I also finally sent out that poll to determine which franchise I should review, and the results- so far, at least- are decidedly mixed. Amusingly enough, each of my suggestions either received the same amount of votes or none at all, while my query for people to suggest their own if they weren't included resulted in even more possibilities- all of which only got that one vote each!
So, in summation- there was no clear winner, as I hoped, just a lot of split votes. Go figure. I guess I'll just have to take matters into my own hands. I'll give it a few more days, just in case a tie-breaker emerges, but thus far, it's a completely split vote all the way around. Maybe I'll just do one of the selections that got NO votes. I always was one to pull for the underdog.
Also, I have been working here and there on my next 6-month anniversary list, the one about my fave rising stars. I decided, just to move things along, to limit each list to around 20 names, and I'm up to around eleven or so on the next list, so I should have that for you soon. So, keep an eye out for that, hopefully later this week!
Moving on... here's a look at the recent movie London Town.
Like a lot of teens, I went through a "punk" phase, and was lucky enough that it happened when there were still a few actual punk bands left standing, though I suppose a lot depends on your definition of the much-debated sub-genre.
I would have to say the "most" punk bands I saw live were The Ramones, Fugazi, Siouxsie & The Banshees and The Cramps, as well as plenty of so-called Grunge bands, though some don't consider that to really be punk. Probably because the bands associated with it don't sound anything alike, really, making it an ill-defined sub-genre at best. Then again, you could say the same thing about the bands I named.
Up for no debate whatsoever, however, is The Clash, oft-cited as the best punk band ever, or "the only band that matters," as the ads put it. While I lean slightly more towards The Ramones, who are a bit more fun, I certainly love The Clash, and admire the way they weren't afraid to mix politics into their sound, which not all punk rock did, despite its reputation to the contrary.
Certainly they had more to say than, say, The Sex Pistols, who, lest we forget, only put out one official album. The Clash were also much more musically diverse than a lot of punk, mixing everything from reggae to ska to funk to rockabilly to rap into their heady mélange of "message rock."
As such, their music has aged a lot better than a lot of old-school punk, the much-maligned final album Cut the Crap notwithstanding.
The film London Town seeks to capture that time period, circa the late 70's, in which young Englanders first embraced the new genre, and the obvious way it divided the population at the time, with the older generation horrified at what they were seeing, given the wild hairstyles and fashion associated with it, to say nothing of the music itself, which was unapologetically loud, brash and oft-controversial lyrically.
The films focuses in on the 14-year old Shay (Daniel Huttlestone, Into the Woods), who practically runs the household in his poor, lower-class home, almost serving as an ad-hoc wife to his father, who works two jobs and is barely home at any given time. By day, the father sells pianos in a music shop; by night, he drives a cab. Neither are doing him much good at staying afloat financially.
Things take a turn for the even worse when Nick (Dougray Scott, Mission Impossible 2, Fear the Walking Dead), the father, is seriously injured moving a piano, hospitalizing him indefinitely, leaving Shay to make some tough decisions.
Shay attempts to get a hold of his absentee mother, Sandrine (Natascha McElhone, Californication, Designated Survivor), who lives in London, but is a bit of a drop-out, squatting in various places and taking up with several men at once, all the while trying to further her musical career.
Eventually, Shay gets her to step up a bit when his little sister, Alice (Anya McKenna-Bruce, Sense8) falls ill, but just barely, and it soon becomes clear he will have to take matters into his own hands, which he does by donning a dress (to look older than he is) and driving his father's cab at night!
Among his fares one night is none other than Joe Strummer, of The Clash, played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who he's a huge fan of, and strikes up a bit of a friendship with, eventually even getting to watch the band rehearse at their practice pad.
Later on, the two even get (dubiously) locked up in jail together, after a riot breaks out at a free show given by the band to smooth over another riot that broke out at the prior one. Presumably this was the "Rock Against Racism" show in Victoria Park, though the movie plays fast and loose with the chronological elements, in terms of what songs were out when and the like, so it's hard to say.
Granted, the story is almost complete fiction, and some of the musical elements/real-life events are used for dramatic effect, but I can see where die-hard fans might be a little dubious of the way the film portrays certain things and the time period in which they happened. But if you can go with it, it's a fun little movie, as unlikely as some of it is, in terms of realism.
Perhaps my favorite thing in the movie that wasn't the soundtrack is the character Vivian, played by up-and-coming actress Nell Williams, perhaps best-known as the young Cersei Lannister on Game of Thrones. Vivian is the one that really sparks Shay's interest in punk rock music, driving home what his mother was trying to do via mix tapes she sent Shay in the mail. And nothing makes a point better to a boy in the midst of puberty than a cute girl.
