MOVIE REVIEW -- STORM

The tempest at the center of Storm has nothing to do with a thunder- and lightning-packed downpour. It’s a political thriller about a Dutch attorney who stumbles on a new batch of war crimes while building evidence against a Serbian army general who may be responsible for ethnic cleansing in Sarajevo.

At the center of this storm is lawyer Hannah Maynard (Kerry Fox), determined to bring the army commander to justice, especially after her chief witness kills himself -- but not before the witness lies in court, effectively damaging whatever case Hannah and her prosecuting team had made against the general (who has been in prison three years awaiting trial).

It doesn’t help matters that Hannah was hoping to head the prosecutor’s office, a job that instead went to the man who’s now her boss (and who’s more than eager to pass on the flimsy case to her). Starting from basically scratch, Hannah begins to uncover new details. For starters, her key witness was telling the truth about the horrors in Bosnia; he just didn’t see them himself. His sister Mira (Anamaria Marinca), however, suffered them firsthand. Not so surprisingly, she doesn’t want to talk about her past. Some thuggish Serbians don’t want her to talk either.

Director Hans-Christian Schmid steers his smart, probing drama into a mystery for much of the film, as Hannah peels away parts of her witnesses’ lives, uncovering new layers of terror. Schmid slowly ratchets up the danger as Hannah burrows deeper and deeper: She dodges a rock thrown through her car window; Mira’s son disappears from school. Both incidents are not-so-subtle, menacing messages to the women to stop meddling. Plus, Hannah’s boss and the court just want to reach a settlement and put the whole thing behind them. So much for justice.

Fox is solid as the strong-minded and dogged Hannah. “I’m not interested in politics,” she says. “My responsibility is to uphold the applicable law.” Storm starts as a courtroom drama, but as her investigation uncovers the secrets behind a bus, a hotel and Serbian officials, it develops into much more. There are no fancy camera moves, stylish visuals or brash mood-setting music -- Schmid builds the dread naturally, and the results are way more suspenseful than most Hollywood thrillers. Along the way, he reveals the battle scars from a war that ultimately amounted to genocide. --Michael Gallucci

MUSIC REVIEW -- YEASAYER

Yeasayer

Odd Blood

(Secretly Canadian)

Yet another group of Brooklyn hipsters, Yeasayer don’t ooze pretension like many of their peers. In fact, several of the songs on their second album, Odd Blood, are more accessible than anything you’ll find in the Dirty Projectors and Grizzly Bear’s combined catalogs. The first single, “Ambling Alp,” even comes pretty close to conventional pop territory. That doesn’t mean Yeasayer have abandoned the tripped-out psych-pop of their 2007 debut; they’ve just learned to corral it more efficiently into songs rather than ideas masquerading as songs. Odd Blood’s best tracks (“Ambling Alp,” “O.N.E.”) borrow Animal Collective’s tribal jams and meld them to peppy ’80s synth-pop. They’re way more ear-friendly -- and way less mind-fucking -- than you’d expect from a band that proudly wears the “experimental indie-rock” tag. --Michael Gallucci

MUSIC REVIEW -- NICK JONAS & THE ADMINISTRATION

NICK JONAS & THE ADMINISTRATION

Who I Am

(Hollywood)

As the most talented and ambitious Jonas Brother, Nick carries a lot of weight. Apparently he also carries a head full of ideas that needs cleared every 10 months or so. On Who I Am, a solo project with a group of session musicians called the Administration, Nick doesn’t stray far from JoBros themes of bad-love-turned-worse and the mean girls who make his life such hell. Never mind he’s only 17 and things will likely become totally unbearable once he settles down and gets married; as “State of Emergency” declares, love is a losing battle for the baby Jonas Brother. The Administration is a funkier bunch than Jonas’ siblings, so Who I Am boasts a more soulful sway than anything Nick has recorded before. And the album’s best songs – the snaky “Rose Garden,” the grown-up pop of the title track -- push Jonas out of his familiar teen-pop territory. The ballads are still kinda soggy, but when JoBros eventually go their own ways, Nick should be just fine. As long as he stays away from those evil women. --Michael Gallucci

CULTURE JAMMING -- JANUARY 27

TOP PICK

Bayonetta

(Sega)

In the year’s first must-play videogame, you’re a witch with some big weapons and killer moves (including one that gives you humongous fists to bash enemies with). This action game (for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3) blends intense button-mashing with solid storytelling. Best: Finishing moves incorporate old-school torture devices like the guillotine and iron maiden.

