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Susan Sarandon and Goldie Hawn ham it up energetically in this surprisingly perceptive, punchy comedy about where groupies go when younger rock chicks muscle them out. Hawn wants to keep headbanging in leather, Sarandon's primly settled in beige, Geoffrey Rush is a celibate writer caught in Goldie's slipstream. No more syrupy than Almost Famous.

Following what's now uniformly referred to as "the events of 9/11", producer Alain Brigand invited 11 respected directors to each make a reactive film lasting eleven minutes, nine seconds and one frame. Among the diverse responses, the most intriguing come from Ken Loach, Claude Lelouch, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Sean Penn.

The fundamental tension here isn't whether bipolar salesman Barry (Adam Sandler) will end up with doe-eyed English executive Lena (Emily Watson). No, the question here is one of authorship. At a snappy 97 minutes, detailing Sandler's eccentric but essentially loveable dufus, his explosive temper and wacky air-miles scam, it fits neatly into the Sandler lineage. Yet, with Sandler's broader antics leavened by long tracking shots and static arthouse takes, the film is recognisably the work of pop-auteur Paul Thomas Anderson.

Sally Potter's supremely vivid take on Virginia Woolf's tale of a 400-year search for love and freedom. Tilda Swinton switches centuries and sex with enormous serenity, while Quentin Crisp proves an inspired Virgin Queen A visual feast with few equals.

Inexplicably and unforgivably buried theatrically by Pathe, this is Charlie Kaufman's follow-up screenplay to Being John Malkovich. Tim Robbins is the uptight scientist who falls for Patricia Arquette's alarmingly hirsute loner; Rhys Ifans is the man brought up as an ape in the wilderness.

David Essex and his cheeky grin may have starred in two of the '70s' great British rock'n'roll fantasy movies, That'll Be The Day and Stardust, but he came a cropper in this 1980 motorbiking mess. Champion racers macho it out—it's clichéd, lazy and sexist. Then again, how many movies star Essex, Beau Bridges and Harry H Corbett?

Rattle & Hum director Phil Joanou escaped the U2 camp to direct this uneven saga of Irish mobsters on the loose in early-'90s New York. Sean Penn makes for a reasonably authentic Oirish lead and Gary Oldman blows the roof off as an unwashed homicidal loon, but this sporadically brilliant flick belongs to Ed Harris. His incandescent performance as malevolent mob boss Frankie Flannery will stick in your head weeks after the credits roll.

Ambitious and underrated, this finds the Godfather team of Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo mired in Harlem's seedy underworld of steamy dives, bootlegging mobsters and sultry divas circa 1920. Richard Gere and Gregory Hines kick out the jazzy jams while Walter Hill fave James Remar provides a disturbing portrait of Dutch Schultz. This is Coppola at his wild and uneven post-Apocalypse Now peak.

Veteran Georgian director Otar losseliani cobbles together this amiable slice of menopausal whimsy, following middle-aged factory worker and wannabe painter Vincent (Jacques Bidou) as he breaks his blue-collar routine and flees to romantic Venice. There he encounters other eccentric middle-aged men, spies on some skirt-lifting nuns, climbs a roof, drinks some wine, and then returns home, a wiser man. DVD EXTRAS: Interview with director losseliani, trailer, filmography.

So it's a musical, it won many Oscars, and it's got Catherine Zeta-Jones in it. But that doesn't mean it sucks! Anything that's influenced by Bob Fosse is bound to have a dark undercurrent, and this crowd-pleasing tale of man-murdering molls and the common craving for publicity is witty and slick. Renée Zellweger, Richard Gere and that Jones woman sing and hoof.