I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Good concept, poorly executed.

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

This is, behind all the directorial flourishes, a view of working class Britain from above and beyond, and escaped. Davies' plummy voice tells us he has long departed from viewing his childhood home with any degree of warmth and instead drones on in sepulchurion disdain about the Church, his homosexual guilt, his artistic hauteur, as he hammers home, again and again from his dismal vantage point, an opinion complete in it's self absorption, self hate, projection, and most sadly heartlessness. C'mon Terry you must have had some mates, some fun, or at least some mentors who left you with some sense of the pulse of the place you grew up in!Next up Blackpool and all it's masses awaiting intellectual dissecting by a dried up soul.

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning Like Little Britain narrator Tom Baker, filmmaker Terence Davies is a luvvie queen from London who happens to have been born in Liverpool. Which explains the odd narration and really the wasted opportunity here had a true, gritty scouser been reading things. But in all fairness, this manages to emerge as such a boring, pointless, sentimental, pretentious and utterly self indulgent excuse for a documentary that it seems beyond salvage anyway.Davies, with his incomprehensible babblings regarding his old memories and commiserations and teeth grindingly posh and pomp voice, has engaged in a deeply personal project with seemingly no idea of how uninteresting and alienating it will be to his audience. A pile of old archive footage of people doing such interesting things as staring out of windows, walking in crowds, playing in streets and washing steps, is strung together whilst the maker relives old memories and tries to get in touch with life and his own soul. Or, at least that's what I think. I'd like to consider myself as intelligent, but I really couldn't fathom any deeper meaning to any of this and was instead just left bored out my mind. It's blissfully short, and might help you get off to sleep, but really, why not just watch some pornography instead? *

Luckily it was only 77 minutes. This documentary on Liverpool, UK, during the 20th century had potential, but it was like watching a college student's project instead of the work of a 64 year old man. The archival footage was interesting, but the negative, cynical poetry of TS Eliot and James Joyce was very depressing and dark. Here is footage of smiling beautiful Brits going about life and being happy with friends and family, and happy playing children, despite living in a poor city, and the heavy dressing poetry being read over it was ridiculous. Try living in a tough, diverse American urban center, with rampant crime & conflict and then you'll have something to complain about. The poetry was hard to understand too, and no captions available. It is pretentious to prove you are literate by using Joyce or Eliot's words (or whoever the poems were by - there was no attribution), despite them being very whiny, cynical, negative and depressing.It was boring to me and to my male friend. We didn't think it was cute or clever to call Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, 'Betty and Phil" and to be so critical of the Royal pomp & pageantry while adoring Hollywood glitter and pomp. The commentary was unwise, immature, cynical and depressing. The special features were BORING too. Everyone is kissing butt of the director because of past work, but this movie was like a POV show on PBS.The director could have focused on any number of beautiful things about life in Liverpool, including the beauty of the townspeople, instead of the depressing drone of complaints. I recommend to miss it or watch the footage with the sound off. One other point: in the special features they mention more than once that the song The Folks Who Live on the Hill was "BY" Peggy Lee. She sang it, but it was written "BY" Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern.

The 21st Century has seen an amazing rebirth of feature length documentaries as a rich cinema experience. Obvious examples from 2008 are Man On Wire and Waltz with Bashir.Of Time and the City is the latest and certainly the most eccentric. It has no obvious claim to a mass market, not even from its home turf Liverpool. It is quite esoteric at times, laced with poetry and introspection which may make it less accessible for some who would otherwise enjoy it immensely. Yet at the same time it is a vivid history of post-war Liverpool, and its working people. A collage of the changing character of British cities in the second half of the 20th Century.This is filmmaker Terence Davies' homage to his roots. The official website describes it as "both a love song and a eulogy. It is also a response to memory, reflection and the experience of losing a sense of place as the skyline changes and time takes it toll." Davies was born in November 1945, after the end of the Second World War and at the beginning of the end of the British Empire.Terence comments that "family, church and the movies" were his "whole world". He grew up in Liverpool's slums. The changing and unchanging architecture of this port city is central to his memories. The enduring buildings are mostly Classical, with more columns than a U.S. State Capital.We see the promise and the betrayal of the slum clearances with the communities of small terraced houses replaced by the ghettos of public housing towers. The "loss of dreams" is underscored by Peggy Lee's The Folks Who Live On the Hill. "We had hoped for paradise. We got the Annus Mundi," puns Davies.His republican sentiments are clear. We are treated to some of the highlights of the royal circus known as the Betty Windsor Show, in particular her wedding and coronation.He also parades the other masters of pageant and ritual, the Roman Catholic Church and its red-robed clergy. However, the papal pomp is not enough to keep Terence within the faith. The hideous new Cathedral cannot cement his attachment to his ancestral religion. Instead he visits a different arena, the wrestling ring, to indulge his adolescent homosexual fantasies.Of Time and the City is a visual gem, using mostly archival footage. It's his first documentary and Davies says that he cut it like fiction - "the images should speak". The narration mixes poetry with his own commentary as he explores "time, memory and mortality". T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets is a major source of inspiration:Out at sea the dawn wind Wrinkles and slides. I am here Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning. (East Coker)We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. Through the unknown, unremembered gate When the last of earth left to discover Is that which was the beginning; ... A condition of complete simplicity (Costing not less than everything) And all shall be well and All manner of thing shall be well (Little Gidding)Musically Davies has little time for the pride of Merseyside, The Beatles. His soul has been stirred more by the likes of Mahler. The film's sound track is an aural delight.If you're looking for a travelogue, then forget this film. Terence Davies challenges his audience, through his personal reflections, to ponder their own journeys.'Cinema Takes' http://cinematakes.blogspot.com/