The Brown Note Movie Review
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Perhaps an ironic title for this crushingly bleak finale to probably the TV event of the year - and a fitting strong episode that is centered on a massive moral question - would you sacrifice the person you love the most to save everyone else in the world.
I suspect that Ukraine played a big part in the awards success of this German anti-war film, which even the Germans called "Shallow, cynical and horny for Oscars", because other than the awards-worthy cinematography, sound and score - everything else is decidedly mid-tier. Almost as basic and trite as a modern war film could be without being directed by Steven Spielberg.
After a righteous victory lap with last years 30 Something celebrations, where would one of the all time greatest and most important electronic music acts go? For me they've successfully welded their past and modern electronic music into a highly political album that hits a surprisingly sweet spot.
After the middling episode 7 the series roars back into life, with one of the most powerhouse and satisfying episodes (perhaps alongside Ep 5) and also the darkest and most brutal. Bella Ramsey has her finest hour as Ellie and an excellent Scott Shepherd as preacher David, is the lowest humanity has sunk so far. Great stuff.
The Velvet Underground legend's fine seventeenth solo album makes the unexpected detour into Yacht-rock/pop and electronica with a raft of contemporary artists. I wouldn't mind a bit of trimming over its occasionally duller first half but it's and album that grows through its duration and also repeated listens.
Gradually getting back into newer album releases, with this surprise-around-christmas victory-lap release from the recent Mercury Music Prize winner and correct speller of little. Another consistent and solid album from the UK rap star and her in house producer, the already legendary Sault alumni, Inflo - if the least impressive of her golden run.
Oh dear, after the hugely successful Ep3 pulled the same stunt, stopping the forward momentum built up from Ep's 4-6 dead for another (gay) love story (a really tiny bit) falls a bit flatter this time. We get the necessary back story of Ellie (Bella Ramsey), her past at the military academy and her relationship with her room-mate and love, Riley. It's good but the weakest episode, quite repetitive, a slog, feels like low stakes filler and curiously like an episode of Stranger Things. Ellie only spends minutes with Joel this time but those minutes are more compelling than all the time spent with Riley. A victim of its excellent policy of only showing one episode a week, leading viewers to need a massive episode each time.
The English Trainspotting. I've decided to include movies in "Gone But Forgotten" where I focus on something either denied classic status on release or ignored today or both in the case of this Nick Love adaption of epic writer, John Kings novel about football hooliganism. It's impeccably cast, moves like a rocket, has surprisingly great cinematography, awesome dialogue and a soundtrack that aces even Trainspotting itself. It also tells a few unknowable truths about working-class Britain.
Old M. Night Shyamalan has been on one wild ride these last fifteen years, a run of some of the worst films this century, followed by a couple of the worst films of all time - the ship seems to be righting though. Mainly his last few Unbreakable films and this book adaption have fared far better. He is still his own films worst enemy though, going PG or Spielberg when he should be going R-rated or confrontational, even reversing two major elements from the award winning novel to make them happier!?!? Still these are intriguing themes, reasonably well explored and with a soulful, committed turn from David Bautista - and the blandest gay couple in history - it just gets over the line.
Even Scottish band, Simple Minds, rote story is all but forgotten - that they were purveyors of bombastic stadium rock alongside the peers U2, throughout the mid eighties, draping themselves in worthy social issues. This completely misses the even more hidden truth - in the four years between 1979 and 1982, the band released six albums in what was one of the most progressive and brilliant runs by any band, including The Beatles and Can. A look through that period - so deserving of reappraisal - and how the rest of the decade played out for them. It started as a review of the masterpiece (10/10) album New Gold Dream but I felt the wider story needed addressing.
Released as UK Punk raged, for me the greatest album by David Bowie artistically. A near remake of the also 10/10 Low from not even a year before - Low may get more plaudits for being first, but, that minimalist album is just shaded by its maximalist followup as far as outright satisfaction goes.
After watching director, Ti West's first Pearl movie "X", which alongside Pearl was regarded as 2022's high points in horror, I didn't really get it, but I wasn't prepared for the gulf in class between that good-but-rote standard horror and the masterpiece that is Pearl. Mia Goth is, I think, alongside Anya Taylor Joy, Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey, one of the four hottest properties in acting right now. Here she gives a performance for the ages in one of the most complete portrayals of a psychopath since Psycho itself. Hyperbolically I give it a 9.5/10 - same as The Northman and Everything, Everywhere All At Once - my top two films of last year.
As a double PHD in both Liam Neeson action movies post Taken, and pre-Fast Jason Statham action movies, I feel Gerard Butler may well send me back to university. I'm really liking where he's at now and after the fabulous Greenland, we get this almost puritan throw back to 80s Jean Claude Van Dam era actioners, just with way better acting and directing. But please stop under-using the wonderful Daniella Pineda. Utilitarian film-making at its finest.
