If ever there was a premise that excites those hunting the vampyric essence The Addiction has it. After being treated as everything from the collective fear of death to a seductive bisexual decadent, The Addiction promises to examine the vampire as a theological entity, a symbol of the spiritual isolation that arises from sin. A glorious idea in theory and one which could have fed new life into the evolving myth of the vampire but not only does The Addiction not live up to its promise, it goes out of its way to make you wish you never got excited about it in the first place.

It's not just that The Addiction is pretentious, it's offensively so. There's no reasoning in this film, no consistency, just a fundamental misreading of existentialist philosophers coupled with impenetrable references to AIDS, original sin, the killing fields and the need to bring suffering upon others. In the latter, The Addiction succeeds admirably. Much like an academic paper with an exciting abstract but dull, self-important content, this is a film that has neither a sense of direction nor a desire to enlighten its audience. The filming is ugly, the acting is mediocre, the tension is non-existent while the whole pseudo-intellectual edifice is held together by a storyline so thin that the makers stop pretending to stick to the script around a quarter of the way in. Even the famous "orgy" sequence leaves its audience less aroused or terrified than it does agitated and bored.

While things threaten to brighten when Christopher Walken makes his brief appearance, you might wonder why he has a knowing smirk on his face. One can only speculate whether he sees the thing as a joke at the expense of the writers. The problem with this thought is that this is a film that takes itself too seriously to even be amusing for its pretension, like a party guest who not only doesn't want to have a good time but wants to make sure that everyone else in the room doesn't have one either. If you're interested in any of the fascinating themes which The Addiction toys with then don't watch it. This film drains 82 excruciating minutes from your life and concludes what Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt did in 3 minutes while wearing French wigs. A hateful film.

Justin Timberlake returns to a pop world very different from the one he left. In 2006 Michael Jackson was alive, Britney hadn't yet gone mad and nobody knew what a Beliber was. Interestingly, much of The 20/20 Experience is about rejecting the pop landscape which Timberlake's last album shaped.

Don't expect much in the way of streetwise raps or clambering house beats here, Timberlake turns his attention to the 70s soul albums that paved the way for the later disco era as if directly claiming his precedence in modern pop. Mirrors alone belongs to another time (the mid-80s) and is the most commercial track here by some distance.

This doesn't make it a less, but a more, appealing album. While his contemporaries are desperately churning out would be hits for mass appeal, The 20/20 Experience subversively plays like a collection of grooves. The ghost of Michael Jackson still haunts the rhythms but Timberlake is more interested in being off the wall than bad for much of this album. This is clearest on the wildly sucessful Let The Groove Get In. Six years ago it would have been turned into a four-to-the-floor dance monster, but Timberlake goes for restraint which compels the listener to enter a more authentic erotic experience. The eruption into a looped falsetto is simply delicious.

Darker pleasures are offered by the experimental Don't Hold The Wall with its middle-eastern pungi and descent into claustrophobia while Tunnel Vision is a fountain of obsessive energy with Timberlake's pop sensibilites marking it as 20/20's answer to Cry My A River and a very likely major hit. These moments are high points for Timbaland as a producer who reinvents his bag of tricks (which was long ago worn out) by incorporating the sounds of "Dream pop". Team Timberlake/Timbaland have been listening to Pogo more than they have Rihanna.

If there is a short-coming it's the lyrics. Like Madonna, Timberlake's words have become trapped by his own persona and the come-ons and single entendres range from the smirking to the cringe worthy. Still, attention to what is actually being said isn't a concern on an ambient album that isn't meant to be heard as much as felt. Rather than standing at the front and centre, the vocals blend into a tasteful, luxuriant and immaculately produced tapestry of music that wraps the audience into itself letting JT's comeback play like an elegant suite of bleeps, sambas and harps.

It all makes for a deeply sensual experience.

1967, the Milan chateau of a rich, industrialist family. Each family member, father, mother, son and daughter, hides from facing themselves to some degree or another, burying themselves in playing the role expected of them. Terrence Stamp arrives as the angelic Mysterious Stranger whose eroticism and nonjudgementalism allow each to contact the self buried beneath expectation and social propriety. And then he disappears. The void left in his absence is palpable while each family member attempts to come to terms with themselves with varying degrees of success.

