Video releases

Rental and DVD (£19.99)
Entertainment in Video Cert 18

Magnolia sees Paul Thomas Anderson flipping through interconnected lives almost at random. It's like flipping a radio dial and seeing what you come up with. Anderson's end product is deep, dark and dangerous - these, by and large, are lives at the end of their tether being acted on by chance and coincidence as much as cause and effect.

It's the film director as God. Anderson even visits a plague of frogs on his characters and his three-hour film is topped and tailed by equally strange occurrences. Anderson's last film, Boogie Nights, had horrible happenings but there was a sense of community and continuity which is significantly lacking here.

The trademark swirling camera of Anderson's regular cinematographer, Robert Elswit - remember Boogie Nights opening shot - is in evidence in complicated set-ups and long takes. Many of his rep team - Julianne Moore, William H Macy, Philip Baker Hall and Alfred Molina - return. But it's Tom Cruise, his familiar toothy grin turned alarmingly feral in a sinister turn that's far further from his persona than he's ventured before and in a humbler role: he's just one of 12 alphabetically named stars, one plot in Anderson's skilfully cut jigsaw. And two names you probably won't know - Melora Walters and John C Reilly - are as good as anyone.

It's a strange, bleak, ambitious tale full of regret, guilt and doppelgangers. Magnolia lacks Boogie Nights's clear structure but positively demands to be watched twice when, I suspect, it may seem even better.

Boys Don't Cry
Rental Fox Pathé Cert 18

The potentially tawdry tale of a gender-bending petty thief who tries to start a new life as a male in small-town Nebraska leading to rape and murder is handled with great tact and sensitivity by director/co-writer Kimberly Peirce and a carefully selected cast.

Hilary Swank, who won the Oscar as the film's central character, ended a long hunt for someone who could convince as Brandon/ Teena (she first had to spend a month being accepted as male in real life). No less remarkable is Chloë Sevigny's performance as Lana, the girl who comes to love and trust Brandon both before and after the truth becomes apparent.

Against all possible odds, Swank and Sevigny have given us one of the most natural and romantic screen couples of the year as the two outsiders desperate for a little tenderness and someone to believe in. It's easy to imagine the treatment Lana's shiftless family and friends would have had in most films, but here nobody is a stereotype, everyone is a believable, complex character. Peirce, who is only 33, gives the film an atmosphere of hope mixed with foreboding - a sad tale brilliantly brought to life.

Les Enfants du Paradis
Retail (£15.99) and DVD (£19.99)
Second Sight Cert PG

Often referred to but rarely seen these days, Marcel Carné's three-hour plus epic is a flamboyant celebration of French theatre and the ups and downs of love - and of the country's liberation, as if it was released in 1945. It's floridly romantic in a way that makes it seem more dated than, say, L'Atalante, but also funny and stylish in turn and it has a real glow both in its look - in a newly restored print and its affection for its characters. Made in black and white, it was recently voted "best French film ever" by the French Film Academy and despite its length, its complex plot never seems padded and provides some spectacular setpieces.

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