I will review these together as I saw them all on the same day (though not at the same tyme). Three films in one day? Had i gone mad? Perhaps, but if so I had been driven mad by the cruel world in which we live. Rising Covid-19 cases in Dublin meant that we were being put at Level 3+ of our restrictions map – it was announced on Friday 18 September that from midnight restaurants and the like would be closing, but also cinemas! The horror. If taking a half day off work so that I could see three films before the screens went dark means that I am mad then put me in a straitjacket. Though I should note that never having seen three films in a row before I was wondering whether I would enjoy the experience or perhaps suffer from massively declining marginal utility. Read on and see how this astonishing experiment panned out.
Nocturnal is set in a coastal town in Yorkshire. Pete, a handyman working at a running track, sees Laurie, a teenage girl, training and starts staring at her. She spots him staring at her and calls him out on it, but they somehow strike up a conversation and start hanging out together (despite dark jokes from the girl about how her photo wiil be appearing on Crimewatch and from the guy about disposing of bodies in hydrochloric acid). You might find yourself imagining where this story is going, but it doesn’t go that way (unless you are very good at guessing the plots of films, in which case maybe it does go the way you are imagining it).
Someone did say that part of the appeal of Nocturnal is that it is like an entire film based on Morrissey’s ‘Every Day Is Like Sunday’ – not the plot, but the feel of a seaside town as being kind of shit. It is the kind of place that anyone with half a brain leaves as soon as they can (though we soon learn that Pete is somehow stuck there and Laurie has been brought back). The way Pete and Laurie are presented is interesting, with the handyman inarticulate and unexpressive, something accentuated by the way for much of the early part of the film we barely see his face, and Laurie considerably more confident. Yet they are both outsiders to a degree, Pete a loner who struggles to connect with people (for all that he seems to be able to charm women, he is unable to maintain relationships with them) and Laurie a blow-in from exciting cosmopolitan Dublin who is now stuck in this provincial kip among locals who see her as stuck up and looking down on them.
And so it goes. Maybe the film is a bit slight and the reveal a bit predictable, but director Nathalie Biancheri has put it together atmospherically and the two leads, played by Cosmo Jarvis and Lauren Coe, deliver strong performances, so I recommend.

The most interesting thing about the film for me was the evocation of that period of crisis in the 1970. I know we talk about the far right being on the rise now, but back then the National Front was marching proudly through British streets and looking like it was on the brink of an electoral breakthrough. Moreover, there was nothing dog-whistley about the NF’s racism, with its leaders upfrontedly campaigning on a platform of expelling all non-whites from the country (“What about people who don’t want to go?” an interviewer asks a National Front leader at one point, to which he smugly replies “Oh they’ll go”). The film is also interesting for the friendly relations between the NF and the cops who were assisting them in their marches and demonstrations, something that attendees at RAR counter-demonstrations were often shocked by (somewhat surprisingly though, the 1979 murder by cops of anti-racist activist Blair Peach is not mentioned, though I suppose it did not happen at a RAR event). But you also get that sense of the 1970s as a time of general ferment, with schoolkids passing out anti-NF leaflets to their classmates and a general interest in all kinds of politics.
There’s a lot of music in the film, as can be imagined: reggae obviously but also various punk tunes. ‘White Riot’ gets a look in but the acts whose mentions are most interesting are the Tom Robinson Band and Sham 69. Perhaps unfairly I think of Tom Robinson as a bit of a second or third division punker, right-on politics disguising some pretty mediocre music. The film though makes clear that he was an important player in the RAR movement and someone who leant his support early when it was neither profitable nor popular. The film largely climaxes with a big RAR concert in Hackney; one of the organisers talks about how although the Clash were playing and were a bigger and probably better band, she stuck her neck out to insist on Tom Robinson headlining, as he had done so much for RAR and played the kind of positive music that would bring people together (there’s a nice bit where Topper then says “Well obviously we weren’t used to not headlining, but it wasn’t all about us so we took it on the chin”).
The other band were Sham 69. Again, I think of them as another second or third division punk band, the kind of act who came into being because the first thing they heard was the Sex Pistols and not all the people who had influenced them. Some of the RAR people talked about how Sham 69 had acquired a bit of a yobbo following, some of whom were a bit far right adjacent. Some of the RAR people were saying that Jimmy Pursey of Sham 69 was wary of directly denouncing the far right, as people had been doing too much lecturing of the kind of the people who made up the band’s yobbo following, though part of the film’s story is him deciding to play the big RAR gig and nail his colours to the mast. I am reminded here a bit of how back in the day Madness had a bit of a far right skinhead following, reputedly because i) skinheads loved Two Tone music and ii) Madness were the one big all-white Two Tone band; Madness wanted to bring their bad followers along to the light rather than lose them by preaching at them, though I suppose not wanting to alienate the people buying your records must also play a part here.

It’s a lot of fun and just the kind of thing to see before they close the cinemas again and the world goes to hell in a hand basket again. The stuff about older Bill & Ted (and all the even older Bills & Teds) is entertaining and at times touching, while the daughters (Billie & Thea, played by Brigette Lundy-Paine & Samara Weaving) are both totally awesome female analogues of Bill & Ted, but kind of more together than their Dads but not in a way that plays to stereotypes of paternal incompetence. I hear there is talk of some kind of Billie & Thea spin off series and that would be astounding. There’s lot of funny stuff in it too, like the killer robot or the woman from Flight of the Conchords (her name is Kristen Schaal), and Dave Grohl.
One of the things that is really appealing about the Bill & Ted films is that they are both very likeable. They are two blokes but they never feel blokey. The characters are older and craggier but they’re still keeping on. I must admit though, I am still somewhat unclear as to which one is Bill and which one is Ted.
I must admit that I enjoyed my cinematic marathon, with the three films being sufficiently different from each other to make me feel like I was experiencing many different aspects of what films have to offer. Hopefully the memory will keep me through the dark times in which the cinemas remain closed.
images:
Nocturnal (Scannain: “Wildcard to release Nathalie Biancheri’s Nocturnal in Ireland and UK from September 18th”)
Paul Simonon of the Clash at Victoria Park (Observer: “White Riot review – whistle-stop tour of a 70s London uprising”)
Dude! (entertainment.ie: “The first reviews for ‘Bill & Ted Face The Music’ are in”)
Billie & Thea (Slashfilm: “Bill and Ted Face the Music Shifts Back to August 28 as a New Featurette Shines a Light on Bill & Ted’s Daughters”)