Here's a fun piece I did for Pitchfork - a guide to punk movies. Framed as the 20 Best, it was originally conceived as "from the worst to the best", which explains the insulting tone of the early entries. Below is a really insulting one - the very first entry in fact - that got cut out to make for a round 20.
CBGB (2013 – directed Randall Miller)
Considering the awesome historical material at its disposal,
CBGB is an inexplicable dud. But let’s try explicating. The late Alan
Rickman, great in costume dramas and rom-coms, makes for an awful Hilly
Kristal. Where there ought to be a charismatic center to the movie, there’s a
bleary slob with hooded eyes and a deadpan mumble. CBGB tries so hard to
be gritty, but despite the dogshit, rodents, roaches and dead Bowery bums, unreality
riddles the entire production. The punk club’s notoriously squalid toilet, for
instance, is depicted as roughly six times larger than the real one (take my
word, I’ve taken a leak there). Even the
rat in the kitchen looks groomed and shiny with health. Television’s Tom
Verlaine gets electrocuted onstage but having that happen when he’s singing the
line “lightning struck itself” from “Marquee Moon” renders it corny and
false. But the film’s largest failure is
in the area of motivation and context: it’s never really clear why Kristal started the club, how it became a magnet for malcontents and misfits, or what those
bands defined themselves against in the first place. Because the acts are
introduced as hallowed legends, The Ramones and Talking Heads and Blondie seem
like stars-to-be rather than the striving nobodies, who might easily have got
nowhere, that they actually were then.
Things get even worse when The Dead Boys turn up and Kristal decides out
of all the groups they’re the ones he wants to manage. If Stiv Bators’s
self-strangulation and blowjob theatrics aren’t repulsive enough, we get to see
Rupert Grint as guitarist Cheetah Chrome exposing his pubes. CBGB was a
monster flop, grossing just $40 thousand, less than one-hundredth of its
budget. But at least they spelled the venue’s name right, rather than the
common error CGBGs.