Reviews

Britta Phillips & Dean Wareham – L’Avventura

Luna spin-off go Lee'n'Nancy or Serge'n'Jane

Lyrics Born – Later That Day

Solo debut from drippy Californian renegade and erstwhile DJ Shadow associate

Junior Walker & The All Stars

Motown's mighty sax man on two twofers

Hares Apparent

First five albums (plus bonus tracks) by post-punk demigods

Irish Stew

Lively, multi-layered Dublin-set comedy drama

The Early Films Of Peter Greenaway—Volumes 1 & 2

Greenaway has more than once been known to disappear up his own aesthetics, but this collection of his short films plays to his strengths, tolerating little tedium. Disc One includes six films exploring his constant themes, from A Walk Through H (numbers, maps, the afterlife) to Windows (37 people fall through windows to their deaths). Disc Two features the obsessive Vertical Features Remake and The Falls (92 mini-biogs), and is—if you're in the mood—monumental like video art pioneer Bill Viola.

Charlie’s Angels 2: Full Throttle

With barely a nod to the notion of storyline, this is another loud, brash series of MTV sketches, big on energy, little on brain. Somehow the idea of three scantily-clad chicks getting along okay with each other is pitched as pop-feminist empowerment. Diaz, Barrymore and Liu kick ass and chew scenery; Demi Moore is freakish; the (great) soundtrack rides roughshod over everything. Candy floss.

Dire Straights

Who'd have thought after the debacle of Velvet Goldmine that Todd Haynes' next film would be as clever, meaningful and powerfully resonant as this masterpiece of stylised social commentary? In the 1950s, the expatriate German director Douglas Sirk directed a series of Hollywood films that at the time were sniffily known as "women's pictures", which only later were recognised as brilliantly crafted satires, as sharply observed as novels like Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates' classic dissection of the Eisenhower years.

Marc Almond – Heart On Snow

Non-stop erotic cabaret singer goes East to form Buena Vista Socialist Club

The Mass – City Of DIS

Marvellously convoluted virtuoso mayhem
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