Review by Tacitus...

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The People's Republic of Clogher
Hello campers! I've finally decided to put some thoughts down on (virtual) paper about the films I love.

Here we go....

Naked (Mike Leigh, 1993)



Naked is one of those films that leaves a mark, a scar even, on everyone who watches it. Set in early '90s London it stars David Thewlis (7 Years in Tebet, The Big Lebowski) as Johnny, Lesley Sharp (The Full Monty, From Hell) as his long-suffering ex Louise and the late Katrin Cartlidge (Breaking The Waves, Topsy-Turvy) as Sophie.



The opening scene sets the tone for the movie, with Johnny seen having rough sex (probably non-consentual) with a much older woman, leaving her in a Manchester allyway and fleeing in a stolen car to London. Johnny's escape and subsequent search for his ex-girlfriend leads him (and us) on a nightmarish journey into the decaying half-life of Thatcher's Britain.

Thewlis gives a career making (and possibly breaking, when you look at the scraps this talented actor has had to feed off in the subsequent decade) performance as a confused, highly intelligent drifter whose acid wit is only matched by his desire to self-destruct. Everyone who encounters Johnny is subject to stinging barbs and Revelationary proclamations in equal measure, in fact the Book of Revelation plays a crucial role in his challenging world-view.

Johnny's meeting with Louise (excellently underplayed by Lesley Sharp) is punctuated by a series of vignettes - He meets, and has a brief sado-masochistic fling with, Louise's flatmate Sophie (Katrin Cartlidge was never better as the fragile victim and her death in 2002 at the age of 40 was a great loss), an equally disturbed Glaswegian teenager (Trainspotting's Ewan Bremner) and his girlfriend, and Brian a security guard in charge of an empty building - "You're guarding space? That's stupid, isn't it? Because someone could break in there and steal all the ****in' space and you wouldn't know it's gone, would you?".

These characters are well-drawn and acted but really only exist for Johnny to undertake an increasingly frustrated tirade against the state of the world, indeed in a less skilled director's hands, Naked could have easly turned into a reactionary, humourless 90 minutes reminiscent of the worst in 1960s Kitchen Sink drama. Thankfully Leigh (who also wrote the screenplay) gives the characters enough depth for the audience to care for even the unsympathetic - apart from Greg Crutwell's one-dimentional 'villianous landlord' Jeremy, though on repeated viewings I've found the character's abject nastiness to be needed in relation to making Thewlis' nihilistic Johnny a more sympathetic figure.

After the final, bleak showdown Johnny and Louise prepare to leave London and return to Manchester. This isn't meant to happen, Naked can't have a happy ending?


WARNING: "you eejit, fancy not noticing until now?" spoilers below
The cranking up of Andrew Dickenson's haunting score prove otherwise as Johnny makes his (final?) bid for salvation by leaving while Louise's back is turned, battered, bruised and limping on the outside, still railing against the world on the inside.

The film's final scene shows Thewlis limping down the street, towards the camera, in the early morning light while the pounding music swirls around him. Who knows where he's going? I doubt if Johnny does, though I suspect that this journey has a one-way ticket.




Naked is in equal measures bleak and touching, nasty and funny, Damnable and redemptive. It's wonderfully shot (by longtime Leigh cinematographer, Dick Pope) and tightly directed. It's David Thewlis' film though, he gives Johnny the raw energy and belligerence this flawed Prophet deserves. A spellbinding performance in a wonderful film - you might not like the subject matter, and at times the situations veer dangerously close to pantomime, but this portrait of the urban hopelessness left by Thatcher's rule is compelling viewing...

A memorable


EDIT and postscript -

This film was a weird choice for a first review but I had a bit of a 'long night of the soul' on Saturday (mainly brought on by Gin, Ireland losing at the Rugby and too much faux sympathy directed at me in the club afterwards) so I fed Naked into my player and life didn't seem quite as grim...

I guess we all know our own version of Johnny, I did. Sadly Colin's not with us anymore (he succumbed to an AIDS related illness two years after Naked's release). Colin was very much one of Thatcher's children: hyper-intellignet, scathingly funny, determindly working-class and abandoned by his family, childhood friends and The State. Colin drifted from low-paid job to low-paid job but his demons always seemed to pull him back from any kind of commitment.

