"4:13 Dream" by The Cure

What hath Robert Smith wrought? One of the things The Cure always had going for it as a band was a dramatically pop sensibility that worked alongside floppy-handed protestations against sweetness and light. However, their new album 4:13 Dream, four years in the making, is barely damp with catchiness. “The Only One,” which was notably one of the teaser singles released to build anticipation for the record, is a brief respite. It’s built on a lovely, layered and jangly guitar bit and percussion that resembles handclaps. Smith’s ululations pulse over the melody, raising hairs of delight.

Most of the tracks, however, while they may represent a musical evolution, are dark in a different and uglier way than anything the band has ever done well. Stuffed with messy, grungy guitars that Smith shrieks, squeals or, occasionally, mumbles over to a quick yet dull tempo, they wear on the patience in a hurry, with little evidence of craft. “It’s Over” is a particularly egregious example. Even

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"Hold on Tight" by Hey Monday

Pete Wentz runs the show. That is, the emo/pop/punk show. He’s the HNIC, the Don, the one behind the controls for the fastest growing scene of music in the past several years. Wentz, the bassist of Fall Out Boy and husband of pop princess Ashlee Simpson, as if we even needed to mention those facts, has the Midas touch. If he produces, finds, talks about or signs a band to his Decaydence imprint, it usually turns to Gold. Literally. Wentz’s bands hang RIAA Gold and Platinum certified plaques on their walls, since Wentz devotees proudly gobble up anything he puts his proverbial stamp on.

Hey Monday are one of Wentz’s bands, and Hold on Tight is a gushingly sweet, power pop album that’s equal parts Paramore
and Avril Lavinge, thanks to the sassy vocals of Cassadee Pope. Her attitude and her register are an exact match of Avril’s and this somewhat paradoxical, tame badassery lends an extra edge to “Set Off” and “How You Love Me Now,” both of which feature room-filling gang vocal

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"The Express" by Dennis Quaid

The historical accuracies, or, in this case, inaccuracies, that populate The Express are a bit of a moot point. I am not dismissing the facts, but the film is meant to be a “feel good” sports biopic, a testament to the human spirit, a story about overcoming the odds in the face of racial discrimination and diversity. To argue over the minutia of where games were played or how scenes were embellished is irrelevant, and in films such as this, amping up dramatic license is sanctioned if it advances the film’s main thesis: determined men will overcome. Cheering for the underdog awakens endorphins in a moviegoer’s brain, and one needn’t look any further than the original Rocky for supporting evidence.

The Express is the true story of Ernie Davis, the Syracuse University football player who was the first African-American to nab the prestigious, highly coveted Heisman Trophy. The film doesn’t just retell Davis’s story. It takes a gander at the relationship between the player and his

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"What Just Happened" by Robert De Niro

Barry Levinson and Robert DeNiro team up for the screen adaptation of Art Linson’s Hollywood insider account What Just Happened: Bitter Hollywood Tales From the Front Line. In the vein of similar narratives such as The Player, Sunset Boulevard, and, most recently, the television series Entourage, What Just Happened strikes a contrast between the superficial glamour of the movie business and the exigent trivialities that lend themselves to its infrastructure. Contrary to these other films and Entourage, What Just Happened often confounds its purpose—ostensibly, to shed light on the utter absurdity of the industry and characterize the power brokers involved as almost Arthur Miller-esque “working men”—and the need for a tangible commodity.

While one may argue that “a man hanging over a ledge in Hollywood is desperately funny and true,” as Linson does, it does not seem enough in terms of: a) breaking new ground and b) providing the audience with anything to hold onto in the long run,

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"RocknRolla" by Gerard Butler

RocknRolla is a cool movie. So cool, in fact, that it doesn’t let the audience get close to its slick cast of characters, the homecoming kings of the gangster world. Viewers are kept at arm’s length, with a gun pointed squarely in their face as they try to decipher how convoluted plot lines intersect and why they should care about a motley crue of callous men. If crooks like One Two (Gerard Butler), Lenny Cole (Tom Wilkinson), and Handsome Bob (Tom Hardy) are roost-ruling fraternity brothers, then we’re the rush rejects that they haze with banal dialogue and headache-inducing action sequences. Is there no sympathy for film nerds—those of us who yearn for a cohesive plot and explosive entertainment that doesn’t recycle worn-out genre conventions?
Director Guy Ritchie is partially responsible for pioneering a new wave of hoodlum flicks—not quite Bob Le Flambeur, but good fun nonetheless. Critics accuse Ritchie of having gone soft and nepotistic after marrying a certain pop star, but

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