|
|
 |
| |
?The hilarious Rocker prepares to make some noise |
Also on release this week
WHAT is it that makes Americans love the schmaltz?
Young At Heart tells the story of an older people’s choir touring prisons and other public institutions and is a wonderful documentary, but heavy on the sugary sap.
Their average age is 81 and they bang out classics ranging from James Brown to the grasping tones of Sonic Youth.
But I couldn’t help compare it to a similar doc, Feltham Sings, which saw poet Simon Armitage go to the west London young offenders prison and teach long-term inmates how to belt out numbers.
The difference between the two is the American version can’t help but tug the heart strings a bit too much, while the English doc simply lets you work it out for yourself.
• AFRO-Saxons is a great documentary, but perhaps would be better suited to a small screen. It tells the story of teams of hair stylists battling it out to be crowned No 1 black hairdresser of the year at the UK National Black Beauty And Hair Awards.
The characters that pop up make for interesting skits – a Tottenham-based female braider, a fast-talking couple from Brixton, a Thai husband and wife from Peckham, and then a Brummie salon-owner hoping to show the loudmouth Londoners how it’s done.
• The Rocker is so heavily influenced by the Jack Black school of heavy metal comedies that I was surprised he didn’t make a cameo somewhere along the line. From Spinal Tap to School of Rock, hairy men in tight Spandex make for easy gags, and The Rocker does just that. Robert ‘Fish’ Fishman is the Pete Best of an 80s rock band, Vesuvius. Kicked out just as they hit it semi-big, Fish has nursed wounds for 20 years. Then he hears his nephew’s rock band A.D.D. are looking for a drummer and sees a chance to make amends and live the life once more.
• The hard-hitting Gomorrah, based in a brutal Naples ghetto, tells of the all-encompassing reach the violent gang Comorra has on everyone and everything. From the anodyne civil services such as rubbish collection and waste disposal through to gun running, drug dealing and protection rackets, the violent men boss their communities with pistols and beatings – and generations of inherited loyalty to their street clans.
Its skill is showing the criminal intent such poverty breeds. Full of macho men thinking they are Tony Montana, it highlights the ignorance, violence, and close-knit nature of how the underworld meets the real world in southern Italy. These gangsters have an unquenchable thirst for wealth, lacking any intellectual enlightenment as to the terrible deprivation caused by their plight. It is shocking, refreshing, and the film of the autumn. |
 |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