Although I rarely watch new TV series, I have been swept up in the hype of this acclaimed video game adaption, and was presented with a very classy yet not mind-blowing show. It has, however grown to become enthralling and undoubtedly the TV event of the year. Ironically I have reviewed EVERY series of Narcos, so am one of the people viewing Pedro Pascal's assent to God status with a "yes, we told you this ten years ago". For all it's achievements in technical and writing areas, there's no doubt it's biggest success - the greatest lead pairing in modern TV and how emotionally wedded to Joel (Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) we already are.
I cannot get a line on writer-director Damien Chazelle at all. His films Whiplash and First Man were brilliant but in totally different ways. His films La La Land and Babylon are terrible but in totally different ways. I definitely didn't expect this to be this bad and I sat through three-hours and ten-minutes of it so you don't have to. I thought I'd get a wildly flawed, art-house triumph, instead I got the Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby, only even more superficial and empty. Car crash cinema.
"Gone but forgotten" is an album (sometimes an artist) that was either denied classic status on release or has fallen completely out of the conversation. Alongside The Pixies and Sonic Youth, Bob Mould's 80's act, Hüsker Dü were one of the holy trinity that formed American alternative rock music and especially grunge - his follow up three piece, Sugar, had a fair crack of making some of Grunge's best music. They were certainly acclaimed at the time, but now revisionism of the era tends to bring in acts like Stone Temple Pilots or Alice in Chains - but I barely hear Sugar mentioned, despite Copper Blue being up there with Nevermind, Siamese Dream and Ten as one of the best albums of that first rush, and one that I have always gone back to.
This Mia Goth led slasher has a lot to recommend it, mainly it's cast and direction - but the least interesting thing about it is probably the horror movie it becomes.
A new feature on this channel - on the radio show I have "Gone but forgotten" which is an album (sometimes an artist) that was either denied classic status on release or has fallen completely out of the conversation.
Being an enormous fan of the underrated outing by this films director (Scott Cooper) and star (Christian Bale), Out of the Furnace - which also received tepid reviews - I was sure this Edgar Allan Poe featuring murder mystery was a lock. I was wrong, I've no idea what went wrong here but this is actually atrocious and some great actors give their worst ever performances (not Bale btw)
Has eating the rich ever been more literal? Yes as they aren't actually eaten (unlike The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover) but this class/foodie warfare tale is even better than I'd been led to believe and slightly superior to the analogous Glass Onion.
An unexpectedly timely rumination on male relationships and depression, as well the most welcome cinematic reuniting of a director and cast since Another Year. Probably Oscar winning writer/director, Martin McDonagh's most complete film, as well as star, Colin Farrell's most complete performance. With its focus on existential crisis, despair, depression and suicidal idealisation, the oddest companion piece with Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, possible.
No matter the critics consensus, the sequel to the breakout modernist take on Agatha Christie, Knives Out, isn't quite the film its predecessor was. This time both the characters (a rogues gallery of internet famous people) and the murder mystery itself, are both less interesting. This is still top quality entertainment though, and feels like a million dollars, even when it's slapping itself on the back. We wont tire of Benoit Blanc any time soon, as long as the quality is at least this high.
Bizarrely, in the same year another, very different Australian director thought it was time for a biopic of Elvis, auteur Andrew Dominik finally realised a decade long goal of bringing another icon back to the silver screen, Marilyn Monroe. Dominik has only released four films this century and this is his most art-house and dangerous project. Sadly, despite the luminous and brilliant Ana de Armas, some outstanding visuals and music (courtesy of Nick Cave and Warren Ellis) it's hampered by bad writing, mostly soaring when people aren't talking.
The sequel The Woman King apparently. But seriously not good.
Not, apparently, Black Panther 2 Electric Boogalaoo but a different film entirely. And a lot more fun.
The Rock makes The Eternals but funnier and faster, at times, which is something I guess.
Which indeed it is, featuring underappreciated efforts from Suns Signature, Indio Sparke, Chief Keef, Spiritualised, Tomu DJ, Just Mustard and The Afghan Whigs.
Exactly what it says on the tin. Plus lambasting ever redundant critics year end lists of films no one has seen.
Ahhh, Neil, my old friend - you get the last album review of the year and what an intriguing one it is, amongst the EIGHT Neil Young albums to come out in 2022. Compared to the good if not outstanding, Barn, released at the start of the year (also with Crazy Horse) what stands this out most from a serviceable recent run of new albums, is a ton of personality. It's all done with such wild abandon, with zero concessions to anyone, it almost feels related to something like, Tonight's The Night.
The second album, after the spectral wonder of her first, Echo, has been damned with faint praise but for me is continually elevated by the sheer number of immediate choruses and melodies, outweighing it not being experimental or varied enough. Here the astonishing voice, married to a raft of really big tunes makes it one of the albums of the year for me.
