Reviews

OPENS OCTOBER 17, CERT TBC, VARIOUS MINS Boldly straddling the chasm between obscure gallery installation and provocative arthouse epic, The Cremaster Cycle, made by Björk's boyfriend Matthew Barney, is as sumptuous as it is obtuse, as impervious as it is ambitious.

Utterly demented female assassin action from Korea's Je-gyu Kang, who comes across as the bastard son of John Woo and Luc Besson (without the flair of either). Kang chucks in a load of contemporary political context, which is interesting, but falls victim to the current vogue for assembling your final cut half an hour too long. Enjoyable but overlong and confusing.

Bob Rafelson's epic that nobody remembers. Beautifully shot and cast with Patrick Bergin as Burton and Iain Glen as Speke in their historical expedition to find the source of the Nile. The former compares wounds with Bernard Hill's Livingstone; the latter's a Victorian publicity hound. The journey is a bit National Geographic, but the hardships register.

Charlton Heston plays the Last Man On Earth after everybody else has been transformed by a plague into albino vampires in this so-so adaptation of Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend. Some nice post-apocalyptic moments in the first half, but the vampires really aren't scary enough and the allegorical ending is on a par with a flying mallet. Disappointing.

Pop perfectionists follow up 1999's comeback album, Last Exit

Follow-up to 2000's much-lauded Maroon from Jimmy's offspring

Engagingly oddball debut from Icelandic electrobod

Album number nine from Dean and Gene Ween, who know no stylistic bounds

Set fire to anything. Set fire to the air," urged John Cale at the beginning of Music For A New Society. That 1982 masterpiece was the evisceration of a man whose fractured psyche was mirrored perfectly by songs arranged in jagged, improvisatory style; a knife held at the throat of sweetness. Now he reappears with his first album of songs for seven years, and his finest album in any genre for over two decades.

Greatest hits (again) plus recent acclaimed remixes