Perhaps more so than any other director, Pasolini's work is virtually indistinguishable from his political thought and what spaces do exist between the two are at their narrowest in Teorema. Whereas other left-leaning filmmakers use the narrative of film to launch their most vitriolic attacks on capitalism and the bourgeois, true to form, Pasolini doesn't play up to expectations. There's no anger or hatred here (in fact there's a reference to the hate-fuelled in the opening sequence where it's mockingly suggested that "nothing that the bourgeois does can ever be good"), instead Pasolini examines something far deeper than economics, he looks to the causes of desire which motivate those who seek economic dominance. In a sense, he looks at the spiritual.

It is interesting that the atheist Pasolini uses a semi-religious narrative to show that while humanity is busy pursuing consumerism it is losing touch with what at its core it is. This is a film which truly does away with class distinction, not by demonising one group but by looking beyond the things that control us and holding a magnifying glass over the things that make us commonly human; the desire for love and the void keenly felt in its absence.

Pasolini is always the star of his films and the directing in Teorema is ethereal in places and downright strange in others. Terrence Stamp's Mysterious Stranger is haunting but it's Silvana Mangano who steals the show here as the mother forced to examine herself and who finds the experience so intolerable she seeks escape in mindless sex.

Despite the idea of the plot probably resonating with many film watchers, this is not a film for everyone. At times interminably slow, it does not seek to provide a "felt experience" and is very much a product of its time and place. For those looking for an intellectually challenging and, at times, visually arresting journey into European cinema, Teorema is a worthy gateway into such strange worlds. Three stars.

In Reluctant Saint, Donald Spoto outlines the life of a man who identified with the outcast and the poor to such a degree that, by the time of his death at 44, he was indistinguishable from them. A man whose body was ravaged by scars of the leprosy he'd washed from the bodies of others. A man mourned by the animals he loved.

A deeply moving biography, Reluctant Saint reveals St. Francis of Assisi, not as sanctity beyond reach, not a "white washed tomb of dead men's bones", but a fully human saint who, through the cracks of his broken humanity, shines divine love. Here he is shown in his humour, eccentricities, difficultness and intelligence. There's also the broken-heart and loneliness that is felt by friends of God and lovers of all creatures great and small.

Spoto shows how, even within his own lifetime, the Franciscan Order had degenerated into corruption and strayed into politics - far from Francis' humble message of nonjudgementalism and unconditional love towards all things. His complex relationship with the organized church is also discussed in detail and it's suggested that although Francis was not a secret heretic (as some have asserted) his approach was to look past externalisms and see the Church as the administer of sacraments, free of the stuffy institution worship of traditionalists. Meanwhile, the impression given of the Church is one of uncertainty in how to accommodate such a character. Indeed, it still approaches Francis with some embarrassment; official publications all protest, perhaps too much, the respect Francis had for the Church as an organized institution in a bid to "make safe" his radicalism.

His young, libertine lifestyle is brought to life vividly and the effect of the troubadours and chivalry on his later conversion are considered as primary formative influences. Elsewhere, the composition of the Canticle of the Sun is recounted beautifully while debunking some of the more recent attempts to present St. Francis of Assisi as a proto-hippie. Sadly, his relationship with animals isn't given as in depth a treatment as might have been desired but then no book could possibly contain the love that he felt towards all things.

As paper and ink goes though, Reluctant Saint, emphasising emotion and spirituality while not diminishing its scholarship and historical rigour, is a first class addition to the already vast number of books that have been written about him and is another tool used by the ghost of St. Francis to preach absolute love and acceptance to a world as in need of the true Gospel as ever before.

There comes a point after reading so many "maybes", "perhapses", "what ifs" over the course of nearly three hundred pages that any hope to ascertain something like truth is met with despair. This should come as no real surprise; objective truth is an oppressive concept to those who push for the kind of relativism where any fantastic idea is acceptable simply because the precious want to believe it. Lynn Picknett's Mary Magdalene: Christianity's Hidden Goddess is an almost perfect avatar of the worst side of this emotional relativism and the flawed research that often accompanies conspiratorial literature. Here is a litany of bogus theories, a complete misunderstanding of ancient sources, a manipulation of data to meet a prejudiced outcome and a seemingly inexhaustible hatred for Christianity.

