Touted as 'Sex & The City: The Movie', as Nicole Holofcener often directs the series, this nervy comedy's actually closer in neurotic spirit to her earlier, excellent Walking And Talking. Catherine Keener stars, but Brenda Blethyn's mugging threatens to upset the work of Jake Gyllenhaal and Emily Mortimer. Women on the verge.

Ken Loach's 1969 masterpiece (based on Barry Hines' novel and produced/co-written by Tony Garnett, later behind This Life and The Cops) remains the template for grim oop north dramas. Its honesty, spontaneity and spiky humour shame more recent dilutions such as the appalling, infuriatingly overrated Billy Elliot. When a young Yorkshire lad, ignored by his loutish mom and brother and beaten down by grumpy, bullying teachers, finds a baby kestrel on the moors, he discovers a purpose in life, vowing to train it to fly. Only one teacher (Colin Welland) is sympathetic.

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

In a small Arizona town a toxic waste dump creates a plague of hundreds of giant spiders. Cue mass destruction and enormous fun, since the SFX are first-rate, the cast (led by David Arquette) is solid and the script strikes the right balance between laughs and twitch-inducing 'arach-attacks'. The best giant bug movie for decades. DVD EXTRAS: Trailer, commentary, deleted scenes, plus Larger Than Life—director Ellory Elkayem's first award-winning short horror film. (PH)

Delbert Mann's earnest 1955 slice-of-life drama about an ordinary Bronx butcher (Ernest Borgnine) mustering the courage to find a girlfriend earned four Oscars—Best Picture plus one each for Borgnine, Mann and screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky, who later penned the far superior Network. It's decently acted and well-meaning but very slight, dated and a little condescending.

As Tom Clancy's square-jawed CIA hero Jack Ryan, Ben Affleck's the only man on earth who can prevent terrorists from sparking nuclear showdown between the US and Russia. Not even solid support from Morgan Freeman and Alan Bates can inject life into this dead-on-arrival Cold War throwback. DVD EXTRAS: Commentaries from director, cinematographer and Clancy, documentaries and trailer.

An immaculate, determinedly unsentimental Marc Forster film, with breathtakingly honest performances from Halle Berry and, especially, Billy Bob Thornton. Death Row prison guard Thornton's family are traditionally racist; Berry's husband (Sean "Puffy" Combs) is executed. In a pit of despair, an unlikely, colour-blind love blooms between the two. One of 2002's best. DVD EXTRAS: Extra footage, cast and film-makers commentaries, isolated soundtrack.

In his final starring role, Richard Harris glowers impressively as the Irish underworld patriarch in Don Boyd's inspired relocation of Shakespeare's King Lear to contemporary Liverpool, Sadly Boyd directs with a low-voltage energy which flattens out intense emotion and visceral violence into brightly lit, blandly shot TV cop drama.

Jane Campion's second film (1990) tells the life story of Janet Frame, a New Zealand author who overcame poverty, chronic shyness and (misdiagnosed) schizophrenia to achieve international acclaim. Kerry Fox stars, while Campion hones her own stylistic match of trippy fantasy and gauche intimacy. Earnest, with detours into the ethereal. DVD EXTRAS: Three interviews with Campion, filmographies, trailer, biography of Janet Frame.

The ultimate journeyman, Kevin Reynolds is back with his explosively soulless adaptation of Dumas' classic. Formerly solid character stars Guy Pearce and Jim Caviezel don Hobbit haircuts and bored expressions as the socially mismatched childhood friends torn apart by jealousy and betrayal. It's clunky and mechanical, and lacking in even the faintest directorial fingerprint, yet it bounces you safely to the finish. DVD EXTRAS: Making Of..., audio commentary, deleted scenes, sword-fight choreography documentary and sound design featurette.