New Zealand Listener - May 26, 2018

56 LISTENER MAY 26 2018

BOOKSBOOKS&&CULTURECULTURE

SWAGGER OF THIEVES

directed by Julian Boshier

R

ockumentaries face an inevitable

comparison with the genre’s

parody blueprint, This is Spinal

Tap. Swagger of Thieves, a fascinat-

ing jumble of a retrospective on

Head Like A Hole, the band that erupted

out of Wellington in the early 90s along-

side Shihad, certainly earns its own.

After all, they’re a band with two Nigels:

guitarist Nigel Regan and voluble front-

man Nigel “Booga” Beazley. Tap had only

one, guitarist Nigel Tufnel. In a famous

scene in the 1984 movie he twiddled

some knobs. The HLAH doco has Regan

whirling his about, flashing the audience

from behind his instrument. It was that

balls-out live act that got them noticed,

at a time when late-80s speed metal and

the sludgy punk of grunge inspired a new

generation of local guitar bands. HLAH

embraced all that. It made for messy early

albums but enjoyably bonkers shows.

Ah, the good old days. Many a Kiwi

rockumentary has pined for them. Swagger

of Thieves, however, is, like the Shihad

doco Beautiful Machine, something more

than noisy nostalgia.

It tells a compelling tale of a band fall-

ing apart, more than once. As well, it’s a

confronting study of drug addiction and

the self-centredness, self-delusion and

fragile egos of musicians.

Director Julian Boshier has filmed the

group over the years. His approach largely

assumes viewers know of them, too. His

relationship meant the Nigels let him film

them shooting up on the group’s late-

1990s farewell tour. It’s the film’s most

disconcerting scene. He also filmed the

pair’s arrest on drug matters in Christch-

urch. Their habits, which developed

despite the 1996 overdose death of man-

ager Gerald Dwyer, pull the band apart.

In mitigation, Beazley says the group

played some of their best shows when he

was “tanked”. Former bandmates, bassist

Andrew Durno and guitarist Tom Watson,

recount the despair of playing with a pair

The Nigels’

naked truth

A Head Like A Hole

doco ofers more than

noisy nostalgia.

FILM

by Russell Baillie

CROOKED HOUSE

directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner

C

harles Hayward (Max Irons) is a

hard-up private detective in post-

war London. A woman from his

past, the beautiful Sophia Leonides

(Stefanie Martini), tells him she suspects

her business tycoon grandfather, Aristide,

has been poisoned. She asks him to look

into the case – or, as the police chief (Ter-

ence Stamp) will later demand, “Find out

who killed the bloody midget!”

As befits an Agatha Christie adapta-

tion co-written by Downton Abbey creator

Julian Fellowes, there is a grand country

manor, the Leonides’ lair. All kinds of

sinister secrets lurk within.

Murder in the

country manner

A Christie adaptation

has a bleak reveal.

FILM

by James Robins

Stefanie Martini, left, and

Gillian Anderson in Crooked

House: sinister secrets.