Recommended movies for Lockdown II
The Police are Blundering in the Dark (La polizia brancola nel buio) – 1975. Thriller. I have never seen worse haircuts on actors before; got lion manic, oblong perm, coal-skuttle brylcreem and Mr Lee Grant, all in one scene? With a Lady Diana impersonator pulling that face shy shoe-horned in. Sitting on a pastel chenille sofa-set under the wall-mounted beaming Buddha that contains the camera that collects the mad scientist’s brain wave photos which serve no narrative or illustrative point. And where are those cops? There’s a gurning, grunting, feral Neil Young who darn done it all in the garden greenhouse. While most of the women travel tits-out topless, for no sensible reason. Your perfect watch!
The Moon Over the Alley – 1976. Documentary. Has the most tuneless soundtrack I’ve ever heard; each song sounding worse than the last. I had to replay a few days later to prove I wasn’t dreaming or going mad; why would anyone make this music, or use it in a movie? Has a scene in a pub with a longhaired pianist accompanying a geezer called the Spanish Singer did the scariest dance you’ll maybe ever see with his head stock still in a hummingbird hover while his body jerked back like a music hall Egyptian – credited as Mr Tony Strachan – I discovered while researching off online where there is no useful information about this man, or his piano player. I wish I was living in the nineteen-seventies, even with such awful entertainment; when they still made things of brass and iron, glass and wood, brick and stone – built to last, and beautiful too. Every time I pray to be sent back in time I promise God; ‘I won’t say a word. No one will know I’m from the future. Honest. Just put me in the picture. Get me out of HERE!’
The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel) – 1979. Drama. I read Gunter Grass’ ‘Dog Years’ and ‘Tin Drum’ as a truculent teenager, trying to be cool; forcing myself as they are dreadful novels; but this cinematic version is pretty damned great even though the arty experts said it can’t be done. The hero’s part is creepily performed by one David Bennett; an anatomically stunted boy playing an anatomically stunted other boy, who was cast as children or elves or pixies for the rest of his career – you can’t take your eyes off his toddler torso once you know this fact. The uncut version was banned worldwide when classed as paedo child pornography had wall-eyed Bennett watching weird as flushed fornicators grumble and grunt through doors and windows on high and low. The ONLY movie I have continually kept and regularly watched in my life thus far.
On the Bowery – 1953. Documentary. Drunks are the worst; that phony pretending intimate interest when all they really want is another cheap shot; the puff-eyed hollow-cheeked nodding acquaintance, ‘Please tell me more.’ Duplicitous punks Bukowski, Hunter Thompson, Hemmingway, O Henry, Dante, Dylan Thomas, even my favourite bohemian poet, manic Max Bodenheim, was an insufferable arse. I love that the central curio character played by Ray Sayler looks scarily similar to an aged Jack Kerouac and whines and wheedles with snarls and sulks as that writer did, by all accounts. The streets themselves; the hand-painted shop fronts, natty neon panels, bills and boards; flickering patterns from the elevated railway and gorgeous cars with their super deluxe V8s purring cruising the musty crusty crowd. Of the most annoying inauthentic real people I’ve ever seen on film.
Man Bites Dog (C'est arrivé près de chez vous) – 1992. Pseudo-documentary. First movie I’d seen with hacked hard cuts – or whatever they’re called – no leading shots of hands on doors or changing gears or cursing traffic… just BANG to the next bit. A device which works as improvised shady back street theatre in bars and taxis and bombed out buildings much better than you’d think. Doesn’t have the same effect on secondary viewings so try to make your first a special event. Mine took place at the trés trendy arthouse Prince Charles Cinema off Leicester Square with a murmuring mob of Japanese students. I laughed out loud at the first inky instance of busily bungled body disposal and turned to see rows of frowning faces glaring disdain my simpleton self… but it was hilarious… and I was up front… as close to the action as I could get.
