Three films. Thumbs down.

It is quite hard to watch a bad film these days. Not because there is a lack of them (far from it), but rather because it has become too easy to pick and choose your way and sort out the dreck after reading reviews, watching trailers and perusing critical ratings. There is a lot to be said for random cinema-going, but since I do not have enough time for that, these are probably the only three flat out bad films I saw in 2024 (which means it is entirely possible that Coppola's Megalopolis in not on this list simply because I chose to avoid it).

Drive-Away Dolls / dir. by Ethan Coen

It is, indeed, very sad that a Coen brother was involved in this. Namely, Ethan Coen, who directed this train-wreck of a road comedy about two lesbians who by sheer accident come to possess some important cargo. The cast is good, and from a certain angle it does have a feel of an oddball Coen brothers film. It is when you look closer that you see that this is just silly fluff that has none of the substance and the density of something like Raising Arizona. Besides, Margaret Qualley keeps doing this preposterous southern accent that comes off as a bad gimmick gone horribly wrong.

The film is bizarrely short (under 90 minutes) but it was a true slog to watch it until the end. There are maybe two jokes in the whole thing that land, everything else feels misguided and pointlessly vulgar. 

Hit Man / dir. by Richard Linklater

There were two films about hit men that I watched in 2024. One was called The Killer, starred Michael Fassbender, and was genuinely good. Chilling, powerful, understated. The other was the action comedy Hit Man which I switched off fifteen minutes before the end. 

I guess I simply do not get Glen Powell. He seems to be this hot new star who just appears bland to me. In Richard Linklater's latest, he plays a psychology professor turned undercover police officer whose job is to pose as a hit man to save a girl he loves. The premise is not even too bad but God this is such superficial nonsense that I spent one half of the film rolling my eyes and the other half thinking why am I doing this to myself? In the end, after no longer being able to endure the cheesy chemistry between the two main characters, I put myself out of misery. This was contrived and unfunny, and I'm a moderate Linklater fan.

Gladiator II / dir. by Ridley Scott

I was an impressionable teenager when the first part came out, and I loved it to bits. It may have been something more than that, in fact. An obsession. I was obsessed with the music, with Russell Crowe's voice, with Joaquin Phoenix's pettiness. Everything about it hit me where it was supposed to, and over the years I still tried to follow the crazy rumours of a possibly sequel supposedly written by Nick Cave (?), supposedly about Maximus in afterlife. 

Having watched the bullshit cash-grab that is Gladiator II, I guess they should have gone for Nick Cave's script. Gladiator II is way more silly and ridiculous than anyone's idea of an afterlife. It is, basically, just a series of admittedly effective fight scenes, laughable plot twists and characters repeating the 'Rome was a dream' phrase that is rendered completely meaningless by the end. Gladiator II is entirely devoid of emotional substance (it is impossible to care for Lucius, and it is not even a knock on Paul Mescal), and it only stirs something inside when the images and the music of the original music make their appearance.

Some people complained about the idea of sharks in the Colosseum. God, if that was the biggest problem...

Dylan: 10 best songs

It was with a very heavy heart that I went to see A Complete Unknown the other day. Two minutes in, though, and I was just happy to be there. I left the cinema with a spring in my step and the sound of about a dozen Dylan's songs playing in my head at the same time. 

That's right. I liked the film despite the fact that I'm still not convinced by Timothée Chalamet (I thought that his portrayal of Dylan was somewhat depthless and that he probably overdid that nasal thing), despite the fact that they did not do justice to Suze Rotolo (who was reduced to a Hollywood trope), despite the fact that towards the end of the film they seriously tinkered with history (a work of fiction is just that, though: a work of fiction) and despite the fact that I'm Not There still is the greatest Dylan film ever. 

What's important is that I found the whole experience so emotional I could barely hold back my tears during some of the performances (kudos to Chalamet for learning to sing and play all of those songs). I would even watch it all over again, at some point, even if I'm still not sure if that is because the film is great or simply because I love the songs so damn much. 

Speaking of which. I used to play this game back in the day: 10 best Dylan songs. There is of course no way you can ever hope to make a list like that without hating yourself or regretting those great choices you had to forego. But still. 10 best Dylan songs. As ever, the golden rule remains the same: not more than one song per album. 

Oh and as a bonus: I will attach my favourite lyric / verse from each song. Because, after all, this is Bob Dylan.

