Choice

In a poor week for new releases, it's worth catching up on those you might have missed. John Dahl's The Last Seduction, surely the year's most cunning thriller, has just been released on video but is still playing in London. The Mask and The Shado w are two delightful comic-strip adventures with the whiff of popcorn about them.

If you like your horror films elegant and intelligent, the Mexican feature Cronos will fit the bill. A kindly antiques dealer stumbles upon the Cronos device, a 16th-century gadget which guarantees eternal life once it gets its claws into you. Thereafter, the poor, put-upon fellow must satisfy his vampiric appetite whilst concealing it from his beloved granddaughter. First-time director Guillermo del Toro trades in blood and pathos to create an unusually sensitive probing of a familiar genre.