The Independent Recommends: The Five Best Films

The Straight Story (U) David Lynch steadies the wheel and dabs on the brakes for this warm, folksy road movie with a difference (right). Richard Farnsworth is the genial old salt heading Wisconsin way atop his little green tractor.

The Limey (18) Steven Soderbergh's film-jigsaw amounts, at times, to a sort of soulful, art-house Austin Powers. Terence Stamp headlines as the sour Sixties hangover at large in Nineties LA.

Ratcatcher (15) Set in the rubbish-strewn wilds of Seventies Govan, Lynne Ramsay's debut paints a haunting portrait of everyday childhood madness. Quite simply the best British film we've seen all year.

The World Is Not Enough (12) Leaping off a dazzling pre-credits sequence comes the best Bond in decades. Pierce Brosnan has his hands full tackling Sophie Marceau's lissom heiress and a shaven-headed Robert Carlyle.

East is East (15)

A stage-to-screen triumph for Ayub Khan-Din's Anglo-Asian play. The scene is the terraced home of the culture-clash Khans; the plot, a torrid sequence of domestic storms.