Reviews

François Ozon's psychological thriller finds repressed crime writer Sarah (Charlotte Rampling) retiring to her editor's house in France to work on her new novel. Then his wayward daughter Julie (Ludivine Sagnier) arrives, shattering the calm. Sagnier does her best teenage temptress, Rampling's initial disapproval turning to fascination as Julie racks up the notches on her bedpost. Until there's a murder. Quietly clever.

This six-part TV anthology, produced by Robert Altman in 1997, follows a pearl-handled handgun as it passes from owner to owner across America. The premise is strong, as is the cast (Martin Sheen, Randy Quaid and Kirsten Dunst), but the show never quite lives up to the first two episodes—"Columbus Day", in which James Gandolfini and Rosanna Arquette knock acting spots off each other, and "All The President's Women", directed by Altman in kooky mood.

For all their recorded lushness—and was there a more pristine '80s bauble than The Lexicon Of Love?—ABC never quite nailed the visuals. The Jerome K Jerome river-larks of "The Look Of Love" and cartoon capery of "How To Be A Millionaire" aside, it was disappointingly standard fare: Martin Fry doing lost and lovelorn while being cold-shouldered by aloof waifs. As the decade (and the hits) thinned out, the videos almost stopped trying altogether.

Awesome rebirth of original Country Queen, produced and arranged by The White Stripes' Jack White

Sixth album from California's desert-dwelling husband-and-wife team

San Francisco theatrical rock troupe in cult iconic shock

13-track compilation features newly discovered track and a little dubious tinkering

Kafkaesque comedy-drama of child-parent intimacy

Nobody wants a painfully slow death: do you want to watch one, even if it's set against the crumbling beauty of Venice? Visconti's '71 adaptation of Thomas Mann's novel is a classic no one dares question, but its study of ageing composer Dirk Bogarde falling in unrequited love with a golden, fey young boy is stately and overwrought, and so enamoured of itself it forgets the audience. Perilously sluggish.

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.