Reviews

T. Rex

WAX CO SINGLES VOLUME 2 (1975-8) Rating Star BOTH EDSEL If you hit puberty back in the '70s, your first vaguely sexual experience was, perhaps, handing over your 50p to purchase the latest must-have T. Rex single, seven inches of raucous beauty bedecked in a blue-and-red paper sleeve. Someone's had the very fine idea of re-fashioning these period gems on individual CDs and collating them into two box sets, 11 on each.

Neko Case – Canadian AMP

Vinyl-only mini LP of stripped-down delights from Virginian chanteuse

Jay-Z – The Blueprint 2: The Gift & The Curse

Double CD follow-up to last year's mainstream rap classic proves that bigger is rarely better

Billy Joe Shaver – Freedom’s Child

Hard-country survivor soldiers on with his 12th studio album

Various Artists – Risiko 100

Ultra-hip German label gets birthday cake and bunting treatment

Days Of Thunder

Twenty-two tracks from Dylan's legendary Rolling Thunder tour finally see official release

Monday Morning

Dull mid-life crisis yarn

Rollerball

Die Hard director John McTiernan remakes the '70s extreme-sports classic with a sledgehammer where the subtle social comment should be. Chris Klein, the poor man's Keanu, is the Rollerball superstar learning that league-owner Jean Reno has all the morals of a snake. Loud, brash and dumb, though cameos by LL Cool J and Pink might thrill pop completists.

Monster’s Ball

Halle Berry's blubbing Oscar win shouldn't obscure the fact that this is a brave, harrowing film, echoing the intimacy of '70s cinema's heyday. Billy Bob Thornton is uncannily intense as a Death Row prison guard who cracks up when his son Heath Ledger can't handle his job. An odd coupling with convict's wife Berry may or may not redeem him. Inspirational.

The Shipping News

Not as bad as they said, until you hit the magic realism. Lasse Hallström is safer on the brief establishing scenes, and Newfoundland is refreshingly unfamiliar Both sadsack Kevin Spacey and closed Judi Dench endure a near-Theban family history in rotten weather. Journalists will savour the local paper.
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