This is a shame considering that both The Templar Revelation: Secret Guardians Of The True Identity Of Christ and The Sion Revelation are, for their questionable deductions, two of the most intriguing and persuasive works in the genre. Their twists and turns, hinting at an ever thickening game of smoke and mirrors, unveiled the Esoteric Tradition as the hidden hand behind a series of historical mysteries. In so doing, both of those works act as histories of occult philosophy in Europe and make convincing cases for the influence of Rosicrucianism at Rennes-le-Chateau.

None of this is to be found in Mary Magdalene: Christianity's Hidden Goddess. Perhaps this is because the focus here is on biblical sources rather than more recent history but one has the impression that Picknett felt the need to air yet more of her personal problems with Christianity than previous publications allowed. It's through this lens that Picknett demands the truth of a number of extreme claims. These include the claim that Maria Magdalena was black despite all ancient evidence pointing to her being a semitic woman, that the Catholic Church is unquestionably involved in an organized sexist conspiracy (despite there being four female "Doctors of the Church", the highest theological honour it gives) and, perhaps most tellingly of all, the claim that Jesus Christ had John the Baptist murdered by his "secret follower" Salome. This is not only despite no evidence, it is actually in the face of all historical documentation.

Added to this, there's a fundamental misunderstanding of selective passages of the Gnostic Gospels. There's no analysis of Docetism, the old Gnostic doctrine of Jesus being immaterial, as this would counter Picknett's demand for an unmarried sexual relationship between Jesus and Maria Magdalena. Also, Picknett attributes a number of semi-Gnostic beliefs to the Priory of Sion. One can only but wonder how the eccentric but devout Roman Catholic Pierre Plantard would react to such claims.

There are secrets, known to initiates, concerning the true place of Maria Magdalena in Christianity but you will not find them here. For those who wish to get closer to the truth, Marjoire Malvern's Venus in Sackcloth is recommended. Mary Magdalene: Christianity's Hidden Goddess is to be avoided unless the topic of research is how foolish hatred and prejudiced research become when given their fullest expression. One star.

Capitalising on Madonna's leaving Warner Bros. motivates this release of her collected studio works rather than a further attempt at celebrating the career of their most bankable star. It's a false move. Given the multiple millions of copies that these records have already sold, one would think that a polished and revived compilation of Madonna's vast (and frequently brilliant) unreleased catalogue would have ventured into higher sales territory but then, even when she was with Warner Bros., there's always been something of the expensive and deluxe about certain "limited edition" Madonna releases.

While the collection of these musical books into one, canonical, Holy Bible signifies the closing of the first three decades of the Madonna event, let the casual fan be aware from the off-set that there are some truly essential doctrines that you won't find here. Vogue, Into The Groove, You'll See, Beautiful Stranger and Justify My Love are all career highlights that are nowhere to be seen and one has to question whether it would have been a smarter move to have included The Immaculate Collection and Something To Remember in this package and market it as "The Ultimate Madonna Experience". There's also the question of whether these records can be pursued individually (and with the, typically, beautiful linear notes and images rather than the cardboard slips here) for less than the asking price of this box set.

As for what is here, what can be said that hasn't been exhausted? These albums document the career of one of the greatest artists (and art is the word here) of our time and a true icon of modern history. Listened to chronologically, Madonna's transformation, from tie-dyed ragamuffin to sophisticated artist who uses pop culture as the canvas for her vision, is genuinely spectacular.

Ray Of Light's ethereal techno has barely aged at almost 15 years. Its The Power of Goodbye and Sky Fits Heaven are not only highlights in Madonna's career but highlights in pop music. Like A Prayer's title track is still a foremost contender for Madonna's single greatest moment and the album itself documents its creator's struggle with Catholicism, art and eroticism as a series of prayers of ecstasy. Likewise, Confessions On A Dance Floor deals with a Kabbalistic rebirth and provides another groundbreaking single in Hung Up amongst a tour de force of electro-pop. Elsewhere, the once maligned Erotica is revisited as one of Madonna's best records (check out the flamenco on the deliriously hedonistic Deeper and Deeper and the ocean deep bass on French lounge number Waiting) while Like a Virgin and True Blue are virtual greatest hits records in themselves. In fact the only let down, aside from some dated filler on the self-titled debut, is the recent and bland tasting Hard Candy. Unsurprisingly it's the least Madonna sounding album of the collection.

