The Brown Note Movie Review

Given Mr Young's insane amount of releases in recent years, I suspect this maybe one fans have skipped. You shouldn't. In a banner year for live performances from Young (Glastonbury etc), this attendant studio album is one of the most ramshackle he's ever made, but its full of idiosyncrasy and Young in the now. Unusually specific personal lyrics, churning garage rockers and several gentle ballads,...

The feverishly awaited return of the mighty Thornton brothers, Pusha T and Malice (plus production again from the Neptunes/Pharrell Williams) after more than fifteen years, has been the rap event of the modern era. Unless you like children's rap like Travis Scott and Drake. There was no way on earth it could live up to the hype or their heyday best. It does. Every last aspect - from the rollout to...

One of the best reviewed superhero projects since GOTG3 and it still stiffed at the box office. The days of comic book movies earning a billion are long gone, even half that is a success now. Florence Pugh takes over from Scarlett Johansson (who ironically just killed her at the box office...) as the new Black Widow (kind of). There are big plusses and nearly as big minuses here. The themes, soul...

My intermittent series on albums, movies or bands that either were denied classic status on release or have been forgotten about since. Though their Krautrock peers, Can, Neu!, Faust and Kraftwerk still get plenty of coverage, these equally brilliant pioneers are rarely mentioned. Their first three album run, Phallus Dei, Yeti and Dance of the Lemmings (two of which are doubles) is one of the fine...

A new segment on this channel called Overrated. I am a hater at heart and love trashing things more than loving them. So this bit will feature things that have garnered universal acclaim, that I don't think are actually any good. Here the holy cow, that stinks up every list of best war films, reviewed in depth, where I factually and objectively state why Saving Private Ryan was never any good.

In an era where the live music mega-festival has changed, a look at two elements from the recent Glastonbury festival. Charli xcx Vs Neil Young, is live music important at a live music festival anymore? And the Kneecap/Bob Vylan controversy.

MASSIVE SPOILERS Director Ryan Coogler certainly has critics bending over backwards, but like Black Panther, this - the best reviewed major release so far this year - is nowhere near as good as the insane level of praise it's got. A beautifully made and totally worthy watch, but a long way shy of a masterpiece in multiple ways. The first half is done so well, I kinda wished the vampires had stayed...

My intermittent series on something either denied classic status on release, or has been forgotten about since. I wanted to review this all time fave but struggled to know if it belonged here. It DID get classic status, but many years after it was made, and that was the 90s. Since then the final, notorious and never conclusively released final album from Alex Chilton's power-pop inventing Big Star...

The fabulous Victoria Beverley Walker, aka PinkPatheress, hasn't put a foot wrong with her three major releases, including this new mixtape. Unlike contemporaries like Billie Eilish, she actually is a self created bedroom star and not an industry plant, and one who wipes the floor musically with the likes of Sabrina Carpenter. In fact she is about the only peer of Brat-era Charlie XCX.

What a con-artist Swans leader, Michael Gira is. After creating the greatest achievement in rock the last decade, the monolithic, gargantuan trilogy of, The Seer, To be Kind and The Glowing Man, he promised us he was done with these planet sized two hour behemouths and that Swans would enter a new phase of very different music. Well, they did for two albums, but he's right back into it with Birthi...

This substance free, Casio-presets, ambient waffle, is the worst album length project the (recently under fire) Radiohead front man has been involved with. Worse, it completely wastes the talents of a legend of British electronic music, who may as well not even be here, so little is his noticeable input. Someone needs to sit Thom down and say, stop commenting on the Middle East and stop releasing...

As a huge fan of the underappreciated original, I could not be more disappointed by this utter slop. "Critics think it's better than the original"?! How?! By watering down and denuding everything that was different and special about the first film, until it's homogenized garbage? Even Ben Affleck's lead doesn't escape, his previous intensity as the autistic hitman, is now just goofy and the usuall...

Not an original bone in it's body but utterly enjoyable sub-Hitchcock hokum, that makes great cinematic use of limited environs. Luckily they also have an excellent lead to helm it all in Meghann Fahy, as she traverses a dinner date with murderous complications.

As a painfully stick in the mud old school rap fan, I am deeply ashamed to have featured the last two Armand Hammer albums, without paying any attention to the twenty-five plus year career of one half of the duo, Billy Woods. Golliwog is one of the finest and most immersive rap albums of the recent era, though that immersion is not pleasant, the world being a nightmarish horror-scape, it is howeve...

DJ Felix Manuel has delivered one of the best - and classiest, and most listenable - electronic albums of recent years. A pairing of his virtuoso piano playing and equally dexterous drum programming - all produced to sonically beautiful fidelity.

A few years ago I would've ranked Alex Garland alongside Robert Eggers, as one of the most exciting new directors out there, now it's two utterly forgettable war films, back to back, that are bad in completely different ways. Though Warfare does share with Civil War, having both nothing to say and being at the back of the pack of numerous other much better films on the same subject. Watch somethin...

After my initial exposure to the mercurial talents of John Martyn - who created his own language through Folk, Blues and Jazz through the 1970's and on - a follow up. Before I focused on the immortal albums like Solid Air and One World, this time an extensive look at the rest. Well, up to a point, specifically from his debut, London Conversations in 1967 to The Apprentice in 1990. A slow start, an...

After a lackluster decade of documentaries, Theroux returns with one of his finest, most important - and most timely - ever, on Israeli colonization of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It says the quiet part out loud - it never has been about how the Palestinians behave, it's always been about ethnic cleansing.

Since their second album, Ants From Up There, bagged my album of the year in 2022, and promptly lost their iconic leader - no British indie act has gone through more change. Now firmly ensconced in their Harry Potter House Band/Music Hall Indie phase with a beguiling, detailed and unique baroque new album.

Director Gareth Evans rightfully made his name with the iconic Indonesian action crime films, The Raid and the even better The Raid 2. This grimy cop thriller goes unexpectedly full tilt Hong Kong era John Woo, but it's a law of diminishing returns as the dozens (hundreds) of bodies pile up, albeit imaginatively.

Happily, Justin Vernon's much loved project has made the tilt away from the experimental, abstract songwriting of the last two albums, and a return to more satisfying complete pieces of the first two, albeit with the odd slightly annoying and incongruous hangover stylistic elements. Still, it's great to have him back in this pocket and with his own defined genre of Neo-Country-Soul.

Well who knew, if you take something with a rusted on fan-base and don't abuse that fan-base or take them for granted, people will come and watch your film. There's nothing good about it - great turns from Jason Momoa and Jack Black aside - but there's nothing really bad about it either.

I went in expecting mid-tier MCU, like Captain Marvel or Black Panther, I got bottom tier, like Antman 3 or The Marvels. This is an abomination of a film with no reason to be and horrible visuals. An excellent Harrison Ford aside - there's zero reason to even bother once.

There are commonalities with Hollywood and TV in recent years. Having not one single original idea and remaking something no one asked for, to a terrible standard and for some reason, cynically using an existing fan-base but rubbing that fan-bases noses in it by race/sexuality or gender swapping a lead character. There's also a more vile and insidious trend going on here where only one person alwa...

Director Steven Soderbergh's latest is a classy Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy variant, expertly made and with an impeccable cast, exceptionally led by Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender. The odd improbabilities aside.