First released in CD form in 1992, Fragments Of A Rainy Season marked a crucial, pivotal point in the life and career of our greatest living Welshman. After years of alcohol and drug addiction had turned his life into a full-blown shambles, Cale swapped whiskey and cocaine for regular games of squash and full-time commitment to parenthood in the early '90s. Far from blunting his creative edge, sobriety and responsibility appeared to free him up to take greater risks in the studio, and brought the kind of focus that enabled him to hone his live act down to something like perfection.

Stylish Hong Kong gangster flick that doesn't quite realise its potential

This unintentionally funny French heist movie is mired by its late-'70s aesthetic. Francis Huster is the swaggering hero, all but popping out of super-tight beige slacks and ruefully mouthing lines that mention "the poetry of the cash balance". The earnest political radicalism seems dated and risible now, but the direction is competent and the bank heist itself is good fun.

While Matchbox 20 have been a byword for AOR, director Hamish Hamilton's concert film has a sense of scale and occasion that makes Rob Thomas and friends look like a group with something almost thrilling to say. Caught in Atlanta during their 2003 tour, the band build a head of steam banging through hits like "Push", "3 AM" and "Bent".

One of the best US TV shows around, a relentlessly kinetic, breathlessly filmed and edited conspiracy and counter-espionage drama starring Jennifer Garner as CIA agent Sydney Bristow, clandestinely placed within the sinister SD6, an organisation plotting global domination. The serial plot twists, constantly shifting allegiances, reckless narrative pace and relentless action make these 22 episodes essential viewing. Brilliant.

Bertolucci's epic tracing the life of Pu Yi, who became China's last Godlike emperor aged three and then, deposed by revolution, had to learn to live as a gardener. Contrasting the splendour of the Forbidden City with the greyness of Communism, it almost gets lost in surfaces, but Peter O'Toole excels as Pu Yi's tutor

Richard Linklater's warm-hearted comedy is elevated to late-night stoner classic status by a manic central performance from Jack Black, here masquerading as a substitute teacher in a posh American private school who educates his privileged pre-teen charges in matters RAWK. Great, throwaway fun.

Much-misunderstood 1975 John Schlesinger reading of Nathaniel West's classic parody of Hollywood's corrupting influence in the '30s. Bristling with brilliant scenes exposing the individual's vulnerability in a crowd which worships bland celebrity, it lurches between satire and the truly horrifying. Donald Sutherland and Karen Black (miscast) star, while Conrad Hall photographs.

Robert Aldrich's most profitable movie presents war as mean-spirited farce: Major Lee Marvin offers a bunch of jailed WWII Gls—including John Cassavetes, Telly Savalas, Charles Bronson and Donald Sutherland—the chance to join him on a suicide mission into Occupied France. The movie wastes its greatest actor, Robert Ryan, but it's a relentless work—violent, funny and deeply cynical.

Startling documentary about an American family torn apart by sexual scandal