CD

Whitney Houston – 25^th Anniversary Edition

(Arista/Legacy)

Before the doodie bubbles, before declaring crack-is-whack and before she became one of the world’s top divas, Houston was a 21-year-old R&B singer primed for stardom by record-company legend Clive Davis. Her 1985 debut glistens in this deluxe edition, which includes five bonus tracks. A DVD features music videos and early TV appearances, including her first.

DVD

The Hurt Locker

(Summit)

Here’s your chance to see one of last year’s best movies (and an Oscar hopeful), which practically nobody saw in theaters. Too bad, because Kathryn Bigelow’s smart film about a Baghdad bomb squad deserves a big-screen viewing. So watch it on Blu-ray, where the terrific action sequences tangle with the more personal stuff (featuring an excellent Jeremy Renner).

DVD

Magnolia

(Warner)

It celebrated its 10^th anniversary last year, but Paul Thomas Anderson’s stunning epic now makes its Blu-ray debut in a set that includes a production diary, extended scenes and an Aimee Mann music video. Anderson’s sprawling tale of human frailty (eight years before he tackled the same subject in There Will Be Blood) stands as one of the ’90s’ best movies.

DVD

9

(Universal)

Last year’s post-apocalyptic CGI movie looks dazzling on Blu-ray. But you may want to keep the little ones away from this story about tiny stitched-together creatures who struggle to survive in a menacing wasteland (spoiler alert: There aren’t nine of them at the end). Extras include commentary, deleted scenes and the original short film that inspired the film.

--Michael Gallucci

MUSIC REVIEW -- SHOUT OUT LOUDS

Shout Out Louds

Work

(Merge)

On their third album, these warmhearted Scandinavians scale back the production dramatics of their last album and follow their instincts, which lead them directly to a joyful and slightly fretful mix of ’60s-through-’80s-inspired pop. Work’s opening song is called “1999,” but that’s at least a decade too late for these Cure fans. Riding a skipping drum and synth beat, frontman Adam Olenius reminisces over a cherished concert and other life-changing memories from his youth. The hooky chorus at the center of “Fall Hard” proudly displays Shout Out Louds’ most laudable gift: Olenius and his bandmates wear their hearts on their sleeves, with a ton of compassion and without an ounce of self-consciousness. --Michael Gallucci

MOVIE REVIEW -- THE WEDDING SONG

Two girls – one’s Jewish, the other’s Muslim – are engaged to be married in Karin Albou’s Tunisia-set World War II film. But many things (poverty, family, the war) get in the way of their pre-arranged happily-ever-afters. For one thing, Myriam (Lizzie Brocheré) doesn’t even like the guy she’s supposed to marry. And the Muslim man Nour (Olympe Borval) is set up with works for the Nazis. Plus, Myriam clearly has a thing for her pal. The girls are best friends, sharing every secret, laugh and tear since childhood. The love stories at the center of The Wedding Song are just part of the movie’s drama. There’s class divide (even among the Jews and Muslims themselves, both of whom are persecuted by the Germans, albeit in different ways), racial barriers and sexual politics to overcome too. But mostly the film is about the two girls. The Wedding Song hinges on their relationship, and the terrific Brocheré and Borval save the film from its ponderous thoughts on race, class and sex. Eventually, everything collides and the war catches up to them, exploding their personal problems into something the whole world – regardless of race, class or religion -- can understand. --Michael Gallucci

CULTURE JAMMING -- JANUARY 20

TOP PICK

Family Guy: Something, Something, Something, Dark Side

(Twentieth Century Fox)

Family Guy’s second Star Wars spoof is just as funny as 2007’s Blue Harvest. The hour-long DVD (which will air on Fox in the spring) retells The Empire Strikes Back from the perspective of Peter (as Han Solo), Chris (Luke Skywalker) and Brian (Chewbacca). Cleveland’s R2-D2 and Stewie’s Darth Vader get the best lines.

VIDEO GAME

James Cameron’s Avatar: The Game

(Ubisoft)

The movie is a hi-tech knockout. The game – for every console known to man and Na’vi – is a button-mashing tie-in with the same spirit. It’s a third-person shooter, so be prepared to kick ass with various weapons in the jungle setting. Best of all, you can play as either humans or aliens. Either way, there’s plenty of Pandora to explore from mission to mission.

DVD

District 9

(Sony)

One of last year’s best movies looks absolutely stunning on Blu-ray, which zeroes in on the story of displaced aliens and one man’s literal transformation. The payoff finale delivers, but it’s the buildup that counts, as you’re drawn into the world of Johannesburg slums and out-of-this-world weaponry. Lots of cool extras here, including tons of deleted scenes.

