Reviews

Sci-fi tosh with Christian Bale

Set at the death of the samurai age, Japanese master Nagisa Oshima's first feature in 13 years charts the disruption of a militia barracks by the arrival of Ryuhei Matsuda's androgynously beautiful young swordsman. A partial return to the erotic obsession of In The Realm Of The Senses, it's a bleak but mesmerically beautiful movie where realism balances with dreamy stylisation.

The clinically style-obsessed Tony Scott might not have been everybody's choice to helm a Tarantino script just as St Quentin was white-hot (seems a while ago now, huh?), but he made a splendid 1993 pulpy pot-boiler which, in sum, outshines its pithy but disjointed parts. Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette are the doomed Detroit lovers-on-the-run with a suitcase of coke, negotiating baroque badlands after Slater kills sleazoid pimp Gary Oldman and his comedy dreadlocks. Everyone who's anyone turns up to harass the couple and their sad dad Dennis Hopper.

A Bosnian and a Serb share a trench in this Oscar-winning anti-war film which uses farce and satire to convey its message. The director's an experienced documentary maker; there's truth in his portrayal of an absurd conflict. Sadly the late, great British actress Katrin Cartlidge, ever one to support worthy causes, is miscast as an egocentric reporter.

Pretty, discreet indietronica from Oz

Australia's next big thing unleash experimental mini-album debut

Ex-Pavement kingpin condenses decades of rock'n'roll lunacy into one uneasy capsule

Nashville hit songwriter gets gritty

Riotously infectious debut from fun-fixated Danish duo

Shockingly good three-CD archive of UK prog-rock