Popular reviews

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  Review by Blake Bergman "Various Spaghetti" ★★★★

  "Radio On" is a late 70's British endeavor about a search for meaning in a manner of ways. As the film is a great effort within itself and very purposeful in merit, there is a sense that the title of the film can be a presented misconception for some watching the film blind without research of context first. Possible misconception is more of a negative driver, rather it should be said that the title feels like plays upon two concepts. First is that of the face value "Radio On" feeling like we are going to get a musical endeavor, regardless of the tonal feeling of the film, we will be getting music at a constant to match. There is a…

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  Review by Ethan Lyon ★★★½ 2

  1st Chris Petit

  The Midlands and North rendered eerily beautiful by luminous black and white widescreen cinematography. A man makes his elliptical way north to Bristol to piece together some reason as to why his brother killed himself, discovering that the destination was probably not worth the journey. More than anything, the plot feels like a thin excuse in which to conduct an extensive piece of psycho-geography on the state of England in the late 70s. It's a bleak place, filled with boredom, hostility and jaded apathy to all. Yet Petit manages, with the aid of a German cameraman and some rich shadows, to turn the rooms our lead wanders through into crepuscular beauty. One particular pub, cast in heavy…

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  Review by Justin LaLiberty ★★★★ 1

  the British, music-fueled answer to Wim Wenders Kings of the Road; equally monochromatic and celebratory of the the idiosyncrasies of people you meet on the road and its affinity for music (and a very particular type of music, at that) is palpable

  and the new restoration is beautiful

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  Review by Mark Cunliffe 🇵🇸 ★★ 2

  Ach, I wanted to like this.

  When you read in the Radio Times that a film from 1979 is about to receive it's network television debut a staggering 34 years later, your interest is piqued.

  Radio On, a first feature written and directed by former film critic Chris Petit, tells the story of a DJ travelling from London to Bristol in his battered Rover to try and find the truth about his brother's suicide.

  The film seems to set out to debunk one myth; that Britain cannot produce a mythical road movie, whilst proving another; that we're not so dissimilar to our German counterparts. In getting acclaimed German director and master of the austere slow drip film making Wim Wenders…

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  Review by Liz ★★★★ 1

  I’m sorry but the soundtrack and vibe just made me think of an old Drummer stroke story about a guy who gets fisted by Gary Numan in the backseat of a car.

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  Review by Mos Co ★★

  The music in this was great, and got me through the first half of this, which was basically a road movie, and the chap interacts with some folk along the way and there’s decent music playing most of the time.  Then he gets where he’s going, the music dries up a bit, and you quickly realise that it’s really boring! 
  It does look cool most of the time, so you can enjoy that.

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  Review by Mikey ★★★★

  Heading towards the 80s with no place to call home.
  The familiarity of 1979 in an unfastened road movie that finds its euphoria in David Bowie music. The designated driver is faced with bedlam. On a train to who-knows-where.

  This rare piece of British cinema is not kind or unkind to who ever unearths it. Radio-On is a greasy oddball, that finds its meaning in listening to music to escape the end of a decade of latency and the beginning of a new chapter. A film without malevolence or mystery as it appeals to no one but 1979 Britain parked on the edge, now on a train to nowhere.

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  Review by Adam Trainer ★★★★★ 7

  And the neon when it's cold outside
  And the highway when it's late at night
  Got the radio on

  Pop music is simultaneously the most inconsequential, frivolous and ephemeral thing, and as serious as your life. It’s identity-forming, relationship-defining, so implicitly connected to memory, place and the personal that it can’t be anything other than an elemental, foundational, be-all-and-end-all presence in our lives. And then it’s gone – the song’s over. We’re changed but the turntable’s playing static, the radio’s playing an ad, the cassette’s ejected and the 45’s slipped back into the belly of the jukebox and some other fucker’s playing their song now.

  Music’s a journey – it has a start and an end, it’s transitory and it’s…

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  Review by Joe ★★★★

  Hits so many of my aesthetic pleasure triggers that I can't help being a little bit suspicious of it. A depressive joy ride.

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  Review by Mark Cunliffe 🇵🇸 ★★★½ 2

  Wimpy bars and the Westway. Nightshifts spinning discs for the disinterested workers at the Gilette factory and fresh wintry evenings with sopping wet hair. Getting your hair cut short, too short. The end of an affair and the open road. Inky black nights and doom laden news. The Troubles on the radio and flickering away on your three TV sets back home. A psychotic AWOL squaddie brings them to your passenger side. Rainswept roads and pylons. Snow on the hills and mist in the air. Fräulein drifters and an Eddie Cochran obsessed petrol pump attendant. Your car radio, on with Bowie and Kraftwerk. The Blockheads and Devo. Wreckless Eric and Ohm Sweet Ohm. Pornographic slides and your dead brother, and…

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  Review by Sex Ray Spex ⚡ ★★★★ 3

  Radio On is as brilliant as it is self indulgent. Boring as it is mesmerizing. You can't deny though, a real interesting take on the classic road movie.

  Literally said "yes... YES... YESS!!" whenever we lovingly progressed through some material-psychological infrastructure or interior. Like this is a photographers movie.

  I hated whenever someone talked and the stilted interpersonal dynamics threw me off. Except for the Scottish hitchhiker that was so funny I got side stitches. In fact I laughed a lot but I have a very dry sense of humor.

  I watched this because it was referenced in a book I read on Kraftwerk. In that respect I was very satisfied with what they did - not just playing Kraftwerk songs that I like hearing but using the photography and context to riff on Kraftwerk's whole modernity focus in a way that let me hear the songs differently.

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  Review by ItsLV ★★

  Struggled to connect with this one.

  Fantastic photography and soundtrack.