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.

Urban angst, Iranian-style

Michael Chiklis often grabs the plaudits for his portrayal of detective Vic Mackey, controlling the dealers and gang-bangers of LA's fictional Farmington with his renegade Strike Team, but this DVD release of The Shield's first series is a jolting reminder of how creator Shawn Ryan conceived it as a complex ensemble piece steeped in moral ambiguity. Ryan exposes the politics and brutality that underpin police work, while the handheld photography makes gunfights, rape and murder hideously real. Brilliant.

Hollywood remake borrows names and Minis but that's all

Classic mid-'80s Jam & Lewis R&B

Oft-dismissed post-Let's Get It On team-up with Leon Ware

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.

Edwyn Collins-produced follow-up to 2001's Persevere

Brendan Fraser is an American aid worker in Vietnam who just might be masterminding a US-backed anticommunist coup while seducing Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen), the classically demure oriental lover of cynical British hack Thomas Fowler (Michael Caine). An intriguing, morally muddy adaptation of Graham Greene via director Philip Noyce.

Peter Mullan proves himself a director of real bite in this harsh, affecting study of how '60s Ireland's strict adherence to Catholic doctrines ruined the sanity of many a young woman. If deemed to be in "moral danger", girls were incarcerated, with nuns serving as jailers. Geraldine McEwan makes a chilling wicked witch, and a sparky cast ensures it's an engrossing, unpreachy story.