Reviews

Android

Quirky variant on the Frankenstein riff. Klaus Kinski is a scientist working on a space station with his android assistant Max404 (Don Opper, who co-wrote). Max is going through android adolescence—he's restless, sulky, curious about sex. Then a trio of escaped convicts invade, and one of them's a girl. Funny and compelling, and worth catching for Opper's geeky performance alone.

Cowboy Junkies – Open Road

Hard to tell what's the main feature and what are the extras in this excellent four-part, three-hour package from Canada's heroes of spooked alt.country. There's an hour-long documentary on the Junkies' 2001 world tour, a Quebec festival appearance, Margo and Michael Timmins playing an acoustic set and the same pair in lengthy conversation to make it a must for all Cowboy Junkies fans.

Ashley Park – The Secretariat Motor Hotel Darling

Third album from mellifluous Vancouver country-popheads

Kid 606 – Kill Sound Before Sound Kills You

Californian often hyped as the US Aphex

Cracker – Leftover Salmon

Two-band collaboration revisits Cracker faves in Richmond vs Nashville showdown

Joan Baez – The Complete A&M Recordings

Across five studio albums and a live set, the first lady of folk comes to terms with new movement of singer/songwriters

Brussels Sprouts

Staggeringly diverse re-releases from Belgian label a decade ahead of its time

Child’s Play

Van Sant's stark, poetic recreation of Columbine

Brannigan

This late John Wayne movie has The Duke as a Chicago cop trailing his man to London, while a hitman seeks to fulfill a contract on Wayne's life. It's middling, fish-out-of-water fare, the kind of bawdy, roustabout stuff Wayne did far too often, but by way of compensation you get Richard Attenborough as Wayne's finicky Scotland Yard sidekick.

A Snake Of June

Mesmerising Japanese study of voyeurism and eroticism. Shot in black and white but colourfully performed by Asuka Kurosawa as a repressed wife who's blackmailed by a stranger into—wait for it—masturbating in public places. In lesser hands it'd be tat, but there's a Cronenberg-like claustrophobia to the seediness. Porn, then, but arty porn.
Advertisement

Editor's Picks

Advertisement