Reviews

Belated British release for alternative Nashville singer/songwriter

Bewildering debut album from Southend-based oddball

Petite sex-rocker rings changes for fourth album

Compilations of two sonic soul forces

Long-awaited re-release for one of the great lost albums of the early '70s

The inevitable sequel to Shanghai Noon

Slick odd-couple blockbuster which sees secret service grandee Anthony Hopkins forced to team up with street-punk Chris Rock in Prague as a nuclear bomb in a suitcase goes up for sale. Jerry Bruckheimer ensures the noisy pace never lets up; an anarchic Rock plays it strictly for laughs and a horizontal Hopkins looks mighty bored. Great stuff, all the same.

Not as astute or ambitious a satire of "reality TV" as Series 7: The Contenders, but Marc Evans' house-of-horror, shot on webcam, hosts a rattling good scary yarn. If the kids stay in the creaky pad for six months they win a million, but as Davina day looms, things get gory. A superior, if pretentious, genre piece.

Audrey Tautou's wide-eyed, innocent expressions are subverted cleverly in this Gallic romance-mystery. Hints of Hitchcock, but a mention of Memento's inevitable, as we see the story first through her eyes, then through those of the object of her amour fou, Samuel Le Bihan. Doesn't soar, but studded with scenes both picturesque and psychologically taut.

If Gillian Welch floats your boat, chances are Laura Veirs will, too, though her take on homespun Appalachia is tempered by modernist tendencies. Anyone familiar with 1999's eponymous guitar-and-voice-only debut will be taken aback here, ditching much of its thorny agit-folk for dreamily intoxicating balladry, sawing strings and near-perfect vocal phrasing.