Reviews

More road movie than rock movie, CATCH has a surprisingly mature, melancholy tone for a British beat picture. That it has any tone at all is a tribute to director Boorman, whose characteristic fusion of the mythic with the ordinary is already evident in this his first movie, and writer Peter Nichols, who imbues the surprisingly engaging supporting characters with a quality of personal yearning and need for escape that spans generations. Boorman's preoccupation with water, rigorous yet dreamlike use of landscape and tendency to celebrate or at least acknowledge the antiquated are just as vivid here as they are in HOPE AND GLORY. Too detailed and ambling to be anything but opaque or irrelevant on video, I suspect.

Literally orphaned by police conspiracy, Shane Ballard is not your usual serial murderer and stripper obsessed self-marginalized southern small town eccentric. Whether he's pursuing the impossible dream of becoming Loundes County sheriff to find his mother's murderer or having a cozy heart to heart phone chat with Charles Manson, CITIZEN SHANE portrays the charismatic Shane without a whiff of exploitation or condescension and with a lot of humor and affection. If you're an American despairing the willing cultural, political and social homoginization that's transformed this once great country into a conformist and ironist limbo, this film will reafirm your faith in being smart, curious and weird. Find a copy of this documentary and check it out.