Film Reviews by Plastic Teaspoon

This is one of the unusual films where the sequel was better than the original. I would recommend watching the sequel Primitive London first and come back to this if you want more.

Both films are a collection of titilation mixed in with supposedly serious commentary and documentary footage that looks like it was included just to get the film past the censors and critics. The result is a fascinating and sometimes bizarre mishmash of 1960s London.

Primitive London keeps a brisk pace and is braver on selecting its subject matter. In contrast this film lingers too long on most of its subjects and is less ambitious.

The subject matter is worthy and Sean Penn does a great job at portraying a charismatic politician. I really wanted to like this but sadly the film just failed to get me interested. The director opts for far too many cheesy close-ups and the whole thing gets lost in schmaltz. This was a serious life-and-death issue (literally for some of the participants) and it deserved better treatment than this.

Very little happens in this anime series. No fights, heroes, supernatural beings or any action to speak of at all. The series is all about getting to know the characters. We follow them through their daily lives and become part of their newly formed family. The drawing and attention to detail is superb.

The only downside to this was that there are not more episodes to rent. The series left me dying to know what happened next.

Having read other reviews I was expecting a lot of this film but was left disappointed. The film relies too much on the subject matter to carry it through. The direction is heavy handed and the acting is is obvious and the characters are overplayed. The film does raise questions about war and occupation but the director appears to want to ram them down your throat in case you miss them. I can appreciate that when the film was made the war was still raw in some peoples minds, but I don't think the film ages well. Not a cinematic disaster by any means but certainly not up there with the best films of all time. Worth a watch from a historical perspective.

The plot is a little contrived, but that is not such a big deal for a neo noir. Many noirs had much more contrived plots but were still great films. For such an extreme low budget film the quality of the final product is remarkable.

The storyline is patched together out of sequence and you do have to be on your toes to figure out what is going on. Well worth making the effort to do so though.

This film is interesting from a historical perspective as a sequel to Black God white Devil. You should definitely watch that first.

Historical interest is probably the only reason you would want to watch this one though. The film has some good moments but on the whole is a bit of a jumbled mess.

This film felt like an antidote to the spaghetti westerns being filmed in Europe around the same time. Here there are no famous actors, no sets, no screenwriters, no money - just a hand held black and white camera, a lot of religious superstition and a dusty wind-blown desert.

The film is staged as a real-life drama but is clearly allegorical. I don't think we are meant to believe events happened exactly as portrayed.

An earlier reviewer points out this film looks amateurish compared to studio productions from the same period. But for me this was what made the film interesting: the land and people are dirt-poor and the film works just fine at portraying this. I didn't feel the need to pretend to like it so I can feel arty and sophisticated. I just liked it as it was, warts and all.