Sid & Nancy
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Movie Reviews of Sid & Nancy
Movie Review: Can't stop watching it
Summary: 5 Stars
I love the Sex Pistols and the whole british punk movement of the 1970's. I think Johnny Rotten wrote the greatest lyrics for the band and Cook & Jones are the true backbone musicly of the Sex Pistols. Glen Matlock certainly got cheated and so did the band when Sid Vicious joined as their, ahem, "Bass Player." (Was glad to see Glen was back for the reunion tour and you can hear his great bass work on Filthy Lucre Live=plus hear the band as a four piece rather than the Sid version with a singer, drummer, guitarist and a fashion plate standing stage left.)
I love Alex Cox's RepoMan film and when I read he did the "Sid & Nancy" film, I bought it. The two that play Sid & Nancy did a fine job. I liked that Courtney Love had a bit part in it too. The story is crazy yet amusing. It is a demented love story that was based around nothing but Sex, Drugs and (Punk) Rock N' Roll. But the Rock N' Roll (as in music) was pretty much left out, since Sid really wasn't a musician. Sid befriended Johnny Rotten and got him to join the band after they parted with Glen Matlock. Here in the film, you see that Johnny, Paul & Steve were probably thinking it was a HUGE mistake having Sid in the band, plus they had to deal with his girl, Nancy.
Just goes to show you the devestating effect drugs can have on the poeple that use them and the heartache it can bring to others. Sid had a role in the disbanding of one of the most important bands in rock history and possibly had a hand in the death of his girlfriend. Did someone else visit Sid and Nancy and got high together and killed Nancy? Did Sid just hold a knife and Nancy went to jump on him during a fight and was accidently stabbed by Sid? Only Sid & Nancy know. One thing is for sure, they were certainly made for each other and both had a death wish.
As far as the acting, I wished they picked better poeple to play the other Sex pistols. The guy who played Johnny was okay but he should have played it more obnoxious. The Sex Pistol songs done for the movie by other musicians are very sterile sounding without any punk bite. Same goes for X Ray Spex "Oh Bondage, Up Yours!". I didn't like that Johnny Rotten was kinda portrayed a bit wimpy, too. But the feel and crazyness of the film is cool and it's pretty much a derranged story that has some memorable scenes and is great to watch alot just for those.
This movie is certainly a cult classic. If you like movies such as Repo Man, Heathers and Pump Up the Volume, you will enjoy Sid & Nancy.
Movie Review: More Sid And Nancy Than The Real Nancy and Sid Were
Summary: 5 Stars
I think Sid & Nancy might just be the best rock-based biographical film yet done. Better than Oliver Stone's The Doors, better than last year's dismal Brian Jones flick whose name isn't worthy of being repeated here. The reason Sid & Nancy rises above the rest can be summed up in one word: talent. Sid & Nancy is the result of a passionate filmmaker getting near-perfect performances from his well-chosen cast, of welding great music and attention-grabbing scenery to a modern tragedy that touches many emotions. The result is a five-star film.
People are surprised when I tell them the Sex Pistols rank among my all-time favorite groups. No, I was never a punk, and besides, when I was growing up `70's punk bands were mostly curiosities from modern pop culture history, but I do like the music the Sex Pistols produced on their one and only legitimate album, and the film Sid & Nancy, much criticized by pompous purists and much praised by most everyone else, is a chronicle of that era and two of its most infamously doomed participants. The chameleonic Gary Oldman brings Sid Vicious not only to life, he somehow surpasses the original to vicariously embody a character more memorable than the flesh and blood young man on whom the role is based. Likewise Chloe Webb (who really deserved better career choices than she got after this movie) brings the manic-depressive Nancy Spungen back from the grave in all her alienating, irritatingly pathetic hideousness.
Some say this movie takes liberties with the timeline of Sid and Nancy's short lives, and others say it manages to glamorize them for the wrong things. Probably legitimate gripes, I'll grant, but there are also those who refuse to see the greatness in, say, Shakespeare's Richard III, because the fictionalized villain bears scant resemblance to the real man. That's much the same case here. For all one might say in criticism of this movie, Alex Cox did the impossible and revived the decaying, culture-shocked world of 1970's London, and against that stage he crafted a story that works well. Sid & Nancy is about drugs, music, twisted love between two misfit human beings, needless death, and a revolutionary movement that imploded on its nihilism even as its message was lost on the masses. Sid & Nancy is not only about Sid and Nancy, so emblematic of their time and place, it is the tragic chronicle of the spirit of misguided post-adolescent reaction against a dismal age.
Movie Review: Punk Rock Love
Summary: 5 Stars
Sid and Nancy is an unforgettable movie.It might not be correct in a way.They think Sid might have murdered Nancy,but nobody knows this for sure.This movie shows you how bad you can end up if you do drugs.There is so much drama in this.The actors did a really great job trying to capture Sid,Nancy,Johnny and all the rest of the charators real personalities.Some parts are funny,but the rest just makes you take pity on Sid and Nancy.
