TakeTwoReviews

I'm a Zeppelin fan, but honestly just the music. I'm too young to have witnessed their heyday and get caught up in the mythology, but I grew up with their records, falling in love with some more than others and I can easily get lost in those riffs, lyrics, drums, my god the drums. The story behind the band though, well as a kid I didn't really think of it. This tells that story with archive footage and interviews with the three surviving members. It's a familiar tale though. Kids bored of button down post war Briton, enthralled by the excitement of American rock n roll. We start with Jimmy Page and his introduction to the guitar. With two supportive parents happy to indulge. John Paul Jones gets a bit rushed over in his intro, but I guess there's an eagerness to get to the frontman. Robert Plant, transfixed by Little Richard (and who wouldn't be) knew right away he wanted to sing. John Bonham, although passed, isn't forgotten either and we get snippets of voice interviews that keep him involved. It's quite slow and methodical as each member goes through their early pre-band memories. A very traditional TV style documentary. Plant and Bonham are the first to connect. Brummies spotting a shared love. But it's Page and Jones that are getting their first taste of success as session musicians, meeting on the Goldfinger score. Page's credits alone are pretty staggering, a who's who of 60s British music icons, but Jones is no slouch either. Jobbing musicians, doing honest work, back when that was an option. Plant is much more the kaftan loving hippy and soon enough, Page too is looking for more freedom outside the session work. He wants to play in a band, starting with The Yardbirds. Experimenting in the scene, again with a heavy American influence, getting a feel for a deeper sound. Unconstrained, everything gets a bit more conceptual, mythical and when Page meets Plant. That's the touch paper lit. "We knew there was something in the air". Bonham and Jones are both reticent to begin, other commitments, family concerns, but all that is soon overcome of course and once in a room, a quarter way into the documentary, boom! Becoming Led Zeppelin keeps everything tempered though, the excitement comes through their retelling, the smiles beam as they recollect the memories. The first we see of them playing together is still under The Yardbirds name, but there's no mistaking that sound. It's spine tingling Zeppelin. The young Scandinavian audience don't look quite ready for what they're witnessing, it's hard to comprehend now just how out there this sound was. What's nice about Becoming is it takes its time. It's not cut, cut, cut, keep up stuff and we only hear from the band, there's no need for anyone else. It's pure. The music too is allowed to breathe, songs played out in full, although sometimes accompanied by newsreel anchoring them in the events and culture of a globalised world opening up. Page is undeniably the special ingredient, not just for his guitar, but his vision for the first record and his insistence on it being sold as an album, snubbing the single obsessed culture. That sounds ambitious or cocky even for a new band, but with Page's connections and manager Peter Grant's help, record deals are signed. A deal that puts the band in control. Now I said it was the records that I know and love, but it's the live performances here that cook. Watching Page play, Plant move, Bonham let loose, Jones tiring it all together, god they're good. 1969. San Fransisco. The Fillmore. The sound is there. The look is there. The people are there. Arguably this is where Zeppelin break. "We knew after that we were on the right track". The critics hated it, but the people, the people loved it and who wouldn't. Watching Page in a battered leather jacket with a bow on his scuffed guitar, ripping through 'Dazed and Confused' while Plant yelps. We're lead through the evolution, through the first two records, through the recording. How each member grows. The focus though is 1969, it's the becoming as the title states. It's not a ground breaking doc and I'm not sure I learnt much I didn't know, but the footage is fantastic and having it driven by the band, who really don't usually indulge in things like this, makes it quite special. Well worth a watch whether you're a fan or not.

The year is 2054 on the planet Niflheim. Mickey (Robert Pattinson) is part of a colony, but not a particularly valued one. He's an Expendable, he's sort of indestructible. With a reprintable body, getting his memories uploaded into a new body after every morally questionable death. It's his job. He's used to it but sick of being little more than a lab rat. The churn of Mickey's is about to hit a snag though, when Mickey 18 is born into the world, before Mickey 17 is dead. He's here we learn because he's desperate. Things weren't going well on earth, nothing much was. When Tim Key is eager to leave the planet, you know it's time to go. Anyway he applies for the expedition and the job, with no other viable options and not much of a clue what he's signed up for. It's all sounds cold, heartless science fiction but it's not. It's darkly comic. Ok it is cold too, but Mickeys narration is funny and tragic, he's instantly lovable. The opposite can be said for Kenneth 'Trump' Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) and his wife Ylfa (Toni Collette). They are the unscrupulous, evangelical, white supremacist, dictatorship power couple chartering this new colony mission to an unpopulated frozen planet, rife with unknown danger, hence the need for Mickey. He's the canary in the coal mine. It's a good cast, but this is Pattinson's show and he's utterly brilliant. Even more so when there's multiples of him running around. Where his 17 incarnation is lovable, it turns out 18 has a bit of a temper. Mickey's world is turned upside down, but maybe 18 can help him break the negative spiral he's stuck in. Especially as Marshall's plans reveal how dark and creepy he really is. It's a bloody marvellous romp, quite heavy on the blood and disarmingly deft with the romp. It's not at all silly though. It's inventive, fast paced, with an engaging story arc, that hits every gear change perfectly. Mickey starts out pretty dumb, but as 17 lives longer, he starts to understand his place in the world, the intensions of those around him and not just the people, but the tardigrade-like creatures that inhabit Niflheim. On the surface, it's big budget action adventure, but you don't have to dig far to find the cutting satire. It's a gripping mix of the bleakness of humanity, spliced with just enough hope to see you through to the end and I loved it!

My Own Private Idaho occupies a weird place in my mind. I half remember last watching it on late night TV, possibly after it being introduced by Alex Cox. I didn't know what I was watching, but I was captivated without knowing why. 30 years on, I'm hoping to shed some light, but I hope I don't regret it. So Mike (River Phoenix) is in Idaho with a whole lot of nothing, but a persistent cold, a steel guitar score... and narcoleptic seizures, that induce melancholic dreams of his mother. Waking up in Seattle, a transient grifter, hanging out with a bizarre roll call of older gentleman with an amusing range of quirks, it's clear that this lifestyle doesn't really suit Mike and his condition. He's used to slumming it though. Until he's taken to Alena's (Grace Zabriskie) house, where he bumps into Scott (Keanu Reeves). He's a hustler too, but unlike Mike, he comes from money. After a run in with the unnerving German car part salesman, Hans (Udo Keir). The pair find themselves in Portland. Here resides Bob (William Richert), homeless thieving father to the young male prostitutes like Budd (Flea). Everyone idolises Bob. He's prophetic, poetic and opportunistic. Scott is due to inherit a family fortune on his 21st birthday and Bob hopes to cash in, but Mike and Scott see through Bob, his tall tales and empty promises. It's a wonderful cast and a wonderfully empty story, that sort of drifts along with its leads and their youthful reflective dialogue. With an odd balance of surface hipster cool and a deep study of friendship, love and belonging. We follow Mike trying to make sense of his life and find his mother. Reeves is great, Phoenix is magnificent, although both nearly get overshadowed as Keir threatens to steals the show, miming to German electro pop with a lamp in a hotel room. It's romantic and even more engaging than I remember. In the slacker cinema stable that signalled a certain period of the 90s, this stands out as a high water mark.