The secretive Vivian is the one who helps teach Shay how to dress, wear his hair, and talks him into having fun once in a while, getting him a ticket to see his first Clash concert and advising him on which of their albums to buy first. (The first one, but of course.) But she's oddly guarded- with good reason, as it turns out.
I loved the way the movie portrayed young love in a realistic, unglamorous way. Shay is awkward, gawky and unsure of himself, while Vivian seems the polar opposite: self-assured, sexy, cocky and cheeky.
In other words, Vivian's kind of the guy in the relationship, and Shay's more like the girl- one assumes a conscious reflection of his other role, as a stand-in for his own mother in his family. Note also how he literally has to dress in drag to pass for older in order to pull of driving a cab as someone who's underage, further demoralizing the poor kid.
I thought all of this, even if unintentionally so, was a clever way of dealing of the sort of gender issues that we're dealing with now in society, what with all the new terms of classification to that end, and the fact that people are starting to wise up that associating certain things with certain genders is kind of wrong (i.e. boys wear blue, girls wear pink; girls are "supposed to" dress a certain way, while boys are "supposed to" dress another, etc.).
The way the movie reflects our current times doesn't end there, either. For instance, we also see groups of people protesting the influx of immigrants into England and declaring the superiority of whites. Hmm...why does that seem so familiar? 😏 (Interestingly, though, the film was actually initially released in 2016, before the election. The more things change, the more they stay the same, I guess.)
Although, some of the events in the film are a bit dubious- would the cops really arrest a little kid like that, much less beat him down with a nightstick? Maybe back then, who knows. But what is the likelihood that he would be locked up with freaking Joe Strummer? After picking him up not once but twice in his cab?
That sort of questionable plotting notwithstanding, it's sort of interesting how the film strives for downbeat realism in some aspects- the squalid surroundings Shay lives in, in his small town; not to mention his mother's iffy lodgings in London; the protests and riots; the fact that Shay has to take over for his dad when he's injured, and so on.
On the other hand, it's sort of a fairy tale in others: Shay meeting Strummer and the two becoming sort of unlikely mates, to the point that Strummer later on cancels a gig (!) to attend the re-opening of Shay's father's music shop after Shay takes it upon himself to sell all the pianos and buy guitars and the like and make it into a "rock shop" instead.
In other words, the film kind of wants to have its cake and eat it too, even to its detriment. I mean, don't get me wrong: I'm glad that the film has its fun moments, otherwise it might have been too dreary and heavy-handed. But it does strain credibility at times, admittedly.
That said, if you can just not try to read too much into it and ignore some of the chronological issues, it's an entertaining enough movie, anchored by strong performances across the board. Meyers turns in a solid turn as Strummer, doing his own vocals more often than not (fear not, there's enough of the original tunes in there to please purist fans), although the rest of the band gets short shrift by the very nature of the plot.
The kids are all great, and give very natural, surprisingly nuanced performances, while Scott and McElhone likewise serve as an excellent point-counterpoint of the way opposites can both attract and drive people apart. The film's portrayal of young love is also right on the money, and strikingly realistic, notably in a somewhat cringe-inducing love scene. (The kids are supposed to be 14-15 years-old, after all.)
The director is Derrick Borte, who did the underrated comedy/drama The Joneses, with David Duchovny, Demi Moore and Amber Heard, which is well-worth seeing. I thought this was even better than that film, and I was actually a bit surprised to learn that the director was American, given how realistic the depiction of England was. (Okay, technically, he was born in Germany, but brought to the US before he was even a year old, so... might as well be American, really.)
And, perhaps needless to say, the soundtrack is phenomenal, and not just because of the copious amounts of The Clash featured. There's also The Ramones, The Buzzcocks, Toots & The Maytals and others, so it's not just all-Clash-all-the-time.
While Clash fans might be disappointed that this is more of a coming-of-age story with the punk rock scene serving as a back-drop and not the focus of the story, it worked for me.
Besides, if you want more Clash, you can always check out Rude Boy or any of the number of documentaries on the band (The Rise and Fall of The Clash is a good one) and the excellent one on Joe Strummer, The Future is Unwritten.
Regardless, I quite enjoyed London Town. While I may have been raised in the South- about as far from England as one can get, comparatively- I definitely related to the working-class environment and what it was like to discover punk rock for the first time and fall for an older (if not necessarily wiser) girl.
And like I said, there are obvious parallels between what was going on then and what is going on now in He-Who-Will-Not-Be-Named's America, so it felt timely, in spite of being set in the late 70's.
So, if you like punk rock music- and especially The Clash- and you can get past some historical inaccuracies, and if you enjoy a good coming-of-age drama, then you should love this one. It's not perfect, and some of it strains credibility, but that's why they call them movies and not documentaries.
London Town is readily available on DVD and for rental on Amazon and other streaming services.
Check it out!
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