Beau

Stunningly beautiful and utterly bizarre Japanese fable about a medieval Kabuki actor (Kazuo Hasegawa), renowned as a female impersonator, who carries his on-stage portrayal of a woman out into the world in order to seduce and murder the noblemen responsible for his parents' death. The direction is haphazard, the imagery is amazing. DVD EXTRAS: Director's biography, web link.

All dressed up and somewhere to go—Oklahoma visionaries in resplendent spectacle

First UK releases for currently hot band

Hardcore folktronica. From Cherbourg

Stunning new album from Britain's best-kept secret

Intensely moving, Simon Raymonde-co-produced follow-up to 2001's Lido

It's over a decade since former actor Will Oldham took his first faltering steps in a forgotten backwater of American music. When Oldham began recording with his brother Paul in 1992 he was recovering from a nervous breakdown, staking out an area that provided a refuge for his skewed, haunted but unusually perceptive sensibility.

The Blades Of Grass ARE NOT FOR SMOKING REV-OLA West Coast ex-folksters The Sunshine Company just missed stardom when their version of newcomer Jimmy Webb's "Up, Up And Away" was beaten into the charts by the Fifth Dimension's in 1967.

Scorsese's much-anticipated, brutal epic blazes beautifully across the screen

Polanski's heartfelt hymn to Polish suffering in WWII Warsaw