A Moveable Fest, Week 4: Boxcar Bertha, Killing Zoe, The Warriors

Can you dig it?

Week 4: Tim's Choice

Boxcar Bertha

"America in the 30's was a Free Country. Bertha was jes' a little bit free'er than most." When Bertha's dad's plane goes KA-BOOM and takes him out with it, she hooks up with a union organizer and they have sex and rob a lot of trains and hold up fancy parties for the attendees' jewels. "Not my tiara!" Martin Scorsese's second feature film is likeable enough, though not particularly Scorsese-ey. Barbara Hershey does her best Sissy Spacek impression (but with 35% more teeth). Watch out for UNEXPECTED REALLY VIOLENT BIT!


Killing Zoe

Zed rocks up in Paris, generously fucks Julie Delpy (what was she thinking), and then he and his mates do an awful lot of drugs after they decide to rob a bank the next day. Miraculously chipper the next morning, they show up at the bank: but OMG Julie Delpy works there! Evidently fucking people like Zed doesn't bring in the big bucks.
Zed: "So Eric tells me you like Viking films. Viking movies."
Oliver: "Yeah...I guess."
Zed: "I love that stuff! Those helmets with the fucking horns on!"
Pretty much the highlight there, of a boring, relentlessly misogynistic, grubby little drug-fucked shoot-out plus tits.


The Warriors

When a "no weapons" truce is broken at a mass gang meeting, The Warriors are framed for killing the leader of the most powerful gang in NYC. They gotta get home, running the gauntlet of a spectacular array of costumed rival gangs who are out for their blood. I'd never heard of this film, and was completely surprised by it - there's a lot more West Side Story than The Outsiders going on here. (Yes, I know, my references are odd. My film education has been...uneven.) The gaudy gang outfits are brilliant (my favourites include the French mimes and the goth base-ball players), and the fight scenes often suggest conceptual dance over realistic violence. It's a bizarre and stylized film, and the rotoscoped segues between scenes heighten the strangeness beautifully. If you'll excuse me, I'm off to dig out my pink roller-skates.