A Girl & A Gun

Quadrophenia (1979), Roddam

The last time I watched this I was 15, & I'd thankfully forgotten what a terrible, terrible film it is. Have there ever been any good films based on albums? Maybe so, but none based on a The Who album. Quadrophenia was originally a double album, which goes some way to explaining why this film is twice as bad as you can possibly imagine it's going to be.

It basically depicts youth culture as a refuge for inarticulate, unimaginative and non aspirational idiots
While this has obviously always been the case, you'd expect to find a few interesting people knocking about any large group. In Quadrophenia you get the entire cast of the British soap and drama industry, so the most interesting thing becomes spotting who hasn't been in The Bill.

You do get the fantastic Phil Daniels in the central role, and "you killed my f***ing scooter!" is genuinely funny. You get the also excellent Ray Winston taking a kicking from a gang of lads uniformed in parka coats - a chilling and almost Clockwork Orange moment.

You also get Sting's terrible dance style inflicted on the world. He's supposed to be cool - yet he looks like everyone elses dad!

Phil Daniels is joining EastEnders.

Punishment Park (1971), Watkins

Watched this at the Phoenix last night. I'd never heard of it, or the director before, so it turned out to be a fantastic surprise. This is the kind of radical movie making that lets you peek at what the potential of cinema actually is, that makes you fall in love with films all over again. Sure, a lot of the characters talked in political cliches, but hey - people do talk in cliches in the real world, and these were the kinds of cliches that don't usually make broadcast media. Besides which, it was a great film - pacey, funny, sickening, and troubling likely (and unfortunately, not just in the US at present). The actors - mostly regular people - were faultless.

Set (and filmed in) 1970 at the height of US anti-Vietnam War protests, the story is told through the cameras of an English news crew, in the style of a documentary. They are one of several European crews who have gone to the US to document the tribunals and punishment of anti-war protesters, predominantly hippies and students who, following the reintroduction of the 1950 Internal Security Act, are judged to be “a risk to internal security”.

The film tracks two groups alternately - one being tried and sentenced and another who have elected to choose Punishment Park rather than decades in prison. The Punishment Park option consists of a game: The unarmed prisoners have to cross 53 miles of desert in three days to reach an American flag to 'win'. The Army have to try and stop them.

This ingeniously solves two social problems simultaneously - the extreme prison over-crowding and the training of newly drafted soldiers before they're dispatched to Vietnam.

Just excellent. I'm really keen to see Peter Watkin's other films. People have slated this film for being paranoid, but it's difficult to see what other response would be sane, considering the situation in America and Vietnam during this period. If the film provokes anything, it isn't the dread of some future dystopia, it's the memory of the McCarthy period, and direction of the current political situation.

Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Lumet

One of Sidney Lumet's finest moments, and the sort of film which gives him about two decades worth of mileage to churn out any old tosh he likes.

Watched this on Saturday night with Addi Omotosho, at her new flat in Crystal Palace. Absolutely incredible. Hadn't seen it for years so it was a rare treat to see Pacino putting in one of his best ever performances as the luckless Sonny Wortzik, supported by a uniformly excellent cast, and a fantastic script. Pacino is at his most beautiful, even though at times he can barely peek over the top of the bank counters.

Gilbert watched it too, over at his blog.

The Andromeda Strain, Wise (1971)

Watched this last night on BBC2, since I was finding it hard to get to sleep. The poorest, dullest movie I have seen in a long, long time. If I wasn’t so easily entertained by giant computer screens running imaginary programmes, looking at the wall for 130 minutes would have been more exciting. I take back everything I said about the Sorrow and the Pity being too long.

Alien, Scott (1979/2003 directors cut)

Watched this last night on channel 5 with Matt Cook. Matt likes Aliens, but this one is my favourite of the series. Directed by Ridley Scott, the man who spawned a thousand film theorists, with a budget that went entirely to HR Geiger’s league of extraordinary model makers. Sigourney Weaver’s fee for Resurrection was more than the entire cost of the first film, but boy did Scott get a lot of baroque for his money. The Nostromo is a frilly Goth monstrosity of a ship.

There are so many great things about this movie; it’s hard to know where to start. Somewhat predictably I adore Ripley’s terrible perm (actually in close competition with the alien for the scariest thing in the film), and also the inevitable computer-that-knows-all.

& I so want an office that looks like the Nostromo’s twinkly lighted command centre.

Scott’s depiction of John Hurts face rape & giving birth at the dinner table are such classic scenes that even people who have never seen this film remember them. And milky robot blood! Genius!

For those of you who are feeling all nostalgic at this point about Barbra Creed should go and check out these great pages:

Kristeva, Sherman, Butler, and the Abject, from Angela Marie Smith’s The Abject Female Body: The Photography of Cindy Sherman.

10 Years Later: Reconsidering Cindy Sherman's "Sex Pictures" by Lauren O'Neill-Butler, over at the Ten Verses site.

Don't Look Now, Roeg (1973)

Watched this last night on BBC2. Donald Sutherland plays John Baxter, a man refusing to accept that he might have psychic abilities but saying yes to a great Afro hairstyle. John and his wife Laura are in Venice sometime after the accidental death of their daughter by drowning.

I don’t think this is Roegs best film but it’s no The Sound of Claudia Schiffereither. It’s probably his most coherent work since it’s subject matter is non-linear time/storytelling, the narrative and the camerawork both constructing disjunctions of time and space. The colour and texture of the film are fantastic – predominantly very 1970s high definition browns.

There are some great characters in the film - Bishop Barbarrigo (Massimo Serato) and Inspector Longhi (Renato Scarpa) are amazing, they manage to seem equally, and simultaneously, sincere and completely untrustworthy. Roeg could have done so much more with his creepy English characters. & The ending is hilarious.