The Screengrab

The recent direction in which Radiohead has turned causes much split opinion, as might be expected from one of the biggest bands in the world.  Some feel that the more avant-garde turn their music has taken is a sign of growth, development, and change for the better, a step away from the simple but distinctive pop craftsmanship that marked their early days and towards an entirely new sensibility, more attuned to the voice of modern minimalist composers than to the pop or even indie-rock tradition.  Others think it's been a disaster, a pretentious and overwrought plunge into the alienatingly highbrow at the cost of the band's credibility, relatability and listenability.  Whatever one's opinion (and I'm certainly in the former camp), a lot of tears have been shed over the fate of the band's guitarist,  Jonny Greenwood.  Though he's been vocally supportive of Radiohead's direction and has adapted his playing admirably well to the demands of the more stripped-down, electronic-influenced work, many have wondered -- especially given the sound of lead singer Thom Yorke's solo work -- if he was fully behind the shift in tone.  But after the release of the stunning soundtrack to Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood, no one should worry, least of all Greenwood himself.  It's a masterful album, perfectly suited to the material onscreen, that shows how fully possessed he is by moody minimalism and dissonant, striking tones.

There were legitimate worries when  Greenwood was announced as the composer to the score to There Will Be Blood.  A number of people, myself included, questioned the prominent role assigned to Aimee Mann's music in Magnolia; boosters found it fitting, a natural extension of the movie's story.  Others found it extremely inclusive, smacking of the cart driving the horse.  It turns out they have nothing to worry about:  Greenwood's score in There Will Be Blood is as subtle and insinuating as Mann's songs in Magnolia were obvious and intrusive.  From the first squalling, snakeline chords the the last smothering cluster of strings, it's a tightly controlled, sinister, and utterly appropriate score, a musical realization of the struggles and excesses in Daniel Plainview's soul.  While the movie itself is epic, the score is minute and precise,  coming from a stripped-down version of a full orchestra and delivering a terrible sense of struggle from its very first notes.  At times, Greenwood almost seems to be fighting a horrible battle to make the dissonant blasts and squalling notes force meaning and emotion from the barren landscapes of the film's oil-town settings:  there is pain and effort in this music as real and as clear as Plainview's horribly willful efforts to drag himself out of a hole in the ground with a wooden leg.  Some notes sound relentlessly, again and again, with a  furious insistence worthy of Ligeti; other notes creep loosely around the edges of perception, bringing the entire thing an almost ambient quality like Brian Eno's instrumental efforts.  It's an astonishing piece of work on every level, instantly marking Greenwood as a force to be reckoned with as a film composer.  (Unfortunately, the presence of a slight three-minute quote from his own "Popcorn Superhet Receiver", an avant-garde piece influenced by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki, disqualified the widely praised score from Oscar contention.)

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Opening wide this Friday is David E. Talbert's First Sunday, which should represent the final nail in a coffin which contains the mouldering remains of Ice Cube's reputation as an American nightmare.  Younger Screengrab readers may not realize this, but Cube was once a rapper who so terrified white America that they put him on the cover of national news magazines, where he sneered and scowled his way right into your scaredy-bones.  Now he just makes comedies that Steve Martin is too busy to bother with.  Anyway, Talbert is being claimed as the new Tyler Perry, which, depending on your inclinations, is either a refreshing change or a dire threat.  We were sort of hoping that First Sunday would function as a pseudo-sequel to the Friday films and would, at the very least, treat us to the spectacle of Cube and Katt Williams having to sit through a really long, dull sermon while stoned out of their gourds, which is an experience we've all had at one time or another.  Unfortunately, it's no such thing, so here's some other movies you can look forward to after this endless Sunday is over.

STORMY MONDAY (1988)

Back before Mike Figgis hit it big, he directed this quirky little neo-noir thriller.  It hasn't proven to be one of his lasting legacies as a filmmaker; for everything it does right, it goofs up in some profound way that nearly sinks it — its plot is pretty thin even by the standards of such potboilers, and two fine lead performances by British actors (Sting and a young Sean Bean) are clumsily countered by two dopey ones by American actors (an ultra-hammy Tommy Lee Jones and Melanie Griffith, clearly letting the clock run down on her fifteen minutes of fame).  That said, it's worth watching for two reasons:  first, it gives you an important stepping point in the development of Figgis' career, should you be interested in pursuing such a thing; and second, it's crazily gorgeous to look at.  It features some nearly perfect cinematography by the estimable Roger Deakins, all rain-slicked streets and cheap neon and hazes of cigarette smoke and shadows that people fall into and never emerge.  It's all surface; you'll find no depth here no matter how hard you look.  But if surface is all you're looking for, you could do a lot worse than Stormy Monday.

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