Superbly acted drama gathers no moss

Richard Linklater takes the po-faced monologues of Slacker up a level with this extraordinary, state-of-the-art, animated dream trip. The endless navel-gazing and philosophising (Are we alive? Are we imagining everything? There's not gonna be a car chase in this, is there?) are undeniably wearing, but you have to admire the only sentient Texan's ambition and nerve. DVD EXTRAS: None. (CR)

A morbidly slow but ultimately touching vignette from France, starring the legendary Michel Piccolia an ageing actor whose wife and kids are killed in a car crash. He mopes around Paris, but is persuaded by an American director (John Malkovich) to take a movie part. He muffs his lines, ensuring no feel-good ending. It earns its melancholia. DVD EXTRAS: Interviews, trailers, production notes, filmographies

Chronically misfiring comedy written and directed on an off day by Billy Bob Thornton, who also stars. He and Laura Dern are a bickering Arkansas couple, spending time with her eccentric white trash family. Little happens, but the casting of Ben Affleck and Jamie Lee Curtis as husband and wife has to be among the world's weirdest.

Stunning new album from Britain's best-kept secret

Kansas-born troubadour's second LP

Todd Haynes is a film-maker you're never quite sure whether to champion. In the past, when he's won accolades, it's been for something boring and indulgent, like Safe, which moved as quickly as Laurent Blanc in diver's boots in Montreal snow. When he took a hammering, it was for the vivacious, accurate glam rock Citizen Kane that was Velvet Goldmine. Which, relevantly, was gorged with fantastic music. Now he's everybody's darling again, tipped to enjoy Oscar orgies with his deeply stylised Douglas Sirk homage, Far From Heaven.

Timbaland does the job but Jade fails to shine

Sixteen years after The Smiths, Johnny Guitar goes solo

Nostalgia overload for the School Disco crowd