Afouotos
Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.
InformationRap
This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.
Payno
I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.
druid333-2
If documentaries such as 'Punk Rock Movie','The Decline Of Western Civilization','D.O.A:A Rite Of Passage',etc told the unvarnished truth of late 1970's/early 1980's Punk Rock,and carried over to later day rock docs such as 'Hardcore Underground U.S.A.' & '1991:The Year That Punk Broke', Scott Crary's 'Kill Your Idols' goes beyond & tells the tale of the late 70's,early 80's "No Wave" post punk noise scene in New York City. When Punk threatened to become homogenized into "New Wave" by the early 80's,a scene rose,Phoenix like,from the near wreckage of Punk to become "No Wave". It was the musical answer to a form of neo Dadism,where bands such as DNA,Sonic Youth,The Swans,Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel,to mention but a few,scraped & scratched a Freddy Kreuger like glove across the Cerebral Cortex of audiences at venues such as CBGB's,Max's Kansas City,etc.,pretty much until the end of the 80's/early 90's,when the scene seemed to implode upon itself (although some of the participants,as most of them preferred to not think of themselves as musicians, still played around at one point or another). Kill Your Idols tells it's sordid story in two parts. The first half of the film tells it's tale from the original mainstays of the No Wave scene (we get first hand testimony from the likes of Lydia Lunch,Thurston Moore,Lee Ranaldo,Michael Gira,J.G. Thirlwell,Arto Lindsay,and others),while the second half is a commentary of the next wave of N.Y.C. noise bands that are currently packing the clubs (the Yeah,Yeah,Yeahs,as well as others). What do the original denizens of the noise scene have to say about all of this? Find out for yourself. Scott Crary,besides directing this outstanding,albeit scathing rock doc, also photographs & edits. Well worth seeking out if you're a fan of early,as well as later day Punk Rock,Experimental,Avant Garde,Noise,New Music,etc. Not rated by the MPAA,but contains pervasive strong language & a bit of quasi-pornographic footage from some of the New York underground films of Richard Kern,Nick Zedd,etc. that is not for innocent eyes.
tim-nicholas-1
For starters, the first half of the film provides a fairly decent overview of the No-Wave "scene." For those who have never heard of no-wave before, it might jump into things too quickly, and could have probably done a better job relating it to the culture at large, but the interviews were compelling and the footage excellent, so I'm not going to complain too much. What did bother me, however, was the editing. The director takes far too much liberty in slicing and dicing in the middle of sentences and cutting back and forth between different speakers that it's impossible to tell exactly what anyone is talking about. It all feels very manipulative. This only becomes blatantly obvious as the film progresses, however. The second half of the film focuses on the modern day bands which have been influenced by the bands discussed in the first half. Here is where the film falters. The overview of these bands is short and leaves much to be desired. Not only is no evidence given to suggest that this selection of bands are in any way connected to each other as the no-wave bands were (for the record, most of them are not), but very little evidence is given to show how they were influenced by that group. Knowing many of these bands prior to seeing the film, I can obviously see that a band like The Liars has been profoundly influenced by no-wave. But Yeah Yeah Yeahs and especially Gogol Bordello seem like a huge stretch. At this point, the film essentially stops being informative and begins to do nothing more than bash the modern day bands. Lydia Lunch gives a particularly scathing indictment, and the interviews of the bands themselves seem to back up the no-wavers' claims that they're not much more than fashionable posers. (A.R.E. Weapons come off as exceptionally naive and stupid, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O is merely a horrible interviewee, littering every statement with countless "um"s and "ya know"s ; Gogol Bordello and to a lesser extent, Black Dice, provide the most intelligent insights of the bunch) I wish the contemporary groups had more of a chance to defend themselves without being edited into stupidity, and I wish the film had asked some interesting questions about the influence of no-wave and the future of independent music, instead of just going with a boring angle of "it was better back in the day".
Robert Vaessen (robsworld)
A short documentary about the New York, 'No Wave' music scene. Bridging past and present, this movie starts out well, and the interviews with some of the older artists were great. Truthful, unpretentious, no holds barred. What was 'No Wave?' A musical movement that grew out of Punk Rock. Was it Punk Rock? Well, sort of, but not really. It was/is a more artistic expression, more of an experimental ethic. Unconventional to be sure, but the association by sound (with Punk) isn't as strong as the ethic (revolutionary). This documentary was obviously trying to show the continuation of this ethic, from past to present. I think it would have been better served as a focus on the roots of this movement, as the connection to the current music scene (up to 2004), paints the current group as more concerned with commercial aspects of their success, than they are with an honest expression of their own music. I like the way they let the artists tell the story, but some of the footage was a bit rough (poor quality), and then there was the totally unnecessary scene depicting oral sex?! What the? Why was that in there? In the end, it was a part of my past that really enjoyed this movie.
musidorus-1
In the first half of this great documentary, we meet the former members of the 70's and early '80s New York no-wave scene which included Suicide, Lydia Lunch, DNA, Theoretical Girls, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Swans, and Sonic Youth. We learn how truly underground and chaotic their thing was; they took punk to an extreme that the more familiar NY bands (Dead Boys, Ramones, etc) never dared. This was anti-music, atonal and extreme, but very much in step with the punk ethos of breaking down the barrier between artist and audience. These were some truly desperate and alienated human beings raging out with the only means available to them. The docu features original on-stage footage filmed in tiny clubs as they shrieked, abused guitars, and pounded away in desperation. Whether or not you like that sort of thing, the scene's urgency and authenticity spoke for itself.Fast forward to the 21st century. For some reason the post-punk/no-wave shtick is fashionable again, and we meet the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the Liars, Black Dice, and a few others. This is a selection of artists who happen to be in line, on some level, with the no-wave aesthetic- but as anyone who's been following recent pop trends knows, they exist within a larger musical and cultural context obsessed with late 70s/ early 80s rock culture in general. They tell us a little about gigging it the Apple today and how impressed they are with their forebears. That's about all. However, the original interviewees haven't gone away; somehow they're still alive and it's when they express their opinions on the new scene that the film really changes pace.Yes, the film's second half amounts to one of the most severe ass-beatings ever recorded. They're quite remorseless; Lydia Lunch is particularly scorching in her assessment. Pretty much all of the original interviewees express their contempt for current-day trendies and scenesters who have nothing to say and simply want to feed off the past (whilst wallowing in the fashion, of course). To be sure, the two scenes stand in sharp contrast; the old zeitgeist of alienation, risks, originality, and zero recognition is a bit different from today's skin-deep New York that can spawn the Strokes and hype them up into superstar status before anyone's heard them. It was amusing for me to see this film at a film festival because I saw it in a room full of young hipsters who came expecting to be flattered and instead must have felt that they received a big slap in the face. There was a palpable tension in the air…Fortunately the documentary doesn't set it all up as us vs. them, old scene vs. new scene. A glimpse of hope comes from the band Gogol Bordello and its leader Eugene Hutz, who emigrated from the Ukraine and play weird gypsy punk cabaret music in a downtown Manhattan joint. They're the only one of the crop of young bands featured here that seems to agree with Lunch and the rest that culture should look forward instead of backward.Anyway, as you walk out of the theatre, your heart torn out and your punky haircut about to collapse in a shambles of postmodern anxiety, don't be too hard on yourself. No, let me rephrase that. Be as hard on yourself as possible and don't try to escape the film's point; it'll come back to haunt you. But, it's not too late to change. When you wake up the next morning, you just might find the courage to do something that's actually original.