10. "Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again" (1966)

Dylan was in such an imperious form in 1965/1966 that almost any song from Highway 61 Revisited or Blonde On Blonde would do. "Stuck Inside Of Mobile" is infectious and intoxicating and could go on for a million more verses for all I care. 

Grandpa died last week
And now he’s buried in the rocks
But everybody still talks about
How badly they were shocked
But me, I expected it to happen
I knew he’d lost control
When he built a fire on Main Street
And shot it full of holes

9. "Blind Willie McTell" (1983)

That Dylan recorded this during the Infidels sessions and chose not to include it on the actual album is surely one of the biggest mysteries of the man's career. (For the record, Infidels is not as bad as they tell you.) "Blind Willie McTell" is a timeless folk classic that was released a decade later, as part of the third Bootleg Series collection.

Well, I heard that hoot owl singing
As they were taking down the tents
The stars above the barren trees
Were his only audience
Them charcoal gypsy maidens
Can strut their feathers well
And I can tell you one thing
Nobody can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell

8. "Love Sick" (1997)

Back in 1997, I did not even know that Bob Dylan existed. And yet I can probably imagine what a pleasant shock Time Out Of Mind was for people. After years of treading water, after a string of misguided albums and a couple of LPs covering folk standards, Dylan released a true stone cold classic. "Love Sick" is murky, minimalist and absolutely devastating.

I see lovers in the meadow
I see silhouettes in the window
I watch them ’til they’re gone and they leave me hanging on
To a shadow

7. "Changing Of The Guards" (1978)

I've been addicted to this song for far too long to omit it from this list. The strangely underappreciated Street Legal has other good songs ("Señor", "Is Your Love In Vain") but God do I love this one. Yes, with that booming production, those backing vocalists, that saxophone. The groove is endlessly ecstatic, and the imagery of the lyrics is awe-inspiring.

Gentlemen, he said
I don’t need your organization, I’ve shined your shoes
I’ve moved your mountains and marked your cards
But Eden is burning, either brace yourself for elimination
Or else your hearts must have the courage for the changing of the guards

6. "Love Minus Zero / No Limit" (1965)

I would look with suspicion at anyone who doesn't think "Love Minus Zero / No Limit" is one of Dylan's very best ballads. 

In the dime stores and bus stations
People talk of situations
Read books, repeat quotations
Draw conclusions on the wall
Some speak of the future
My love she speaks softly
She knows there’s no success like failure
And that failure’s no success at all

5. "Tangled Up In Blue" (1975)

Famously, George Harrison was a fan of this one. And who wouldn't be? I personally love Planet Waves, New Morning and even Selfportrait (remember, Dylan was massacred for that one), but it was Blood On The Tracks that restored everyone's faith in Dylan back in the day. Quite simply, "Tangled Up In Blue" is a masterpiece both lyrically and melodically.  

I lived with them on Montague Street
In a basement down the stairs
There was music in the cafés at night
And revolution in the air
Then he started into dealing with slaves
And something inside of him died
She had to sell everything she owned
And froze up inside

4. "Hurricane" (1975; live version from The Rolling Thunder Revue)

Dylan saw the violinist Scarlet Rivera playing in the street and thought she just had to be in his live band. And what a revelation she turned out to be. This political epic would be an undisputed highlight of next year's Desire, but Rivera absolutely tears it on this live version that can be found on the Live 1975 bootleg (which no person with even a passing interest in Dylan should be without). My head starts spinning when I just think about this performance.

Now all the criminals in their coats and their ties
Are free to drink martinis and watch the sun rise
While Rubin sits like Buddha in a ten-foot cell
An innocent man in a living hell

3. "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" (1963)

This was very effectively done in the new film. As Dylan is recording the song, a studio engineer asks: "Who wrote this?" Dylan's manager gives the laconic reply: "He did". More than 60 years on, it is still mind-blowing that someone could put their pen to paper and just do it. 

Still I wish there was somethin’ you would do or say
To try and make me change my mind and stay
We never did too much talkin’ anyway
So don’t think twice, it’s all right

2. "Ballad Of A Thin Man" (1965)

I used to have a theory that even a Dylan hater would love this song. And I've actually known a couple of people who proved me right. I can't think of another song in which every lyrical line, every bang on the piano makes my spine tingle and brings on a new wave of goosebumps.

You raise up your head
And you ask, “Is this where it is?”
And somebody points to you and says
“It’s his”
And you say, “What’s mine?”
And somebody else says, “Where what is?”
And you say, “Oh my God
Am I here all alone?”

