Given the discipline of a strong director, Alex Cox has revealed overwhelming ambition, and a ferocious imagination in his films
"Sid and Nancy" was impressive, turning the dirty and depressing true story of Sid Vicious and his lover Nancy Spungen into a surprisingly moving romance
Clear-eyed in his cautious celebration of the punk movement's rebellion against the oppressive realities of Thatcher's Britain, and similarly lucid about the difficulties of sudden fame, Cox never glamorized his drug-addict protagonists; nor, even more remarkably, did he condemn them for their idiotic, anti-social, frequently pathetic odyssey towards self-destruction in New York's Chelsea Hotel
Sadly, the film's tense, gripping authenticity of atmosphere and performance was to be repeated neither in the indulgent, unfunny spaghetti Western spoof "Straight to Hell," nor in "Walker," an uneven, allegorical satire on American imperialism in the form of a l9th-century colonialist who sets himself up as tyrant of Nicaragua
"Sid and Nancy" was impressive, turning the dirty and depressing true story of Sid Vicious and his lover Nancy Spungen into a surprisingly moving romance
Clear-eyed in his cautious celebration of the punk movement's rebellion against the oppressive realities of Thatcher's Britain, and similarly lucid about the difficulties of sudden fame, Cox never glamorized his drug-addict protagonists; nor, even more remarkably, did he condemn them for their idiotic, anti-social, frequently pathetic odyssey towards self-destruction in New York's Chelsea Hotel
Sadly, the film's tense, gripping authenticity of atmosphere and performance was to be repeated neither in the indulgent, unfunny spaghetti Western spoof "Straight to Hell," nor in "Walker," an uneven, allegorical satire on American imperialism in the form of a l9th-century colonialist who sets himself up as tyrant of Nicaragua