Every bit as bad as we feared

"The Postman" (15)

Yes, it is as bad as everyone said; Kevin Costner's latest folie de grandeur was pulled abruptly from American cinemas, and never even made it to the big screen in Ireland, and it's easy to see why. Connoisseurs of bad movies may revel in Costner's portentous declamations as the man driven to bring decency back to a savage post-apocalyptic world, but most people will just fall asleep as the movie meanders along for an interminable three hours.

"Curdled" (18)

"Quentin Tarantino presents . . ." screams the cover artwork for Reb Braddock's film about a woman (Angela Jones) who's (literally) dying to meet Miami's most infamous serial killer (Alec Baldwin), and Taranteenies might do worse than check out this short and fairly sharp black comedy.

Pretty Village, Pretty Flame (18)

Srdan Dragojevic's remarkable, chilling depiction of the war in former Yugoslavia takes an ironic, apolitical stance on the conflict, and an exclusively Serbian point of view, which some may find objectionable, but there's no denying the fierce power of Dragojevic's vision, and much of the film can be seen as a fierce satire on the combination of paranoia and corruption which brought Serbs to war.