Reviews

They do everything else with sickening panache, but the French have never got to grips with the slasher flick, which makes this back-to-basics horror as unexpected as it is violent. A sexy teen (Cécile De France) is invited to the family home of her best friend (Maïwenn Le Besco) out in the French equivalent of redneck country. She meets mum, dad and little brother, night falls, a rusty old van pulls up outside, a fat bloke gets out and starts graphically raping and killing everyone. No intellectual chit-chat here, then.

Bright, polished but ultimately lightweight Britcom about a forbidden romance between a London girl of Indian parents (Preeya Kalidas) and a white English boy (James McAvoy), Jeremy Wooding and former NME editor Neil Spencer's debut feature rehashes a bog-standard culture-clash plot. The incorporation of Hindi film song-and-dance numbers into a naturalistic story is a nice touch, but at heart this is the kind of creaky yarn that might have made a generic TV drama at best.

IN 1966, ROGER CORMAN MADE an offer to young assistant Peter Bogdanovich that the wannabe director couldn't refuse. Corman had two days left to run on a contract with Boris Karloff, and the challenge was this: use that time to film 20 minutes of new material with the veteran actor, edit in another 20 minutes of Karloff footage from Corman's The Terror, shoot another 40 minutes with other actors, then stitch the lot together. The result was Bogdanovich's first and, arguably, greatest movie.

First part of Tarantino's kick-ass grindhouse homage testifies to his awesome directorial development

Long-awaited return of New England philosophy major-cum-troubadour

Second full-length adventure in uneasy listening from PJ Harvey collaborator

Exquisitely bittersweet, pain-blasted country-rock from America's West Coast

Comprehensive 'official bootleg' four-CD set compiled by Robbie Krieger

Stunning documentary/interview with former US Defence Secretary

Peter Stollett's refreshing debut is somewhere between Larry Clark's Kids and a witty Lower East Side comedy of manners. It takes a hugely charismatic teen cast, light docu-style shooting and a textured screenplay and then follows eponymous virgin-surgeon Victor (Victor Rasuk) and his embattled Latino clan over one momentous and hormonally challenged summer.