Reviews

Futurist jazz 10-piece from Norway

Ungainly gothic masterpiece marks partial return to classic rock

Reissue of lost avant-AOR classic

Overdue reissue of No Wave classic

Superb live LP from band's autumn years

The Wachowski brothers' kick-ass cyber-noir sequel bows to mainstream demands but still delivers

OPENS JUNE 20, CERT 15, 98 MINS Hated drill instructor Samuel Jackson and most of his squad disappear on a basic training mission in the jungle and disgraced DEA agent John Travolta is the only man qualified to winkle the truth out of the two remaining soldiers.

A pair of '70s cops, undercover, become miserably hooked on smack in this impressively unflinching '92 drama. Jason Patric and Jennifer Jason Leigh star, both grittily serving notice that they're prepared to sweat, shiver and sacrifice goody-goody mainstream careers. The despair's draining, but its influence was to prove widespread.

Stylish but disturbing French art thriller starring Vincent Gallo and Béatrice Dalle as victims of a drug experiment that's turned them into...uh, sex-crazed cannibals. Dalle turns up the volume on her usual sexy-but-bonkers routine, Gallo is just bonkers and the whole thing is like an extra-gory werewolf movie without the fur. Not one for the squeamish.

The James M Cain novel The Postman Always Rings Twice (femme fatale seduces drifter into murdering her husband) has often been revisited: this 1942 Luchino Visconti version, a Scorsese favourite, was considered immoral and subversive on release, yet spawned the Italian neo-realist school. Noir to the core, it's long and fatalistic.