Saturday 2 May 2015

Cult Movies & Crushes


As ever, I’m a bad, slack blogger... However, I thought I’d write about movies, and not the ones that are always easy to find, but the ones that are cult and compulsive viewing.

Dredged from the depths of my mega trivia laden mind, here is a tasty trio: Siesta, Revolver and Performance.

Siesta, 1987. This one features Spain & Gabriel Byrne, who is, to say the least, smoking hot in this film and plays a Spanish trapeze instructor. Yes, you did read that right. The film has an absolutely incredible cast: Ellen Barkin as a badass stuntwoman who draws no lines, Byrne, Julian Sands, Isabella Rossellini, Martin Sheen, Grace Jones and Jodie Foster. It's backed by one of the best, most evocative soundtracks conceivable, by Miles Davis.

What is this movie about? Umm. Let’s just say it opens with Ellen Barkin waking, lying in a field in a bloodstained red dress, convinced she has committed a murder but sidelined by rolling amnesia. Julian Sands may be a dilettante photographer … or her guardian angel. And all she wants, and may have had, is one last good time with her ex, Augustine, AKA Byrne. Wouldn’t we all? But then again, maybe the blood on her dress is his … or his wife’s.

She’s hoping it’s Mrs Augustine’s.

Hot, surreal, dreamlike, all of those good words. This is one arty film worth finding, even if simply for the soundtrack and the atmosphere.

Trailer for Siesta:




Revolver, 2005. Directed by Guy Ritchie, written by the brilliant Luc Besson & Ritchie. Starring Jason Statham and Ray Liotta, amongst others. This is one cool, complex, tricky movie with a great premise and no, Statham isn’t his usual total-action self. He’s actually pretty damned good. There’s chess in it, on a board and as strategy, a gambler who gets panic attacks, and it is way better and more intriguing than the panning it got would indicate. I quote Statham’s character, Jake, from the film: ‘One thing I've learned in the last seven years: in every game and con there's always an opponent, and there's always a victim. The trick is to know when you're the latter, so you can become the former.’ Watch and work it out, my lovelies.

Trailer for Revolver:




Performance, 1970. Mick Jagger, James Fox, Anita Pallenberg. An East London gangster, Chas/Fox is on the run and crash lands in the ramshackle (this was 1970) Notting Hill home of reclusive faded rock star Turner (Jagger) and his girlfriend Pherber (Pallenberg). This is one wild, trippy film that makes you wish you could time travel back to the last days of swinging London. Naturally, Jagger and Pallenberg perform a major mindfuck on the hapless fugitive, dismantling him piece by piece. Worth viewing if only to see Jagger sing ‘Memo From Turner’ surrounded by naked (genuine?) gangsters.

Performance’s very vintage trailer…




Give at least one of these films a try, you won't regret it,

xoxo

J

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