He spent 3 months sleeping on our sofa then disappeared into the night in early '94. We didn't see him again.

Maybe this is why Naked has such a pull on me. I don't know.
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Great review Tacitus, of a film that strangely I've not seen. I've added it to my rental list now though. I agree about Katrin Cartlidge, she was an actress with a lot of integrity.



Do you know my poetry?
Nice choice for a first review. Naked is a terrific film, and agree that Thewlis' performance is just simply amazing.



Thanks Taty for a great review, I am a long time fan of Mike Leigh, I haven't seen Naked it is now on my must see list. i would love to see you review Secrets and lies
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The People's Republic of Clogher
Lost In La Mancha (2002, Keith Fulton, Louis Pepe)



.....Or How Storms, Aircraft and Jean Rochefort's Prostate Sabotage A Movie.....

Murphy's Law -

Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.

You will always find something in the last place you look.

No matter how long or how hard you shop for an item, after you've bought it, it will be on sale somewhere cheaper.

The other line always moves faster.

In order to get a loan, you must first prove you don't need it.

Anything you try to fix will take longer and cost you more than you thought.


I've always been a fan of Cervantes' Don Quixote and when I heard that Terry Gilliam was adapting it for the screen, my eyes lit up. Sadly, Lost In La Mancha may be the closest we'll get to seeing the director's vision.

Keith Fulton & Louis Pepe's fascinating documentary was originally intended to be a 'Making Of...' feature (think of The Hamster Factor on the Twelve Monkeys DVD) to accompany Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. It instead stands as a memorial to Murphy's Law.

From the beginning, Gilliam seems subdued. He's complaining that the film's budget is half of what he needs. He's complaining that no one can track down co-star Vanessa Paradis. Then the filming starts....



We're treated to unrehearsed extras, prima donna horses, electrical storms, a flying visit from the Spanish Airforce and a guest appearance from poor Jean Rochefort's aforementioned prostate (which causes the actor understandable pain and to fly back to Paris for days on end for treatment). Lost In La Mancha unfolds like a horror film with a mounting sense of dread as each new catastrophe hits the production and to see Gilliam visibly wilting onscreen makes for uneasy viewing.

Terry Gilliam has, of course, been through this all before with The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen (1988) - an epic fable, beset by problems but differing from The Man Who Killed Don Quixote in that it actually limped over the finish line. To make matters worse, the filmed scenes we see look like classic Gilliam - big close-ups, fantastical design, slapstick etc. Rochefort (health permitting) was perfect as Don Quixote, Depp seemed kooky as ever and Vanessa Paradis was..well...stunning as ever.



You've got to feel for the director, thwarted in making a movie that he'd spent years thinking about but it's compelling viewing.

As the man himself said - "I am getting tired of these fights [with backers.] Each time you get into a fight the world closes in a bit. You start losing an innocence, a belief that everything is possible. Terry Jones thinks I'm belligerent and egotistical, and that I've got to get into a fight to keep me going. It does keep me awake. But I limit it to the fights that are worth it nowadays."

As I said - "It's difficult pushing custard uphill."

A bittersweet



The People's Republic of Clogher
Dead Man's Shoes (2004, Shane Meadows)



Dead Man's Shoes is a film that I'd been waiting for since it's Premiere at the Edinburgh Festival last year. The buzz was promising - a return to form by Shane Meadows after the messy Once Upon A Time In The Midlands, shot in 3 weeks (for £750,000) and featuring a devastating performance from his friend/actor/collaborator Paddy Considine.

The film concerns Richard (Considine), an ex-soldier who returns with his disabled brother Anthony to the small English town they left 10 years before. He has a score to settle with the local gang, headed by Sonny (ex-British Light Middleweight Champion and onetime foe of Chris Eubank, Gary Stretch), who had drugged and abused Anthony before leaving him for dead in a derelict building.



Thus opens a revenge movie of sometimes quite startling intensity, Considine (who I've been bigging up recently but honestly feel that he's the best actor England has right now) delivers a performance of rare quality - passive/aggressive, subtle, caring, ferocious but always fuelled by one thing: the guilt of not being there when his brother needed him most.