1. "She's Your Lover Now" (1966)

And yet I choose this one today, the Blonde On Blonde outtake (partly reminiscent of "One Of Us Must Know") that was first released in 1991. I don't even know why. I just remember that back when I heard it for the first time, I began to laugh uncontrollably. My stomach and my chest were actually contorting with nervous, stifled giggling. It has only happened a few times in my life. Some of James James' short stories did it. "Astronomy Domine" did it. Joaquin Phoenix's acting in The Master did it. Dylan did it with "She's Your Lover Now". I guess this is just my physiological reaction to what is commonly referred to as 'genius'. 

P.S. Plus, the abrupt ending is genuinely hilarious.

Yes, you, you just sit around and ask for ashtrays, can’t you reach?..

Marianne Faithfull; a few words

I've always suspected that there will come a time when I finally understand what Lawrence meant in one of his most famous songs: 'all the people I like are those that are dead'. And while it has not yet come to that, mercifully, it still feels like time is beginning to move a little too fast. This January, it has been cruel and unforgiving. First my favourite filmmaker, and now this. 

Marianne Faithfull always had that presence. I guess I could describe it as this effortless charisma that filled every inch of the image or the screen every time that I saw her. She filled the records and the speakers, too, with a voice that had the charm and the sort of playful wisdom that always felt so uniquely hers. 

Also, unlike a million other pretty faces from the 60s, the ones that swirled around that glorious decade of madness and beautiful excess, she had substance. And that is not just "Sister Morphine" that she had once co-written with Mick Jagger. Albums like Broken English, Give My Love To London and Negative Capability (her late-period Renaissance was remarkable) are these rough, self-contained jewels that demand your absolute attention. 

Presence and substance - when you encounter those two things in one person, hold on to that person until the very end. 

And then she always had impeccable taste. The record that gets played in my house most often is a collection of Marianne Faithfull's live performances titled The Montreux Years. It features, among other things, songs from artists such as Van Morrison, Neko Case, Leonard Cohen and John Lennon. Her choice of material was nothing short of perfect, and it always felt as if the likes of Morrison and Cohen wrote those songs specifically for her to sing. She kept that taste until the very end, and that is regardless of where you looked: her Paris apartment or her last spoken-word collaboration with Warren Ellis. 

Certainly she was beautiful, one of the most beautiful people you could ever see. A beauty that so effortlessly transcended the physical form as well as that long-gone decade that branded her Jagger's muse and yet another sex symbol. 

She had presence, substance, taste, beauty. Very few people in the world can beat that. So few, in fact, that I'm not even too sure that they still exist.

January Round-Up

With the exception of last year, when Bill Ryder-Jones released the masterful Iechyd Da, January is mostly dull, dry and uneventful. Which is, regrettably, more or less exactly what could be said about the latest Franz Ferdinand album. The Human Fear starts well, with the frankly rather enthusiastic "Audacious" single that could stand up to their early work. It is all donwhill after that, however. I still think there is a decent songwriter in there somewhere, but a few flashes aside (the riff of "The Birds", "Night or Day") - this is like their first three albums castrated and diluted with water.

If a career can contain only one masterpiece, then Tunng have already made it. It was 2020's Tunng Presents... Dead Club, their richest and most tuneful set of songs ever, and an album which managed to soundtrack that awful year for me. This year's Love You All Over Again is things going back to normal: lovely electronic folk pop with melodies that float around you rather than knock you down. Still, the one-two punch that opens this album is brilliant; and even despite some blatant filler ("Sixes"), I still find myself going back to this time and time again. For comfort, yes, but also for the melodies.

Ethel Cain has made quite a name for herself with her long-winded Christian slowcore that frankly just bores me to death. Perverts, her new EP (that runs for nearly 90 minutes, I'm obliged to say), deals with all kinds of human perversions that she sets to a bunch of dreamy, vaguely menacing ambient drones that go absolutely nowhere.

I honestly do believe that even at this late point in their career Mogwai can still come up with engaging music. The Bad Fire has some pleasantly dreamy grooves ("Pale Vegan Hip Pain") and intense crescendos ("If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some Of The Others") to keep me interested. A good album. One, though, that won't make a fan out of you. Also, the closing "Fact Boy" sounds just like Sigur Rós. 

Finally, I have never cared for Ringo Starr's solo career, and the cursory listen to Look Up did not provide any interesting revelations. Decent, well-produced country music whose edge is so thin it is barely worth talking about. "Don't Pass Me By" would be a highlight on this collection, and "Don't Pass Me By" is not even a very good song (by far the weakest piece on The White Album, and that album features "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill").

