A procession of sad sack underdogs from all walks of life, carefully colour coordinated and arranged in a series of almost motionless tableaux, live out moments from their lives. They all want happiness or security in some form or another but it's always just out of reach.

There's a surface similarity to the films of Aki Kaurismaki and, in the meticulously constructed city sets, to Jacques Tati's Playtime. There's no obliviously iconoclastic M Hulot ploughing through it all and leaving…

This must have seemed like a solid gold dead cert at the time. Hot on the heels of Grease, the biggest musical in the history of ever, how could Olivia Newton John's next vehicle fail?

Well, let's start by getting a director who can't direct dancing and has no visual imagination at all. That's usually the best choice when you're making a fantasy musical. Next, let's base the story on roller disco. The kids love roller disco. Can any of…

This is a documentary with very clear ideas about whose side it's on. It plays out in classic sports movie style - the reigning champ and the underdog challenger, the highs, the lows, the victories and defeats. All that's missing is a montage of Steve Wiebe punching a side of beef.

Billy Mitchell does himself no favours by modelling his look on Fisher Stevens' villain in Hackers and delivering a series of glowering looks to camera as he talks his…

This is a glacially paced study of three desperately lonely people who all live alone in the same Taipei apartment, often at the same time.

On a fairly superficial level, Ming-liang Tsai appears to be Taiwanese cinema's answer to Bela Tarr. We get long, stately shots of Mei, Ah-jung and Hsaio-ang going about their daily lives, sitting in bare rooms, smoking, sleeping. There are moments of deadpan humour and tenderness but the overwhelming impression is one of urban isolation. These…