In Alexander Payne's wickedly mordant satire, newly-retired Warren Schmidt is forced to acknowledge the sheer empty horror of a wasted life that has left him with a ghastly marriage to someone he no longer recognises as the woman he fell in love with, a neurotic daughter who's about to marry an hilariously useless water bed salesman and a past he can't remember because in all the years now behind him he did little of merit and nothing of note. Dysfunctional families are currently all the rage, but About Schmidt has a dark individuality and coruscating comic edge that makes it uniquely compe

Released along with four other François Truffaut films, this '77 piece is one you either love or hate. The auteur's autobiographical protagonist roves around Paris, picking up and ditching a stream of women, musing over what constitutes the perfect female ankle, and philosophising like Woody Allen on opium. Old-school; intense.

A booted and suited Cave looks disarmingly like a door-to-door evangelist in this live French show from 2001. The intensity of his earlier work has of late been tempered by a more pensive, hymn-like calm and it's the latter which is to the fore in a set that concentrates on the No More Shall We Part album. Yet it's older material such as "The Mercy Seat" and "Saint Huck" which provide most of the highlights.

Michael Cimino's searing Vietnam War epic stands its ground

Tub-thumping story of how America conquered the final frontier

Susan Sarandon and Goldie Hawn ham it up energetically in this surprisingly perceptive, punchy comedy about where groupies go when younger rock chicks muscle them out. Hawn wants to keep headbanging in leather, Sarandon's primly settled in beige, Geoffrey Rush is a celibate writer caught in Goldie's slipstream. No more syrupy than Almost Famous.

Following what's now uniformly referred to as "the events of 9/11", producer Alain Brigand invited 11 respected directors to each make a reactive film lasting eleven minutes, nine seconds and one frame. Among the diverse responses, the most intriguing come from Ken Loach, Claude Lelouch, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Sean Penn.

The fundamental tension here isn't whether bipolar salesman Barry (Adam Sandler) will end up with doe-eyed English executive Lena (Emily Watson). No, the question here is one of authorship. At a snappy 97 minutes, detailing Sandler's eccentric but essentially loveable dufus, his explosive temper and wacky air-miles scam, it fits neatly into the Sandler lineage. Yet, with Sandler's broader antics leavened by long tracking shots and static arthouse takes, the film is recognisably the work of pop-auteur Paul Thomas Anderson.

Sally Potter's supremely vivid take on Virginia Woolf's tale of a 400-year search for love and freedom. Tilda Swinton switches centuries and sex with enormous serenity, while Quentin Crisp proves an inspired Virgin Queen A visual feast with few equals.

Inexplicably and unforgivably buried theatrically by Pathe, this is Charlie Kaufman's follow-up screenplay to Being John Malkovich. Tim Robbins is the uptight scientist who falls for Patricia Arquette's alarmingly hirsute loner; Rhys Ifans is the man brought up as an ape in the wilderness.