FILM: RECORDED DELIVERY
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Your support makes all the difference.Spiceworld: the Movie (PG) Polygram, retail & rental, 25 May
Ginger, Posh, Scary, Sporty and Baby examine their celebrity status with a degree of success in what is, essentially, an extended pop video. Some fare better than others. Sporty (Mel C) proves the most ballsy, Baby (Emma Bunton) the most philosophical, while Posh (Victoria Adams) seems incapable of stringing a sentence together. The girls endeavour to question the nature of their man-made personae, while cultivating them further. In fact, there is no end to the girls' knowingness. They offer comments on the paparazzi and even parody a pair of Hollywood film-makers who pitch potential film scenarios to the Spice Girls' manager (Richard E Grant). Their final plan becomes reality when the Spice Girls race their Union Jack tour bus over an unfolding London Bridge. Most satisfying is their ability to ridicule their own music, casting Stephen Fry as the judge who chastises the girls for producing a record that is "by no means as kicking as your last". HHH
Regeneration (18) Fox Pathe, rental, 25 May
Gilles Mackinnon's harrowing, though beautifully shot, adaptation of Pat Barker's novel sees a group of shell-shocked First World War soldiers, including poets Siegfried Sassoon (James Wilby) and Wilfred Owen (Stuart Bunce), undergoing psychotherapy in a Scottish military hospital. Their psychiatrist, Rivers (Jonathan Pryce), treats his patients with reverence, delicately questioning them about their dreams and the horrors of trench warfare, but difficulties arise when he himself becomes disturbed by their gruelling accounts. There are strong performances from Wilby and Pryce, and particularly from Trainspotting's Johnny Lee Miller as Billy Prior. But the film never really decides whether it is following Prior's or Sassoon's story - both are equally compelling, but are left frustratingly unresolved. HHH
The Tango Lesson (PG) Artificial Eye, rental, 25 May
In criticising the male egotism embodied in the tango, Sally Potter ironically presents this shameless vanity project - which she both directs and stars in - about her own preoccupation with the exotic dance. We are supposed to applaud her quick mastery of the steps as she cavorts in front of the camera with her dance partner, Pablo Veron, who even manages to turn food preparation into a dance routine. H
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