Reviews

Second album by Seattle-based lo-fi retro-lover

Underachieving solo debut from ex-Black Crowes wailer

Double-CD debut from new Prince. Only available at codychesnutt.com

Vintage blues and then some from revered bluesman

Re-releases for undeservedly forgotten post-punk Mancunians

OPENS APRIL 25, CERT 15, 106 MINS Everything about this slice of uber-trash is insane. Remember John McNaughton's Wild Things—so over-the-top that it was both atrocious and brilliant? Trapped is its mad twin, the one they lock in the attic. Anything casting Kevin Bacon and Courtney Love (neither of whom has ever consciously under-acted) as a pair of deranged kidnappers has to have loads going for it, however hysterically flawed. In brief: Bacon grabs Charlize Theron while Love nabs Stuart Townsend; they delegate minding the kid to Pruitt Taylor Vince and demand money.

OPENED MARCH 28, CERT 12A, 135 MINS The Earth's molten core has stopped spinning, and this is a Bad Thing, with knock-on effects that will kill off humanity within a year. Enter a team of kamikaze scientists with an unlimited military budget who plan to drill through the Earth and kick-start the core again with a few nukes. "This isn't going to be subtle," observes a character early on, and they're not far wrong. What we've got here is kind of the ultimate disaster movie, like Armageddon with the gloves off and a ton of mad science on board.

"The Beatles tours were like Fellini's Satyricon," John Lennon once remarked, and seeing the director's 1969 masterpiece of decadence again, you can only wonder how they made it through alive. A bleak but visually stunning crawl through the paranoia, bisexuality and corruption of ancient Rome, it's hardly easy viewing, but stunning all the same as a lurid portrait of a world tipped over into the realms of madness.

A monumental 150-minute attempt at tracking China's cultural transition from Mao-ish uniformity to the eccentricities of Deng Xiaoping's quasi-capitalism, Platform (1990) follows four wannabe performers from Fenyang over a long and turbulent decade (1979-1989). Unlike director Jia Zhang-ke's excellent 1997 drama Xiao Wu, Platform has a bizarre disregard for character and narrative coherence.

Electro duo Ariel Wizman and Nicolas Errera bring fun back to French avant-disco with help from Sparks