The Brown Note Movie Review

After acquiring a big TV, continuing my journey back through widescreen classics. Here Martin Scorcese's luxurious follow up to the greatest gangster film of all time, Goodfellas. Another classic no doubt but the main takeaway from this review is that it isn't better than that film, as I and many others have often claimed.

Finally! a review of one of the biggest movies of all time and also one of the most inexplicable successes. Once I watched it, I realized why - it's solely aimed at 12 year old boys, and no one is talking about how sexualised the blue girls are. It's basically a $400 million dollar blue alien fantasy for 12 year old boys. It also is visually like a gaudy Saturday morning CGI kids tv show, with 90's slang, flat acting, awful writing, next to no story and its acclaimed visuals representing a high definition screen saver - earning it a rare big fat zero out of ten.

A slightly odd story about being TV shamed, has led me to the world of giant 4K TV's and subsequently, re-watching widescreen classics. Here Ridley Scott's genre re-birthing sword and sandals epic stands up well for it's great, dynamic, propulsive screenplay and a superb central cast of characters and performances. It's also probably more relevant to modern politics and populism than ever.

The two beloved stalwarts of underground weird rap are a logical combination - and a possible next level Run The Jewels (which is literally a track name here). It's wild, imaginative fun, swerving minute to minute - but the mixing on the vocals can be off. Still probably the best rap album so far this year and a blast.

Their fifth album has a great sound stage and strong moments but a lot of the songs are under developed and it can get sonically quite repetitive. Not as flat out brilliant as the last two.

Our lady saint Lana del Rey returns with her massive ninth album, and after the seismic breakthrough of NFR! was followed by two slightly lesser works, a record that stands nearly as high. Her most personal and confident description of who she is garners my highest score for a while.

The 73 year old outsider artist has pivoted towards music in later life, with the opening of his bio on Wikipedia reading, "He was born the 7th of 27 children during the Jim Crow era and claims to have been traded for a bottle of whiskey when he was four". This though is highly accessible and in no way off-puting music, that at its best draws a link from 1800's slavery to modern variants.

This fabulous little film has double what it needs to get over the line story wise. Completely undemanding, quite thrilling and for older people, deeply distressing - kids don't even clean up after parties anymore, they just google it!

Brandon Cronenberg's psych/body horror sadly lacks the X factor and substance his esteemed father brings to the table, but is still well worth it for fans of depraved, explicit, transgressive JG Ballard-esque societal horror. But none of that matters. We are but peasants for the goddess Mia Goth, the new Bridget Bardot - and a far better actor.

It's a bear. On Cocaine. Can you believe this hype machine cost near twice as much to make as Everything, Everywhere all at Once?!?!? It looks like it was shot on a 90s cam-corder. As with any film like this, you will ask yourself if it had enough to justify sitting through it, the answer is not quite.