Reviews

Ultravox - Brilliant

Dull and pompous record from the no-longer-relevant Ure and co

22 May 2012

Does the world really need another album, the first in 26 years, from the ‘classic’ Midge Ure-era Ultravox – a group of negligible lasting impact on music even at their mid-80s arena synth-pop zenith? The Trade Descriptions Act-violating Brilliant is…

Ed Sheeran - Tue 10 Jan 2012, HMV Picture House, Edinburgh

Unlikely chart-topping teen idol performs angsty ballads

3 Feb 2012

‘I have some news’, Ed Sheeran casually mentions amidst the screaming adoration, after a nice loop-pedal driven cover of 'Wayfaring Stranger'. ‘My album’s just gone triple platinum’. (More screams). Quite impressive, really, for the unlikely teen idol…

Men in Black 3

Silly, lightweight, completely unnecessary but surprisingly fun

25 May 2012

In these times of austerity Hollywood seems scared of originals ideas. Studios demand ‘brand recognition’ before they’ll stump up the multi-million dollar budgets blockbusters require. And they seem willing to latch onto almost any brand, from comics to…

Kung Fu Panda

3 Jul 2008

COMEDY/ANIMATION (PG) 91min In the words of Carl Douglas’ 1974 disco hit: ‘Everybody is kung fu fighting.’ Everybody, that is, apart from overweight panda Po (voiced by Jack Black). He dreams about joining his heroes, the Fierce Five, in butt-kicking…

Cannes 2012: Amour

Deeply sad and affecting film from Michael Haneke, and winner of the 2012 Palme D’Or

28 May 2012

Unlike The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke’s Palme D’Or winning film from 2009), which stands out for its thematic and narrative complexities, Amour sees the Austrian director take a far simpler approach to filmmaking, with an intimate story of an elderly…

Cannes 2012: Holy Motors

Hugely satisfying and inventive celebration of cinema from Leos Carax

28 May 2012

Monsieur Oscar (Denis Lavant) is picked up by his driver Celine (Edith Scob) for a day’s work - 9 appointments that will take him across Paris and into the paths of an array of characters. If that sounds vague, it’s deliberate - to say anymore would…

Nude

Non-gratuitous meanderings for art’s sake

21 Aug 2008

Don’t worry, there is no gratuitous nudity in Nude, just two actors flexing and posing their naked bodies in close proximity to the front row. But it’s all done in the name of art, and the context of a life drawing class, in which the reluctant audience…

Cannes 2012: The Paperboy

Lee Daniels’ plot hole-ridden latest film is still a compelling, if occasionally ludicrous, ride

25 May 2012

Lee Daniels follows up his sleeper hit Precious with an enjoyably trashy, if often misguided, story based on the book by Pete Dexter. It’s 1969 and journalist Ward (Matthew McConaughey) returns to his hometown of Lately, Florida to investigate what…

Dexys - One Day I’m Going To Soar

Full of wit, panache, brutal self-examination and abundant tunefulness

21 May 2012

The title alone gives you a tingling feeling that something glorious and redemptive lies within: and so it proves on Dexys’ – formerly Dexys Midnight Runners – first new album in 27 years. Following the young soul rebels’ disastrous plunge in fortunes…

The Angels' Share

Loach and Laverty's latest suffers from attempts to attract all-comers

23 May 2012

Here persists the noble quest of Ken Loach and screenwriter Paul Laverty to create accessible, populist films about the lives of the UK’s so-called underclass. Unfortunately, The Angels’ Share is straining so hard to be accessible and populist that it…

A Fantastic Fear of Everything

Crispian Mills' directorial debut starts well but quickly loses pace

11 May 2012

A film by the former lead singer of Kula Shaker might not sound an appetising prospect. But before dismissing A Fantastic Fear of Everything, we should remember that Crispian Mills’ film pedigree is pretty spot-on. He is, after all, the son of Hayley…

The Pact

An unoriginal, low budget thriller that’s light on gore and stronger on tension

11 May 2012

The latest US horror/thriller to be granted a UK release has a slightly better pedigree than most: writer/director Nicholas McCarthy’s film was developed from his own short, which was shown last year at Sundance, quickly developed into this feature…

The Cold Light of Day

Clumsy, by-the-numbers action thriller starring Henry Cavill, Bruce Willis and Sigourney Weaver

12 Apr 2012

(12A) 93min Wall Street trader Will Shaw (Henry Cavill) is taking a break from his Stateside business worries to visit his family in Spain, despite terse relations with his father (Bruce Willis). Unfortunately, he barely has time to sip a sangria…

Stonewall

9 Aug 2007

Doubtless huge progress has been made regarding gay rights in recent decades but there are still reports of gay people being persecuted across the world.

