Popular reviews

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  Review by Mark Cunliffe 🇵🇸 ★★★

  Ray Davies one and only foray into filmmaking, Return To Waterloo is a dark cross between Julien Temple (whose film Absolute Beginners he would later appear in and provide some music for), a Tommy-era Ken Russell and Dennis Potter at his most disturbingly repressed and psycho-sexual.

  It is the story, told through song, of The Traveller (Ken Colley), an ambiguous commuter who boards the 8.52 from Guildford to Waterloo and who, as the train hurtles through the suburbs towards the capital, contemplates both his life and his fellow passengers, whilst audiences cannot ignore his uncanny resemblance to the police’s identikit profile of the 'Surrey rapist' plastered across the front page of that day's edition of The S*n newspaper. This similarity…

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  Review by TAYA777 ★½

  tim roth as "boy punk"

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  Review by Gabriel Bath ★★★★ 5

  In 1967 The Kinks released one of their most celebrated songs, Waterloo Sunset. A warm and relaxing ballad, filled with a potent hopefulness. An encapsulation of a time that must have seemed like it was the start of something beautiful. A sentimental celebration of an England, where romance could blossom as beautifully as anywhere else in the world. 

  In 1985 Ray Davies released his first solo album Return to Waterloo, accompanied by a hour long TV musical released the year prior. Born not into the Swinging Sixites but the Thatcher run, hyper-nationalist 1980s, Return to Waterloo instead of capturing train station romances turns to the much darker underbelly of English life. Return to Waterloo reflects on the classist nature of English society,…

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  Review by Justin Decloux ★★★★ 3

  I didn't know this was a full-on musical with a punk Tim Roth!

  The Kink's Ray Davies directs his only film project and it's a wild visual trip as a serial rapist rides a train and his mind flits through the past, present, and future (?). Beautifully shot by Roger Deakins. Ray loved musicals so much it's a shame he didn't get to make more films.

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  Review by stella ★★

  man 
  ray davies of the kinks and punk tim roth ? wish this was executed better, i could have made it my entire personality

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  Review by Adrien ★★★

  I'm a huge fan of The Kinks, so when I learned of Return to Waterloo while listening to The Movies that Made Me, I knew I needed to check it out. Fortunately, it's now streaming on Tubi and easily accessible to anyone else eager to check out Ray Davies' sole directorial effort. What an effort it is.

  Davies uses the brilliant premise ("A man taking the train to work one morning is overcome by melancholy memories and morbid fantasies.") to explore poignant ideas (an empire in decline, the depressing reality of adult life, the innocence of youth gone) through a visual language reminiscent of Hitchcock (POV shots) and especially Nic Roeg (atemporal, ambiguous montage rife with flashbacks, flashforwards, and dream…

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  Review by seva ★★

  these stars are for punk tim roth only

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  Review by loureviews ★★★★½

  I L<3ve Musicals!

  What a great pleasure to see this again, now with the understanding through adult eyes.

  Musician Ray Davies helms and scores this minor masterpiece in which the terrific Ken Colley gets a rare starring role. He always came across as slightly creepy (which made it rather perverse that Python cast him as Jesus in The Life of Brian), and so he fits in perfectly as The Traveller, a commuter from Guildford to Waterloo, who watches, waits, and wills his journey to progress while we start to learn more about him.

  There are songs on the train, in the background, pushing the action forward, with pointed lyrics which are amusing, perceptive, and rather moving.

  Everyone in the cast…

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  Review by Joseph Brown

  You: Think Tommy
  Me: ok
  You: But not terrible and actually forms a cohesive story and is under 80 minutes
  Me: OKAY
  You: And replace The Who with The Kinks oh and Ray Davies directs 
  Me: bbffrttt
  You: It is included with Prime
  Me: p   e   r   f   e  c
  You: Tim Roth is there
  Me: *removes own spleen and eats it*

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  Review by 🦇rosie🦇 ★★★

  lil tim playing a musical punk boy. that is all

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  Review by Henry Rowlands

  I'm a Kinks fan (Arthur and Village Green are two of my favourite records) and recently I heard an interview with Julien Temple in which he mentioned he was working on the first Kinks biopic. Even though they were kind of the dark horse of the British Invasion, and are still over-shadowed by the Beatles, the Stones and the Who, it did still surprise me that no one had ever made a film about them and the Davies brothers in particular. Then I started to look for a good Kinks documentary to satisfy the lack of a cinematic depiction but I could not find a copy of the BBC one from a few years ago anywhere. Thanks to Letterboxd though…

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  Review by derin

  subway singer ray davies i love you <3