Julien Temple's film about 70s pub rockers Dr Feelgood is his best rockumentary yet
Julien Temple has made many movies about music – about the Sex Pistols, Joe Strummer and Glastonbury. But I don't think he's ever made a film as good, and purely insightful as this one, about the cult Canvey Island R&B band Dr Feelgood, who had their heyday of fame in the mid-70s pub-rock era that foreshadowed punk, before the band fell victim to infighting and a sad early end. The Feelgoods' reputation is not as weighty or towering as all those other music stars, and I think this has allowed Temple to relax and give us both an engaging film and a resonant psychogeography of Canvey Island and Essex itself. Like Will Self and the Isle of Grain in Kent, Temple finds himself responding to this striking and remote landscape, a little like the Cambridgeshire fen,...
Julien Temple has made many movies about music – about the Sex Pistols, Joe Strummer and Glastonbury. But I don't think he's ever made a film as good, and purely insightful as this one, about the cult Canvey Island R&B band Dr Feelgood, who had their heyday of fame in the mid-70s pub-rock era that foreshadowed punk, before the band fell victim to infighting and a sad early end. The Feelgoods' reputation is not as weighty or towering as all those other music stars, and I think this has allowed Temple to relax and give us both an engaging film and a resonant psychogeography of Canvey Island and Essex itself. Like Will Self and the Isle of Grain in Kent, Temple finds himself responding to this striking and remote landscape, a little like the Cambridgeshire fen,...
- 2/4/2010
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
- With the forthcoming releases of Control and I'm Not There - the folks over at Time Out (London) brought their collective of film and music critics together to chart the top films pertaining to music legend. The Top 50 list manages to make no mention of a recent Hollywood-ized bio-tales of Ray Charles and Johnny Cash (thank you!) and from the chunk of films that I have seen the positioning seems a propos. Todd Haynes' who has his Dylan creation coming out soon tops this list with one of my favorite films from the helmer in Superstar: the Karen Carpenter Story. Personally I would have found space another Da Pennebaker film in Depeche Mode 101 and Grant Gee's Meeting People is Easy - a brilliant Radiohead doc. Here's the top 50 list -1 Superstar: the Karen Carpenter Story (Todd Haynes, 1987)2 Don't Look Back (Da Pennebaker, 1967)3 Gimme Shelter (David Maysles/Albert Maysles/Charlotte Zwerin,
- 10/8/2007
- IONCINEMA.com
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