BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS (Cert 15, also available to buy DVD £15.99): Starring: Stephen Campbell Moore, Emily Mortimer, Jim Broadbent, Simon Callow, Peter O'Toole, John Mills, Hugh Laurie.

STEPHEN Fry's feature film directorial debut is an inventive adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's 1920s novel Vile Bodies. Destitute writer Adam Fenwick-Symes (Campbell Moore) is several weeks in arrears with his rent to his landlady and needs to raise money quickly to woo his sweetheart, Nina Blount (Mortimer). At its heart, the film is a love story about two people separated by social standing, which looks lustrous and much of the humour translates - something just seems to be missing.

DVD Extras: Director commentary, behind the scenes featurette, Stephen Fry documentary.

KILL BILL VOLUME 1 (Cert 18, also available to buy DVD £19.99/VHS £14.99) Starring: Uma Thurman, David Carradine

THE first half of Quentin Tarantino's astonishing blood-soaked martial arts epic sees him back on blistering form, fusing his obsessive love of Eastern cinema with mordant humour and exhilarating action set-pieces.

The Bride (Thurman) is left for dead in a wedding chapel by her double-crossing former mentor Bill (Carradine). Trapped in a coma, The Bride wakes four years and six months later to seek revenge on Bill and his accomplices. The characters are depraved and demented (rape and paedophilia crop up within the first hour), and the humour is extremely dark. Thurman looks amazing and supporting performances are solid too. Volume 2 hits cinemas on April 23.

DVD Extras: Making Of featurette, 5,6,7,8's perform Jayne Mansfield and I'm Blue, teaser trailers.

WILBUR (WANTS TO KILL HIMSELF) (Cert 15, also available to buy DVD £15.99) Starring: Jamie Sives, Adrian Rawlins

WILBUR (Sives) is a pessimist who is so disillusioned with life, his only thought is how to end it: hanging, paracetamol overdose, slit wrists - everything Wilbur tries comes to nought and, invariably, his long suffering brother Harbour (Rawlins) arrives just in the nick of time to save the day. Director and co-writer Lone Scherfig invests her deceptively simple black comedy with real bite, nudging poor Wilbur to the brink of despair, only to find himself overshadowed, yet again, by his brother.

DVD Extras: Deleted scenes, out-takes, cast interviews.

Published: 15/04/2004