Harlan County USA – 1976. Documentary. The Brookside Strike. A miners’ trade union under brutal persecution from local rednecks using straight state sanction with drive-by shotguns, midnight murders and lynching threats – hard to figure, or readily accept in our post-modern world. Those Nazi cunts. I would’ve found myself a grassy knoll and shot the fucking lot of them; if I had a gun, and knew how to use it. And not so silly as bullies harassed the protesting picketers loyal local troopers hid around a cold corner down a highway hill out of statutory sight. Lois Scott and other women strikers will break your heart as inspirational salts of the earth deserving of respect and admiration when shaking axe-handles at machinegun toting vigilante posses of sinister scabs – they even harmonised with perfect pitch when challenge chanting, ‘We shall not be moved’. Although this drama hasn’t turned out well – for the affected community, our Labour Movement, or the planet Earth.
Rumble on the Docks – 1956. Drama. Fourteen minutes into this teen gang ripoff you get to see the worst band dancing sequence ever filmed – it takes your breath away with fear and loathing as Freddy Bell and the Bellboys play a hotdog version of their smash hit number, ‘Take the First Train out of Town’. Then you get to see some hep cats grooving on the hubbah hubbah dancefloor – crewcut, grease-back, jive ass mothers – several of whom you would have to knock out or even rumble, if they did that near you!
Being Frank: The Chris Sievey Story – 2018. Music documentary. Showcasing an epitome of the English eccentric; those tense, tenacious, ultra-prolific, retro- crypto- oddball cranks: John Otway, Paul Byrne, Kenneth Spiers, Rowland Rivron share a quirky brass-necked nerdish disregard for the public’s liking of actual skill. They carry on regardless with a stalwart following of underground anorak devotees; freely admitting to no originality nor virtuosity or even a clue… for the most part… just happy to be here? A regulation piece was so easy to produce as each of these chancers has a coded collection of all and any thought, word or deed they’ve possibly had – stacked in crates in attics and garages, for grumbling grandkids to lug off to the tip on an unwatched episode of ‘Hoarders Next Door’. And each song sounds like ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ or ‘My Ding-a-ling’ or something lifted from bloody Benny Hill. With guest appearances on children’s TV until the coke and alcohol orgy scandal that hogs the headlines and spoils the fun with a soft decline into bald bloated busking in Facebook funk.
The Embalmer (L'imbalsamatore) – 2002. Drama. Loose and leery in a very good way. With dialogue, script, premise and plot made up as they went, or so it would seem. Ernesto Mahieux, as the unrequited delusional lover is genuinely strange, or a brilliant actor, maybe both? Another obnoxious, physically challenged, averagely talented artist-on-the-make has a callous disregard for the Hollywood honed aesthetic affections of your public passer-by. Is my current favourite kind of creative. I was mightily impressed with the Barry Island vibe of Castel Volturno; in off-season seedy winter winds; the two bob bingo, plastic stalls in asphalt parks, a deserted racetrack in frosty fusty fog, the derelict zoo, sleazy suites with hangdog hookers, emptily echoing industrial estates and not a whole lot on the embalmer’s craft… gets your classic romance.
The Island (Ostrov) – 2006. Drama. An unexpected gem. So they sometimes say. While none of the movies reviewed above uses linear narrative to dictate pace this one excepts with an A, B and C. Looks tonal Tarkovsky on opening credits; lots of running water; metaphoric mists; a pandered palette of turquoise blue with sepia midtones, no reds or yellows to brighten the brain – or maybe my telly is on the blink? Is beautifully filmed; finely under-acted, that pounding plot keeps the timeline tight making easily followed reasonable sense despite a salty string of cod coincidence, the least of which brings an elegant end – learned from that shady Shakespeare shill? A turgid tale about mithering monks should leave you cold yet has a paradoxic pessimism that actually makes you feel kinda GREAT? Best movie I’ve seen in quite a while… and that’s all I’ve been doing for eight fucking months! Check it out.
