The Independent Recommends

The Three Best Films

Antz (PG)

Computer-animated comedy (left) voiced by a stellar cast stars Woody Allen as a worker ant who becomes an unlikely opponent of the colony's totalitarian regime. Good fun, and Allen's best work in a while.

Slums of Beverly Hills (15)

Tamara Jenkins' feature debut is a modest but winning rites-of-passage movie about a family coping with poverty in Los Angeles's richest suburb. Alan Arkin gives an acting masterclass as the dad.

Ronin (15)

John Frankenheimer's action thriller is buttressed by a fine international cast (including Robert De Niro, Jean Reno, Stellan Skarsgard), moody French locations and a clutch of supercharged car chases.

Anthony Quinn

The Three Best Plays

Hindle Wakes Royal Exchange, Manchester

Spectacularly refurbished after the 1996 bombing, this theatre bounces back in fine resilient form with the excellent production which had to be aborted then. To 9 Jan

Martin Guerre West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds

It's third time lucky for this much rewritten Boublil/Schonberg musical. In Conall Morrison's starkly involving production (right), it finally emerges as a tighter, magnificent show. To 13 Feb

The Boy Who Fell Into a Book

Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough

Typically witty and ingenious concept from Alan Ayckbourn - here wearing his children's dramatist hat. To 9 Jan

Paul Taylor