Songs of the month:

Tunng - "Everything Else"

Franz Ferdinand - "Audacious"

Mogwai - "Lion Rumpus"

Black Country, New Road - "Besties"

Viagra Boys - "Man Made Of Meat"

Three films of 2023

I feel like I do not have it in me to write an obituary. I will only say that we will now be living in a world where a new David Lynch film is an impossibility. And that is a sad and pathetic world. Grey and increasingly more hopeless, and made even worse by two psychopathic clowns, Trump and Musk, who are about to compound the overwhelming misery. Oh how appropriate that scream at the end of the third season of Twin Peaks really is.

As for this piece, it is to do with three 2023 films that were released in the cinemas in 2024. When I do my annual write-up on cinema, in about a month or so, I will only focus on last year. In which case these three will be missed, and they deserve so much better. 

The Beast (2023) dir. by Bertrand Bonello / France

There are bits and pieces of Henry James's great little novella The Beast In The Jungle behind this - but this is still very much its own thing. The Beast is this beautiful mindfuck of a film, with a plot that moves from distant to recent past to frankly rather disturbing future in a grotesque and at first somewhat confusing manner. After some time, though, it all falls into place, and when you understand what is going on here, the whole thing becomes very tight and impressive. 

In the future, everything is controlled by AI and people's emotions are surplus to requirements. However, humans can undergo a certain 'cleansing' procedure to rid themselves of real feelings. Which is exactly what the character of Léa Seydoux is trying to do. The setting moves from early 20th century France to 2014 Los Angeles to 2044 Paris, and we go through some vaguely familiar scenes - the very last one being absolutely devastating, and quite Lynchean in its own surreal way. 

La Chimera (2023) dir. by Alice Rohrwacher / Italy

Like The Beast, this felt to me like a total left-field masterpiece. Only this film has none of the slickness of the The Beast. It is set in Italy in the 1980s and tells of a group of looters who dig out Etruscan treasures and sell them to collectors. The main part is played by Josh O'Connor (who was great in both Challengers and Lee), and he is absolutely phenomenal here - but I was also really impressed by the Brazilian actress Carol Duarte who gives one of the most charming and natural performances I've ever seen.

It is a very arthouse sort of film, but La Chimera gives that word a good name. Because for all its playful eccentricities (the scenes where Josh O'Connor's character finds the treasures are truly bizarre), the film has real emotional depth. The last scenes in particular are some of the most powerful cinema in recent memory.

Perfect Days (2023) dir. by Wim Wenders / Japan

Back in the old days, one of my pet peeves was people telling me that Wings Of Desire was the greatest film of all time. I used to fight each and every one of those people. Much has changed since then and I have softened to it a little (that said, I still find it vastly overrated) - but it is only now, with Perfect Days, that I can safely state that Wim Wenders has finally made his masterpiece. 

Not Wings Of Desire, not Paris, Texas - but this, a meditative, almost wordless film about a Japanese toilet cleaner in Tokyo whose daily life we witness over the course of several days. It is a mesmerising film, and it felt so great, and so calming, to be part of the experience of watching it after a long working day in a half-empty Polish cinema. Wenders forged something timeless out of routine (Kōji Yakusho is hypnotic in his role, and especially in that memorable close-up at the very end), and did it so well that Lou Reed's song is merely an afterthought.

Book review: STREET-LEVEL SUPERSTAR by Will Hodgkinson

Lawrence is the sort of man who believes The Mother And The Whore is the greatest film ever made. Now you may have heard of people who express that opinion, you may even come across a few of them in real life, but deep down you will always question their honesty. As this brilliant book by Will Hodgkinson demonstrates, Lawrence is an authentic character. His oddness is genuine, and so are his opinions. Lawrence truly loves The Mother And The Whore like no other film. He also believes Vic Godard is the greatest living songwriter. Oh and liquorice candy is the best food in the world.

One of the undeniable achievements of this biography is that you do not even have to be a Lawrence fan to be completely engrossed by the narrative. That I personally happen to love the man's music (Felt's Forever Breathes The Lonely Word, Denim's two studio albums and Go-Kart Mozart's On The Hot Dog Streets are all classics in my eyes) is a nice bonus, but really - you can't help but be fascinated by this strange, enigmatic artist who never washes his jeans, carries a WH Smith bag with him wherever he goes, drinks milky tea and dreams of writing the greatest pop song of all time. Bizarrely, we can all relate. No, seriously, we can. 

