1FF Film Club - LONDON

[Craig]

Nil by Mouth (1997)
In a working class London district lives Raymond, his wife Valerie, her brother Billy, Billy's mother Janet and their grandmother Kathy. Billy is a drug addict whom Raymond kicks out when he steals drugs from Ray himself. Billy hangs out with his heroin addict friends and they shoot up together. The family is dysfunctional, mostly due to Raymond's fiery-temper and violent outbursts.

The Long Good Friday (1980)
Harold, a prosperous English gangster, is about to close a lucrative new deal when bombs start showing up in very inconvenient places. A mysterious syndicate is trying to muscle in on his action, and Harold wants to know who they are. He finds out soon enough, and bloody mayhem ensues.

Ill Manors (2012)
The lives of four drug dealers, one user and two prostitutes.

10 Rillington Place (1971)
Based on the real-life case of the British serial killer John Christie, and what happened to his neighbours Tim and Beryl Evans.

 

[Craig]

London - The Modern Babylon (2012)
London: The Modern Babylon is legendary director Julien Temple's (Joe Strummer - The Future is Unwritten) epic time-traveling voyage to the heart of his hometown.

Notting Hill (1999)
The life of a simple bookshop owner changes when he meets the most famous film star in the world.

Night and the City (1950)
A small-time grifter and nightclub tout takes advantage of some fortuitous circumstances and tries to become a big-time player as a wrestling promoter.

Oliver! (1968)
Young Oliver Twist runs away from an orphanage and meets a group of boys trained to be pickpockets by an elderly mentor.

 

[Benito]

 

[Craig]

Midnight Monday deadline.

 

[SALTIRE]

Ooh Nil By Mouth leading so far, that's a hard watch.

 

[Craig]

Poll closed.

Nil by Mouth (1997) - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119792/

 

[Benito]

This is how London used to be before pre 2000 before the gentrification, amazing film even if it is very dark and harrowing one of my favorite kitchen sink dramas no doubt.

 

[AnimoEtFide]

Was racking my brain trying to think of iconic (or just good) London films from the modern era (post-2000ish). All my personal favourites (Mona Lisa, TLGF, Meantime, High Hopes, The Icpress File) are all at least 30 years old. It's all Richard Curtis-esque shite now like Notting Hill or Bridget Jones. And as much as I love Mike Leigh, Happy-Go-Lucky got on my tits. Eastern Promise? Bullet Boy and Kidulthood, if that's your cup of tea? Must be difficult to make engaging films about a bunch of social media managers and web designers sharing a flat in Hackney.

 

[Martino Knockavelli]

Apropos of that the best diagnosis of contemporary London as glittering dystopia is Basic Instinct 2. Remember that disturbing luxury apartment development ad that went around a few years, which someone mashed up with American Psycho to much viral hilarity? Basic Instinct 2 had already done that, but hardly any mainstream film critics got it. City as hyperreal super-mammon blackhole, a JG Ballard script shot by Michael Mann. With Stan Collymore.

 

[Craig]

Watched Nil by Mouth this afternoon. Seen it once before but that was quite a while back.

There's no real central plot to it that I can see. It's kind of a mish mash of several aspects of the lives of a south London family living on the breadline. A brief snapshot into their existence type of thing, and the mostly miserable existence it is. Not that it doesn't have its moments of light struggling to shine through the grim shell that encases their surroundings.

Never learning from their mistakes and bad choices they're doomed to repeat the cycle from generation to generation until someone does break out of it. A central theme is that Raymond is the epitome of the no good, abusive, alcoholic patriarch of the family and is very much a product of his environment. We find out that his dad was the same, as was Val and Billy's father. The film doesn't try to excuse his behaviour or have us sympathise with him but at least tries to get us to attempt to understand why he is the violent cowardly bully he has become. We get to see all the ugly aspects of domestic violence, drug addiction and alcoholism more often than not in painful detail. All part and parcel of living on a poverty ridden housing estate and it's this aspect of the film that draws me to it more than any other. In the heart of one of the most affluent cities in the world we chance a glimpse at the neglected underbelly that middle England doesn't want to acknowledge exists.

It's commonly known that this film is a case of Gary Oldman exorcising certain demons from his childhood, and nowhere else in the film does this show more than it does in the performance from his sister Laila Morse in a film role you'd surely be surprised to learn was her first. Just one performance amidst a myriad of great performances mostly from actors who are familiar with the subject matter from personal experience. Ray Winstone born and raised on a London council estate, Jamie Foreman son of a south London gangster. It all adds to the realism of the film that at times plays out like an ugly fly on the wall documentary.

It's obviously far from the greatest film set in London but if you were to compile a list of films that encapsulate what London was, is and will be then you have to include a film like this.

 

[Martino Knockavelli]

Hadn't seen this one before. Jeez.

There are things to admire in it - the performances are uniformly excellent as you say Creg; the deliberately grey, ugly and uncomposed look of it is undeniably evocative even if it's the stuff of cliche now; and it's definitely powerful and affecting.

But I do wonder about this particular species of bleak fest. Man's capacity for violence and the way that cruelty begets more cruelty is as worthy a subject for art as any, I suppose, and obv this was of personal import to Oldman. But it is not exactly an edifying way to spend 120 minutes, and I'm hard pressed to say to say that I'm any more enlightened about the human condition than I was beforehand. I was already aware that horrific grim squalid shit goes on all the time, fucking everywhere. So what does one get out of it really. I'm left with a document of misery and dysfunction. It's powerful and affecting in the same way as necking a bottle of bleach.

It's a problem I have with quite a bit of this second wave kitchen sink stuff (bits of Clarke and Loach, etc). The first wave of this stuff often had a poetry to it (Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner) or articulated a view about politics/class/race etc (Sat Night & Sun Morning, This Sporting Life, Taste of Honey). Some do both and are even pretty funny with it, poessessing a humanity and generosity spirit even if those qualities do get stamped all over in the final reel (Kes). Some of the more contemporary stuff in this vein does those things too - eg Shane Meadows, or compare/contrast with Distant Voices, Still Lives, which tackles fairly similar subject matter.

But here almost all of that is stripped away, leaving just the "realism" part, which is then pursued as its own goal. Maybe there is something laudable about being unflinching and honest and raw, and about telling these sorts of stories and showing these sorts of milieux. But I'm not sure that from an audience POV it's not just rubbernecking, and ironically even the desolate fucks in this film find that a bit much to stomach. So absent a few more breaks in the clouds, or it being more discernibly in service of something a bit bigger, it does not do a lot for me. It's admirable in the same notional way as the craftsmanship of a well made torture chamber. Soz.

4 BAGS OF POPCORN AND A SELECTION OF TERRIFYING FACIAL TATTOOS.

>>>(also and maybe this is an embarrassing thing to admit cos everyone else on the planet already knew, but I had no idea that woman out of Eastenders was Gary Oldman's sister until I read Creg's post, WTF)

 

[SALTIRE]

I couldn't put myself through watching that again, much like Requiem For A Dream; I'm glad I saw it, but I don't want to revisit it.