DVD

Iron Man: Armored Adventures Volume 2

(Marvel Animation/Method/Genius/Vivendi)

Unlike the hit movie, this animated TV show features a teenage Tony Stark putting on an iron suit to fight baddies. But it’s totally fun, especially when heroes and villains collide. This disc includes six episodes (you can find the first six on Volume 1, which was released in October), including a story arc starring the awesome Living Laser.

DVD

Robot Chicken Season 4

(Adult Swim/Warner)

The fourth season of this hilarious stop-motion series takes on SpongeBob SquarePants, Star Trek, Indiana Jones and T-Pain. The two-disc set includes all 20 episodes plus tons of special features, like deleted scenes, commentary, alternate audio and clips from the creators’ Comic-Con panel appearances. Plus, the recently aired Christmas special is here.

--Michael Gallucci

MOVIE REVIEW -- ARAYA

This Venezuelan documentary, unreleased in the U.S. for 50 years, plays like a meditation on the history of an ancient land populated by poor salt miners and fishermen. There are many gorgeous black-and-white images here: Director Margot Benacerraf shoots in close-up and from the ground up. Occasionally she peers at the workers from above, viewing them as an army of ants, methodically and ritualistically delivering their bounty to the mountains of “white gold.” There are also some soothing sounds, as miners silently push their boats out to the gently waving sea. But the over-poetic narration (“Salt and sweat, sweat and salt, until the end of time”) is often intrusive; Araya says plenty without the nonstop voiceover (does the narrator really need to tell us a dozen times that everything the villagers eat comes from the sea?). You’ll learn a few things – conquistadors paid their soldiers in salt! – even if we never quite figure out where the salt comes from before the miners pull it from the sea and where it goes after they pile it up on the shore. Mostly, though, you’ll be awestruck by the elegant, tranquil images of a land and people that haven’t changed much since time began. --Michael Gallucci

CULTURE JAMMING -- JANUARY 13

TOP PICK

(500) Days of Summer

(Twentieth Century Fox)

Even though it claims from the start that it isn’t a love story, this terrific movie (one of 2009’s finest) is indeed a love story – the best since Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, in fact. Two twentysomethings hook up, fall in love and then break up. It’s all tossed together, mixing up chronology and emotions. It also breaks for a cool song-and-dance. Watch it on Blu-ray.

BOOK

Another Green World

(Continuum)

The latest book in the music-snob-approved 33 1/3 series takes a look at Brian Eno’s 1975 ambient classic. Writer Geeta Dayal probes the stories and sounds behind the U2 producer’s best album, a tranquil meditation on a cold world, told through synthetic noise. It’s a perfect wintertime record. This book makes an accommodating companion.

CD

Forge Your Own Chains: Heavy Psychedelic Ballads and Dirges 1968-1974

(Stones Throw)

This cool compilation gathers 15 songs from a bunch of bands you never heard of. Some were from Cleveland (the Sensational Saints), some were from Thailand (T. Zchiew and the Johnny). All of them ingeniously blend 1970s psych-rock with gospel, funk horns and other things you rarely hear in the genre. And all of them are designed to blow your mind.

DVD

Inglourious Basterds

(Universal)

Last year’s best movie comes to Blu-ray with all of Nation’s Pride, the Nazi propaganda film that’s glimpsed in Basterds. The two-disc set also includes extended and alternate scenes. But the real reason to own this is to watch Quentin Tarantino rework not only war-movie clichés, but World War II itself. A blast.

DVD

Motown: The DVD

(Motown/UMe)

The greatest pop-music label ever compiles 18 clips from 1965 through 1971, featuring its top artists singing their greatest songs. Many of these TV spots – some from The Ed Sullivan Show, some from lesser-known programs like Teen Town – are lip-synched, but that doesn’t take away the joy of seeing the Temptations, Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder at their best.

--Michael Gallucci

MUSIC REVIEW -- NEIL YOUNG

Neil Young

Neil Young

Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

After the Gold Rush

Harvest

Dreamin’ Man Live ’92

(Reprise)

Even though it may not have been evident at first, in hindsight it’s obvious that Neil Young would be Buffalo Springfield’s breakout star. It’s his songs – not Stephen Stills’ or Jim Messina’s or Richie Furay’s – that eventually transcended their era. There’s some hippie-dippy flower waving going on, especially in his earliest songs, but by the time the group recorded its second album, Young had rolled past his bandmates, lyrically and sonically.

