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37
'Spider': a web worth the shivers
Controversial Cronenberg does it again in a film which is far more than a creepy movie, but this one needed seeing twice before the grim tale it unravels sunk in with a sinister beauty.
36
'Strange Days': Hard-wired sparks in dark times
Nine years ago, an ambitious sci-fi chiller left audiences largely unmoved and critics divided. Could this have had more to do with its unwelcome messages than its technological accomplishments?
35
'Les Choristes': music, with class
A modest masterpiece has swept the French off their feet. When such musical gifts go international, you may find yourselves in for an unexpected treat.
34
'Effendi': justice in the balance
Jon Courtenay Grimwood's second Arabesk goes into the SF and Crime categories only by default. It should really be in the scalpel drawer along with other extremely penetrating instruments.
33
'The Butterfly Effect': on badly burnt wings and a prayer
A long and winding trail of fiction about memory, time and mind over matter features some intriguing diversions, but ends up being too senselessly earnest to go where it wanted.
32
'Sarac'h' brings the world to Brittany
To label an album "world music" is often idleness, a lack of precision. But when Breton singer Denez Prigent comes up with near-miracles like 'Sarac'h', there's no other term for the astonishing extension of a tradition.
31
'We': an old masterpiece with a post-modern message
A friend lent me a missing link between H.G. Wells and Orwell's '1984'. Yevgeny Zamyatin's short but seminal 1921 trip into science fiction proved to be the most pertinent social satire of our times I've encountered in ages.
30
In 'Permanence', Schroeder sounds the interstellar 'all change'
A woman's bid to retain her salvage claim to a huge, abandoned, space craft grows into a major novel of interstellar rivalry, abundant in intriguing ideas and confirming the author's place among the best in SF.
29
'Blueberry': a Western on acid with spirit
One of the most original 'Westerns' you're ever likely to see is the first big French film of the year, impossible to pigeon-hole and, by the way, mostly in English.
28
'Decipher': far out, too much (and grippingly good)!
Stel Pavlou's first novel rivets the attention, draws on two of the oldest and most widespread myths known to humanity, and chucks scientists, the military and an oil corporation together to save the world ... again.
BC Writer of the Day
