Analytical US-style remake of slow-burning Japanese chiller

Director Peter Watkins' mid-1960s work for the BBC still shines. Culloden recreated the famous battle as if covered by a modern news team—a radical approach for the time. More controversially, The War Game showed that nuclear war was an unwinnable nightmare, and was consequently banned by the Beeb, though it picked up an Oscar when released theatrically in 1966.

Despite the presence of the hapless Josh Hartnett, Tim Blake Nelson (him from O Brother, Where Art Thou) stirs up a sprightly, sinister revamp of Othello. Mekhi Phifer's fine as the school basketball hero who blows his future when jealous Josh, in the lago role, convinces him Julia Stiles is a duplicitous Desdemona. All this and Martin Sheen trying to look non-presidential as the sports coach.

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.

Second album of bruised brilliance from London-via-South Wales trio

Second album from unpredictable English dance-folk prodigy

Another immaculate chapter in Ry Cooder's Technicolor Cuban adventure

More brilliantly bilious dispatches from This England

Continuing saga of the 'real' Ryan Adams

Mancunian prodigy collaborates with ex-Can vocalist on latter's second solo release since 1971