In terms of what is here, then, makes The Complete Studio Albums an essential purchase and it perhaps says something of what Madonna is about that she fills eleven albums and still omits some of the most iconic pop songs of the past thirty years. Although (most of!) those singles can be hunted out on the Celebration (2 CD) compilation, those wanting to venture deeper into the demi-religion of Madonna should be here as a starting point while even those who have experienced before can use this collection to be touched again for the very first time.

In a sense more expectation rests on Lotus than of any album of the TRL generation of pop stars. The six years since Christina Aguilera's last truly popular album have not been kind to this once highly esteemed songstress. Divorce, a number of catastrophic public appearances, a flop film and awful album have all pounded nails into a waiting coffin. Even the much celebrated voice seemed to have given way to missed-lyrical screeches at the Super Bowl. Perhaps most troubling of all has been the popular feeling that in the arrogant defensiveness seen in interviews and much of her work, Aguilera has succeeded in alienating a large proportion of, what was once, an enormous record buying fanbase. Fortunately, someone at Team Christina realised this and made crucial decisions to initiate damage control. An appearance on a popular television program, a change of image and a slot on Maroon 5's best single were all quickly arranged, with a new album hastily pieced together to re-track a pop career gone off course.

Tellingly, the gap between Bionic and Lotus is the shortest of Aguilera's career but unlike its predecessor, Lotus easily accomplishes what it sets out to do. The spiritual heir to Aguilera's debut, Lotus' thirteen tracks play less like a concept album and more like a collection of singles primed and ready for release, a clever move in the game of pop. Lite power anthem Army Of Me in particular sounds made for radio and with the right promotion could give the former Mrs. Bratman a major hit while the poptastically dancey Let There Be Love wouldn't have sounded out of place on Ms. Spears' last record. Best of all is Cee Lo Green duet Make The World Move, a relentless barnstormer of horns and unbridled optimism. A certain #1 if it had been released as the album lead, for the first time in years it makes Christina Aguilera sound like fun.

Similarly, stand-out track Blank Page, the obligatory major ballad, doesn't indulge in post-divorce aggression as much as honest vulnerability and something that sounds suspiciously like real love. It's an astonishing song for it. With Blank Page, SIA, whose ballads were the only saving grace of Bionic, proves herself as necessary a collaborator for Christina now as Linda Perry was ten years ago. Beautiful.

This isn't to say that all here is solid pop gold. Circles is, frankly, horrible and would have made the album a more complete record had it been left on the cutting room floor whereas the shouty Just A Fool sounds like Aerosmith covering Celine Dion and not in a good way. However, these are minor blemishes on a consistent record which deserves a commercial success that diverts the worst possible outcome for any aspiring diva: irrelevancy.

The day will come when Christina Aguilera will stop trying to prove herself to the world and instead deliver the career best album that is obviously in her, a grown-up version of 2002's Stripped that is sang (not shouted) by a mature woman and mother. Until that day comes, she could do much worse than aim for the temporal but accessible pop perfection often heard here. The train is back on the rails. Three stars.

Arguably the most beautifully written horror novel of the 20th century, Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes is less a grown up fairytale (the essence of gothic horror), more a childhood journey into pre-mature adulthood. Oh, but don't think that Bradbury is going to travel down the well-trodden road of children dealing with adult themes, Something Wicked This Way Comes doesn't let you off the ride that easily, no. Here the innocence and spiritual freedom of childhood meets the jaded corruption of age in a head-on blur of imagery that plays on the desire for eternal youth just as it does on the terror and exhilaration of aging.

Two boys are edging close to their thirteenth year, together, in a small Illinois town the week before Halloween. The flow of day to day life is interrupted by the appearance of a sinister carnival, a carnival with a ride of magic; a carousel that travelled forward adds years and travelled backwards removes them. Desire to ride the carousel arises from an absence and a greed to have that absence met. However, those who fulfil their desire and ride the carousel may find themselves younger/older but they also find themselves unable to deal with inhabiting a body that they've perhaps grown out of and, in search of help, they turn to the wicked carnival which they are sucked into, eventually becoming part of its travelling freak show. In this, Bradbury essays the nature of evil; evil promises to fulfil our desires and uses the draw of that to lure us into the misery which it feeds on, the misery which sustains it, the misery which can only be overcome by joy.

