Reviews

William Friedkin's thriller casts Benicio Del Toro as a Special Forces killing machine running amok and Tommy Lee Jones as the man who trained him and now has to bring him in. Hokum, basically, but the knife fights are the best since David Carradine and James Remar went at each other with some gusto in The Long Riders.

Cleary's career has included drumming in psych-poppers The Essex Green, stints in The Pants and Famous Potatoes, mandolinist in contra-dance string bands and a 1997 release under the moniker Stupid Club (Made To Feel). Once resident of Austin, he now calls New York home, but sounds Tennessee in spirit. Confused? You should be, but Numbers Add Up sounds like the happy nesting of a restless muse. Tapping into a literate strain of country-folk, his mellow delivery is as easy to swallow as James Taylor's, but glows with lasting warmth.

Fog's Andrew Broder meets cLOUDDEAD's Jonathan Wolf

Cult Canadian dandy grapples with his dual personality on third LP

Further unreleased Hendrix material from 1970 concert

Pioneering soul legend's back catalogue finally gets respect it deserves

Two-CD retrospective from Barking's finest. Initial copies include limited edition CD of rarities

Flawed, fascinating, atypical Britflick

Hideo Nakata, Japan's master of suspense and unease, knocks one out of the park again with this follow-up to his Ring cycle. A neurotic single mother discovers a ghostly rising damp problem in the apartment block she moves in to with her little girl. Gradually, her sanity begins to ebb away. A squelchy study in female hysteria and maternal anxiety, yes, but also a good, old-fashioned spook flick.

This Korean thriller is arrestingly stylised, impeccably directed and occasionally very beautiful, but jeesh, it's nasty stuff. A deaf-mute tries to kidnap a rich man's daughter to pay for his sister's operation. Naturally, it all goes horribly wrong. The torture of a young woman with electrical cables and the blade attack on a family of organ traffickers are especially gruesome, but beyond that, there's a withering examination of urban alienation and loneliness at play.