{"id":27126,"date":"2017-12-31T00:01:33","date_gmt":"2017-12-31T05:01:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=27126"},"modified":"2020-05-26T22:53:26","modified_gmt":"2020-05-27T02:53:26","slug":"sid-and-nancy-1986-criterion-collection-blu-ray","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2017\/12\/31\/sid-and-nancy-1986-criterion-collection-blu-ray\/","title":{"rendered":"Sid and Nancy (1986) [Criterion Collection] [Blu-Ray]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>For someone who understands the punk rock world so well, Alex Cox is very quick to tear the nostalgia shades off of the viewers to depict a meeting of two lovers that was so intense it resulted in an unfortunate murder. \u201cSid and Nancy\u201d are often romanticized by music lovers even to this day, but Alex Cox who brought us the masterpiece \u201cRepo Man,\u201d looks behind the gloss, picturing two unbearable, but real individuals. Director Cox paints a brilliant picture of two people spiraling in to oblivion, with a remarkable drama that\u2019s less a biopic and more a chronicle of two doomed lovers. Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen are a lot to drink in. From the moment we meet them, they\u2019re loud, they\u2019re parasitic and disgusting, but they form a relationship where they understand each other. In many ways they decided that they need each other to survive.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

They\u2019d weather the storm of the world together until the very disastrous end. One of the more rattling but compelling scenes in \u201cSid and Nancy\u201d involves the Sex Pistols staging a concert on a yacht which is interrupted by the coast guard. While everyone are being chased around and lugged in to vans, Sid and Nancy quietly brush through the crowds, content in their own bubble. Despite the inevitable violence that ensued, Sid and Nancy\u2019s relationship is fascinating but ugly. We watch two people steer in to brick walls constantly, as they try to earn their ways in their world through musical stardom. Nancy is a groupie who finds some sense of a nurturing instinct toward Sid. Sid is a man who is used to playing background and wants to pursue his own music.<\/p>\n

Once Nancy introduces Sid to drug use, though, any and all hopes of Sid ever breaking out of the Sex Pistols shadows are shattered and he remains his own worst enemy. Cox\u2019s direction is raw, his direction engrossing, and he manages to keep up well with the excellent turns by Chloe Webb and Gary Oldman. Webb in particular throws herself in to the character of Nancy, a woman who is enamored with rock and roll who bases her mannerisms based on her favorite musicians. She\u2019s an emotional train wreck with humongous issues with her own parents, and she\u2019s desperate to grasp on to hope that Sid and she will be able to claim some sense of normalcy. Granted, they can escape the slums of London, and their own merciless addiction to drugs.<\/p>\n

Cox allows Webb to unleash her performance, resulting in Nancy consistently shrieking and bellowing at emotional pitches that offer insight in to her mental imbalance more than exposition. Nancy would be good for Sid, if they weren\u2019t constantly being so self-defeating. \u201cSid and Nancy\u201d tastefully dodges the exploitative moment where Nancy is stabbed to death, and focuses on a hazy night to where the pair swore a suicide pact, but were too strung out to stand. Cox begins and ends the narrative on Sid Vicious awaking to his lover lying in a pool of blood, and closes on him catching a taxi with her to nowhere, as her spirit welcomes him with open arms. To Sid no one else mattered but Nancy, right until the very bleak end.<\/p>\n

The Criterion release comes packed to the nines with the original theatrical trailer, and \u201cEngland\u2019s Glory,\u201d a half hour archival documentary produced by Martin Turner in 1987. It features some footage from the film shoot, to interviews with the cast and crew. In a twenty four minute interview with Alex Cox filmed in 2016, the polarizing director discusses his career, shooting the film, and its reception in the US and the UK. \u201cSad Vacation\u201d is fifteen minute excerpt showcase for Danny Garcia\u2019s new documentary \u201cSad Vacation: The Last Days of Sid and Nancy,\u201d with comments from actor Victor Colicchio, photographer Bob Gruen, actor Ned Van Zandt, author Brett Dunford, and Kenny “Stinker” Gordon (Pure Hell), respectively. \u201cD.O.A.: A Right of Passage\u201d is an eleven minute clip series featuring the real Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen.<\/p>\n

\u201cSid Vicious, 1978\u201d is a fourteen minute phone interview with Sid Vicious after he fell in to a drug induced coma on a plane from London to New York. \u201cThe Filth and the Fury!\u201d is an episode of the British program that helped establish the Sex Pistols\u2019 reputation. \u201cThe London Weekend Show\u201d is a fourteen minute series of excerpts from the television series with exploration of punk rock and the fashion of punk in London. There are also clips of interviews with the Sex Pisols and punk rock fans. There are two exhaustive audio commentaries. The first features recorded interviews with screenwriter Abbe Wool, actors Gary Oldman and Choe Webb, cultural critic Greil Marcus, filmmakers Julien Temple and Lech Kowalski, and musician Eliot Kidd. The majority of the information and discussion is about the era of punk rock and the Sex Pistols, the punk movement, Sid\u2019s persona and public image.<\/p>\n

The commentary, which was recorded in 1994 features twenty four chapters. The second audio commentary features director and cowriter Alex Cox and actor Andrew Schofield, who plays Johnny Rotten. The pair of men discusses shooting the film, various sequences, as well as some funny observations about filming. The commentary which was recorded in 2001 garners twenty four chapters. Finally for the collectors, there\u2019s an 18 page illustrated booklet with Jon Savage\u2019s essay \u201cThe Horrible Purity of Immortality,\u201d and \u201cOn Sid and Nancy and Sid & Nancy.\u201d<\/p>\n