Kathryn Bigelow's lavish direction can't keep this creaky adventure afloat. Catherine McCormack is Jean, a photo-journalist researching a century-old double murder while rekindling her relationship to Thomas (Sean Penn) on a sailing trip. A cliché-soaked script and Liz Hurley's wobbly acting lends a made-for-TV ambience.
Probably the most wistful music you'll hear this year is on this debut album by Casino Versus Japan, which takes us back to the good old days when electronica wasn't afraid to be beautiful. Tracks like "The Possible Light" and "Summer Clip" have the same kind of warped grandiloquence as the Aphex Twin and Global Communications a decade ago: delicate melodic flakes magnified through a cosmic amplifier. On tracks like "Moonlupe", Vangelis is even brought to mind—and there's nothing illegal about that.
Ill-starred, Badfinger's final album before guitarist/vocalist Pete Ham's suicide was designed to annoy. Made in 1975, it finally saw the light of day in 2000. Given the nature of "Hey, Mr Manager", "Rock'n'Roll Contract" and "Savile Row", the Welsh power poppers practically signed their own death warrant. Creatively, Head First reeks of insecurity and shifting tastes within, but its archly melodic, cynical elements could strike a chord with Super Furry Animals types. A period piece with added demos, this is the tarnished gilt on the '70s mirror.
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.
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.