Demob Happy

Laptop pagan folk – what else? 6/10 Although the term ‘Folktronica’ seems to be used entirely as a derogatory term now, it is a useful word to help describe this album, which is a fairly literal fusion of folk songwriting and the glitchy textures of electronica. Unfortunately, it is the songwriting that lets the album [...]

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Doves, hawks and road maps 8/10 Directed by Stephen Gaghan – writer of Soderberg’s superb ‘Traffic’ – Syriana is a complex and fragmented web of stories that aims to provide a snapshot of the ways in which the US pursues its oil interests in the Middle East. In the same way that Traffic examined the [...]

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Black and white oddity from France 8/10 13 Tzameti is a surprising and memorable film that references but does not plagiarise other works while mining a distinct character of its own. Shot in stark monochrome, it opens in a bleak French coastal town where Sebastian, a young Georgian immigrant, is working as a handyman to [...]

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Bear with me 9/10 Werner Herzog is noted for making films that include ‘animals doing unusual things’ and ‘long, extended landscape shots’ (IMDB). Grizzly Man fulfills both criteria, but more unusual than the behaviour of the bears that feature in this brilliant documentary, is that of film’s protagonist – Timothy Treadwell – an authentic American [...]

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London one Saturday in 2003 8/10 Saturday shows Ian McEwan is still at the top of his game. Brain surgeon Henry Perowne is caught up in a road rage incident with an unpredictable thug called Baxter, who he recognises as having a degenerative neurological disorder. Perowne’s prognosis saves him from an imminent beating, but Baxter [...]

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Fairytales and bad dreams 8/10 Innocence is a mysterious piece of of largely visual filmmaking with an impressive, mostly child cast. It is clearly intended as an allegory or parable about the end of childhood and the awakenings of adolescence, and is not meant to be treated too literally (clearly some people are puzzled by [...]

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In Cold Blood 7/10 ‘Capote’ avoids the standard pitfalls of the Hollywood biopic by concentrating on a particular aspect of the famous writer’s life rather than trying to turn his whole life into a story. Moreover, it is unconventional in that it deals with its protagonist’s hypocasy and egomania as much as his celebrated brilliance [...]

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