Reviews

Lost soft-pop masterpiece from Nashville arranger and former Elvis cohort

Second instalment of Tarantino's "roaring rampage of revenge" is a little heavy on the dialogue

Mannered documentary on Basque separatism

Jack Lemmon is the boozy PR man. Lee Remick is the teetotal secretary. He buys her a brandy. They're hooked! They lose their jobs, have an unwanted baby and get stuck into the hard stuff. He reforms. She doesn't. "You and I were a couple of drunks on the sea of booze, and the boat sank!" Hysterical yet Oscar-worthy stuff from Blake Edwards.

Adapted from a Robert Ludlum potboiler, Sam Peckinpah's demented final movie from 1983 ostensibly centres on TV reporter Rutger Hauer, who, coerced by sinister CIA men Burt Lancaster and John Hurt into selling out old pals, allows them to rig his home with cameras to monitor their weekend reunion. It's soon clear Peckinpah has far more interest in Hurt, brilliant as the betrayed rogue agent whose maniacal plotting drives the film over the edge. A bizarre pile-up of double-triple-crossing, it's almost impossible to follow; but then, confusion and panic are what the film is about.

Susan Hayward won the Oscar for committed scene-trashing in this 1958 movie, which—based on the real-life execution of Barbara Graham, a "goodtime girl" (possibly) framed for murder and sent to the gas chamber in 1955—was very much the Monster of its day. Robert Wise directs as if it were a jazz documentary, taking cues from the great score by Johnny Mandel, itself cooled to within an inch of its life by the Gerry Mulligan Quartet.

Mrs Elvis Costello keeps it (largely) in the family

Second album from folk-country Seattle quintet, again produced by Tucker (Laura Veirs) Martine

Back with a vengeance, the second of Tarantino's Uma-in-yellow action epics gives good dialogue—excerpts included here. The music's deliberately eclectic, built around a spine of appropriated Morricone. Johnny Cash rumbles through "Satisfied Mind", Charlie Feathers chirrups old-time rock'n'roll, and there's a hidden track from Wu-Tang Clan, "Black Mamba". Malcolm McLaren—presumably Quentin admires his media scams—gives us the sultry samples of "About Her".

Scotland's favourite pop-folk troubadour embraces the harsher reality of the '70s with mixed results