Reviews

It's an unlikely story: avant-garde cellist sees the light in a disco glitterball at New York gay club The Gallery and decides disco is the ultimate modern format for exploring minimalist composition. In the mid-'70s, Russell—conservatory-trained, a scholar of Eastern music forms, steeped in the ideas of Steve Reich and Terry Riley—was blown away by the engulfing quality of music transmitted over a massive club sound system and literally entranced by disco's use of repetition.

The Russian chess genius' trial by computer

Alex Cox's gory update of Thomas Middleton's 1607 play about anarcho-nutter royal assassins. The ghost of Derek Jarman clearly lurks behind Cox's ambitious vision of Liverpool as a post-punk, retro-futurist city state. Christopher Eccleston spits nails as the hard-bastard anti-hero, but not even Eddie Izzard, Derek Jacobi and Sophie Dahl can lift the drama above flawed curio level.

There was genuine suspense and intelligence in Michael Winner's original 1974 thriller, which addressed some of the same debates about rising crime and liberal impotence as Dirty Harry and Straw Dogs. But this 1982 sequel, relocating Charles Bronson's wounded architect to LA and forcing him to endure another double rape/murder episode, veers dangerously close to shabby exploitation.

Debut album follows a trio of superb seven-inch singles

Generic horror film, scored by Nathan Barr with contributions from the man who ups the eerie ante for David Lynch Angelo Badalamenti. Also has spooky-in-context songs from The Turtlenecks and Your Mom. Deliberately nerve-jangling: when I wanted to take it off, I couldn't. Most entertaining are Barr's sleevenotes: "After the score was completed I checked myself into the local psychiatric facility for various tests and shock therapy. They released me after a month with an electronic monitoring bracelet.

Long-serving English roots band unmasked

French duo return to form on third album proper

Two-CD compilation full of little wonders

DIRECTED BY Edward Zwick STARRING Tom Cruise, Ken Watanabe, Hiroyuki Sanada, Timothy Spall Opens January 9, Cert 15, 154 mins Very loosely based on the development of trade links between the US and Japan in the 1870s, signalling the end of Shogunate rule and the beginning of Japan's Meiji Restoration era, The Last Samurai details the exploits of fictional cavalry hero Captain Nathan Algren (Cruise). Dispirited by the violence he's inflicted on the Indian nation, Algren accepts a lucrative assignment to train Japanese riflemen.