Time to give up the ghost

THE GRUDGE

The Japanese horror series launched in 2000 gets a further American iteration – half-sequel, half-reboot – as a daisy-chain of murdersuicides bedevils almost every character in it. As storytelling, it’s jumpy and disorienting, with a brave showing from Andrea Riseborough as a fatigued cop, but the spectral jolts are so randomly allocated that it simply gets tiresome.

15 cert, 94 min

THE TURNING

This reworking of The Turn of the Screw gives Henry James’s classic ghost story a trendy gerund-ified title, but considering its general haplessness, “Screwed” might have been more apt. The usual clapped-out haunted house scares get yet another workout, while an ill-conceived twist ending feels like an insult.

15 cert, 94 mins

PAW PATROL: READY, RACE, RESCUE!

This extended episode of the dog-based emergency services cartoon packs in all of the artistry and emotional nuance parents have come to expect from the series (ie none). Like being talked at by a hyperactive five-year-old for 48 minutes, it’s one for very young viewers only. U cert, 48 min

A HIDDEN LIFE

Terrence Malick makes a grand comeback with this spiritual war epic about an Austrian farmer who faced execution during the Second World War for conscientious objection. It’s a stirring tribute to his protest against state power. 12A cert, 174 min

refined songcraft.

This has been the duo’s almost unique territory since breakthrough hit West End Girls in 1984. Hotspot is their 14th album and shows no relaxation in quality control. The songs are smart as ever and the sound is fantastic, with Madonna and Killers producer Stuart Price once again at the helm (as he has been since 2013’s Electric). Vintage synths are layered with grandeur to frame Tennant’s yearning, melodious voice.

What is subtly shifting with age is perspective. Tennant has always cultivated the air of someone standing on the edge of the dance floor looking in. You can still find him there on Monkey Business, where a sardonic portrait of a party animal (“I’m a legend round these parts”) is set to a thrilling blend of motoric Kraftwerk electro and lush Philadelphia disco. But a tone of reflection is creeping in, a sense of memorialising times past.

On opening track Will-othe-Wisp a glimpse of an old dance partner at a Berlin train station inspires wistful speculation on whether they have traded their wild ways for “a wife and job and all of that/ Working for the local government/ Living in a rented flat.” Tennant has long revelled in such suburban banalities, aligning his poetic sensibility with the day-to-day dramas of Philip Larkin and John Betjeman, although here a thrilling four-to-the-floor backing track helps keep any sense of remorse at bay.

Dreamy synth pop ballads You Are the One and Hoping for a Miracle amplify notes of regret at roads not travelled.

The elegiac Burning the Heather, meanwhile, depicts a lonely but hopeful romantic encounter in a countryside pub, with references that hint at the autobiographical. Bernard Butler strums acoustic guitar and a trumpet echoes with melancholic tenderness as Tennant protests: “You’ve got me all wrong/ I’m not that guy/ I’m just the singer of the song.”

It is lovely stuff, replete with bucolic images of sheepdogs leathering around autumnal hillsides. As Pet Shop Boys enter their heritage years, they are still taking dance music into unexpected places.

Their sound is still fantastic but they are starting to memorialise

Wire

Mind Hive (Pink Flag)

Twin Atlantic Power (Virgin EMI)

Yorkston/Thorne/Khan Navarasa: Nine Emotions (Domino)

The Milk

Cages (Wah Wah 45s)