A biopic of Brian Wilson had been mooted ever since the late 1980s, but it wasn’t until 2014 that Bill Pohlad’s Love & Mercy was released, with its bold time-hopping structure that allowed both Paul Dano and John Cusack to play the Beach Boys’ chief songwriter. The former played Wilson […]
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Moonwalker & Michael Jackson – Pop Screen 29
Could the King of Pop have become the King of Cinema? Not, perhaps, on the evidence of 1988’s Moonwalker, a curious, personal but deeply overbudgeted melange of music videos, live performance, claymation and a bewildering plot-line where Jackson fights back against Joe Pesci’s not exactly Scorsese-worthy drug dealer by turning […]
David Clark Five & Catch Us If You Can – Pop Screen 28
The director of Deliverance made a film starring the Dave Clark Five? It happened! This week, We Are Cult’s Mark Cunliffe rejoins the podcast to talk about John Boorman’s very uncharacteristic debut Catch Us If You Can, starring Clark as a stuntman who goes on the run with Barbara Ferris’s frustrated advertising […]
Amy Winehouse & Amy (2015) – Pop Screen 27
There aren’t many pop movies of the 2010s that won an Oscar, but then there aren’t many pop movies as well-crafted and emotionally devastating as Asif Kapadia’s 2015 documentary Amy. A bruising look at the rise and fall of Amy Winehouse told with intimate archive footage, it’s both a celebration […]
Elton John & Rocketman – Pop Screen 26
The long-awaited biopic of Sir Elton Hercules John – wait, Hercules? Yes, Hercules – was always going to be a flamboyant affair, but no one suspected it would be a full-scale, dancing-in-the-streets musical. Yet that is exactly what director Dexter Fletcher and screenwriter Lee Hall delivered in 2019’s Rocketman. This […]
Abba, Cher & Mamma Mia Here We Go Again! – Pop Screen 25
Phyllida Lloyd’s 2008 film Mamma Mia! was a box-office sensation – so why are we vaulting straight over it to review its 2018 sequel? A lot of reasons, as Mark and Graham discover on this week’s episode of Pop Screen. Beginning with an absolutely gonzo rendition of When I Kissed […]
True Stories & Talking Heads – Pop Screen 24
Look at the film we’re covering on this week’s Pop Screen. Who can say it’s not beautiful? That’s right, this week Graham and Ewan are reviewing True Stories, the sole directorial credit for Talking Heads frontman David Byrne. A drily comic compilation of stories inspired by Byrne’s love of local […]
Christina Aguilera, Cher & Burlesque – Pop Screen 23
Christina Aguilera waited ten years to make her first film, and when she did the reviews suggested she could have waited a little longer. This week, Joe and Graham look at Burlesque, which pairs Christina with one of the most accomplished (Oscar-winning!) singers-turned-actors in history, Cher. It’s a strange mix […]
Joan Jett & Light of Day – Pop Screen 22
On paper, Light of Day has everything going for it. One of the first films Michael J Fox made after Back to the Future, it’s a gritty tale of rock ‘n’ roll as a blue-collar pressure vent, aptly made by the director of Blue Collar, Paul Schrader. Its supporting cast […]
Young Dais & Tokyo Tribe – Pop Screen 21
Pop Screen takes its first dip into the flamboyant world of Japanese director Sion Sono with Tokyo Tribe. Adapting a manga by Santa Inoue, Sono takes the characteristically weird decision to tell it in the form of a hip-hop opera, with dialogue rapped by a mixture of actors and real […]