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The Ballad Of Genesis and Lady Jay – Marie Losier (2011)

Losier is a French film curator and she makes documentaries about underground artists. For seven years she followed Genesis P-Orridge (1950-2020).

“The Ballad” starts just before P-Orridge met Lady Jaye. We get a few flashbacks to COUM, the early days of Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV, a peak into Genesis’ troubled youth and the fact that they did not want anybody to say what they are supposed to look like. Genesis refers to themselves as “we”, because of multiple personalities.

Experimenting with crossdressing and multiple identities, things really set off when Genesis meets Jay, a performance artist half their age. They fall madly in love and in stead of making ‘a combination of themselves’ (a baby), they decide to make themselves look like each other. Plastic surgery, breast implants, the same hair, the same make-up, the same cloths. Lady Jay is incorporated in the band, we get some live footage of concerts and then the tragic death of Lady J. The documentary ends soon after.

I have never been much of a follower of T.G., Psychic TV, etc., but this tragic love story gives an interesting peek into early industrial music and some of the people involved.

Certain Women – Kelly Reichardt (2016)

  • drama

Three different films about three different women with only here and there overlap. All parts play in some remote and cold part of the USA.

Gina is building her own house in the wilderness while she lives in a tent with her family. Jamie has a winter job at a horse farm and one night she just joins a course for school teachers given by Beth who lives four hours away. Then we have Laura (Laura Dern), a lawyer with a client who does not take no for an answer.

A calm and alright drama.

Climax – Gaspar Noë (2018)

For some reason I thought this was a film of Julia Ducournau. Now I see that is is a Noë. Maybe that explains why I felt like watching “Enter The Void” afterwards.

“Climax” is by and far not was good as “Enter The Void”. We follow a French group of dancers. You get scenes in which the group wildly dances (is this the style they call “Vogue”?) The style of dancing is intense en erotic and the next scenes are nothing but dancers talking about sex. This goes on for about an hour.

Then after one show, the usual Sangria is served at the afterparty and apparently the Sangria has been mixed with some sort of zombie drug. Some people get sick, other get horny, but generally the atmosphere becomes a whild nightmare with turning and twisting cameras, close ups, screaming people and all that jazz. This long last scene is indeed not your usual kind of film, but even for Noë it is too much.

The first part is boring, the second half quite uninteresting.

Jurassic World: Rebirth – Gareth Edwards (2025)

Scarlett Johansson is not only beautiful, she is also a great actress. She can play anything, from Marvel action, an unearthly “female”, a 1950’ies reporter, name it. This is also a bit of my problem with the newest Jurassic franchise. Edwards had Johansson add some extra and unnecessary drama.

Anyway, in the previous Jurassic movies, mankind had brought dinosaurs back on earth. In “Rebirth” they are again about to die out, except for a few regions where they live in ‘no go areas’ for humans.

A team is set up to get blood samples from three types of living dinosaurs. Needless to say that this is not exactly easy, but in the end the task is pulled off.

Perhaps amusing to watch on TV or streaming some time, but even Johansson could not make the film all that interesting.

Crank – Neveldine & Taylor (2006)

  • action

I thought this was a recent film. Also, the story sounds familiar, but I do not remember similar to what movie.

Chev (Jason Straham) is a gun for hire. He gets injected with a poison that will kill him unless he keeps his adrenaline levels high. Het sets out on a high speed and drug infused revenge chase.

Tank Girl – Rachel Talalay (1995)

It took some effort/patience to see this oldie, but now it is just a Prime Video included film.

“Tank Girl” is much more a comic book film than what for a time I had expected Marvel movies to look like. It had got a lot of comic book interludes. Very amusing.

In a Mad Max type dystopian future Tank Girl sets out to take revenge on a company who wants to control the water supply. Overly confident and utterly crazy, Tank Girl gets captured, but fights her way to the top of the company to get her revenge.

Decoder – Muscha (1984)

Cold Spring announced a new release of the soundtrack of this film for next month. It seems that I somehow missed this film which includes music and acting from Genesis P-Orridge, William S. Burroughs, Einstürzende Neubauten and more.

The film is not extremely hard to find, but it is either very expensive or ‘exotic’. I got myself an Italian version from Ebay. It does have the original German language and English subtitles, so that was no problem.

As you can expect the film is fairly experimental with psychedelic scenes, not overly professional and there are some shock elements with sex and violence, drugs, (post)punkers running around, etc. We follow and elderly security agent and a young guy who is experimenting with electronic music. The young man finds out that his music influences people’s behavior. There are some 1984-type elements and some TOPY type experiments (with Neubauten).

I enjoyed the film better than the soundtrack.

Small Things Like These – Tim Mielants (2024)

  • drama

Cillian Murphey plays Bill Furlong, a trademan in coals in rural Ireland a couple of decades ago. He has a hard life, but a loving wife and five daughters.

One of his customers is a nearby cloister which is a so-called “Magdalene asylum”. Young women, usually pregnant without a partner, are sent there and Bill starts to realise that they are not treated very well.

“Small Things Like These” is a slow, gritty, minimalist film based on the fairly famous book by Claire Keegan.

The Vast Of Night – Andrew Patterson (2019)

1950’ies New Mexico. The whole of the small town is at a basketball game. Everybody, but Fay who mans the telephone switchboard, and Everett who hosts his weekly radio show.

A strange sound is heard and Everett asks his listeners. Two callers have more information and Fay and Everett set out to investigate. Something is in the sky over the town and it is not the first time that there are visitors.

An alright drama.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps – Matt Shakman (2025)

  • action

Apparently another branch on the Marvel tree. The Fantastic Four are a 1960 comic book super hero team and Shakman created a highly amusing 1960’ies style future.

For the rest, there is not much to the film. We have the usual bad guy who wants to destroy the world and a group of heroes with special abilities to prevent that from happening. Add the usual American patriotism and drama and you have got another entertaining and typical Marvel production.