Choice: Film: LA Confidential

LA Confidential, on general release

Attention all Kevin Spacey-cadets: the main man is appearing live on stage (he was a stage actor for years before movie stardom) at London's Almeida Theatre next April in Eugene O'Neill's monster bar-room drama, The Iceman Cometh. In the USA Spacey is currently famous for doing interviews to publicise his role in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (a gay-centred film made, bizarrely, by Clint Eastwood) in which he refused to discuss his private life. Meantime, over here we have this cracking new thriller LA Confidential, also starring Kim Basinger (above). As Ryan Gilbey wrote: "It's a very well-made and intelligent picture, assembled with an attention to detail, both in plot and characterisation, that you might have feared was all but extinct in American cinema." All that plus the man who almost made you believe A Time to Kill was worth watching (I said, "almost"), did the dirty in Glengarry Glen Ross, who invaded your nightmares in Seven and won an Oscar for The Usual Suspects.