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The Very Best of the Shirelles

“These dollies were the template for the too numerous to recount girl groups to follow. Check how Diana Ross and the Supremes named them as an influence, Ronnie Spector said seeing them make it gave her hope for the Ronettes, and so on. They have more than sixteen great songs in their discography, bu” read more

Time Capsule: Songs for a Future Generation

“A truly great single disc collection chronicling the best of America’s favorite “tacky dance band from Georgia,” as they have labeled themselves over the years. There doesn’t seem to be anything major missing, although there’s not enough Whammy! for my taste. No room for “Legal Tender”” read more

Singles

“I vividly remembering my older cousins playing this album a lot in the mid-90s during their teenage years. A memory which would eventually go on to become my own teenage action. Yes, I moped around in my bedroom while doing Algebra II homework as Morrissey whined, and Johnny Marr’s guitar jangled ” read more

Changesbowie

“Replacing both Changesonebowie and Changestwobowie for the CD era, Changesbowie essentially jams the two together and adds in the major hits from the rest of the albums the Thin White Duke released prior to 1990. The results? One of the most comprehensive and greatest collection of music that not on” read more

Changesonebowie

“David Bowie’s first greatest hits collection remains one of his best. Yes, it’s only eleven tracks and it only covers about five albums, but the sheer genius on display and musical invention is astounding. The alien-folk rock of “Space Oddity” will not prepare you for the coked out soul croo” read more

Greatest Hits

“With a career as expansive and varied as the Cure’s it is nearly a fool’s errand to try and sum up their career on a single-disc retrospective. There’s just too many various moods and styles that they’ve covered over the years, but this 2001 disc is a perfectly fine sampler platter. Think of” read more

The Beach Boys’ Christmas Album

“A bit of a drone but those vocals are heavenly. The standards they cover prove that their vocal prowess could extend beyond the teenage dreams of surf, girls, and hot rods of their earliest singles, but the musical arrangements are lacking in the joy and spirit of their best singles and albums. The ” read more

You Make It Feel Like Christmas (2020 Edition)

“Another year, another deluxe edition of this Christmas album. This time around it is to coincide with the Hallmark Channel using the OneRepublic written ditty, “Here This Christmas,” as the official theme of their onslaught of cliché holiday-themed romances. Throw in one additional bonus track,” read more

Just Can’t Get Enough: New Wave Dance Hits

“Not exactly a genre lacking in danceable singles from a variety of acts, but this version of Just Can’t Get Enough decided that remixes was the way to go. Instead of populating it with songs by the likes of the B-52’s, Yaz, or early Depeche Mode, New Wave Dance Hits finds the likes of the Jam, L” read more

Just Can’t Get Enough: New Wave Women

“A bit too obvious at times? Sure, but this is some primo assemblage. Not only do we get hallowed icons of the genre like Chrissie Hynde, Annie Lennox, the Go-Go’s, but they’re jammed alongside some fun discoveries like Altered Images, the Belle Stars, and the Pandoras. Sure, there’s probably b” read more

Criss Cross

“A near nihilistic obsession with fatalism pervades noir as whole but particularly in the branch of “heist gone wrong.” The Killing practically announces its failed central conceit from the outset, The Asphalt Jungle follows all its thieves as they die, and into this gloomy outlook comes Criss Cr” read more

The Phantom Lady

“B-picture director extraordinaire, Robert Siodmak, crafts this taunt little thriller about a devoted secretary (Ella Raines) going above and beyond to clear the name of her framed boss. That’s essentially the beginning and the end of the film aside from a few sequences of tremendous visual and ton” read more

The Brothers Rico

“A minor noir about the ways in which family can be an albatross around your neck, The Brothers Rico is unremarkable if solid. Eddie (Richard Conte) is living the straight life in Miami when his brothers’ presence causes him to get pulled back into the criminal underworld. Much like Michael Corleon” read more

The Harder They Fall

“I’m not sure if I could dream-up a better swan song for Humphrey Bogart than that of hardboiled reporter blowing the lid off of fixing in boxing. It combines everything that had made Bogart a major star: a combination of weary cynicism and righteous morality, dripping in noirish signposts and a br” read more

Tight Spot

“Director Phil Karlson is something of a minor critic’s darling with his beloved noirs The Phenix City Story and Kansas City Confidential frequently getting thrown around on lists of the greatest examples of the genre. Even some of his lesser-known works exhibit a competency with mood and genre tha” read more