The movie starts off as Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious meeting Nancy at a friend's apartment.She shows interest in Sid,but Sid doesn't think much of her.But not long after,Johnny and Sid are at a bar and see Nancy begging for drugs off some guy.The guy gets angry, the result:Nancy gets splashed with beer in the face. She runs outside and crys,Sid taked pity on her and follows her.When he goes to her,Nancy is scratching her fingers against the cement wall.
He says to her "That must hurt.But not as much as this,"then he just smashes his head against the wall. How random.Eventually Sid and Nancy fall in love,Sid also falls into doing herion.Nancy introduced him to that.They evetually get married and blow off tons of money on drugs.At the end, they are no longer in London but are living in the Chelsea Hotel in New York where Nancy family lives.
Sid admits he wants to go back to London but Nancy doesn't.Then they get into a huge arguement that will be the last one that they will ever have.Sid rams a knife into Nancy's side.Ignoring the pain, Nancy and Sid make up and fall asleep.Nancy wakes up covered in her own blood.She makes her way to the bathroom and dies there."Sid,Im dying,"she cries out to him,but he's still asleep.
Sid eventually gets arrested and released because there is not proof that he killed Nancy or not.The ending doesn't make sence really.Sid makes his way out of the city into a rundown area.He meets up with kids dancing to funk music."C'mon Sid!Dance!Don't be a stuck up!"They say.So you see a drugged up, English punk rocker dancing(horribly!)to funky music.
Then a cab pulls up and he gets in.And there in the back seat is Nancy,clad in a white dress that's kinda like a wedding dress.They kiss and the cab drives off.A dedication appears in red print saying "Sid Vicious died of an over dose on Febuary 2,1979.R.I.P Sid and Nancy."The whole movie is good.But the moral of the story is this :Drugs really mess you up.
Movie Review: Overlooked Performances.
Summary: 5 Stars
I barely recognized Gary Oldman in this role. He shed double digit pounds for the role and I hear he paid a trip to the hospital for it. That's usually what Acadamy voters usually obsess about. But it's just the beginning point of my argument for Gary. What's more, I sense possession in Gary, a transformation rarely seen in todays, or in the history of film making. His torment is for our pleasure. I thought to myself that during episodes of this movie Gary must really be coked out, and I mean that for the first time of using that sentence ever as a good way. What the hell kind of performances were so good that not even a mention of Gary could me made? Let's see:Dexter Gordon in Round Midnight, William Hurt, Bob Hoskins and James Woods, with Paul Newman winning for the color of money. Let me say this, the only one of those I did see was the color of money (shame on me I guess) and sure, Paul was great but I get the nacking feeling he was honored that award for political reasons (don't bull***t yourself into thinking anything else.) And a note on the other four, "what the *bleep!"
The film is REMARKABLY good. It cuts into a raw, selfinflicting no holds barrier type film, a belly in stitches black humor that is sort of like laughing but feeling terrible after when you see a one armed man juggling or some sick crap like that. This has the formula of Doors, where pretty much it's, Hello, I'm coked, Hello, I'm rich, Hello I'm coked, Hello I'm poor, Hello I'm on speed, Goodbye I'm dead. This is my last opinion and it's shared with reluctance because of her many haters, and they have good reason to, but cloe webb was a great imbodiment of Nancy and she deserves credit, but Nancy's face belongs to Courtney Love who is scattered into a handful of scenes as Nancy's friend. Sometimes Webb was distratingly punk. I guess I mean she sort of sold herself to her director as if he were with licence to whip her between every scene with one of those S&M whips. *whip! (now I want you to be a coked w**re!) *crack! "ACTION!"
Movie Review: first rate portrayal of addiction and decline, in the Punk scene
Summary: 5 Stars
This has got to be the best film that I've seen about drug addiction and the emptiness of people who fall into it. The decline and death of the protagonists are frightening and depressing, so well acted that it is horribly, completely believable. Oldam and Webb are simply brilliant. Webb is totally believable as a border line personality, at times sensitive, but suddenly abusive and paranoid - it is subtle and perfectly acted.
But the film is much more than that. There is also a twisted love between two people who can only be described as complete losers: Sid, who is nothing but a youth disaster become celebrity by chance and Nancy, a suburban cast-off who has wandered into the drug world, S&M for pay, and a pathetic search for groupie association with stardom. While almost nothing on their own, together they enter a downward spiral that can result only in death. Together they are far worse than zero. You helplessly witness their descent into a hell of addiction and chaos.
Finally, there is a wonderful evocation of their milieu: the late-70s punk scene. I recall, as a middle-aged man, how this was the first youth movement in which I had no desire to participate: I had been a late-comer hippy and was aspiring to academia when this started. It was the first "movement" that repulsed me personally, that I had no desire whatsoever to mimic. In this film, you see how talentless and nihilistic punk really was, but also how it had the raw energy of urban youth in societies that could offer them nothing of value. Gone are the ideals and dreams of the 60s. Their chaos and drugs and indirection in the end were all that they had, so they lived it unto self-destruction. Their scene, as portrayed in this film, was a revelation to me and is brilliantly evoked.
Reccommended with enthusiasm. This is like a modern Balzacian tale of meaningless annihilation, a rememberance of a time, and a perfect work of art.