Reviews

Bodysong has been hailed as a kind of British Koyaanisqatsi, a poetic implosion of images swimming forth from birth to death. You need music for that, who're you gonna call? The Radiohead guitarist, plainly. Jonny Greenwood says this spacey set of instrumental ambience and interference isn't to be compared or contrasted with Radiohead, which means I can't just say it's creepy and often impenetrable. You probably have to watch the film in tandem: Philip Glass' use of repetition worked better with Koyaanisqatsi than as a wedding floor-filler.

Luna spin-off go Lee'n'Nancy or Serge'n'Jane

Solo debut from drippy Californian renegade and erstwhile DJ Shadow associate

Motown's mighty sax man on two twofers

First five albums (plus bonus tracks) by post-punk demigods

Lively, multi-layered Dublin-set comedy drama

Greenaway has more than once been known to disappear up his own aesthetics, but this collection of his short films plays to his strengths, tolerating little tedium. Disc One includes six films exploring his constant themes, from A Walk Through H (numbers, maps, the afterlife) to Windows (37 people fall through windows to their deaths). Disc Two features the obsessive Vertical Features Remake and The Falls (92 mini-biogs), and is—if you're in the mood—monumental like video art pioneer Bill Viola.

With barely a nod to the notion of storyline, this is another loud, brash series of MTV sketches, big on energy, little on brain. Somehow the idea of three scantily-clad chicks getting along okay with each other is pitched as pop-feminist empowerment. Diaz, Barrymore and Liu kick ass and chew scenery; Demi Moore is freakish; the (great) soundtrack rides roughshod over everything. Candy floss.

Who'd have thought after the debacle of Velvet Goldmine that Todd Haynes' next film would be as clever, meaningful and powerfully resonant as this masterpiece of stylised social commentary? In the 1950s, the expatriate German director Douglas Sirk directed a series of Hollywood films that at the time were sniffily known as "women's pictures", which only later were recognised as brilliantly crafted satires, as sharply observed as novels like Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates' classic dissection of the Eisenhower years.

Non-stop erotic cabaret singer goes East to form Buena Vista Socialist Club