The Brown Note Movie Review

The current heavyweight champion of Latin Pop, Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, aka Bad Bunny, completes a victory lap with his seventh - and most political - album. And it's a fine effort with welcome Salsa and Puerto Rican musical influences. It also repeats my complaint about his previous release, like a Drake album, it appears stuffed with too many mediocre tracks to try and game the streaming...

Director Robert Eggers is right at the top of arguments for the MVP of film making right now. His four films have near been impeccable. This remake of the original 1920's classic is very different from what I'd been led to believe - it's by far the most fun and actually funny (at times) of his often challenging filmography. If it doesn't have the substance of previous works, the cinematography, pr...

David Lynch (January 20, 1946 – January 15, 2025) never made a blockbuster movie in his life, yet is as famous a director as Steven Spielberg. This a show celebrating his unique artistic vision, one that puts in on a par with Kubrick or Hitchcock. He is also a director with a stronger connection to the music in his projects than almost anyone in history. A trawl through every major project of Lync...

Following last years UNIVERSALLY LOVED piece, Oasis Are Shite, an imaginative followup - were they ever any good to start with? So I have done what no sane adult should do, and what I haven't done in 25 years, actually listened to Oasis. Obviously Be Here Now and on are complete garbage, but were those first three great albums, Definitely Maybe, What's the Story.. and The Masterplan ever great? an...

My irregular series on artists, albums or movies that were either denied classic status at the time or who have been forgotten from the conversation since. Here a look a 60s UK folk music genius who branched out into astonishing music in the 1970s (see also Nick Drake, John Fay, Vashti Bunyan...). A walk through his life and career through the lens of four totemic albums from that period, includin...

Perhaps the embodiment of Hollywood's incessant, remake-reboot era, given it's one of the wildest takes on needing a sequel ever. But given director Ridley Scott is himself one of the wildest properties in film this century - you have zero idea what you are going to get with this man lately, maybe it could work? No, no, it does not. Following the original screenplay so slavishly it continually inv...

Nothing is more redundant most best films lists, as any critics top ten will include five films the public wont even see until next year. So my most and least favorite films actually widely released in 2024. Note - I really did mean to say Abigail at number 15, but looking at the thumbnail, decided to describe the film Megan instead. The perils of live radio.

Exactly what it says on the tin. Tis the season of lists, and in a banner year for albums, particularly alt-rock and rap, my top twenty favorite albums of 2024. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/26A8L15kpvZtRl3gRhddG5?si=jZKf4draTgqcWC8cjiXiKw

Perhaps rounding off a banner year for Horror movies, writer-director, J.T. Mollner's twisted take on Horror movie tropes and serial killer films. Spit ingeniously into six non-chronological chapters, each upending the previous, this challenging and provocative film is beautifully made, and anchored by awards-worthy leads, Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallner.

The original Smile was a top tier "ordinary" horror, as opposed the more art-house/A24 world. It's sequel bridges that gap, whilst outpacing its predecessor in nearly every way. Once again the female lead (Naomi Scott) is outstanding, but now the focus on interior mental breakdown - this time for a pop star put under too much stress - is so good, it almost outweighs the need for a horror film at a...

Francis Ford Coppola's decades long passion project is deeply, unforgivably flawed, in so many ways. It's also amazing and brilliant in so many others. In a world where billionaires send themselves into space and all they come back with if tales of flaccid penises, that someone could spend so much on such a piece of art, designed, unconsciously, to defend the very notion of its own existence, is a...

It takes an awful lot to get me back into new material from a classic band I've loved to remember at their peak and pretty much since the career capping classic, Disintegration, in 1989, that had been the case with The Cure. However, the first new material in 16 years had garnered such raves, I couldn't resist and I'm glad I didn't. Despite some of the worst production and mixing I've ever heard f...

