The promising 1996 debut by Greg Mottola, The Daytrippers is the epitome of early-'90s Sundance syndrome, where fulsome character and sharp dialogue take precedence over narrative logic. Thus, on the whim of daughter Eliza (Hope Davis), the entire Malone family (including indie queen Parker Posey) take an entertaining but essentially unjustifiable day trip to Manhattan.
Miraculous, much underrated adaptation of posthumous Kieslowski screenplay by Run Lola Run director Tom Tykwer. Cate Blanchett is a British teacher in Turin who, as an act of vengeance, becomes an unlikely terrorist. Young policeman Giovanni Ribisi falls in love and joins her on the run, but it's more about magic realism and haunting, luminous beauty.
Based on a John Cheever story, this 1968 movie stars Burt Lancaster as a seemingly prosperous and urbane middle-aged man who decides to swim back to his suburban house via all the pools in the neighbourhood. But his journey turns out to be an exposé of his personal downfall. An enigmatic meditation on the American Dream, marred only by a couple of hazy, slo-mo scenes that radiate '60s naffness.
Directed by Oxide Pang, this was re-edited after his success with The Eye—Pang presumably feeling he could now take more stylistic liberties. The movie concerns a drug dealer who courts disaster by upping the ante to keep his girlfriend from prostitution, and sees Pang grandly messing with timelines, colour and reality. An enjoyable dip in the seedy Bangkok underground.
Seven years in the making, this is Anup Singh's dreamy cinematic tone poem (lots of kites and rivers) based on the life and work of acclaimed Indian film-maker Ritwik Ghatak. Adopting a brave, artistic, and not entirely successful motif, Singh follows two symbolic protagonists, male and female, as they re-enact scenes and themes from Ghatak's seemingly sacred canon.
November 1979. Bob Marley is already stricken with the cancer that will soon kill him. He's in the middle of a US tour that will take in 47 dates in 49 nights. By the time he reaches the Santa Barbara County Bowl, he's exhausted. He looks tired and has a cold he can't shake off. The throb in his cancerous toe is a constant reminder that he's dying.
And yet he sounds magnificent.
Made by Jack Hazan and David Mingay, this film follows Ray Gange as he packs in his job to roadie for The Clash. The sight of Strummer, Jones and co acting out scenes from their daily lives is strangely endearing, and as a record of pre-Thatcher Britain, it's fascinating.
Trapped in a sweaty throng of beered-up blokes, Paul Weller live can be an endurance test. In the comfort of your own home, he's great. Recorded last October, you get all the fun of a night out in Glasgow without plastic glasses crunching underfoot as Weller trawls through 30 songs (a third of them from 2002's Illumination). Whether you prefer The Jam ("A Town Called Malice"), The Style Council ("Our Favourite Shop") or his solo work ("The Changing Man"), you're unlikely to be disappointed.
There was life after prog for Utopia. After years of hi-tech bombast and electronic freakouts, the band and their music lost ballast. By 1980, they were playing new wave-inflected pop-rock and Beatles pastiches. Bassist Kasim Sulton wears a skinny power pop tie and synth whizz Roger Powell looks like a Buggle on acid. The highpoints are the extremes: Todd Rundgren crooning "Hello It's Me" and "Cliché" alone, and the group in full-tilt cosmic mode for "Initiation".
Michael Chiklis often grabs the plaudits for his portrayal of detective Vic Mackey, controlling the dealers and gang-bangers of LA's fictional Farmington with his renegade Strike Team, but this DVD release of The Shield's first series is a jolting reminder of how creator Shawn Ryan conceived it as a complex ensemble piece steeped in moral ambiguity. Ryan exposes the politics and brutality that underpin police work, while the handheld photography makes gunfights, rape and murder hideously real. Brilliant.