The Independent Recommends: Film

THE FUGITIVE'S Andrew Davis has remade Hitchcock for the multiplex generation in A Perfect Murder (left). More reptilian with each passing movie, Michael Douglas is sublimely smarmy as businessman and control freak Steven Taylor, who plans to bump off his heiress wife (Gwyneth Paltrow, as a Grace Kelly ice queen) by blackmailing her lover, Viggo Mortensen. Glossy trash, and a gorgeous way to spend a winter afternoon.

On general release

Deepa Metha plies the tense gulf between duty and desire in Fire, her vibrant study of a traditional New Delhi household. Enthusiastically dismantling traditional Indian family values, this rich melodrama smoulders with lesbianism and adultery as it swirls between a profusion of players: Radha the patient wife and her puritan husband Ashok; Ashok's mother, Biji, and his brother, Jatin - newly married to Sita, but determined to keep seeing his girlfriend.

On limited release