Lonely, grief-stricken New Yorker Charlie wants to tell us ‘a good story, and this one really happened, I swear,’ in Urbania, director Jon Shear’s grim, grainy nightmare fantasia of violence, hatred, and revenge. But Charlie also asks for ‘a second to figure out the ending.’ In Urbania, based on a play by Daniel Reitz, it’s difficult to tell the truth from sorrowful, wishful-thinking fantasy. And that’s the point.

I can’t tell you how excited I was when I learned that This Is Spinal Tap was not only coming to DVD but also getting a new theatrical release, too. I mean, here I am, the biggest Taphead — or Tapgirl, as some of us femme fans like to be called — in the world, and here’s this great blast from my junior high school past.

Tears were welling in my eyes as the end credits rolled on Almost Famous, and not because this is a sad story, though it is often bittersweet — no, these were tears of joy for a film that is so complete and perfect and full of life that it swept me up into its world and held me there, and I never wanted it to let me go — and even when it did finally let go, I was happy and satiated. ‘It fills you up’ was my friend’s apt description of Almost Famous.

War is hell, we’ve learned by now. But what about not-war? The 1999 BBC-TV film Warriors — an unsentimental and heartbreaking story of British peacekeepers in Bosnia — demonstrates that any kind of armed conflict is devastating, even to those not in the immediate line of fire.

Imagine Romeo and Juliet without the chipper bounce, and you’ve got Solomon and Gaenor. Tragedy looms for these two star-crossed lovers from the opening frame of Paul Morrisson’s gloomy and melancholy film — tragedy you know they’ve no hope of escaping — and yet this isn’t a relentless bummer of a story. Instead, it’s a wonderfully morose, rainy-day kind of movie, one to watch curled up on the couch with a cat and a cup of tea. Classical and literate, it lets you pretend you’re edifying yourself while you have a good cry. Kinda like a Bronte novel.

Directed by schlockmeister Russell Mulcahy, Highlander ain’t Braveheart, but it has its own cheesy charm. Darkly stylish, it cops a feel off The Terminator, with lots of electrical energy literally charging the atmosphere, as the immortal lifeforce the losers of sword duels give off is sucked up by the victor (but not before breaking every window in the vicinity).

If it’s not Scottish, it’s crap! And sometimes even when it is Scottish, it’s still crap. I was prepared for crap — I was expecting it, and yes, even looking forward to some good laughs. And *Highlander: Endgame,* like its predecessor sequels to the sneakily charming Highlander, does not disappoint.

Bernie McPhelimy (Julie Walters) doesn’t consider herself political, but in Belfast’s explosive atmosphere, speaking out for peace is tantamount to treason — if she’s asking the IRA to stop shooting, she must be pro-British. Bernie is the heart of Titanic Town, based on Mary Costello’s autobiographical novel and directed by Roger Michell, and her story is full of the tragic ironies of the Irish struggle for independence.