Watching Lost in La Mancha is like watching a cyclone (or perhaps a flash flood, which you actually do get to see destroying lots of expensive equipment on Day Two of filming). You know it's all going to go terribly wrong - and it does - and yet you can't help but hope that by some miracle everything will end happily, the film will get made, and the look of wild-eyed desperation will vanish from Terry Gilliam's eyes.

The film began its life as a making-of documentary for the DVD version of Gilliam's film-to-be, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Ultimately, it documents a disaster. Gilliam's film was to be the most expensive one financed solely through European money, and it had ten years of pre-production behind it - and yet, beset by flood, jets, the star's ailing prostate, unrehearsed extras, terrible locations, and a studio with acoustics from hell, it ground to a spectacular halt in less than a fortnight.

The film is mesmerising, like any disaster, and its frequent (and frequently black) humour provides immense and welcome relief. Bring along someone to bite, claw or prod during the excruciating bits. I know I will.

It seems ironic that a film about the notoriously bad filmmaker Edward D. Wood, Jr., the talentless "genius" behind Glen or Glenda and Plan Nine From Outer Space, would result in an outstanding and memorable movie. Tim Burton has opted for a homage to Wood's life, rather than a parody, in telling this rather strange tale of a man who was full of boundless enthusiasm for the art of film making, but had no idea that his films were so terrible. Burton's biopic focuses on the period in the 1950s when the above films were made, explores Wood's transvestism (and fetish for angora sweaters) and his close friendship with the aging, washed up, former Hollywood star, Bela Lugosi (Landau, whose touching performance won him the Oscar for best supporting actor). Other zany characters that inhabited Wood's life include the wrestler Tor Johnson (George Steele), the "amazing" Criswell (Jeffrey Jones), the transvestite Bunny Breckinridge (Bill Murray) and midnight movie hostess Vampira (Lisa Marie). There is also an ironically funny scene where Wood meets his role model, Orson Welles (Vincent D'Onofrio) who does not know that Wood makes Z-grade movies! Shot in black and white the film evokes the period (in a cheesy way) and is a delight.