BY ANDREW MOODY A cult sleeper hit at the turn of the century, shortly after Columbine and shortly before 9/11, Donnie Darko is a curious, beautiful and ultimately tragic romance that ranks with the best movies of the past twenty years. Written and directed by Richard Kelly, his bravery in making a film this lyrical about what is either directly or subtextually about mental illness … Continue reading Donnie Darko
BY ANDREW MOODY I think we are just insects, we live a bit and then die and that’s the lot. There’s no mercy in things. There’s not even a Great Beyond. There’s nothing. Frederick, an unloved, sexually awkward clerk whose hobby is butterfly collecting (with much in common with Norman Bates), falls in love with the sight of art student Miranda. After a massive win … Continue reading The Collector
BY ANDREW MOODY In 1954, 18-year-old Francoise Sagan stunned the Parisian literary scene with Bonjour Tristesse, a scandalous tale of decadence and teenage sexuality on the French Riviera. That she had recently failed the Sorbonnes (the French equivalent of the A Levels) made its maturity, sensuality, sin and deceptively sophisticated dialogue see it become an instant bestseller and Sagan hailed as an enfant terrible and … Continue reading Bonjour Tristesse
BY ANDREW MOODY Aleister Crowley, the Great Beast, dictated nearly forty years after preparatory school at the Plymouth Brethren: “I had been the butt of every bully in school. My whole life seemed at times to be one slimy subterfuge to cozen death.” While perusing the National Portrait Gallery some years back, I noted Crowley’s magical portrait (it did not represent his image but worked … Continue reading Crowley Demystified
BY ANDREW MOODY When a 47 year old, heavily bearded Eminem played his “surprise” performance at the 2020 Academy awards of his 2003 Oscar winner Lose Yourself (because he bottled it the first time and spent the Oscars in bed addicted to Percodan) it made the famous phrase “you only get one shot” a tad redundant, a thought I’m sure was crossing Martin Scorsese when … Continue reading Mean Streets
BY ANDREW MOODY In 1940, one year after the publication of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, the Nazis had overrun most of Europe. Steinbeck was a clear-eyed, moralistic and political realist who knew that US involvement in the war was an inevitability. He joined several government intelligence agencies voluntarily that were created between 1940 and 1942. Two of the organisations were forerunners for the … Continue reading The Moon is Down
BY ANDREW MOODY Michael Herr used his memoir and experiences as a war reporter to write the narration for Martin Sheen in Coppola’s masterpiece Apocalypse Now and co-wrote Kubrick’s most enduring film Full Metal Jacket with another Vietnam writer, Gustav Hasford, whose The Short Timers inspired the boot camp sequence. Herr said of Kubrick that had he not been a film director, he would have … Continue reading Dispatches
BY ANDREW MOODY On November 8th 1938, Adolf Hitler made reference to the mass hysteria caused by Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre radio production of War of the Worlds, as evidence of “the corrupt condition and decadent state of affairs in democracy”. “He hadn’t much else to say,” Welles wryly commented during a meeting with the original author HG Wells in 1940 after war had erupted … Continue reading Welles & Wells
BY ANDREW MOODY Charles Bukowski, the poet laureate of skid row and the mad old sleazebag of American letters, was often regarded as an honorary member of the Beat Generation. Whilst it’s certain he would have been familiar with their work, he never hung with Ginsberg or Burroughs or Kerouac and probably didn’t think much of them. To quote Hot Water Music: “What is your … Continue reading On Bukowski
BY ANDREW MOODY The ongoing desperate protests after the fact against the victorious Conservatives have the same flavour of the anti-EU protests the country has had to suffer for years. Just like Stormzy claiming the UK was racist, when it’s been established the UK is one of the least racist countries on Earth, all Brexiteers are classed as thick and bigoted. Ridiculous. “Why do they … Continue reading Down The System
