FILM

Leaving Las Vegas After a variable few years, the British writer- director Mike Figgis returns with a gritty, hallucinatory and hopelessly romantic tale of love and doom in Las Vegas. Nicolas Cage is the suicidal alcoholic who hooks up with Elisabeth Shue, a prostitute determined to take control of her own life. A love story that's not afraid to wallow in pain.

The Underneath (right) The success of sex, lies and videotape was too much for many people. And as expected, Steven Soderbergh's next two films, Kafka and King of the Hill, got a boot in the teeth. His latest is a cool, clinical thriller focusing on the paranoid world of a young gambler (Peter Gallagher).

Seven Just as the serial-killer genre seemed to be growing blunt, in sweeps David Fincher to sharpen it up. Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt are the cops investigating a Seven Deadly Sins-inspired killer. A film that you won't be able to shake from memory.

RYAN GILBEY