Reviews

Alex Cox, maverick writer-director of Repo Man and Walker, on a newly extended version of Sergio Leone's epic

Emerging in 2001, these Detroit brothers lash the hard-livin' loucheness to traditional country ache. Frontman/songwriter Kurt Marschke's wail is Jaggeresque and there's lonesome balladry aplenty ("27 Hours", "Such A Crime") plus enough "Happy"-like fretwork to suggest what might have been had Gram'n'Keef really got it on. "Entitled" pits the sideways chug of The Breeders' "Cannonball" against early Replacements sneer, and dobro/pedal steel player Peter Ballard tints the big skies with a yearning airiness. Seriously impressive.

New York sextet release their hip hop debut, produced by feted duo DFA

1986 album from Tokyo-born but US-based singer-songwriter

The King's penance ignored

Retelling of the Gram Parsons story. Execrable

Ninth-rate martial arts animé about a killer with the mind of a six-year-old child. Frankly, a six-year-old child would have written something more entertaining than this—the only imagination on display here is reserved for the gore and violence, which is accompanied by a great deal of noise but no sense, and even the animation is unimpressively low-rent. Utterly worthless.

This not-as-crap-as-you'd-fear rehash of the much-loved '60s caper, with director F Gary Gray ensuring it isn't all just gung-ho car-chase action, throwing in stylish backdrops and a good joke or two for good measure. A shame, then, that the charisma-free Mark Wahlberg leads, and perhaps they should've opted for a fresh title, but a stellar cast including Ed Norton, Charlize Theron and Donald Sutherland can't be all bad. Lively enough.

Robert Altman's offbeat '70s transposition of Chandler's noir classic

Who'da thought Blighty's most provocative new country stars would be holed up in Brighton? This six-piece have already been hailed in some quarters as natural heirs to Lambchop, but there's much more besides. "Her Friend The Rain" and "Living And Dead Singers" (BJ Cole on lap steel) weld '70s Cali-troubadour strum to Clifford TWard's bedsit folksiness, while "Elephants" dissolves into an acid-carousel waltz that's as unsettling as Johnny Dowd.