Reviews

Two-disc set celebrating Manchesters baggy-trousered dance-rock primates

Welcome solo career retrospective from former Icicle Works man

"Unassuming and grandiose" lost classic, according to producer Steve Albini

Parisian duo invent "gay biker house" on EP of singles and remixes

Post-punk classics reworked as wine bar subversion

Delicate pleasures from New York-via-Nashville pop craftsman

Good end-of-the-world hokum

Walter Hill's terrific 1978 thriller about a cop's obsessive pursuit of a seemingly uncatchable criminal clearly anticipates Michael Mann's Heat, for which it may have provided an unacknowledged template. It's a much leaner picture than Mann's portentous epic, however, but just as stylish and a lot more exciting, with a series of stunningly orchestrated car chases, a satisfyingly complicated plot and a couple of instances of eye-popping violence.

In Clint Eastwood's self-consciously stately film of Dennis Lehane's cracking thriller, Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon are former childhood friends, estranged by trauma, thrown into adult conflict by tragedy following the murder of Penn's teenage daughter. The novel is raw, seething, but Eastwood's stern, sober direction makes the film a bit of a slog, worthy but oddly unengaging, stripped of tension and the true sense of place Lehane brought to the book.

One of the most gratifying indie dark horses of last year, with writer/director Dylan Kidd giving Campbell Scott the role of a lifetime. As ageing Lothario Roger, getting bitter as he realises his sleazy charms are fading, Scott is dynamic, demanding no sympathy as he educates and corrupts his eager-to-learn-the-ropes nephew. Jennifer Beals and Elizabeth Berkley turn their noses up. Honest to a fault.