Reviews

The High Cost Of Living

Dark, worldly-wise solo return from Van der Graaf Generator man

Power Pop – Three Minute Warning

Ring in the new year with the best in ringing guitars from the USA

The Residents – Demons Dance Alone

Mysterious Californian outsider outfit release album written in wake of September 11

The Caretaker

Clive Donner's 1963 version of Harold Pinter's debut is a faithful, relatively unaltered record of a trio of stunning stage performances from Alan Bates, Robert Shaw and particularly Donald Pleasence (as the splenetic tramp who takes advantage of the mentally crippled Shaw). Four decades on, you can see Mamet's starting point in the furious inarticulateness of Pinter's characters, each trapped in an unobtainable dream.

Resident Evil

After a biological warfare research lab goes tits up when a virus gets loose, plucky security guard Milla Jovovich has to fight off hordes of the living dead in this fast-paced adaptation of the video game. No faulting the SFX or the action, but all the dialogue here is irritatingly clunky exposition, and the plot lies somewhere between predictable and brain-dead.

Hardball

Keanu Reeves stars in this dismally formulaic affair as an inveterate gambler given one last shot at personal redemption when he's asked to coach a baseball team made up of apathetic no-hoper inner-city hard nuts. Based on a true story.

About A Boy

The Weitz brother's adaptation of Nick Hornby's bestseller can't help falling into the sugary-sweet Notting Hill trap. Hugh Grant's genuinely impressive as responsibility-free Will, who strikes up an unlikely friendship with weird 12-year-old Marcus and his troubled hippie mum. It's crucial that the brat isn't annoying: but boy, he is. Hornby's jokes and Badly Drawn Boy's songs add some edge.

Edwin Starr

Agent 00 soul, licensed to thrill

Sells Like Teen Spirit

Grunge kings' best-of is sanitised yet magnificent. Includes previously unreleased track

Procol Harum – Singles As & Bs

A quarter-century of baroque-rock 45s
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