Oil City Confidential (2009)
Average Rating: 7.1/10
Reviews Counted: 11
Fresh: 11 | Rotten: 0
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: N/A
Critic Reviews: 1
Fresh: 1 | Rotten: 0
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Average Rating: 4.1/5
User Ratings: 221
Movie Info
Outside of the United Kingdom, only the most obsessive music fans were aware of what was known as "Pub Rock" during its brief heyday in the early to mid-1970s. But in England, Pub Rock was a important precursor to the punk and new wave scene; the Pub bands rejected the growing pretension of glam and progressive rock, and instead embraced a back-to-basics sound rooted in stripped down R&B and country rock. The toughest of the Pub Rock bands was Dr. Feelgood, a quartet whose revved-up, no-frills
Oct 20, 2009 Wide
A Product of Malitsky
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All Critics (13) | Top Critics (1) | Fresh (11) | Rotten (0)
What emerges is a film to rank alongside Temple's own Joe Strummer elegy 'The Future is Unwritten' as the very best in British rock documentary. Riveting, even if you don't like the music.
Top CriticAuthentic feel to this good-looking biopic of the ill-fated band.
Julien Temple's rockumentary Oil City Confidential looks like a series of Martin Parr photographs of the British by the seaside, and then segues into thrashing guitars on the Seventies New York stage.
I don't think [Julien Temple's] ever made a film as good, and purely insightful as this one.
The splicing of old home videos, archive footage and new interviews is handled with real finesse, and in the band's mad-eyed, quixotic guitarist Wilco Johnson, the film has a tirelessly charismatic ringmaster.
A rugged piece of pulp entertainment charting the unlikely rise of UK blues outfit Dr Feelgood.
A clearly affectionate homage to the Canvey Island foursome whose incendiary R&B paved the way for punk.
It's Wilko's peremptory, offbeat monologues that provide Oil City Confidential with its through-line and several of its funniest moments, not least when he describes the clouds and flames of the Shell Haven Refinery as "Miltonic"
Temple tries his best to make the story lively and interesting (even embarking on a brief history of the Thames estuary), but Dr Feelgood remains an R&B band of limited appeal, and Oil City Confidential won't create many new converts.
Julian Temple's messy, whimsical look at the rise and fall of the British pub rock band Dr Feelgood packs a bigger punch than expected.
Julien Temple concludes his cinematic history of punk with an origins story, making a persuasive, highly entertaining case for why rabble-rousing musical renegades Dr Feelgood are the unsung progenitors of the movement.
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Movie: ID: 770818728 Title: Oil City Confidential Release Date: 2009-10-20 00:00:00.0 MPAA: 6 Status: 1
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