trimming depressive Vincent Van Gogh, the subject of Maurice Pialat's 1991 film. But what makes this movie so engaging is i...

OPENS AUGUST 8, CERT 12, 158 MINS

Biopics of great artists have a way of turning into ripe melodramas about tormented geniuses. And they don’t get much more tormented than ear-trimming depressive Vincent Van Gogh, the subject of Maurice Pialat’s 1991 film. But what makes this movie so engaging is its subdued, almost matter-of-fact approach to the Dutch painter’s life. Pialat, who died in 2002, brings a keen eye for detail and remarkable spontaneity to his account of the three months before Van Gogh’s suicide, spent in the quiet village of Auvers-Sur-Oise.

More concerned with his complicated personal life than his contribution to art history, the film delicately follows Van Gogh’s romance with the teenage daughter of one of his rich admirers and his fractious relationship with his more conventional brother, Th

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