While serving as a complete visual history of the Manics from their early days as glammed-up rock’n’roll agitators?with Richey-to their currently more statesmanlike demeanour, Forever Delayed also shows how perfectly video has suited their mix of music and protest. Live performance and increasingly sophisticated films and storyboarding are shot through with urgent messages, slogans, cut-and-paste docu footage and literary reference as the hits roll on.

Bowie was among the first to appreciate the added resonances the video format offered to music, and with customary prescience and

Ang Lee’s soulful swordfest is out on visually refined Superbit release with wispy hair shots and flashing blades all shimmer-free. Yet Lee’s masterfully melancholic movie?with Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh as the unrequited martial arts lovers, Matrix choreographer Yuen Wo-Ping providing the aerial ballet, and high-kicking upstart Zhang Ziyi providing the feminist subtext?could work wonders in any format.

Josh Hartnett again displays his unerring knack for atrocious career choices in this low-brow, lacklustre sex comedy from the sadly-declined Heathers director. Falling for a cutie he meets at the laundromat, horny Josh swears off copulation. On hearing this, countless honeys throw themselves at him, naturally. Comedy and sex don’t gel: here’s proof.

Highly absorbing film about respectable family man Vincent (Aurelien Recoing) who, after losing his job as a consultant, invents a prestigious new career and betrays close friends with fictitious investment deals. Juggling fact with fiction creates ever-spiralling tensions until Vincent’s double life closes in around him. A deceptively profound drama.

In 2054 murder is obsolete thanks to Precrime, whose precognitive psychics enable police to arrest killers before they can kill. Then Precrime detective John Anderton (Tom Cruise) is himself accused of planning a murder, and only the psychic Agatha (Samantha Morton) can clear him. Spielberg’s masterful sci-fi suspense turns Philip K Dick’s short story into something Hitchcockian and technologically dazzling.

In Bernard Rose’s terrific film, Danny Huston-son of legendary director John and brother to Anjelicagives one of the year’s most outstanding screen performances as charismatic Hollywood agent Ivan Beckman, a man who suddenly finds himself with virtually everything he ever wanted, only to have it brutally snatched away.

The film opens with his lonely death and the callous reaction to it from clients and colleagues at the Media Talent Agency, where he has been a star manipulator and deal-broker. In the long flashback that follows, we see Ivan’s life and relationships unravel as what is left of his career seems to him increasingly brash and eventually empty and the film moves towards its grimly moving climax.

The ‘medieval dead’ conclusion to Sam Raimi’s legendary trilogy is more action/comedy than horror, with heroic amputee Ash (Bruce Campbell) wielding his trusty chainsaw on Sumerian demons back in the year 1300. The special effects are worthy of Ray Harryhausen, and the comedy’s in a league of its own. Great fun!

Third time around for Mike Myers’ sweaty secret agent send-up, and the scattergun approach means two flat jokes for every live one. Still, he knocks down your resistance through sheer quantity: part Benny Hill, part Peter Sellers (although losing the fat Scotsman would do us all a favour). Beyonc

Die Hard director John McTiernan remakes the ’70s extreme-sports classic with a sledgehammer where the subtle social comment should be. Chris Klein, the poor man’s Keanu, is the Rollerball superstar learning that league-owner Jean Reno has all the morals of a snake. Loud, brash and dumb, though cameos by LL Cool J and Pink might thrill pop completists.

Fascinating, propulsive, inside-out account of southern Santa Monica’s badboy “Dogtown” skateboarders, their explosive mid-’70s emergence at the Del Mar Nationals, and their ultimate domination and artistic definition of their sport. Director Stacy Peralta and writer Craig Stecyk, both former skateboarders, provide access and insights, Sean Penn provides narration.

After a biological warfare research lab goes tits up when a virus gets loose, plucky security guard Milla Jovovich has to fight off hordes of the living dead in this fast-paced adaptation of the video game. No faulting the SFX or the action, but all the dialogue here is irritatingly clunky exposition, and the plot lies somewhere between predictable and brain-dead.