James

In 1980 Diana Ross, Motown and Chic all needed each other. With Rick James' breakthrough still a year away, Motown were forced to hire their biggest competitors to provide Hitsville with some hits. In turn, Diana was the last of the original sequence of classic Chic albums, the real follow-up to Chic's 1979 milestone Risqué. Disc one includes the original "Chic mix" of the album (essentially demos, with slightly gutsier vocals) as well as the familiar one. We are reminded just how skilfully "Upside Down" orbits around its absent centre.

Difficult second album syndrome kicks in (despite Phil Spector's assistance)

Prompting both genuflections at its breakneck brilliance and gasps at its gung-ho grisliness, Roger Avary's comeback has been a startling opinion-divider. Fans of the Bret Easton Ellis novel will relish the former Tarantino sidekick's fidelity to the blank immorality of the prose, yet the movie bursts with visual ideas. James Van Der Beek is fearlessly irredeemable as Sean Bateman (younger brother of the American Psycho), flailing across campus, gobbling up narcotics, rock'n'roll (it has a great soundtrack), girls, boys, suicides, whatever.

A Derbyshire-bred, Manchester-based group formerly known as the Dakota Oak Trio. DOT loiter pleasantly at the dewy, bucolic end of post-rock. Fridge are, perhaps, their closest contemporaries. And just as Kieran "Four Tet" Hebden's solo output outshines his work with Fridge, there's a sense DOT's Dave Tyack and James "Pedro" Rutledge make much better records on their own. Plenty of ramshackle virtuosity, crafty folktronica hybrids and limp singing amongst these 10 tracks, but the earth remains resolutely unshattered.

Two cops are shot at; the survivor (John Savage) is ostracised by his colleagues for alleged cowardice, which takes him years to live down. Joseph Wambaugh's novel was faithfully treated by Harold Becker in this 1979 curate's egg, but brilliant as Savage is, it's an up-and-coming, intense actor named James Woods who lights the bonfire.

James Ivory saunters into the 21st century. In Paris

Perfect '70s pop pastiche from Nashville-based singer-songwriter

A dazzling epic with a dark and bracing tone, George Stevens' Giant details Rock Hudson's old-fashioned Texan cattle baron (and American national metaphor) as he races towards modernity, neck and neck with neighbouring self-made trailer trash oil-swiller Jett Rink (James Dean). Hudson's sometimes stiff, and the pacing is certainly stately, but it's worth it to catch Dean's final intricately self-conscious screen turn.

Anthologising nearly-lost gems from Lora Logic's arty post-punk outfit

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.