Good call on "Standing Outside a Phone Booth…." It's just a fantastic, fatalistic, haunting song. I made the mistake, however, of buying the album, which it seems was recorded at a completely different time from the song and only released, with "Standing…" on it, to capitalise on its success. It is a drearily…

Probably the most painfully boring cinematic experience I've ever had. I can't remember a film that I've spent continually checking my watch, wandering if anything remotely funny was going to happen. When it finished it felt like a sort of release.

Michael was a brilliant film - unsettling and creepy, but blackly funny, with it, and still made me laugh out loud at one point, which is a 100% improvement on Toni Erdmann

"Lore" was a great film, a really nice surprise - I'd read the source material and was a bit "Meh" about that, but really thought the film was lovely and took it to a whole new level. Looking forward, therefore, to checking this out at some point.

At the risk of being obscure, one of my favourite prog-rock bands back in the 70s was Nektar, a UK band that made it big in Germany before getting cult success in the States (before breaking up). Their most accessible album, "Down to Earth" has an atypical but delightful instrumental, "Nelly the Elephant" with brass…

Phil Manzanera has a track on his "801 Live" album (one of the best live albums ever, trust me) called "Diamond Head". I'm not sure if it counts as it's an instrumental, but his guitar just….sings. It swoops, it soars, it is a thing of utter, majestic beauty. He never got this good again. The same track on his…

Don't forget the much-underrated "Southern Comfort". He was always, I felt, one of those actors who went unrecognised while continuing to turn in some really solid, often exceptional work. Not flashy or showy or starry, but excellent nonetheless.

Ah, do apologise.

Oops - I do apologise. I was over-eager to start reading the article.

Ah, thank you - that explains the sense of deja vu.

With "Leroy Brown" and "Don't Mess Around With Slim", Jim Croce had this genre pretty much sewn up in the 70s

What? No "Run Joey Run"?
https://www.youtube.com/wat…

This news threw me, but in an unexpected way: I was sure that he was already dead, died too young a few years ago. I'm absolutely positive, and I feel as if I've entered some weird time warp.

Jesus wept I saw this a month ago and only just stumbled on this review. This is a dreadful, dreadful, DREADFUL film. Turgid, dull and painfully unfunny, I have never checked my watch so often while watching a film in the cinema as I did here, every half hour thinking "Surely something funny is supposed to have…

I came very close to walking out of Inception, due to the baffling, "Let's stop and explain the plot again, and why we've changed the rules completely yet again", but the incessant noise and dull, derivative action sequences and it sense of self importance. I genuinely thought I wasn't going to be able to stand…

I think you're way too hard on this. I didn't know what to expect, but really enjoyed this one - I think it stands up to its predecessor, with a nod to the past, an acknowledgement of its present state and a wary glance at the future, I think it worked far better than it had any right to be. Sure, it can't catch the…

Try as I might, I just can't get into Elliot Smith, and I'm a fan of confessional singer-songwriters. Having read this, I'll try again, but I can never get past his wimpy, vocals. Every now and then I go back and give this album and XO a go, but it remains resolutely beyond my grasp.

Well, I always felt so. The happy ending is I got asked to take it to the States for his centennial in Savannah, met his widow and even got to know his children, including the author Joan Aiken. Even though I turned up in Savannah with the entire set and costumes packed in my father's old leather suitcase, I was…

I think Out of Time is a great album, because they were switching instruments around and trying different sounds and textures, from the half-spoken "Belong" to the distorted thrum of "Country Feeback" with its heartfelt plea "I need this…I NEED THIS" which resonated with me. "Half a World Away" and "Me in Honey" are…

I always loved "Shiny Happy People" because, to my ears, it dripped with sarcasm. As an ugly, unhappy person, I fully related to that.