Hot Chip - In Our Heads

The elctro-pop masters' fifth album is their most smartly accessible effort to date

21 May 2012

Every self-appointed creative with a WTF haircut and a MacBook thinks they’re an ‘electronic artist’ these days. But there’s more to it than bedroom-recording cry wank vocals over presets and dropping them to Tuesday night cheek-chewers. Hot Chip’s…

Red Tails

George Lucas pet WWII project suffers from thin characterization, cliché and crude simplification

11 May 2012

Star Wars creator George Lucas used clips from his favourite aviation dramas to stand in for battle scenes in the original rough-cut of Star Wars, so it’s no surprise that several decades later, Lucas has invested some of his personal wealth in an…

Iron Sky

Finland's so-so sci-fi comedy could actually benefit from an American remake

19 Mar 2012

Six years in the making, Iron Sky arrives in a blaze of pre-release publicity. Finland’s first blockbuster, partly funded by fans, you certainly can’t quibble with its killer pitch: Nazis on the moon. It’s just a pity that director Timo Vuorensola’s…

Tim Hecker / Wounded Knee / Matthew Collings

Pilrig St Paul's Church, Edinburgh - Sat 19 May 2012

23 May 2012

Anyone au fait with Sacred Music, BBC 4's two-series trawl through the history of choral worship, from plainchant to polyphony and beyond, will be as versed in the integral relationship between music and church architecture as they are with presenter…

Piranha 3D

16 Aug 2010

Alexandre Aja, the gifted French filmmaker who has so far had the cajones to tackle remakes of Wes Craven’s 1977 wilderness horror The Hills Have Eyes and feted J-horror Mirrors, finally tackles the big one – Joe Dante and John Sayles’ 1978 frat comedy…

Cannes 2012: On the Road

Walter Salles’ adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s classic novel struggles to capture a sense of the times

25 May 2012

If, for two and a half hours, you can put aside the fact that Walter Salles’ (Central Station, The Motorcycle Diaries) latest work is an adaptation of one of the most famous, influential books in recent American history, you might just enjoy this…

Norwegian Wood

Haruki Murakami's novel is transferred to the screen by Anh Hung Tran

2 Mar 2011

(15) 133min Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami has a unique voice in contemporary fiction, both hugely imaginative and intensely intimate. But with this adaptation of one of his most popular books, French-Vietnamese filmmaker Anh Hung Tran fails to…

Patti Smith - Banga

Unique album of punk poetry populated by rocky arias, improvised psalms and lyrical reveries

22 May 2012

You may have heard that Patti Smith dedicates a song to Amy Winehouse on her 11th studio album, Banga. This takes the form of a syrupy ballad, ‘This is the Girl’, and its intentions are honourable, but look beyond it: there are greater, more defiant…

The Cabin in the Woods

Excellent horror has something in its box of tricks to scare everyone

19 Mar 2012

(15) 94min A film that’s almost impossible to talk about without ruining its multiple pleasures, The Cabin In The Woods is the most original horror movie of the year. Reverential to the genre, yet shaking it up simultaneously, it’s exactly what you’d…

Can - The Lost Tapes

An essential Can album with unheard versions of familiar tracks and some never-heard-before material

21 May 2012

Not lost at all, but just forgotten about in Can’s cluttered studio until archived by the classic German psych-rock explorers’ Irmin Schmidt recently, this three-disc dump of material is unfeasibly good considering it managed to avoid the light of day…

Melvins Lite – Freak Puke

Experimental craziness from the long-running grungers' reduced incarnation

24 May 2012

You can never really expect every album by these insanely experimental men to sound the same. Even after 29 years of performing and recording together, The Melvins (or Melvins Lite, in this case) somehow manage to remain enthusiastic and creative in an…