Album: Huey Lewis and the News - Weather

Perennial West Coast feel-good band bring the bland on possibly their final outing

Huey Lewis and the News were an unlikely mid-Eighties phenomenon. Their Sports album was a mega-success for a band already approaching early middle age. Their Fifties feel, given a contemporary polish and boosted by association with cinematic juggernaut Back to the Future, sat comfortably (yet incongruously) alongside the likes of Madonna and Duran Duran.

Oscars 2020: a 'Parasite' love-in caps a night of firsts

OSCARS 2020 A 'Parasite' love-in caps a night of firsts

South Korean triumph dominates a generously-spirited Oscar night

The 92nd Academy Awards saved its surprises for a final stretch that saw Parasite make history as the first foreign language film ever to win the Oscar for Best Picture, pipping to the post the presumptive favourite, the World War One drama 1917 (pictured below).

Blu-ray: Night Tide

★★★★ BLU-RAY: NIGHT TIDE Surreal sorcery from a Californian original, an early role from Dennis Hopper

Surreal sorcery from a Californian original, an early role from Dennis Hopper

Dennis Hopper’s first starring role, in Night Tide from 1961, as a naïve but curious young sailor bewitched by a siren, offers a strange mirror to his role as the evil Frank Booth in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986). If anything, he offers a preview of the bemused Jeffrey Beaumont played by Kyle McLachlan in Lynch's masterpiece.

LFF 2019: Le Mans '66 review - Matt Damon, Christian Bale and the Ford Motor Company go to war

★★★ LFF 2019: LE MANS '66 Matt Damon, Christian Bale and the Ford Motor Company go to war

Battle of the race aces, plus 'The Aeronauts', 'Greed' and 'The Exorcist' revisited

While recent motor racing movies have been built around superstar names like Ayrton Senna and James Hunt, the protagonists of Le Mans ’66 (shown at London Film Festival) will be barely recognisable to a wider audience. They are Carroll Shelby, the former American racing driver turned car designer, and Ken Miles, a British driver transplanted to American sports car racing.

CD: Freddie Gibbs & Madlib - Bandana

Exploring the depths of Californian noir on ultra-accomplished rap album

Don't let the presence of nerds' favourite Madlib on production duties fool you: this is a big bad bastard of a West Coast rap record. It's a cocaine-wholesaling, n-wording, gun-toting, dog-eat-dog-ing, murderous bastard of a rap record, in fact. The narratives are of jail cells, money laundering, betrayal and domination. When talk turns to politics, it's couched in terms of brutal power, paranoia and “puppetmasters”.

Big Little Lies, Series 2, Sky Atlantic review - supercharged start for new season

★★★★★ BIG LITTLE LIES Meryl Streep boosts an already formidable female cast

Meryl Streep boosts an already formidable female cast

When the first series of Sky Atlantic's Big Little Lies paraded across our screens in 2017, its shocking but satisfying ending looked like the perfect conclusion to a superb self-contained drama. Doh! Of course it wasn’t – it was just the first season out of who knows how many.

CD: Flying Lotus - Flamagra

Californian beat scene monarch continues his cosmic drift

It's five years since Steven Ellison aka Flying Lotus released an album, and it's not entirely clear how far he's moved creatively. To be fair he's been busy branching out in other directions, producing for superstar rapper Kendrick Lamar, making short films, and helping members of his Brainfeeder stable like Thundercat and Kamasi Washington along to greater fame. But with this album he seems to have taken up precisely where 2014's “Your Dead” left off.

Destination Wedding review - a misanthropic modern-day romance

★ DESTINATION WEDDING Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder in a misanthropic modern-day romance

Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder reunite in the sunny climes of Southern California

Recently, Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder have found themselves in a career renaissance. Reeves has made a remarkable comeback as the dog-loving action-hero John Wick, while Ryder won audiences over as the grief-stricken mother, Joyce Byers, in Netflix’s 80s nostalgia-fest Stranger Things.

Beautiful Boy review - well-acted but a slog

★★ BEAUTIFUL BOY Steve Carell & Timothée Chalamet can't enliven meth addict memoir

Steve Carell and the astounding Timothée Chalamet can't enliven meth addict memoir

The tortuous road to addiction and back again – or maybe not  makes for a faintly tedious experience in Beautiful Boy, notwithstanding the committed performances of an A-list cast.

CD: Aloe Blacc - Christmas Funk

★★★★ ALOE BLACC - CHRISTMAS FUNK Pretty much does what it says on the tin

Pretty much does what it says on the tin

Egbert Nathaniel Dawkins III – Aloe Blacc – is one shrewd dude. He's extremely adept at reaching out beyond the confines of his natural beat of funk and soul, whether that's credible (covering The Velvet Underground's “Femme Fatale”) on his breakthrough 2010 Good Thingsalbum or commercial (co-writing and singing the late Swedish EDM gigastar Aviicii's “Wake Me Up” can't have done his bank balance any harm, what with going to number one in 22 countries). And of course nobody ever went bankrupt releasing a Christmas album...