Keith Morris Movies
The debut feature by Chris Fuller, the hard-edged drama Loren Cass stars Travis Mynard as Jason, a skinhead who starts a racial conflagration after playing a prank on a Black man with the help of his friend Cale (played by the director and writer, but billed under the name Lewis Borgan). Cale asks out a young waitress (Kayle Tabish), but they end up having dinner at the diner where she works. Everyone in the film seems weighed down by hopelessness and racial tension. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kayla Tabish, Travis Maynard, (more)
The lost subculture of America's rebellious, Reagan-era hardcore set is explored in filmmaker Paul Rachman's cinematic adaptation of Steven Blush's book. Disillusioned by politics, angered by greedy record labels, and bound together by a powerful antiestablishment sentiment, bands such as Minor Threat, Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, and Bad Brains paved the way for such later bands as Nirvana and Pearl Jam by fearlessly questioning -- and frequently mocking -- the status quo, and proving that you don't need radio play to reach an audience. Whether working for a real change or simply attempting to shake things up in the music scene, these bands gave a voice to the legions of youthful fans who felt their opinions had been neglected in mainstream society. In this documentary, concert footage combines with interviews to offer a comprehensive look at the musical revolution that defined an era. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bad Brains, Black Flag, (more)
- 2002
Directed by Jeroen Berkvens, this documentary traces the life of British rocker Nick Drake, who, after a successful musical career during the late '60s and early '70s, died of a possibly accidental overdose of prescription antidepressants in his parents' home in 1974. Berkvens takes a chronological view of Drake's life, beginning with his youth in Burma, where his father was stationed as an engineer, to Cambridge, where he was able to emerge as a musician, to London, the birthplace of his three acclaimed albums, and ultimately to his parents' home, where he eventually succumbed to his long-term battle with depression. The 48-minute documentary includes musical clips, photographs, footage of his various home environments, and interviews with his surviving family, friends, and associates. ~ Tracie Cooper, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gabrielle Drake, Joe Boyd, (more)
While the American punk rock revolution started on the East Coast in the mid-'70s, by 1978 California boasted once of the most interesting and important punk scenes in the world, spawning a number of great bands who would change the shape of underground rock & roll and blaze the trails for the independent music community of the '80s and '90s. Rage: 20 Years of Punk Rock West Coast Style is a documentary that offers a brief but telling glimpse of the formative days of California punk, with film clips of important early bands such as the Germs, the Screamers, and the Weirdos and interviews with important scene figures who discuss the long journey of California punk from an outcast artists community to a sound co-opted by the mainstream record industry in the wake of the multi-platinum success of Green Day. Interview subjects include Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys, Keith Morris of the Circle Jerks and Black Flag, Don Bolles of the Germs, Jack Grisham of TSOL, and Harold Bronson of Rhino Records. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jack Grisham, Keith Morris, (more)
- 1996
- R
- Add Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood to QueueAdd Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood to top of Queue
Much as Keenen Ivory Wayans' I'm Gonna Git You Sucka parodied the basic elements of 70's blaxploitation pictures, this film written by and starring his younger brothers Marlon Wayans and Shawn Wayans pokes fun at the gritty "reality check" films of the 1990's, such as Boyz N The Hood, Menace II Society and New Jack City. When Ashtray (Shawn Wayans) moves to South Central L.A. to live with his father (who appears to be the same age he is) and grandmother (who likes to talk tough and smoke reefer), he falls in with his gang-banging cousin Loc Dog (Marlon Wayans), who along with the requisite pistols and Uzi carries a thermo-nuclear warhead for self-defense. Will Ashtray keep living the straight life or will he join up with Loc Dog's gangsta homeboys? And is his romance with self-styled poet Dashiki (Tracey Cherelle Jones) going to go anywhere? Big brother Keenen has a small role as a mailman. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Shawn Wayans, Marlon Wayans, (more)
