The Brown Note Movie Review

A few thoughts on one of the more controversial Oscar noms lists.

Boasting career best performances from Carey Mulligan and Bradley Cooper, and a massive step up for the latter as a director, a very high class entry into the best picture Oscar race with the Leonard Bernstein biopic.

The much delayed sequel has an atrocious daggy single dad start, where they manage to lose both sides of the Amber Heard argument, but given my low expectations, ends up one of the better post Endgame, comic-book super-hero watches. Unlike The Marvels, it actually looks like they spent MORE than $200 million on the spectacular visual design.

The second from the frankly pointless Radiohead side project, that may as well just be Radiohead, is slightly better than their excellent debut, A Light For Attracting Attention. A more cohesive whole a the years first great album. Straight white indie boys can get best new music from Pitchfork. If your name is Thom Yorke.

My irregular feature on outstanding masterpieces touches down (after another pinnacle year for Stevens with his latest high-water mark album, Javelin) with the album that made his name, still one of the most ambitious and successful album length projects this century.

Pitchfork music magazine has apparently been executed, the century's most important music bible being folded into GQ magazine by its evil corporate overlord Conde Nast. As a devout consumer of Pitchfork since the turn of the century, I've been predicting this for the last five years - the post Fetch the Bolt Cutters years, but really the five years that editor in chief Puja Patel has been in charg...

I walked in expecting a fairly decent 6/10 movie that had been review bombed into the dust by bro-tastic Brie Larson haters, I got literally the worst MCU film yet and kick off the year with a big fat zero out of ten. Even the terrible Thor 4 and Antman 3 have so many more things going for it than this abysmal travesty of film-making.

Director Ridley Scott is having a grand old time of it his later years, putting out some of his wildest films. The Last Duel was a totally underrated true life historical movie, yet actually it's House of Gucci that Napoleon is far closer to. It fails its main job of delivering a convincing biopic of its titular character but succeeds in being entertaining - if draining - due to how completely cra...

Since I recorded this, Gervais' latest special won a Golden Globe, remarkable in a few ways. I almost gave up on Ricky's stand ups after the very tepid, Humanity, but this one, though not perfect, has a lot more fire and reason to be.

Sadly the weakest of the probably six Chappelle specials I've reviewed. Certainly with the least amount of top tier material and reason to exist.

Emerald Fennell's follow up to the outstanding debut, A Promising Young Woman, isn't as vital or brilliant, but certainly has plenty to recommend. Mainly it's pairing of Barry Keoghan and a stellar Rosamund Pike. It's an often great, if superficial and fairly meaningless collision between Brideshead Revisited and The Talented Mr. Ripley.

Hearing this was a young adult romance and musical, there was no way I was going near this with a fifty foot pole, but being desperate I did. After nearly cringing myself to death during the opening half hour, a surprising good story developed. Although it doesn't really dove-tail into the most iconic YA film series of all, I've nothing but respect for a director with this much narrative NOT split...

Zack Snyder came out of the DC Extended Universe something of a cult hero, neutered from his vision by an uncaring world and leaving the unexpectedly superb Snyder Cut of Justice League as a goodbye. Next to James Cameron and Christopher Nolan, he also has one of the most annoying online fan-bases of any director, just without the great movies. The aggravatingly titled and critically mauled Rebel...

In a banner year for big, great and terrible movies, my best and worst films of 2023.   Emperor's New Clothes award going to, Killers of the Flower Moon, sadly.

My yearly list of the best albums, in a pretty decent but not great year in music, in a particularly poor era for music journalism. Movies to follow.   Emperors New Clothes award for most inexplicably, universally praised album of the year - Caroline Polachek - Desire, I Want to Turn Into You   Full show with music - https://www.mixcloud.com/julian-brown/top-25-albums-of-2023/

Every single time I watch this Liam Neeson "actioner" my appreciation for it as a modern classic grows. For me it is the greatest film to examine the difference between toxic masculinity and positive masculinity, as a group of near awful or at least deeply broken men, all become better versions of themselves through adversity. The pack of wolves hunting them representing a beautiful tone poem on i...

I fully expected director, David Fincher's new film to be a stone cold Day of The Jackal look into the mind of an assassin. It isn't, its a far more rote and overdone revenge story, yet at the same time, the level of class every single aspect of its making possesses, the awards worthy performance of a long absent Michael Fassbender and the fact it leans fully into black comedy, makes it feel new a...

If the undoubted cinematic success story of the year was Barbenheimer, it's undoubted biggest victim was Mission: Impossible 7. Coming off the back of Tom Cruise's most warmly received mega hit, Top Gun Maverick and with stellar reviews, the movie hit the immovable force that 76% of movie goers were watching either Barbie or Oppenheimer in its second week of release. Often analogous with The Fast...

This underappreciated low key gem gives us the best Uma Thurman lead of the modern era - seriously why is this woman not used more? And if it isn't her wondrous basket case of an art gallery owner/modern art guru wannabe on screen, its Samuel L Jackson - what more do you want? It may be a tad obvious and predictable but its 100% worth the (short) ride for Uma alone.

A short, flowing and classy sequel to one of last years finest electronic full lengths - Half Moon Bay.

Part of the UK's holy trinity of Shoegaze, along with RIDE and MBV, all of whom made strong comebacks after twenty-years absences, with new albums and tours. Sadly this second comeback album is nowhere near the perfection of the self-titled 2017 effort and is sadly too slight in almost every direction.

The late Mark Linkous' esteemed band receives a totally unexpected final album, the one he was working on at the time of his suicide in 2010, and completed by his family members. And it's wonderful.

The tenth album by the UK stalwarts is, for me, arguably their finest since the high point of Surrender in '99. Tracks like Live Again and the Beck featuring, Skipping Like a Stone amongst the years finest.

This Is England, director, Shane Meadows first masterpiece, retains immense power as a treatise on small town brutality and toxic masculinity, especially with the never better performance of Paddy Consadine.

Director Ari Aster has had quite a wild ride. His debut, Hereditary, was one of the defining films of both horror and A24 in a decade defined by both, the followup Midsommar was derivative trite trash, with a bizarre fan-base. So seeing the tepid reviews of his most ambitious film yet, I gave 'Beau no hope - and ended up with possibly my film of the year.