Film Review: The Music Machine (dir by Ian Sharp)

Posted on September 28, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1979’s The Music Machine, Gerry Pearson (Gerry Sundquist) is a directionless young man who is living in Camden, North London. He lives with his parents (Brenda Fricker and Johnnie Wade) and he really doesn’t have much to look forward to in life. He can spend his days living on the dole or he can get a job that will leave him with no hope for advancement. It’s London. It’s England. It’s 1979. There’s no chance for moving up in the world. The only thing that Gerry has going for him is that he loves to dance at London’s most low-key discotheque, The Music Machine.

Wow. Trust the British to make a depressing disco movie!

Actually, that’s not quite fair. The Music Machine was obviously inspired by Saturday Night Fever and, once you get past the image of John Travolta in that white suit, that’s not a particularly happy movie either. Indeed, one could argue that Saturday Night Fever is even more depressing than The Music Machine. I mean, in Saturday Night Fever, Barry Miller jumps off a bridge and John Travolta spends the entire film treating Donna Pescow like crap. Even Karen Lynn Gorney isn’t smart enough to realize that she was insulted by Laurence Olivier. Travolta may look good in that white suit but he ultimately ends up sitting alone on a subway with a big bandage on his face.

That said, Saturday Night Fever is not an unbearable depressing film to watch. That’s because the film’s narrative moves with an infectious energy, there are small moments of humor that lighten the mood, and Travolta gives such a charismatic performance as Tony that it’s hard not to forgive him even when he’s at his worst.

Unfortunately, The Music Machine doesn’t really have any of that.

It does have a plot that closely follows Saturday Night Fever. Gerry wants to win a dance contest and the chance to appear in a film. His partner is the sophisticated Claire (Patti Boulaye). Whereas Tony Manero had the confidence to come up with his own moves, Gerry is mentored by DJ Laurie (a youngish Clarke Peters, who would later go on to appear in The Wire and Da Five Bloods). Unfortunately, the film itself never comes close to capturing Saturday Night Fever‘s relentless narrative drive and, in the lead role, Gerry Sundquist comes across as being more petulant than smoldering. If we forgave Tony Manero his missteps because he seemed to be so committed to his dancing, it’s harder to forgive Gerry because he’s just so whiny. The Music Machine soundtrack is full of generic disco tunes. There’s no Bee Gees. There’s no Yvonne Elliman. There’s not even a Fifth of Beethoven!

Of course, the main problem with The Music Machine is that it’s painfully obvious that Gerry Sundquist didn’t know how to dance. That’s a bit of problem when the entire movie is supposed to be a celebration of moving with the music. The director handles Sundquist’s lack of dancing ability by filming him from the waist up and having the other dancers move around him. It doesn’t help. In fact, it just makes you even more embarrassed for him. Watching this film, I thought about how, in Silver Linings Playbook, the whole point of the dance scene was that Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence were terrible dancers but they still went out and gave it their all without apology. In that case, it was charming. In the case of The Music Machine, you just feel bad for everyone else on the dance floor.

Oh, this review is becoming so negative! I don’t like ending on a negative note so let me just say that Clarke Peters’s charisma shines through. He’s definitely the best part of the film.

Film Review: The Quatermass Conclusion (dir by Piers Haggard)

Posted on June 15, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

1979’s The Quatermass Conclusion opens with a narrator telling us that civilization is collapsing and no one knows why.

Though the film takes place in London and the English countryside, we are told that societal collapse a worldwide phenomenon. What we see in London is a city that has been taken over by criminal gangs, where the police stand-by helplessly and watch as battles play out. The elderly, abandoned by their government, hide out in decrepit homes and try to avoid being noticed. The future is a world that is pretty much ruled by the young and the young appear to be insane.

Even if one escapes the gangs, there’s still the Planet People to deal with. The Planet People are a group of hippies, who walk across the countryside and who claim that they are going to be transported to another planet. At first glance, they make seem innocent and even a bit ludicrous. But they are actually aggressive and angry, convinced that the adults have destroyed the Earth and that the young are the chosen ones who will be transported to a better world. They are led by a man who calls himself Kick Along (Ralph Arliss), an anti-Semite who smiles when he manages to find a gun and who clearly relishes getting to decide who deserves to be saved and who doesn’t.

Into all of this comes a retired scientist named Bernard Quatermass (John Mills). Elderly and suffering from heart disease, Quatermass has come to London to search for his missing granddaughter. Because Quatermass has spent the last few years living in the Scottish highlands and because the British government has covered-up the extent of the unrest, he is shocked to discover just how bad things have become. Rescued from a gang by another scientist, an astronomer named Joe Kapp (Simon MacCorkindale), Quatermass finds himself watching as humanity slowly sacrifices itself to an alien presence who is not interested in saving anyone but who instead just wants to feast.

The Quatermass Conclusion started life as a 4-episode British television simply called Quatermass, which was the last to feature the character of Prof. Bernard Quatermass. The four-hour miniseries was edited down to a 100-minute feature film that was subsequently released outside of the UK. As a result of the editing, The Quatermass Conclusion is a occasionally intriguing, frequently messy, and almost relentlessly downbeat. Having seen both the original miniseries and the subsequent film, I can tell you that tragedies that were evenly spaced out over the course of four hours come at you nonstop in the feature version. It seems like every other scene features someone either dying or giving up hope. Themes that were fully developed in the miniseries are only hinted at in the feature film. Events that were fully explained and built-up in the miniseries seem to spring out of nowhere in the movie, giving the whole thing a disjointed but nightmarish feel.