BY ANDREW MOODY In many respects, even more than the derivative Star Wars movies, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is the most famous movie ever made. “Hitchcock liked to boast about playing the emotions of audiences as though they were notes on an organ, but when he first read Psycho he must have recognized his own inner music surging through him. It was The Lodger as the … Continue reading To the Cleaners
BY ANDREW MOODY I believe in America… The undertaker’s words to Don Vito Corleone (as the master toys with a kitten in a smoky back room office), are surely the most memorable opening lines in Hollywood history. I first saw the Godfather and the Godfather Part 2 on one, long hot summer’s day at a friend’s house whilst revising for my maths GCSE. I must … Continue reading Illusory Power
BY ANDREW MOODY The general consensus in 2020 is that the HUAC hearings into Communist subversion that began in 1947 and saw many unfriendly witnesses (most famously what were known as ‘The Hollywood Ten’) blacklisted from the Hollywood industry were unconstitutional and fascist. Ed Harris and other notable liberals refused to applaud director and friendly witness Elia Kazan when he received his honorary Academy Award … Continue reading Hollywood Party
BY ANDREW MOODY I don’t like Randle P. McMurphy, the anti hero of Ken Kesey’s classic anti establishment novel set in a psychiatric hospital. I prefer Jack Nicholson in the movie, which was the 1975 Oscar smash, the type of visionary epic that will sadly never be made again. The novel is written like an LSD trip from the point of view of a giant … Continue reading Cuckoo
BY ANDREW MOODY “Rock and roll is not a guitar, it’s not long hair- that’s not rock and roll. The blues is the start of it all,” NWA frontman Ice Cube said. “You add some rhythm to the blues and you have all kinds of people that’s doing rock and roll. All of it is a spirit- if you don’t see how NWA is rock … Continue reading Straight Outta Compton
BY ANDREW MOODY “Know why I hate scavengers?” Mother said “Allie, please,” and turned away. “Because they remind me of human beings.” Paul Theroux’s 1981 award winning novel about a teenage boy narrating the story of his increasingly unhinged father dragging the family to an uninhabited island in Honduras to build a new civilisation (he believes nuclear holocaust is due for the United States) was … Continue reading The Mosquito Coast
BY ANDREW MOODY There was a genuine and cunning intelligence behind Punk’s explosion in the mid 1970s and in particular Malcolm McLaren’s brainchild The Sex Pistols. “(He) wanted to provoke the state,” wrote Punk journalist Jon Savage, “in the way the Yippies or the Baeder/Meinhof gang had done.” Guitarist Steve Jones commented years after the fact: “I was a miserable sod deep inside…. It came … Continue reading Treason For No Reason
BY ANDREW MOODY The mystery of Jack the Ripper’s true identity has lasted well over a century. Numerous suspects, including (the incorrect) Victorian artist Walter Sickert have had their day in court (in lengthy, poorly researched, histrionic books) but finally, in a mammoth 850 page work of heroic non-fiction, Withnail and I director Bruce Robinson has gotten to the bottom of this grimy tale. He’s … Continue reading They All Love Jack
BY ANDREW MOODY According to most biographies of legendary auteur Quentin Tarantino, he lost his virginity late, in his mid-twenties, and didn’t have his first girlfriend until pre-production of his indie classic Reservoir Dogs. This (presumably unbearable) sexual frustration, coupled with his intense academic approach to pop culture, goes part of the way in explaining the typically bodacious violence that characterises his body of work. … Continue reading Jackie Brown
BY ANDREW MOODY Back in 1999, during post-production of his Oscar winning American Beauty, Sam Mendes showed the final cut to legendary director Stephen Spielberg. As it ended, with tears in his eyes, Spielberg turned to Mendes and proclaimed: “You’ve created an American masterpiece…” Twenty years later, with the disgrace of lead actor Kevin Spacey, Spielberg’s words fall remarkably flat. What now comes across when … Continue reading American Beauty Post Spacey
