focus Archives - Jeremy C. Processing

Director – Anton Corbijn – 2007 – UK – Cert. 15 – 122m

*****

UK release date 05/10/2007

The story of Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis: his disintegrating marriage, struggles with epilepsy and eventual suicide – review originally published in Third Way magazine, September 2007

For the uninitiated, post-punk Mancunian band Joy Division formed in 1977, then achieved near immediate cult status through Tony Wilson’s Granada TV show and Factory Records label. The four-piece band grew out of a three-piece (guitar, bass, drums) who Ian Curtis (Sam Riley from Widow Clicquot, Thomas Napper, 2023; Firebrand, Karim Ainouz, 2023; Byzantium, Neil Jordan, 2012) joined as singer and songwriter. The resultant recordings still resonate down the annals of rock: even today, songs such as (to name but three) Transmission, the eponymous She’s Lost Control and Love Will Tear Us Apart carry an undeniable charge.

Curtis took his life in May 1980 just prior to the band’s first scheduled American tour. His three survivors carried on under the moniker New Order to become incredibly successful; yet to this writer’s mind, their work pales beside those early Curtis / Joy Division songs. Quite simply, his work with the band has a focus, a power and a bleakness rare in rock.… Read the rest

Boy Kills World

Director – Moritz Mohr – 2023 – Germany, US, South Africa – Cert. 18 – 111m

***1/2

Relentless, non-stop action via a deaf-mute, orphaned kid, schooled in martial arts, returning to the city as a grown man to wreak vengeance on those who killed his family – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 26th

Elite family the Van Der Koys have taken control of the city and instigated an annual ceremony known as The Culling, a physical contest staged for television in a vast arena in which anyone who opposes the Van Der Koys and the way they run the place is killed. This was of little concern to Boy, who as a child (twins Nicholas and Cameron Crovetti from TV series Big Little Lies, 2017-19) grew up in a carefree existence eating Frosty Pops cereal every morning with his sister Mina (Quinn Copeland) and, the pair naively making insulting hand gestures at publicly displayed Van Der Koy statues during the day which gets their family onto the list of candidates for The Culling. And so his parents and sister are despatched in the ceremony, leaving Boy a traumatised deaf-mute.

All of the above comes out early on in a mixture of flashback and over-the-top interior monologue (hilariously voiced by H.… Read the rest