Reviews

The greatest chase thriller about a melon farmer ever! Charles Bronson is the melon man, prevented from gathering his crop when he's handcuffed to mafia hitman Al Lettieri. Escaping, Bronson wants to turn the killer over to the cops so that he can harvest his melons, but soon the hoods are after him. Directed in pulpy style by Richard Fleischer from an Elmore Leonard script. Bronson's melons look lovely.

The hugely popular crime series continues to thrive, with William Petersen, Marg Helgenberger and team solving heinous murders by looking very intensely through microscopes at bloodied strands of fibre while beautifully back-lit. That one trick's wearing a little thin, but the crash-bang camerawork, designer violence and Vegas vistas keep it shinily seductive.

Capturing the ramshackle chaos and converse musical tautness of new millennium Fall, this professionally filmed gig in Blackburn from September 2002 is a connoisseur's delight of old faves ("Mr Pharmacist") and recent classics ("Two Librans"). A great fan souvenir, blighted only by Mark E Smith's foolish decision to allow some leery Mancoid guest singer to ruin "Big New Prinz".

Hawaiian guitarist/pedal-steeler's expertly bottled Pacific breeze

Impressive bass-free post-hardcore debut

Introduction to the work of recently reformed art/industrial/electronica collective

Superbly packaged box set of all five Garcia solo discs, plus oodles of outtakes

Legendary 1969 documentary about Nazism

The great French director Jean-Pierre Melville understood American movies better than the majority of Hollywood, and devoted himself to a remarkable series of terse tough-guy thrillers which claimed the term "noir" back for France. Shot on the streets of Paris dressed to look like Manhattan, this spare, razor-sharp 1962 affair has Jean-Paul Belmondo looking great as the doomed stool-pigeon at the centre of a web of deceit.

Yikes—if you haven't seen this in a while, prepare to be disappointed. By '83, the Pythons' pioneering madcap humour had descended into reliance on pointless shock tactics. It may be bold, but it's not funny. Their guide to life and death—intelligent, sure, but self-congratulatory—includes copious vomiting, bleeding, organ removal and bouncing Benny Hill Show breasts. Not their best.