Oil City Confidential (NR)

synopsis

Julien Temple's "Oil City Confidential" is the last film in his trilogy on British music of the 1970s. It is a prequel to his landmark films about punk figureheads the Sex Pistols in "The Filth & The Fury" and Joe Strummer in "The Future Is Unwritten." Oil City Confidential is a film noir feature length documentary and about Dr. Feelgood; it's the story of four men in cheap suits who crashed out of Canvey Island in the early '70s, sandpapered the face of rock'n'roll and left all that came before a burnt-out ruin, four estuarine John-the-Baptists to Johnny Rotten's anti-Christ. Cannibalizing the visual flotsam and jetsam of our society, welding into an emotionally engaging and humorous whole, "Oil City Confidential" sets out to explore this unique time, place and social landscape - all of which was responsible for shaping the identity of the band and which, more than any other, defined the strange cultural vacuum which existed before the coming of punk rock.