The Brown Note Movie Review

Director Gareth Evans rightfully made his name with the iconic Indonesian action crime films, The Raid and the even better The Raid 2. This grimy cop thriller goes unexpectedly full tilt Hong Kong era John Woo, but it's a law of diminishing returns as the dozens (hundreds) of bodies pile up, albeit imaginatively.

Happily, Justin Vernon's much loved project has made the tilt away from the experimental, abstract songwriting of the last two albums, and a return to more satisfying complete pieces of the first two, albeit with the odd slightly annoying and incongruous hangover stylistic elements. Still, it's great to have him back in this pocket and with his own defined genre of Neo-Country-Soul.

Well who knew, if you take something with a rusted on fan-base and don't abuse that fan-base or take them for granted, people will come and watch your film. There's nothing good about it - great turns from Jason Momoa and Jack Black aside - but there's nothing really bad about it either.

I went in expecting mid-tier MCU, like Captain Marvel or Black Panther, I got bottom tier, like Antman 3 or The Marvels. This is an abomination of a film with no reason to be and horrible visuals. An excellent Harrison Ford aside - there's zero reason to even bother once.

There are commonalities with Hollywood and TV in recent years. Having not one single original idea and remaking something no one asked for, to a terrible standard and for some reason, cynically using an existing fan-base but rubbing that fan-bases noses in it by race/sexuality or gender swapping a lead character. There's also a more vile and insidious trend going on here where only one person always seems to pay the price.

Director Steven Soderbergh's latest is a classy Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy variant, expertly made and with an impeccable cast, exceptionally led by Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender. The odd improbabilities aside.

I do love Germany's DJ Koze, and ranked both his previous long form behemoths, Amygdala (2013) and Knock Knock (2018) as my second best albums of those respective years. The same cannot be said for his third. A beautifully produced and effortlessly classy affair, that is almost never compelling, sadly.

I think this is an all time first for me, an album where I hated the first half and actually liked the second half. The "UK Bass" artist has one of the most acclaimed albums of the year, I suspect in large part to music critics rating anything that mentions gender or sexual identity higher than it deserves. The first five tracks of yelping vegan Death Grips are interminable, yet the next five are vastly better.

The most mind-blowing album I've heard in years. This psychedelic journey through a club apparently owned by Cthulhu, by Bolivian-American siblings, encourages you to invent a new genre at every turn. A colossal monolith of dayglow noise that is, in an already exceptional year for albums, my new reigning album of the year (sorry Deafheaven/Darkside).

This years brightest new indie attack, levels with octopus armed percussion and a sound like no one else. Music to attune to (like Trout Mask Replica) before all its glories are revealed.