Reviews

Charlize Theron earns her Oscar as confused Florida serial killer Aileen Wuornos, not just for looking less attractive but because, after 20 minutes, you forget she's even a woman. So macho is her white-trash lesbian aggressor that you believe Christina Ricci is 'her' arm candy. Both excel as fuck-ups, and Patty Jenkins' script and direction are grim and gristly. Superb.

The duo's 1994 take on Unplugged, which involved recording new material in Morocco and rearranging old Zep songs with Middle Eastern flavours and musicians, was a brave but preposterous conceit. Filmed in a Welsh valley, in a slate quarry and cross-legged with locals in Marrakesh, they're only really credible and incredible in their natural environment—a stage.

Misunderstood visionaries release 'unfinished'fourth album

The best of Bill Nelson's undervalued art rockers, coinciding with reissues of five original Be-Bop albums

Epic two-CD 'vinyl junkie' retro-mix from Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs

More "Woo-Hoo"s from Tarantino's rock'n'rolling geishas

Business as usual for Chicago's impressionistic chill-out king

The Lancashire-based Palmer has a delicious hair-in-the-voice approach that gives her a tough edge over more fey contemporaries. This, her third album after 2001's self-funded romantica obscura and predecessor A Certain Kind Of Distance, is mostly just acoustic and voice, sparsely adorned with the decorative frills of guitarist Mark Townson, fretless bass, violin, mandolin and cello (the slow string fade of "Followed Down Sundown" is outstanding).

Retro new wave/post-punk Middle Eastern style from Israeli quartet

A selection of the other new albums released this month