As a director, Meadows isn't shy about referencing the films that influenced Dead Man's Shoes' style - there are echoes of Straw Dogs, Get Carter and even First Blood in the tone but nothing is heavy-handed or blatent. Tony Kebbell is wonderful, underplaying Anthony's vulnerable state when it would have been easy to have done another 'Charlie Babbitt' while Sonny's gang brings some much needed levity (and a few laugh-out-loud comedy scenes) to the show.

It's violent, sure, but as Dead Man's Shoes unfolds, we begin to understand exactly why Richard has been driven towards this state.

"God will forgive them. He'll forgive them and let them into Heaven. I can't live with that."

For me, this is the best British film since Trainspotting, and the more I watch it the more I feel that DMS could surpass Danny Boyle's 1996 landmark.

Not sure of a US release date but there's an R2 DVD containing commentaries, deleted scenes, making of doc, an animated graphic novel and a bittersweet Meadows short (also starring Kebbell) called Northern Soul.



If you can, watch it.

An essential


Website and Trailers



Put me in your pocket...
Wow...great reviews Tacitus. I loved reading your comments on Dead Man's Shoes in particular. Sounds powerful.




A system of cells interlinked
Didn't notice the thread until now. Good work
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The People's Republic of Clogher
Straight To Hell (1987, Alex Cox)

I hadn't seen this film in 15 years, and it was pretty bad then. An, ahem, homage to just about every Spagetti Western made (particularly the Django films), the most interesting things about Straight To Hell are the extras - an Alex Cox/Dick Rude commentary and a retrospective doc.



Apparantly the movie came about because Cox had booked Joe Strummer, Elvis Costello and The Pogues to play a series of concerts in Nicaragua to support the Sandinistas. The money didn't appear so the whole crew disappeared off to Spain, wrote a script and filmed Straight To Hell on the set of the 1973 Sturges/Bronson Picture, Chino.

It shows...

Courtney Love has a role, methoding 'most annoying person alive' superbly. Indeed, one might even suspect that she isn't acting, as Cox & Rude remember her 'difficult' behavior on the commentary. The Pogues (the reason for me watching the film all those years ago) look drunk, not surprising since their day would consist of waking up in a gutter beside the set, drinking tequila and collapsing at sundown - good work if you can get it.

I like Alex Cox, one of the true mavericks and a better director than his body of work would suggest. Straight To Hell though is messy and often takes the idea of homage a stage too far into 'rip-off' territory. Still, it you've paid a bunch of drunken singers for 6 weeks work, what else do you do?

File this one under - It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Interesting soundtrack though...

A shambolic



Great reviews Tac... thanks for sharing...
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Nice reviews, Dead Man's Shoes is the Don.

I got Straight to Hell free on a magazine, didn't realise it was *proper* film, lol.
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A system of cells interlinked
Great stuff Tac. I notice your stuff hasn't been pegged for the soon-to-come revamped review section, so I am going to go ahead and get them set up. They are certainly of high enough quality....

One thing though. Before I can go about it, I will need you to rate the films. The site is going to use the 1-5 star(popcorn box) system, and although you certainly don't have to adhere to this, the reviews will have their ratings changed over to the system when added to the new review area, so it will make things easier. If a "scale of 1-10" system is used, the rating will be changed to the 5 star system to reflect the relative level given, and maintain consistency across the site. You can do half-boxes, so it is still as flexible as the 1-10 system.

To use the popcorn boxes, rate thusly:

[*rating]4_5[*/rating] (remove asterix for the real deal, of course) for a 4.5 star rating.

For examples see my thread. and Thanks for writing.



The People's Republic of Clogher
Cripes! I have to rate them too?

The things one has to do in the name of Art...

Thanks Sed, but can I have a Guinness bottle rating instead of the popcorn? It'd suit the mood in which I wrote them.



I can't think about Alex Cox without seeing that scene in Breakfast With Hunter where he's explaining to Hunter S Thompson how he's scripted his famous wave scene in Fear and Loathing as an animation. HST nearly goes off the scale of pissed offness "You keep insisting that my best work should be put into some sort of Mickey Mouse ****!" , Cox is reduced to a quivering jelly and can't get out of there fast enough.



The People's Republic of Clogher
Originally Posted by Pyro Tramp
Did Dead Mans Shoes remind you of Old Boy at all, Tacitus. It did me....
To be honest, not really, though there's a similar feeling of guilt running through both films.