Reviews

Quarter-century of Beeb appearances from the Newhaven rabble-rouser

Reissues remind us that Mr Smooth was once an artiste

Urban angst, Iranian-style

Mining that fecund Field Of Dreams territory, where baseball and unresolved Oedipal complexes collide, The Rookie is a rousing real-life account of loyal Texan husband, science teacher and occasional 98mph pitcher Jim Morris (Dennis Quaid), whose small-town existence and lifelong battles with cantankerous pop (Brian Cox) are suddenly transformed by the offer of a place in the Major League.

The nominal director is Lee H Katzin, but this was entirely Steve McQueen's project. Starring and driving, his 1971 film about the famous 24-hour race was his obsession, and he was in a strange place when he made it, his paranoid quest for perfection reflected in the extraordinary cinematography of motors in motion. Barely any plot, it's all wheels, speed and engine noise. Less a movie than a machine.

Brendan Fraser is an American aid worker in Vietnam who just might be masterminding a US-backed anticommunist coup while seducing Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen), the classically demure oriental lover of cynical British hack Thomas Fowler (Michael Caine). An intriguing, morally muddy adaptation of Graham Greene via director Philip Noyce.

"Songs of murder, mob law and cruel, cruel punishment" get the once-over

NY's nerdiest are smarter than The Strokes

A Derbyshire-bred, Manchester-based group formerly known as the Dakota Oak Trio. DOT loiter pleasantly at the dewy, bucolic end of post-rock. Fridge are, perhaps, their closest contemporaries. And just as Kieran "Four Tet" Hebden's solo output outshines his work with Fridge, there's a sense DOT's Dave Tyack and James "Pedro" Rutledge make much better records on their own. Plenty of ramshackle virtuosity, crafty folktronica hybrids and limp singing amongst these 10 tracks, but the earth remains resolutely unshattered.

Live follow-up to 2001's Last Man On Earth with all-star band