The Independent Recommends: Film

"WHAT WENT down on the way to the top," screams the poster for Primary Colors (left). After the Starr Report, you don't really have to watch Mike Nichol's rather respectful political satire to find out what did go down, but it still makes for entertaining viewing. John Travolta, as the sexually incontinent presidential candidate Jack Stanton, gives an uncanny impression of Clinton and Emma Thompson frumps it up as his wife. But the real acting honours go to Adrian Lester as the political ingenu who falls in and out of love with his charismatic boss.

On general release

Hal Hartley, the arch chronicler of small-town angst, grows up with his new film Henry Fool, a gleefully scatological fable about the friendship between a visionary stranger and a lowly garbage man. Losing his ironic cool, at last, Hartley creates his first full-blooded hero in the wonderfully rambunctious figure of Henry, played to perfection by Thomas Jay Ryan.

On general release