Reviews

The High Llamas – Beet, Maize & Corn

Seventh studio album from inveterate Beach Boys fans

Sad Café

The four-track debut solo EP becomes 157 minutes of music over two CDs, with a bonus DVD

Party Monster – Island

Celebrating the '80s electro-dance era, at least as it was perceived in New York clubs, this mixes period pounders with updated readings from contemporary exponents. Electroclash may not have taken off on cue, but there's a trickle-down situation now. You'll both laugh at and bounce about to Miss Kittin & The Hacker's irreverent "Frank Sinatra", Ladytron's comic "Seventeen" and Felix Da Housecat's "Money, Success, Fame, Glamour".

Radio 4 – Gotham!

Re-release of NY punk-funk debut, with bonus disc

Miles Davis – The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions

Five-CD set featuring four-and-a-half hours of new music recorded in 1970

Bad Boys II

Miami vice action caper overshoots

Holes

Elevated kiddie flick tackles grown-up issues

Harlequin

The Omen echoes throughout Simon Wincer's camp but sporadically affecting 1980 re-imagining of Rasputin. Here the Mad Monk has been replaced by Robert Powell's mysterious glam-rock psychic healer, who cures the leukaemia-stricken son of venal senator David Hemmings and uses magic to expose the senator's crimes. It's clunky and dated, but Powell's typically messianic performance smoothes over the cracks.

Flight Of The Intruder

Gung-ho navy flyboys Willem Dafoe and Brad Johnson, disillusioned with America's half-hearted prosecution of the war in Vietnam, attempt to hurry the conflict to a conclusion by taking it upon themselves to bomb Hanoi. Hilarious macho nonsense from John Milius at his most demented, in other words.

The Honeymoon Killers

A key tome in the lovers-on-the-lam canon, with uncredited mastershots from a fledgling Martin Scorsese, Honeymoon Killers is the tale of a bloated, psychotic nurse (Shirley Stoler—Divine meets Louise Fletcher), her oily Spanish lover (Tony Lo Bianco) and the various needy, neurotic, half-witted women they deceive and murder. Startling photography, am-dram performances, and deeply misogynistic.
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