The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 72

The Guardian Friday December 12 2003 17 Together With You Dir: Chen Kaige With: Tang Yun, Liu Peiqi, Chen Hong, Wang Zhiwen, Chen Kaige, Chen Qiang, Zhang Qjng, Kim Hye-ri, Liu Bing 116 mins, cert PG togethermovie.com IB Chinese director Chen Kaige is apparently putting the catastrophe of his English-language thriller Killing Me Softly behind him though he and we will need quite a bit of therapy for that one and now gives us a very sentimental, westernised feelgood drama set in modern Beijing. A 13-year-old violin prodigy Xiaochun (Tang Yun) comes to the heartless big city with his lovable bumpkin dad Liu Cheng (Liu Peiqi) for a big music competition; he has some U-certificate adventures involving a pretty older woman and learns plenty of life-affirming lessons about music and love. Almost immediately after arrival, Xiaochun secures private tuition with a grumpy curmudgeon, who turns out to be nursing a broken heart; he tells Xiaochun he can't promise fame and fortune, only musical excellence. So instead, prodigy and dad persuade a cold, manipulative but well connected professor-cum-impresario to take him on, finally making a predictable choice between the two men. "Who knew we would find professors so quickly?" muses his father.

Who indeed? Recently, Dai Sijie's movie Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress showed us a much more interesting and complex drama, about the way western culture and classical music came to be accepted and celebrated in post-Maoist China. This just looks like a schmaltzy Billy Elliot. What a comedown for this director. promises to be a stilted evening of yuletide festivities with much eye-rolling from the children. But weary Frank drowses at the wheel and almost crashes the car.

Then they see, vividly illuminated in the headlights, a ghostly woman standing in the road clutching a baby. What follows is macabre and supernatural in the approved manner, not stunningly original, but with some ingenious twists and humorous performances, particularly from Alexandra Holden as Frank's sexually frustrated wife who, thanks to a gruesome denouement, is able to give herself an orgasm by caressing the relevant lobe of her exposed brain. Yecch! Ten Minutes Older: the Cello irtrtr Dirs: Bernardo Bertolucci, Claire Denis, Mike Figgis, Jean-Luc Godard, Jiri Menzel, Michael Radford, Volker Schlondorff, Istvan Szabo With: Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Daniel Craig, Rudolf Hrusinsky, Mark Long, Jean-Luc Nancy, Dominic West 95 mins, cert 15 This portmanteau movie is a companion piece to the one that appeared here in September, entitled Ten Minutes Older: the Trumpet. It's a compilation of shorts by big names including Bertolucci, Schlondorff, Figgis and Godard, meditating on time with a linking cello theme. Just as in the Trumpet collection, the quality is very variable, and the air of precious self-importance that heralds each alleged gem is sometimes just intolerable.

Bertolucci's contribution, Histoire d'Eaux, based on an Indian fable, is at any rate a beautifully lucid piece of storytelling. It is definitely the most relaxed film on offer, as almost everything else is clenched and overwrought in some way. Michael Radford's elegant sci-fi tale has Daniel Craig as a spaceman who returns to Earth after 80 years having only aged 10 minutes. Jiri Menzel shows the face of Czech movie star Rudolf Hrusinsky getting older and older in archive footage and the effect is humorous and poignant. The collection ends with a typically gnomic pronouncement from Jean-Luc Godard entitled Dans le Noir du Temps which disinters fragments of his old films as part of what is apparently a fiercely grim ongoing farewell to cinema.

But the emotional effect of this is entirely reliant on the Arvo Part theme, and it is incredible that Godard should wheel out such a hackneyed, unoriginal piece of music. Again, a very mixed bag with the high points crowded out with work that is contrived and just plain dull. The Fighting Temptations k-trtrtr-ti Bl i Nicholas HH WICKLEBY IHH HH 'u'r-r lliH NICHOLAS NICKLEBY DVD DOUBLE DISC COLLECTORS EDITION HH ALIEN QUADRILOGY dvdhHHHH Dir: Jonathan Lynn With: Cuba Gooding Jr, Beyonce Knowles, Melba Moore, Mike Epps, Steve Harvey, LaTanya Richardson 123 mins, cert PG fightingjtemptatics.corn Frankly, this film ought be on sale in bags' to rose-growers outside farm shops and garden centres. The Oscar-winning yet somehow also habitually appalling Cuba Gooding Jr plays a lovable New York slicker fired from his advertising job for faking his resume. He hears that his aunt in his hometown of Montecarlo, Georgia, has left him a heap of cash in her will, stipulating that he must direct the church choir.

So it's time for ahilarious and heartwarming homecoming to the south that well-known repository of real values where Cuba discovers Beyonce in a local bar wearing an unflattering top and non-bling jeans, singing Fever like Cleo Laine with a hangover. This, presumably, is the world's favourite diva in down-home, unstarry mode, and Cuba matches it with some very unfunny comic acting of his own. The film is directed by British-born Jonathan Lynn, who co-created Yes Minister and, during his Hollywood career, made the very decent comedy My Cousin Vinny. But all he can do here is crank up the big gospel numbers and hope we don't notice the exceptionally poor script. The biggest crime is making Beyonce look so terrible when her appearance in Austin Powers 2 showed she can play comedy while looking fabulous.

It's just turning gold into dross. mi Counties gel increasingly unappealing. Jenkin piles on the coincidences but with the help of spectacular scenery and chainsmoking, booze-addled cad Noah Taylor, it makes for a pleasant, undemanding view. 1607 play into a post-apocalyptic Liverpool, with original dialogue declaimed in fluent ScouseManc. Christopher Ecclestone is the Man with No Name-style lead who braves the menacing street gangs (introductory conversational gambit: "Are you a to avenge his wife's killers.

Cox rounds up Derek Jacobi, Eddie Izzard and Anthony Booth, who have a whale of a time. It looks good and there's a Tarantinoesque death toll. I was reminded of Derek Jarman's punk Tempest. RobMackle To order any DVDsvideos, call 0870 066 7812. Revengers Tragedy Retail (15.99) and DVD (17.99) Tartan Cert 15 Nicholas NicMeby 2002 United Artists Films.

Inc. AU Right Risimd. Artwork i Uisign D2003MGM Home Entertainment LLC. All Rights Reserved. Once Upon A Time In Hie West TH 2003 by Paramount Pictures.

All Rights Reserved. Alien Quadrilogy 1979.198i.1992. 1997 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Alien Ouadrilogy price of 54.97 valid until 14th December only A typically outrageous Alex Cox enterprise transposes Thomas Middleton's.