Reviews

Retired actor Alexander (Erland Josephson) is celebrating his birthday with friends and family when an imminent nuclear catastrophe is announced on TV. So Alexander offers to make a deal with God to avert the disaster. Andrei Tarkovsky's final film is as powerful as you'd expect.

Sandwiched, chronologically, in between Jules Et Jim (1962) and Fahrenheit 451 (1964), La Peau Douce (The Soft Skin) is an intriguing anomaly in the François Truffaut canon. A neo-Hitchcockian tale of infidelity, it methodically observes the extra-marital deceptions of apathetic intellectual Pierre (Jean Desailly) before rashly culminating in a bizarre shotgun shootout courtesy of Pierre's hysterical wife. For Truffaut completists.

Mosaic of hitherto unreleased Faust sounds, spanning their 31-year career

Brought up on the same south London estate as the rampaging So Solid Crew, you might have expected Baz to have become a soul diva or a rap artist, like her sister Monie Love. Instead, under the direction of uber-producer Guy Sigsworth, she's chosen an unashamedly pop path. It would be unfair to call her a black Dido, even if several of the melodies would not have sounded out of place on No Angel. But a female version of Seal wouldn't be far wide of the mark.

Garage rock with an arty twist

Multi-ethnic mixture of religious, film and dance music by post-punks

Pumped and vacuous fourth album from rap's No 1 pin-up

The Blades Of Grass ARE NOT FOR SMOKING REV-OLA West Coast ex-folksters The Sunshine Company just missed stardom when their version of newcomer Jimmy Webb's "Up, Up And Away" was beaten into the charts by the Fifth Dimension's in 1967.

Remastered 24-CD box set of live performances by establishment-baiting avant-noise terrorists

Whimsical but thought-provoking take on the Middle East conflict