The best books start in a way that can be described as inevitable. In Street-Level Superstar: A Year With Lawrence (published in 2024), we meet Lawrence in a Jewish district in London looking for a place to pee and talking about the exquisite, shimmering music from Felt's debut album. What a way to begin. From then on, Hodgkinson creates a fascinating portrait of a flawed, insecure, genuinely odd and talented man who has spent his career striving to break into stardom. As a matter of fact, Lawrence's relationship with fame is the central theme of the book. It is always there, peering from the corner, bubbling underneath every chapter and every sentence. Yes, the "Summer Smash" debacle is definitely mentioned (Lawrence wrote this potential hit single in 1997, it got great notices but was swiftly shelved due to Diana's death - this was the start of Lawrence's darkest years), but the frustration runs a lot deeper and the conclusion that Hodgkinson reaches towards the end is as bittersweet as it is inevitable.

Street-Level Superstar is not even an especially complimentary portrait. If anything, Lawrence is depicted as a difficult, exasperating man. Intriguing, too, but someone you would rather appreciate from a distance (Lawrence's preferred way of dealing with the world). He has a knack for driving other people insane (John Leckie lost it during the recording sessions for Back In Denim) and he seems to have a somewhat unhealthy relationship with money (embittered ex-girlfriend Michaela: "He loved rich people. They didn't even have to do anything for him to love them"). He is erratic and unreliable. "I was under no illusion", writes Hodgkinson in the final chapter of this biography. "His was not a life for any sane person to aspire". Throughout the book, Lawrence is full of painful self-deprecation but also pride in what he has achieved artistically. "When I was young", he says at some point, "I wanted to live in a matchbox". And this from someone who has spent most of his life pursuing the loftiest ambitions. 

Basically, the book gives us one year spent in the company of Lawrence. During this year, we walk with Lawrence through London (and Birmingham, briefly - his hometown), attend his gig at Glastonbury and even the recording session for his latest world smash (titled "Deliveroo Delivery", how else?). And in the background, Will Hodgkinson goes through the man's entire life, from difficult childhood (in an area he hated, with parents he hated) to periods of frenzied creativity to rare friends (Pete Astor, Bobby Gillespie) to estranged girlfriends (both real and imaginary) to years of homelessness and obscurity to the 'grand' unveiling of his giant marble bust in a London gallery. It is quite an incredible story, and Hodgkinson succeeds in bringing the man alive, to the extent that you will be sad to let Lawrence go by the end of it. With his big shopping bag, his famous cap and his diluted tea (two thirds tea, one third milk) bought from Costa Coffee. 

The writing is excellent all the way through, Hodgkinson's style is both humorous and poetic. "It was a glorious day in the city, one of those sunlit afternoons when being alive seems like a great idea. A perfect day, then, to go clothes shopping with Lawrence" (actually, a lot of space in the book is given to Lawrence's dressing style, the kind that puts shop assistants on guard). Or take this paragraph, for instance: "Not only did he never appear to eat anything, he rarely drank water either. The only sustenance appeared to come from the milky tea he liked to buy from Costa Coffee towards the end of our long walks. I, on the other hand, was a mere human, in need of water at the very least". Or when he writes about his personal favourite album On The Hot Dog Streets that opens with "Lawrence Takes Over". Hodgkinson calls the song "poignant because the chances of his taking over were by then as likely as his getting stuck into a cheese fondue". 

Interestingly, towards the end of the book I started to see certain similarities between Lawrence and Mark E. Smith (who initially was quite generous towards Felt). On the face of it, he also tries to be an authoritarian band leader, stingy with money and unwilling to share writing credits. He also writes all the lyrics and does not play any instruments (you could, in fact, paraphrase the famous quote from Smith and say a Lawrence band is Lawrence "and your granny on bongos"). He also gives crazy instructions to his band members. Like he once told the bassist not to play the A-string and the keyboard player to avoid pressing the black keys. But herein lies that crucial difference. The keyboard player never stopped pressing the black keys, and the bassist kept hitting the A-string (he even suggests, half-jokingly, that Lawrence has no idea where the actual A-string is located). 

But despite the failed guidelines, it was all very amiable on the car ride back to London. No bitterness, no threats. He was his usual Lawrence, drinking milky tea, avoiding small talk and writing that elusive hit single in his head. He even approved the draft copy of his biography without any major corrections. As Will Hodgkinson puts it at the very end of the book:

"Lawrence was something else entirely.

Lawrence was a street-level superstar".