Taken on its own, the film has its flaws. I’m not really sure that the plot can truly be followed if you haven’t already watched the original miniseries. As the unfortunately-named Kick Along, Ralph Arliss gives a disturbingly plausible portrayal of a fascist who has adapted to the latest trend and John Mills is instantly sympathetic as the mentally strong but physically weak Prof. Quatermass but some of the other performances are definitely more appropriate for television than a film. And yet the film has moments that work incredibly well. A scene where the alien presence feasts on the thousands who have gathered at Wembley Stadium is undeniably well-done and brings to mind the real-life reports of political dissidents being held and executed in South American soccer stadiums. By the end of the film, the atmosphere has become so polluted with the particles of human remains that it takes on a sickly yellow hue. Even the film relentlessly bleak tone works. If you’re going to make a movie about the collapse of civilization, you should definitely go all out. There’s not much deliberate humor in The Quatermass Conclusion but, then again, there’s not much to smile about when the world’s collapsing.

Watching The Quatermass Conclusion, what struck me is just how much writer Nigel Kneale and Piers Haggard got right about the future. On the one hand, the film is anti-youth to the point of almost feeling like a parody. This is a movie that often seems to be shouting, “Get off my lawn!” Watching this, one can easily guess how Nigel Kneale felt about everyone from the hippies to the punks. However, the film’s portrayal of cities where people are scared to go out at night and of bureaucrats who would rather cover-up a problem than solve it feels rather prophetic today. (In the miniseries, there’s a youthful government official who is overjoyed at the idea of creating an entirely new civilization after destroying the current one and it’s hard to watch him without being reminded of some of the rhetoric of the COVID lockdowns.) It’s easy to laugh at the Planet People, with their face paint and their chanting, but they really don’t feel that far off from a lot of today’s wannabe activists. There’s really not that much difference between the smugly ignorant Kick Along and the people who used to throw paint on works of art.

The Quatermass Conclusion is a flawed, messy, intriguing, and prophetic. It may not be subtle but it’s a film that feel very relevant today.

Lisa Marie Reviews An Oscar Winner: My Left Foot (dir by Jim Sheridan)

Posted on March 17, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“This is Christy Brown, writer, genius!”

So declares Patrick Brown (Ray McAnally) as he carries his son, Christy Brown, into a Dublin pub. It’s one of the most emotional moments to be found in the 1989 Best Picture nominee, My Left Foot. Based on the main character’s memoir, My Left Foot tells the story of Christy Brown, wh was born into a working class Dublin family of 15 and who grew up to become an acclaimed writer and artist. Afflicted with cerebral palsy, Brown’s left foot was the only part of his body that he had full control over. The film follow Brown as he learns to write, paint, and communicate with that foot. As a child, Christy Brown is played by Hugh O’Conor. As a young man, he’s played by Daniel Day-Lewis, who apparently stayed in character even when he wasn’t filming. Day-Lewis won his first Oscar for his performance as Christy Brown. Brenda Fricker won a Supporting Actress Oscar for playing Christy’s mother, Bridget Fagan Brown, making My Left Foot the first Irish film to win any competitive Oscars. I would argue that Ray McAnally, at the very least, deserved a nomination for Supporting Actor as well. (Sadly, McAnally passed away shortly before the release of My Left Foot.)

My Left Foot is an inspiring movie but, at the same time, it’s an honest one. Christy Brown’s life is never portrayed as being easy and Christy himself is never portrayed as being a saint. There are time when Christy is pissed off at the world, at one point even starting a brawl in a pub. Even after Christy is accepted into a school for people with Cerebral Palsy and he has the first exhibition of his work, there is still heartbreak. Christy has fallen in love with a woman named Eileen (Fiona Shaw) and when he discovers that she’s engaged, he comes close to ending his own life. It’s a not to watch as Christy’s pain feels so real and so intense that you almost feel like an intruder while watching. The film leaves you cheering for Christy and happy that he’s found a way to express his feelings and his intelligence but at the same time, it never fools you into thinking that Christy is going to have an easy life. The film’s too honest to end on a note of false hope.

My Left Foot features one of Daniel Day-Lewis’s best performances. (Though who say that every Day-Lewis performance is one of his best have obviously never seen Nine.) Day-Lewis not only captures Christy’s physical condition but, even more importantly, he allows us into Christy’s mind. We get to know Christy as much for his sharp wit and intellect as for his physical disability. Brenda Fricker plays Bridget as being earthy but supportive, someone who always tries to do the best for her son. But the performance that really makes me cry is the performance of Ray McAnally, who initially doesn’t know what to make of his son but who changes his mind once he sees Christy writing with his left foot. “Genius!” he declares and it brings tears to the eyes of everyone watching.

My Left Foot was also nominated for Best Picture and Best Director. Oliver Stone won Best Director for a much more grandiose portrait of disability, Born On The Fourth Of July. Best Picture, meanwhile, went to Driving Miss Daisy.