Reviews

Press faves deliver diamond-hard art-pop

Breathtaking third album from Brixton house heroes. Mad, actually

First new recordings from the 'Lab since tragic death of Mary Hansen last year

Business as usual for loveable Luddite

Partial return to form from Afghan Whigs lynchpin Greg Dulli

Two-disc, 30-track retrospective of enigmatic solo artist's hits and rarities

New Jersey quartet's 1988 power-pop classic revived

Clint's back at his directorial best with a lean, mean adaptation of Dennis Lehane's gripping crime novel

Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki's maverick reputation is built on a series of inspired, lugubrious comic gems, but this latest film—about a coma victim who wakes up with no memory of his past life—suggests he's in need of a new direction. The film looks terrific, but the gags are mannered and the story twee. Not so much deadpan as dead dull, it's a film about an amnesiac that's appropriately forgettable.

From Shohei Imamura—one of several 'legendary Japanese masters' none of us have ever heard of—comes a genuinely surreal fable of a man searching for hidden treasure who finds a complex erotic gush-out with a lonely young woman who's turned on by water. It's often beautiful to look at, though the orgasmic writhing sections are unintentionally hilarious.