Punk rock's first great embodiment of the motto "live fast and die young," Sid Vicious joined The Sex Pistols when they were already established as the most controversial rock band in British history; and it soon became apparent that he couldn't play his instrument, had a magnetic attraction to chaos, and possessed a dangerous thirst for booze, drugs, and violence. Sid and Nancy opens shortly after Sid (Gary Oldman) joined the band, when he meets an obnoxious American punk groupie named Nancy Spungen (Chloe Webb). Nancy claims that she can get drugs, and Sid naively gives her his money. Nancy doesn't show up with the goods, but when Sid runs into her a few days later, she has a tall tale about getting ripped off - and Sid sympathizes with her. Before long, Sid and Nancy have fallen in love, and while they argue with uncommon vehemence, they also depend completely on each other. When The Sex Pistols break up, Sid has few prospects and an increasingly voracious appetite for heroin, and Nancy's attempts to "manage" his career only hasten his downhill slide. Former Clash leader Joe Strummer wrote the film's theme song, "Love Kills," and The Pogues, The Circle Jerks, and Pray for Rain contributed to the soundtrack. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gary Oldman, Chloe Webb, (more)
Alex Cox's directorial debut was a wickedly funny and willfully bizarre story that became a major cult item once it began making the art-house rounds a year after its release (an initial run in a string of Southern grind houses and drive-ins, where it was billed as an action film, was a resounding failure). Having lost his job and his girlfriend, punk rocker Otto (Emilio Estevez) meets a guy named Bud (Harry Dean Stanton) who offers him $25 to drive his wife's car out of a "bad area." When a handful of angry people start chasing Otto, he realizes that something is up, and he discovers that Bud repossesses cars for a living. With few immediate prospects, Otto joins Bud at the repo yard and is soon "ripping" cars with the best of them. When an anonymous source posts a $20,000 reward for a missing 1964 Chevy Malibu, it turns out that what's valuable isn't the car itself, but what's in the trunk, which is very hot, glows brightly, and kills anyone who comes in contact with it. A vaguely surreal modern-noir science-fiction comedy with echoes of Kiss Me Deadly (1955), Repo Man is packed with more incongruous sight gags than anyone can absorb in one viewing; keep your eyes peeled for the air fresheners, the generic newspaper box, and the watches without hands. Harry Dean Stanton gives a superb comic performance as the intense but laid-back Bud, Emilio Estevez delivers perhaps the best work of his career as the petulant but goofy Otto, and Tracey Walter is hilarious as the spaced out repo-yard man Miller. Iggy Pop wrote and performed the theme song and The Circle Jerks appear as a lounge band. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Harry Dean Stanton, Emilio Estevez, (more)
- 1984
Two of the best-known and longest-running bands on the Southern California punk scene, the Circle Jerks and Bad Religion, skank up a storm in this video, which combines footage from two live concerts. Bad Religion performs 11 songs, including "Damned to Be Free," "Drastic Action," "Latch Key Kids," and "The Voice of God Is Government," while the Circle Jerks race through a 23-song set, including "Coup D'etat," "Under the Gun," "Beverly Hills," "Wasted," "Red Tape," "Wild in the Streets," and "Operation." ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- 1981
- R
The performers, attitudes, and music of late '70s, early '80s Los Angeles punk scene are documented in this film by director Penelope Spheeris. Not merely a compilation of concert footage, The Decline of Western Civilization compiles numerous viewpoints on the meanings of the punk movement, from journalists -- one of whom calls punk the folk music of the 1980s -- to club security guards, to the punks themselves. The center of the film, however, is the music, which is fast, loud, and abrasive and often played with purposeful ineptitude; the lyrics are intentionally controversial and shocking, often seeming to embrace violence, sexism, racism, and even Nazism, though usually in an ironic manner. The performances, by bands such as Black Flag, X, The Circle Jerks, and Fear, are mostly shot from within the audience, where the camera often becomes an unwitting participant in the crowd's slam dancing. Especially fascinating are the performances by The Germs, thanks to the antics of their violently self-destructive lead singer Darby Crash, who would later die of a drug overdose and gain a martyr status within the punk community. The film was followed several years later by a sequel focusing on the world of heavy metal. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Alice Bag Band, Black Flag, (more)
Though not Ian Fleming's most famous James Bond novel, 1962's The Spy Who Loved Me was distinguished by the unique device of telling the story from the heroine's point of view; in fact, Bond doesn't make an appearance until the book is two-thirds over. This would hardly work in the film world's Bond franchise, so the original austere plotline of the novel was eschewed altogether in favor of a labyrinthine story involving outer-space extortion. The leading lady, a "hard-luck kid" in the original, is now sexy Russian secret agent Barbara Bach, who joins forces with Bond (Roger Moore, making his third appearance as 007) to foil yet another megalomaniac villain (Curt Jurgens), who plans to threaten New York City with nuclear weaponry. Beyond the eye-popping opening ski-jump sequence, the film's best scenes involve seven-foot-two Richard Kiel as steel-toothed henchman Jaws. Fifteen scriptwriters worked on The Spy Who Loved Me; only two were credited, including Bond-film veteran Richard Maibaum. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Roger Moore, Barbara Bach, (more)