The Sniper

“Here’s a little hidden gem in the film noir genre. A nasty little thing that depicts the dire state of mental health services in 1952 (sadly, not much has changed) and a disturbing portrait of a serial killer seeking methods to stop yet incapable of doing so, The Sniper is nearly radical in its pr” read more

Affair in Trinidad

“After a four-year absence from the screen, Rita Hayworth returned with frequent co-star Glenn Ford in a film that feels like a rehash of Gilda with a healthy portion of various Hitchcock thrillers thrown in for flavor. The resulting films is a mess of generic plotting and beats that felt rusty in th” read more

The Mob

“Something of a dry run for On the Waterfront, The Mob is another expose of the subterranean connections lurking within the waterfront. Broderick Crawford stars as an undercover cop who witnesses a homicide and assumes a new identity to explore the dockworkers union for corruption and mob ties. He fi” read more

The Dark Past

“A movie star remake of 1939’s proto-noir Blind Alley, The Dark Past substitutes that film’s sweaty intensity for a glossier approach. The results are a mixed bag as William Holden does well as the psychologically fraught prison escapee while Lee J. Cobb overacts, as was his wont, as the college ” read more

Dead Reckoning

“Something of an ur-noir as the genre was still developing its rhythms while also pointing forward towards the more brutalist and suffocating films to come, Dead Reckoning is a second-tier noir that functions perfectly as an introduction for the genre. In production before the seminal essay which gav” read more

Johnny O’Clock

“Labyrinthine plot, moody and inky images, and a director, Robert Rossen, that on the surface all seem like surefire bets for a film noir that’s undervalued actually add up to one misfire that’s as promising as it is frustrating. Where exactly should we place the blame? It’s a bit hard to tell.” read more

Blind Alley

“This was potentially a game changer in 1939, a proto-noir where the action is squared away on psychoanalysis and not on fisticuffs and brute strength. Sure, the Freudian psychobabble hasn’t aged well, but there was a rough charm to the likes of Chester Morris, Ann Dvorak, and Ralph Bellamy that pa” read more

Just Can’t Get Enough: New Wave Halloween

“Much like New Wave Xmas, this entry in Just Can’t Get Enough is all peaks and valleys. Mostly valleys as there are six songs named “Halloween” jammed together towards the end of a fifteen-song compilation. That’s not even counting song titles with the word somewhere in them. There isn’t a ” read more

RCA Country Legends

“Short of a comprehensive multi-disc box set, the best compilation album for Dolly Parton was the two-disc The Essential collection. It surveyed all of her biggest hits across her various career phases: upstart country bombshell, genius songwriter, American icon, pop crossover superstar, return to he” read more

Celebration

“To commemorate the end of her recording contract with Warner Brothers, the label she had been with since 1982, Madonna released Celebration, a career-spanning greatest hits collection. There was the one-disc collection, a haphazard assembly of her biggest hits (with numerous omissions), and a deluxe” read more

We Are Glitter

“The edgy glam, sensual chic, and booming synths of Supernature get reconfigured on We Are Glitter, Goldfrapp’s remix album. These remixes bring the temperature down and transform them from stomping glam to atmospheric mood pieces. It’s a neat trick, and one that has peaks and valleys depending o” read more

Solo: A Star Wars Story

“Chalk the original vision for Solo to the annals of “what might’ve been” cinema as their mid-shoot departure hinted at strife within the galaxy far, far away. As someone who generally enjoyed the new trilogy (it has problems, it has bold ideas), and found Rogue One to be the best modern Star W” read more

Strange Frame: Love & Sax

“A science-fiction and queer run through a fairly generic premise is almost saved, but not quite, by a unique animation style in Strange Frame: Love and Sax. A street saxophone performer meets girl, hits the big time, manager forces them apart, and topple the oppressive power that be as the strength ” read more

Slightly French

“A polite, charming riff on Pygmalion was a tyrannical director replaces his leading lady with Dorothy Lamour’s carnival worker. He remakes her entire personality into that of a glamorous French movie star by dangling the carrot of movie stardom and upward mobility. Along the way, she falls in love” read more

Shockproof

“Fascinating and compromised in equal measure, Shockproof is the sight of two disparate auterists meeting and finding their work interfered with by the studio. It’s clear that anyone who knows Samuel Fuller or Douglas Sirk’s major works will know that ironies and undercurrents abound, as do endin” read more