Reviews

French classroom documentary hits the mark

Bob Fosse surprised everyone in '74, showing there was more to his dark vision than nimble dance steps. He riffs permissively on Lenny Bruce's stand-up routines (which were never routine), and Dustin Hoffman's rarely been bolder. Somehow nominated for loads of Oscars while railing against the establishment's buffoonery.

The definitive example of High Godard (that brief period after his spectacular debut, À Bout De Souffle, and before the left-wing quasi-revolutionary abstractions of British Sounds and Passion), Bande À Part is a veritable checklist of stylish and insouciant Nouvelle Vague chic. There's the casually one-dimensional protagonists, in this case pseudo-gangsters Franz (Sami Frey) and Arthur (Claude Brasseur) and their new playmate Odile (Anna Karina).

Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder sleepwalk their way through Arthur Hiller's one-joke 1989 comedy as the accidental owners of a missing microchip who are pursued by an assortment of shady villains. Pryor's blind and Wilder's deaf, but Hiller's pedestrian direction settles for routine caper thriller moves rather than fully exploring the comic potential of this offbeat premise.

Aptly-titled fourth album from woozy New York quartet

Though the herd may not acknowledge it, there's a minority of us who, the minute a billion-dollar special effects epic starts doing dizzying digital fairground tricks, lean to wondering whether we shut the fridge door before coming out. Just as the average male can't see household dust, even when it's pointed out, some of us don't get what the fuss is with this CGI lark. So they made someone fly, by cheating, by touching up the evidence. Whoop-ti-doo.

German romanticism reborn on former busker's second album

The image of a band waltzing on the spot seems to accompany every Tindersticks album. Perhaps it's the curse of a band fortunate to work out a distinctive and effective sound at their inception. Whatever, Waiting For The Moon is the usual impeccably crafted artefact, though it's questionable whether anyone who owns their first two albums needs it in their lives. The aspirations to soul that marked out 2001's Can Our Love...

Featherweight US rockers at their commercial peak

Belated release of 1979 live session