Reviews

Pop art taken to logical extreme

Reissue of unlikely 1974 alliance between would-be art-pop stars and Marxist Canterbury art-rockers

Originally recorded in 1971, The Residents' debut The Warner Bros Album was rejected and has remained unreleased until now. Its first outing is as a remix LP, and it's fabulous. Prime early-era Residents, it's an idiosyncratic assault on contemporary music (The Beatles, Dylan) and society using chaotic avant jazz/rock/classical weaponry. To hear this already deconstructed music fed through the mincer of contemporary electronica only makes it even more confusing, disorienting, beguiling and downright delightful.

Debut solo album from Mojave 3 and ex-Slowdive singer/guitarist

Fiery follow-up to 2003's acclaimed Thickfreakness

Film-maker's quest to discover more about his late father

...or There's Something About Guinevere

Along with Boyz N The Hood, this marks the film world's awakening to a dark period of gang violence in early-'90s LA. The story of Caine Lawson (Tyrin Turner), a young black man looking to escape the daily treadmill of bloodshed, isn't particularly original, but the Hughes brothers pull few punches. It's not a pretty sight, but the film now stands as a curious period piece.

Errol Morris' latest Oscar-winning documentary is no Moore-style polemic but an artful interrogation of infamous US Defence Secretary Robert McNamara, who gave Morris 23 hours of filmed interviews in 2001, before 9/11 and the Iraq war, though unspoken parallels are hard to ignore. A formidable intellectual bruiser at 87, the old Cold Warrior seizes what may prove to be his last chance to make peace with history. Riveting.

Two-disc legends packages with a DVD thrown in