Blu-ray: The Hands of Orlac (Orlacs Hände)

★★★★ BLU-RAY: THE HANDS OF ORLAC Masterpiece of Austrian expressionist cinema

A little-known masterpiece of Austrian expressionist cinema

The German director Robert Wiene is best known for The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (1920), perhaps the most influential piece of expressionist cinema. He's not as well known as F. W. Murnau or Fritz Lang, but he deserves to be in the same league. The Hands of Orlac (1924), made in Austria rather than Germany, is a very fine example of a cinema haunted by the violence and death of the First World War, and containing within it both seeds of fascist aesthetics and the darkness that characterises film noir.

Album: Maroon 5 - Jordi

★ MAROON 5 - JORDI A startingly bleak journey into the heart of giga-success

A startlingly bleak journey into the heart of giga-success

Well this is bleak. Seven studio albums, three live albums, two compilation albums, one remix album, three EPs, 33 singles, 23 music videos, 120 million sales and streams well into the tens of billions seem to have completely erased what personality Maroon 5 might ever have had.

Album: Marina - Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land

★★★★ MARINA - ANCIENT DREAMS IN A MODERN LAND Best so far from re-energised pop star

Fifth album is the best so far from a re-energised, revitalised, newly mouthy pop star

The latest album from Marina Diamandis, her fifth, is a startling explosion of vim and attitude. It mingles speeding, wordy, indie-tinted dance-pop bangers, tilting at all manner of contemporary ills, with sudden moments of broken-hearted piano-led contemplation. When she last appeared two years ago, it was with the lengthy Love + Fear album, Paloma Faith-ish songs whose tastefulness masked real character.

Album: James - All the Colours of You

★★★ JAMES - ALL THE COLOURS OF YOU Of Covid and other contemporary ills

Covid and other contemporary ills haunt the Manchester perennials

James, and Tim Booth in particular, have always been too genuinely, gauchely odd to be hip – outsiders at the Madchester rave yet responsible for one of its biggest anthems, “Sit Down”, then shedding their skin for suppler, sexual territory with Laid, an Eno collaboration which opened their sound and self-image into something both gauzier and raw, but trailed behind his stadium-ambient U2 smashes.

Blu-ray: The World of Wong Kar Wai

★★★★ THE WORLD OF WONG KAR WAI Seven magical films from master HK auteur

A set of seven magical films from Hong Kong's master auteur

There is an irony in the fact that the most celebrated of auteurs to emerge during Hong Kong’s "Second Wave" of directors in the 1980s did not originate from within the bounds of the administrative region. Born in Shanghai, Wong Kar Wai was the son of a sailor and a housewife. It was only on the eve of China’s Cultural Revolution, as Mao Zedong sought to strengthen his grip on Chinese society, that Wong's parents took the bold decision to emigrate to British-ruled Hong Kong.

Album: Tomorrow X Together - The Chaos Chapter: Freeze

An impressively varied second album from the K-pop five-piece

This second full-length album from South Korean quintet TXT scrambles musical genres in rich and fascinating ways. From the fizzing hi-hats and dreamy chords of opener “Anti-Romantic” to the harmonic stasis and minimalist groove of “Frost” which brings the eight-track collection to an impressive close, textures, timbres and tempos are impressively varied throughout.

Album: Wolf Alice - Blue Weekend

★★★ WOLF ALICE - BLUE WEEKEND Individual and creatively dynamic

A big venue proposition who remain individual and creatively dynamic

When Wolf Alice appeared a decade ago, you’d have to have been a soothsayer of Merlin-like proportions to predict the career trajectory they’ve had since. Certainly, prior to their debut album, this writer took them for just another female-fronted London indie guitar band, following the same old formula.

Album: The Cult of Dom Keller – They Carried the Dead in a UFO

★★★★ THE CULT OF DOM KELLER - THEY CARRIED THE DEAD IN A UFO Fierce psychedelic weirdery 

Fierce psychedelic weirdery straight out of Nottingham

While so many bands of a psychedelic bent treat the genre as if it has been pickled in aspic since the swinging sixties of London and San Francisco or maybe the motorik sounds of mid-70s West Germany, the Cult of Dom Keller don’t give any impression of being hemmed in by such self-imposed and heritage-worshipping rules.