Four years before The Deer Hunter, Michael Cimino made his debut as writer and director with this macho love story, starring Clint Eastwood as a typically crusty old bank robber and Oscar-nominated Jeff Bridges as his wide-eyed and adoring young sidekick. Excellent support from George Kennedy and Geoffrey Lewis as a couple of hoods after Clint's ass (as it were).

A rather contrived sequel to 1999's Billy Crystal/Robert De Niro buddy comedy (Analyze This), Analyze That nonetheless has enough sporadic wit and infectious Hope/Crosby chemistry to justify its existence. Here De Niro's neurotic mobster is released from prison into the protective custody of Crystal's wisecracking shrink (don't ask). Cue some 'fish out of water' shenanigans, a Sopranos parody, and a grand heist finale.

Mining that fecund Field Of Dreams territory, where baseball and unresolved Oedipal complexes collide, The Rookie is a rousing real-life account of loyal Texan husband, science teacher and occasional 98mph pitcher Jim Morris (Dennis Quaid), whose small-town existence and lifelong battles with cantankerous pop (Brian Cox) are suddenly transformed by the offer of a place in the Major League.

Patrice Leconte (Ridicule) brings a sombre poetic realism to this elegiac meditation on the nature of fate and the road less travelled. Johnny Hallyday, battered and craggy with gravitas, is awesomely iconic as the taciturn gangster who encounters Jean Rochefort's inquisitive retired schoolteacher. The two men are inexorably attracted, seeing in the other the tragedy of the life they never lived.

Comic book adaptation with Woo favourite Chow Yun-Fat as a kind of near-immortal arse-kicking Dalai Lama who's spent the last 60 years battling baddies for possession of the Scroll of the Ultimate. And now it's time to pass the baton to a younger chap. You could see it as a martial arts Raiders Of The Lost Ark, or a Crouching Tiger for nitwits. Or you could not see it at all. The choice is yours.

Unfairly pilloried on its theatrical release for co-opting the dolefully serious subject of capital punishment into a twist-ending thriller, Alan Parker's depiction of the eponymous philosophy professor and death row defendant (Kevin Spacey—droll), gutsy crusading journalist Bitsey Bloom (Kate Winslet—er, enthusiastic), and their frenetic race to prove Gale's innocence is fundamentally competent—sometimes clinical—studio entertainment. DVD EXTRAS: Commentary from Parker, deleted scenes, Making Of..., music featurette, posters, trailers.

Originally re-edited and released in two parts, King Hu's lengthy 1969 spiritual kung-fu masterpiece here appears as the director intended. The first half is slow, as an underachieving artist meets a beautiful damsel in a haunted fort. Then the fighting begins. Less concerned with special effects than the communication of "zen" through the feeling of the film, it's a truly beautiful piece. DVD EXTRAS: Filmographies, director's notes.

Philip Noyce's deceptively simple tale, describing the inspirational Disneyesque homeward journey of three headstrong aboriginal children, is accompanied by a stinging assault on the rarely explored genocidal project central to Australian nationhood, and in particular the crisis of the country's infamous "Stolen Generations". The result, simultaneously palatable and unnerving, is a contemporary cinematic anomaly—a politically provocative piece of mainstream film-making. DVD EXTRAS: Audio commentary, Making Of... documentary, trailer.

Warren Beatty and Julie Christie in arty, autumnal 1971 tale of the Old West

Ghoulish Japanimation