FILM: THE FIVE BEST FILMS

Sideways (15)

Two men go on a trip to sample the Californian vineyards before one of them gets married - with unexpected consequences. A satirical movie of unusual sweetness, this has been sweeping up major awards in the US.

Sea Inside (PG)

An unrecognisable Javier Bardem plays a quadriplegic man petitioning the Spanish courts for the right to an assisted suicide. Director Alejandro Amenabar (The Others) downplays his usual taste for the gothic in this poignant drama.

Mayor of Sunset Strip (15)

What starts out ostensibly as a tribute to a forgotten mover and shaker from the 1960s music world ends up as a toe- curling study of pathological celebrity stalking. LA disc jockey Rodney Bingenheimer is the fame-seeking moth skewered by this remorselessly cruel documentary.

2046 (12A)

Wong Kar Wai delivers a sequel to his swooning psychodrama In the Mood for Love (2000). Tony Leung plays the 1960s Hong Kong writer with an eye for the ladies. Gong Li and Zhang Ziyi help make the whole thing quite ravishing.

La Nina Santa (Holy Girl) (15)

A religiously inclined 16-year-old Argentinean girl develops an obsessive interest in the middle-aged doctor who rubs himself against her in the street. An erotically charged, controlled study of sudden sexual self-awareness.