So it’s little surprise that Young’s 1968 self-titled solo debut – one of four new remastered reissues and a previously unreleased live set from 1992 that’s just now being released -- sounds like a splintered Buffalo Springfield record. Filled mostly with folkie acoustic songs about youth and love, Neil Young isn’t the statement of purpose many first solo albums tend to be.

Young would make his real declaration of independence on 1969’s Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, an electric wave of guitar feedback and epic-length songs recorded with Crazy Horse (who get co-billing on the record), the backing band he’d use on some of his best albums though the years (including Tonight’s the Night, Rust Never Sleeps and Ragged Glory).

From the opening “Cinnamon Girl” to the 10-minute closer, “Cowgirl in the Sand," Everybody is Young’s first classic and one of his best records, an album of unbridled intensity and feral playing. Highlight “Down by the River” includes the first of Young’s many terrific guitar solos – a spiraling surge of pierced notes and breathtaking agility.

The following year’s After the Gold Rush* is Young’s paean to the ’60s, a song cycle of crashed hopes (the title tune), sad passion (“Only Love Can Break Your Heart”) and burning rage (“Southern Man”). There’s some celebration – especially the giddy “When You Dance I Can Really Love” – but mostly Gold Rush sounds like a requiem for a decade defined by the large, and increasingly unmistakable, chasm between youthful dreams and ruthless reality. It’s one of Young’s gloomiest albums but a crucial piece of his catalog.

On his fourth LP, 1972’s Harvest, Young chilled out and was rewarded with his only No. 1 album. Partly recorded in Nashville, Harvest is Young’s first “country” record. It’s also loaded with guest spots from part-time bandmates Crosby, Stills & Nash, Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor. Stripped of Crazy Horse’s fury, and mostly acoustic (with plenty of pedal steel guitar), Harvest contains some of Young’s most popular songs, including “Heart of Gold” (also a No. 1 hit) and “Old Man.” But the solo concert recording of the anti-drug song “The Needle and the Damage Done” is the record’s most substantial track.

Young immediately planned a sequel to Harvest, but the album was shelved as he pursued other avenues over the years. He finally got around to recording Harvest Moon -- a sort-of follow-up featuring many of the musicians who played on Harvest -- in late 1992. The new Dreamin’ Man Live ’92 gathers solo acoustic performances of Moon’s 10 songs from a series of gigs played before the album’s release. It’s essentially an unplugged Moon, which is one of Young’s most easygoing records anyway. Still, it offers an intimate portrait of an artist who’s refused to settle into a single groove during his long career, as these five mostly terrific albums confirm. --Michael Gallucci

CULTURE JAMMING -- JANUARY 6

TOP PICK

Genesis: The Movie Box

(Rhino)

This DVD set gathers four Genesis concerts from the ’80s and ’90s. So yeah, you’re stuck with Phil Collins instead of Peter Gabriel. Still, the soon-to-be Rock Hall inductees dip into their back catalog quite a bit on Three Sides Live, The Mama Tour, Live at Wembley Stadium and The Way We Walk, busting out some old-school prog wankery. Bonus: VH1’s Behind the Music.

CD

The Doors: Live in New York

(Rhino/Bright Midnight Archives)

Recorded a year after Jim Morrison allegedly showed his dick to an audience and a year before he died, this six-disc set collects the Doors’ final four New York concerts from 1970. There are plenty of favorites here (“Break on Through,” “The End,” “Light My Fire”), as well as covers of blues classics like “Little Red Rooster” and “Crawling King Snake.”

DVD

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

(Universal)

Guy Ritchie’s debut movie is basically British Tarantino. But what a ride. Finally available on Blu-ray, the blazing 1998 film – about a group of guys who owe a mobster a half-million dollars – still kicks ass. Bloody, raunchy and stuffed with lightning-quick dialogue, it’s a great companion piece to Pulp Fiction.

DVD

SpongeBob SquarePants: Season 6, Volume 1

(Paramount/Nickelodeon)

The absorbent, yellow and porous dude caps his 10^th anniversary with a two-disc set that gathers the first 23 episodes from the sixth season. The bonus shorts are fun for fans, but you gotta see “SpongeBob vs. the Big One,” where Johnny Depp plays surfing guru Jack Kahuna Laguna. Plus, there’s lots of Squidward throughout.

VIDEOGAME

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks

(Nintendo)

One of Nintendo’s most beloved characters returns with her best portable outing in years. This DS game strays a bit from the ongoing saga, but you’ll hardly notice. There’s a lot going on here, especially great new puzzles that’ll work your brain. The story is typically (and needlessly) convoluted, but like most Zelda adventures, prepare to get lost in her world for a while.

--Michael Gallucci