The prose which frames this unusual tale is, at times, heavy going, to the extent that it sometimes detracts from the story itself. At other times it is mesmerising, drawing the reader into the story through a mad hypnosis while the characters exist in some strange place between realism and archetype. The sum total of Something Wicked This Way Comes, then, leaves the reader with both a firm grasp of the reality of evil and a reawakened sense of a childhood that has gone dusty with age. An exceptional novel. Four Stars.

Well here's one for the books! Not that Hollywood has produced a male stripper film with a strong veneer of MTV, not that it stars some of the best looking actors around, but that, against the odds, it's all rather good. OK, so don't throw out your copies of Vertigo and The Godfather just yet, Magic Mike won't be troubling the Greatest Films Ever Made lists but it's quite possible that Steven Soderbergh has created what could well become a signature film of the year.

The set up is humble enough; Nineteen year old Adam (Alex Pettyfer), something of a loner, turns up to work on a Florida construction site where he discovers the confident Mike (Channing Tatum). The two strike up a friendship and upon learning that Mike's primary income is derived from stripping, Adam follows his new big brother into the business garnering women, easy money and drugs in the process. There's the necessary romantic subplot involving Mike and Adam's sister thrown in and the conservative undercurrents of a cautionary tale best seen in Matthew McConaughey's Dallas, who, beneath his ageing flesh, acts as an avatar for what becomes of those who cannot let go of their stripper salad days. In many ways, Magic Mike is a film about its title character's attempt to escape a similar fate. While Dallas is certainly the best performance of McConaughey's career, it's Pettyfer and Tatum who are the stars of the show here, both giving fine performances and, in the case of Tatum, turning in some genuinely outstanding dance sequences.

However, despite this stripper framework Magic Mike is, at its heart, a boys will be boys film. Heterosexual male viewers might be surprised to discover that here is a rather masculine film which shows life from the perspective of its male protagonists and is as heavy on bromance as it is on sexuality - not that it's lite on that either. Peter Andrews' cinematography adds to the coming of age flavour and the sun-kissed shots of Florida often make Magic Mike feel like MTV's coverage of Spring Break 1999 - all in the best possible way. If there is a let down it comes in the form of its few female characters; all characterised by their sexuality whether it be prudish or loose, an odd scenario given the supposed male-objectification that the film toys with.

Still, when taken as a carefree adventure, its strong performances, sledgehammer of a soundtrack and optimistic atmosphere elevate Magic Mike far above its contemporaries and mark it out as the best "dance flick" in well over a decade. Fun, trashy entertainment. Three stars.

If there is something shocking about Devil it's that, despite its critics, it really is a rather good film. Given the way horror has been going it may simply look good by comparison but, on its own terms, Devil deserves mention as one of the better horror films of recent years. Equal parts Speed, Phone Booth and The Devil's Advocate, the film uses the concept of Satanic retribution (retribution has never been part of traditional Satanic folklore - but one can always suspend pedantry) to frame a whodunit mystery that also raises questions of character in the Se7en mould. Violent without being gory, it manages to build tension that is genuinely engaging and, at times, claustrophobic.

Five individuals are trapped in the elevator of a Philadelphia skyscraper, each one with their own sins, their own secrets, while the police and building security watch on as realisation of what is really unfolding becomes clear. The acting ranges here from the adequate to the excellent, the latter best seen in rising star Logan Marshall-Green's smouldering performance although Chris Messina's performance as detective Bowden threatens to steal the show. Better yet, CGI is avoided altogether with only traditional methods used to create an unsettling atmosphere.

All this is not to say that Devil is film of the year. It would take considerable effort to earn that title while having a line about how toast falling "jelly side up" is indicative of the presence of Satan (!). The decision to use modern archetypal characters (the homie trying to make good, the annoying salesman, etc.) is also ill-advised. Still, these misadventures don't detract from an enjoyable and perfectly timed excursion into modern horror with an old-fashioned feel which is well worth the time of any self-respecting fan of suspenseful cinema. Three Stars.