The Brown Note Movie Review

The New Jersey via Haiti mystery that is Mach-Hommy seems to be circling closer to the mainstream with a worthy follow up to 2021's Pray for Paris, in a year that seems a standout in rewarding old heads with actually decent rap albums.

Although I've been fonder of the more intense and dense albums by the UK's Darren J. Cunningham, unlike the recent Four Tet release, this at least goes on a cohesive journey and ends up being more than the sum of its parts.

With a show-stopping performance from Alisha Weir as a young kidnapped rich girl (>cough<), an uneven yet ultimately welcome entry into a golden era for horror films, this deliberately at the schlockier end of the spectrum.

Despite having everything on paper - including strong reviews - this amiable farce is only half the film it could be, or needs to be. A waste of the talent and budget on display. It's too slight and surface level and the story too weak to be anything more than a forgettable once through. And I'm docking it another point for that godforsakenly awful cover of The Unknown Stuntman.

The hugely surprising second act in the once terrible, now pretty great, director Guy Ritchie's career continues. Ironically Henry Cavill gets to play the guy that inspired James Bond, in this wild re-telling of a genuine WW2 story. Superficial to a fault but hugely entertaining. Someone help him with his movie titles though.

This excellent and surprisingly art-house prequel to the original (and superb) Omen movie, is also very bizarrely close to the recent Immaculate.

I was a huge fan of Tom Krell's early work How to Dress Well, though faded when it became a more ordinary RnB proposition. This wildly artistic and conceptual 6th album is criminally underrated and one of the years unsung gems.

Being very much down with my fellow kids, I am a big fan of the last decades king of outsider rap, particular in the middle of a terrible era for mainstream rap music. Keef's wildly prolific period of endless album length projects on whatever the hell he felt like, has given way to much stronger and more focused releases in recent year, culminating with the rap album I will probably play the most this year.

Damon McMahon, AKA Amen Dunes' last album, 2018's Freedom, is one of the great singer-songwriter albums of the last few years and the first to make, sounds a bit like David Gray into a compliment. However, his far more experimental follow up has nowhere near the memorable songs of its predecessor.

My irregular series on albums that are perfect 10/10s - here celebrating the 25th anniversary of the album that put the underground alt stars on the same level as Radiohead, and with Yoshimi, one of the great one-two's in alternative music. Much credit has always gone to the incredible "Indie Pet Sounds" music, but Wayne Coyne's singing and in particular, lyrics are criminally underappreciated. It's one of the greatest alternative albums thematically - and its themes of angst filled superheroes, scientists trying to save the world and existential dread and wonder, feel even more relevant today.