Reviews

Bahman Ghobadi's gruelling account of Kurdish hardships on the Iran/Iraq border has none of the artful self-consciousness of Samira Makhmalbaf's remarkably similar Blackboards. Instead, this powerful story of eldest child Ayoub trying to smuggle his dying brother into Iraq features brutally uncompromising scenes of bareknuckle kiddie fistfights, savagely battered horses, and the casual physical abuse of a crippled child.

Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer are the short order cook and waitress in a New York diner in Garry Marshall's romantic drama. The stars ensure that it's at least watchable, but the chemistry between them is nowhere near as intense as it was in Scarface, a few years earlier.

New instalment of 'alt.folk soap opera'

Budget-priced 14-track compilation by Kid 606-style avant-techno types

After the steamy funk of Boogie Nights and the Aimee Mann tearjerkers of Magnolia, PT Anderson's new film basks in heady strings and wonky harmoniums, scored by regular collaborator Jon Brion. It's deliberately dizzying and disorientating, and not always pleasurable. But the borrowing of Nilsson's "He Needs Me" from Altman's Popeye, sung with sugary desire by Shelley Duvall, is inspired. Waiting to interview Anderson in a hotel lobby recently, I congratulated Emily Watson on her singing of this. It's the only thing I've ever said to Emily Watson.

Radio-friendly Norwegian beat mavericks raised on R.E.M. and Teenage Fanclub

New digital version with no shortage of bonuses

Inveterate remixer (Pulp, St Etienne, Talvin Singh) chills out with some downtempo classics

Cleveland County bluegrass legend and Foggy Mountain Boy wows Newport festival crowd, 1959-66

Scorsese's much-anticipated, brutal epic blazes beautifully across the screen