Film: The Five Best Films

1

Get Carter (8)

Mike Hodges' gangland picture retains a thrillingly seedy allure, thanks to bleak locations, spare dialogue, and a performance of near- heroic unpleasantness from Michael Caine.

2

Happiness (8)

Todd Solondz's second film is a comedy of loneliness and sexual deviancy that reaffirms this young writer-director's singular talent. Imagine Parenthood remade by David Lynch, and you're getting there.

3

A Simple Plan (5)

Cult horror director Sam Raimi makes a dramatic entry into the mainstream with this chilling, snowbound thriller about a $4m windfall that brings nothing but ill. Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton co-star.

4

Orphans (8)

Peter Mullan's darkly comic tale of four siblings and a funeral movingly captures the emotional stresses of bereavement over the course of a storm-tossed Glaswegian night.

5

Cruel Intentions (5)

This sly take on Les Liaisons Dangereuses is set in haute monde Manhattan, where Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillippe plot their seductions with all the cruelty of the original aristocrats. See New Films, right

THE FIVE BEST REVIVALS

The Philadelphia Story (Curzon Soho)

Haughty blueblood Katharine Hepburn dukes it out with old flame Cary Grant and newshound James Stewart in George Cukor's irresistible comedy of manners. Sun 2.45pm

2

Written on the Wind (NFT)

Fantastically baroque Douglas Sirk melodrama about love and family madness amidst the oil fields of 950s Texas. Rock Hudson and Lauren Bacall co-star. Sun 7.30pm

3

Shall We Dance? (Riverside Studios Cinema)

One of the great movie romances of the Nineties, and certainly the greatest film ever made about Japanese ballroom dancing. Sun 8.5pm

4

Touch of Evil (Curzon Soho)

Freshly re-edited version of Orson Welles's 958 thriller, all vertiginous angles, lurid lighting and blaring brass, courtesy of Henry Mancini's score. A masterpiece before, a masterpiece now. Showing all week

5

The Last Waltz (Riverside Studios Cinema)

Martin Scorsese's film of The Band's farewell concert is rock's Mount Rushmore, a roll-call of America's finest from Dylan and Joni Mitchell to Neil Young and Muddy Waters. Monday 5.40pm