The Brown Note Movie Review

My yearly list of the best albums, in a pretty decent but not great year in music, in a particularly poor era for music journalism. Movies to follow.

 

Emperors New Clothes award for most inexplicably, universally praised album of the year - Caroline Polachek - Desire, I Want to Turn Into You

 

Full show with music - https://www.mixcloud.com/julian-brown/top-25-albums-of-2023/

Every single time I watch this Liam Neeson "actioner" my appreciation for it as a modern classic grows. For me it is the greatest film to examine the difference between toxic masculinity and positive masculinity, as a group of near awful or at least deeply broken men, all become better versions of themselves through adversity. The pack of wolves hunting them representing a beautiful tone poem on inescapable mortality and how you greet that.

I fully expected director, David Fincher's new film to be a stone cold Day of The Jackal look into the mind of an assassin. It isn't, its a far more rote and overdone revenge story, yet at the same time, the level of class every single aspect of its making possesses, the awards worthy performance of a long absent Michael Fassbender and the fact it leans fully into black comedy, makes it feel new and incredibly watchable.

If the undoubted cinematic success story of the year was Barbenheimer, it's undoubted biggest victim was Mission: Impossible 7. Coming off the back of Tom Cruise's most warmly received mega hit, Top Gun Maverick and with stellar reviews, the movie hit the immovable force that 76% of movie goers were watching either Barbie or Oppenheimer in its second week of release. Often analogous with The Fast and Furious franchise, there were a couple of weak-spots compared to the previous three high water marks. It's still ultra high quality entertainment and nowhere near Fast X stagnation yet, but some of the same signifiers are emerging, repetition, fatigue, reusing old cast members and perhaps most egregious - denying the satisfaction that a complete movie would offer. I'm still desperate to see the next one though.

This underappreciated low key gem gives us the best Uma Thurman lead of the modern era - seriously why is this woman not used more? And if it isn't her wondrous basket case of an art gallery owner/modern art guru wannabe on screen, its Samuel L Jackson - what more do you want? It may be a tad obvious and predictable but its 100% worth the (short) ride for Uma alone.

A short, flowing and classy sequel to one of last years finest electronic full lengths - Half Moon Bay.

Part of the UK's holy trinity of Shoegaze, along with RIDE and MBV, all of whom made strong comebacks after twenty-years absences, with new albums and tours. Sadly this second comeback album is nowhere near the perfection of the self-titled 2017 effort and is sadly too slight in almost every direction.

The late Mark Linkous' esteemed band receives a totally unexpected final album, the one he was working on at the time of his suicide in 2010, and completed by his family members. And it's wonderful.

The tenth album by the UK stalwarts is, for me, arguably their finest since the high point of Surrender in '99. Tracks like Live Again and the Beck featuring, Skipping Like a Stone amongst the years finest.

This Is England, director, Shane Meadows first masterpiece, retains immense power as a treatise on small town brutality and toxic masculinity, especially with the never better performance of Paddy Consadine.