Movies
An ambitious film by Nicolas Roeg, but it didn't quite work for me. It's clear the film is supposed to be magical and ethereal, but Roeg's attempts often come off a little too labored and imprecise. I appreciated the effort Roeg put in the audiovisual elements, I just wish the execution was better. Two city kids end up alone in the Australian outback, after their father commits suicide. They aren't used to surviving in the wilderness and their fate looks dim. Then an aboriginal boy appears and tags along with them. Though they don't speak each other's language, they do have a level of understanding. The setting is great and Roeg really tries to set his film apart. He also succeeds I guess, I just didn't care too much for the soundtrack and the somewhat crude editing. The finale is also somewhat disappointing, but at least Walkabout is a pretty memorable, well-paced film, so it certainly wasn't all bad.Read all
Roeg's first film is quite the calling card. I'm certainly not his biggest fan and it's no surprise then that Performance wasn't entirely my kind of thing, but it's hard to ignore the vibrancy and talent on display here. Regardless of how you end up feeling about this one, it's certainly a film worth experiencing. Chas is a bit of a hothead. When he kills someone he endangers everyone in his little gang of criminals. And so, Chas has no other choice than to flee, both from the cops and his gangster friends. He ends up with Turner, a strange musician who is working hard on making his comeback. James Fox puts in a pretty solid performance, but it's Roeg's manic visual style that stands out here. It's a little rough around the edges and I don't think it works very well with the score, but the energy is boundless. It's a pretty odd film beyond that, possibly a bit too puzzling for some, but it's certainly worth a shot.Read all
While I appreciate what Roeg tried to do here, I hated everything about the execution. This is a film that prefers atmosphere to plot, but the 70s cheese levels are so high that I just couldn't enjoy it. While it kept me engaged enough to wonder what was coming next, that always turned out to be a disappointment.