The second album in 2024 from the Radiohead offshoot, The Smile, is nowhere near as great or coherent as Wall of Eyes. It's perfectly fine, just very undeveloped songwriting wise - as befitting its title - and even Thom Yorke seems to be half involved in many tracks.

Ridley Scott gave his baby new life with the premise of Prometheus, massively expanding the context of the whole Alien universe, then promptly killed it dead with Covenant abandoning that story entirely. This new film has been hailed as an excitingly fresh rebirth, but I don't see it. The production design is superb, but other than the lead, the acting is pretty dire. The biggest problem though, i...

I've nothing but respect for the band's talent but I've rarely heard an album more self-sabotaged than this (despite rave reviews). Almost every song - many of which are very decent - have a math-rock violent interlude half way through, that is often annoyingly goofy and usually stops everything they've built up to that point dead. This makes it all a hard listen, I'd struggle to go back to.

Sometimes in the relentless recycle and repackage world that is modern Hollywood, timing can be everything. No one asked for a sequel to director Tim Burton's breakout 1988 film but it was a hugely welcome return anyway. There's a lot of love for re-pairing the originals leads, Winona Ryder and surely the least disliked legacy actor out there, Michael Keaton. Burton too is back delivering his trad...

No one has ruined more films than Guillermo del Toro, by not directing them. But this time I fell the second attempt at rebooting the Hellboy franchise doesn't deserve the appalling reviews. It's refreshing to see the relentless barage of $200 million failed franchise movies give way to something far more low budget and weird, and the Appalachian horror setting is kinda great.

I feel this Brad and George star vehicle was slightly maligned on release. It remains a high quality outing for the platinum-plated pair and very well made. Plus not reliant on relentless high octane action, at least at first.

If ever there were a case of following your own imitators. The XX alumni's debut, In Colour, helped set a template that Coachella-esque electronic music has tried to follow ever since, making this sophomore album lack the lightning in a bottle aspect of its predecessor. Though a lackluster first half gives way to a much stronger second, particularly when the soul samples and collaborators are in t...

For the first time since the first album review on this channel, Black Country, New Road's Ants From up There, a BIG FAT TEN OUT OF TEN, for the latest album from the Canadian Post-Rock titans. Some of their most stadium worthy rock to date, whilst feeling closer to a symphony by Gustav Mahler. And in case you were wondering. as of 25 October 2024 42,847 dead. 16,765 of those children.

Writer director Coralie Fargeat announces herself in manner akin to Quentin Tarantino, with her second film. Being both unbelievably don't give a f*ck bold and hugely literate in the history of cinema, wearing a dazzling array of influences across this amazingly wild schlock horror. Margaret Qualley and an awards-likely Demi Moore are fearless accomplices. One of the years best, most controversial...

Like its predecessor - Live Drugs - I'm left with the same feeling that I wish half the song choices were different, as at its best, the opening a closing salvos, it's fantastic and a fine representation of one of alt-rocks great bands but much of the middle run is a bit too flat an samey. Def one for fans only. Though Under the Pressure is one of the finest 10 mins of music this year.

Although it wont stand on quality as being one of the esteemed Dan Snaith's finest, as either Caribou or his other alt Daphne, Honey will go down as one of the most important and challenging albums of this era. The use of AI in music is already a hugely controversial topic and one Snaith hits head on by using AI to turn his own voice into a variety of female singers.

My infrequent series on albums, movies or bands that were either denied classic status on release or have been forgotten about since. I've gone on at painful length about my anger at The House of Love - the first exciting and original British indie guitar band since The Smiths - never being included in conversations about either Shoegaze or Britpop, despite being more foundational and sooner for b...

A quick shout out of total respect to the Internets busiest music nerd, The Needle Drop, AKA Anthony Fantano. His recent posts on Macklemore and Godspeed You! Black Emperor, have been amazing in a world where so many journalists and socially conscious artists avoid the genocide in Gaza like the plague. Link below https://youtu.be/oInyT46gNHE?si=VvN9SJfON9Y6_6n8