This fictional portrait of Jesus's mother breaks with tradition to deepen her humanity

I thought carefully about whether or not to include Margery Allingham in this column. She's hardly ever out of print, and many readers know her name, even if they haven't read her. However, very few of them have really got to grips with her books. The ones who have are passionate fans, and she has her own society which holds literary events throughout the year. For many years I had her wrongly pegged as an Agatha Christie knock-off, until I took time properly to read her prose.

If you think that title sounds bland, wait till you see the movie.

Through the fug of spray, wisps of copal incense and blockade of human-sized candles, the band at the back of the church crept into life with the Pink Panther theme tune. I grinned widely. The locals clearly had a sense of humour on this, the most solemn day in the Catholic calendar.

In a typical US diner, a waitress serves a cross-section of society.

Glenn Close has come and gone. Forest Whitaker has come and gone. But this season – the last in this quite extraordinary series – has no need of guest stars to make it special. Vic Mackey, surely the most corrupt cop ever to take the lead in a TV show (murder of a fellow officer, abduction, torture, robbery, drug kingpin...) is about to get his comeuppance. And the end, when it comes, is not far off rivalling The Sopranos for sheer gob-smacking brilliance.

Though some of its inclusions are odd – are Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation or Oliver Stone's Platoon really B movies? – this appreciation of 50-odd "low-budget beauties" will remind film buffs of such hard-core examples of the genre as Monte Hellman's laconic Two-Lane Blacktop (Warren Oates: "I go fast enough." James Taylor: "You can never go fast enough") and John Boorman's deep-noir Point Blank. It also whets our appetite for such obscurities as Budd Boetticher's Seven Men from Now, a 1957 cheapie described as "not just a terrific Western, it's a cinema masterpiece", and even The Rage: Carrie 2, "far richer and more absorbing" than the original.

"When a butterfly leaves the safety of its cocoon, does it realise how beautiful it has become?" And when a writer-director christens his main characters Love, Happiness, Pleasure and Sorrow, does he realise what a prat he looks?

The big bands might not be coming back but the form won’t go away. This incredibly assured debut from composer/arranger/saxophonist Richards and a 20-piece aggregation of young, often Royal Academy-trained players with Gwilym Simcock on piano, adopts a Maria Schneider or Vince Mendoza method with more sighs and whispers than rasps and growls. It’s at its best on the opening track "Dropping Pennies", with a show-stopping duo for Simcock and vibes-man Jim Hart heard between ticking rhythms and subtle reeds and brass harmonies. This is truly thrilling stuff.