When Fed Debra Winger goes undercover in the rural Midwest to investigate a bunch of white supremacists, she makes the mistake of falling in love with vicious, family-loving klansman Tom Berenger. Director Costa-Gavras has made some coruscating political masterpieces, but this overwrought mess is close to idiocy. It defuses its own explosive subject matter. Worth seeing, though, for Berenger's committedly-crazed scenery-chewing.
Pussywhipped by Madonna into remaking Lina Wertmüller's 1974 film, Guy Ritchie betrays the fact that he can't direct outside the bad-lads genre, while Madge proves, for the umpteenth time, her inability to act. She's a rich socialite falling for a poor Italian on a desert island: watch Nicolas Roeg's Castaway instead.
As producer, Ridley Scott—clearly in a good mood—leads us on a pointless trawl through the dusty dirt roads of comedy thriller territory as confused country boy Clay (a smouldering Joaquin Phoenix) gets duped into hanging loose with fast-talking rhinestone cowboy Lester Long (Vince Vaughn). Quite where we fit into this generic nonsense is something else altogether.
After the early patronage of Howe Gelb, Oregon's Matt Ward dished up 2001's End Of Amnesia, one of the most breathtaking albums of recent years. Transfiguration...is another masterclass in deft guitar picking, smudged with piano, harmonica and a voice like honey drizzled onto a dry creekbed. The behind-a-screen-door quality of production adds to the strangeness, while the likes of "Undertaker" often stop, start, scuff around then veer off at a tangent. Somewhere between a Gelb bothering to finish off songs and The Band at their most bucolic.
