FILM / Critics choice

Golden Balls

The director, Bigas Luna (who previously made the much inferior Jamon Jamon) is seen here as a kind of junior Almodovar, but he clearly has his own agenda. The film's main character is Benito, an opportunistic construction engineer whose grand ambition is to build the biggest tower in town. He beds a banker's daughter to this end, while maintaining diverse other assets on the side. Festooned with gold, a Rolex on either wrist, an aficionado of Julio Iglesias, karaoke bars and Salvador Dali, he's an amusing but oddly likeable creation, and the film is well shot with a nicely downbeat ending. Metro W1, MGM Piccadilly W1, MGM Shaftesbury Ave W1, locals

Intersection Based on a 1970 novel by Paul Guimard, this starts with a perhaps-fatal car accident and flashes back to the events which provoked it: a love triangle involving a successful but unhappy architect (Richard Gere), his ambitious wife (Sharon Stone, impressive) and insecure mistress (Lolita Davidovich). Mark Rydell directs, often with a leaden hand, but the film is intriguingly structured and has the kind of bittersweet, double-edged ending too rare in mainstream Hollywood these days. MGM Trocadero WC2, Warner West End WC2, locals

Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould

With Francois Girard's film, an interpretative artist (Gould, played here by Colm Feore) is treated with the sort of respect more usually given to the creative. It would have been easy to make him seem either grotesque or pitiful, and Girard has managed to create quite an opposite impression. When Gould refers to the feelings of loss one experiences only in dreams, it is possible to think that having a richer emotional life asleep than awake is a tragic characteristic: but no one who sees this film is likely to feel that Gould's was an impoverished life. Minema SW1, locals