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List Price: $39.95 | | Label: Criterion
Salesrank: 33245
Released: October 28, 1998 |
| Our Price: $74.99 |
| Used Price: $31.99 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
A lacerating love story, Sid & Nancy chronicles the brief, intense attachment of two of punk's most notorious poster children, Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious and his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen. Director Alex Cox balances a bleak evocation of star-crossed love with surreal humor and genuine tenderness, creating a compelling portrait of the late '70s punk scene. With brilliant performances by Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb, the film's haunting imagery and black comedy resonate long after the final frames.
Description of Sid and Nancy: The Criterion Collection:
After the cultish success of Repo Man, maverick director Alex Cox made the film that remains his masterpiece--a loud, brash, abrasive, painful, funny, and utterly brilliant screen biography of British punk rocker Sid Vicious and his American girlfriend Nancy Spungen. As played to perfection by Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb, Sid and Nancy are made for each other, serving their mutual strengths and weaknesses and rising with the punk-rock fame of Sid's group, the Sex Pistols, while falling into the ultimately lethal pit of drug abuse. Cox doesn't pull any punches or compromise the unsavory aspects of this passionate love story, so the film presents a harsh mix of emotional and physical anguish tempered by the very poignant and genuine love shared by its tormented central characters. Through it all, the film emerges as an intimate and yet oddly epic chronicle of punk's glory days of anarchic sex, drugs and rock & roll. It's as dynamic and confidently directed as any screen biography before or since, no less fascinating for its unpleasant aspects as for the touching emotions at its very human core. --Jeff Shannon
Sid and Nancy: The Criterion Collection Reviews:
THE BEST ROCK PORTRAIT EVER 
2009-12-07 - I was only moderately interested in punk rock until this movie came out, and I have never been much of a fan of bio-pics ( though Val Kilmer's spot on version of Jim Morrison was excellent ), but Alex Cox got everything right on this explosive exploration of one of the lasting icons of punk. Chloe Webb was exceptional as Sid's, needy, whiny, girlfriend, Nancy, but why Gary Oldman was not at least nominated for an Oscar for his phenomenal portrayal of Sid Vicious is beyond me ( the sad thing is that throughout his incredible career, Oldman has still not been nominated by the Academy ).
This film is disturbing, gut-wrenching, funny, ascerbic, depressing, and transcendent by turns, but there is a heavy core of honesty to it that stays with you. Joe Strummer's soundtrack is also pretty impressive.
Sid and Nancy
2009-11-20 - Gary Oldman owned this role as Sid Vicious, guitarist for Sex Pistols! His portrayal made this movie shine! I recommend this to anyone with a respect for the punk rock genre.
Bleak But Vital Biopic 
2009-11-16 - Alex Cox's 1986 film Sid and Nancy is more than a biopic of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen it's more of a moral tale than a biopic at all. There have been many reviews saying how Cox got it all wrong. Filmaker Julian Temple in his contribution to the commentary track agrees with this position but maybe we need to look at the film for what it is, a slightly fictionalized view of a star on a downward spiral of self destruction. The film is a metaphor of punk culture not an accurate depiction of it.
I remember seeing this film when it was released in 1986 and hating it for many of the same reasons that other reviewers have. The subject was just too fresh too well known and the warts were all I could see. Seeing the film after the passage of time improves it. The performances of Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb are excellent if inaccurate. Goldman fold himself into the role with utter abandon. Webbb's lacerating performance as Nancy while not spot on represents an entire mindset of the rock groupie culture. Cox blends fiction and fantasy into a film that is both cautionary and bleak. Under Cox's direction the film plays as a junkie lovestory a sort of twisted Romeo and Juliet for the late 1970's. The film is far from perfect but it is not as bad as many of the Sex Pistols fans say it is. I too was a fan of the band and would agree that the movie does not do justice to the band and its ethos but it does do justice to a time and a place that are now fading memories.
The Criterion disc is well worth seeking out. It features a commentary track that is well worth the purchase price alone. Also included are a phone interview with Vicious, segments from the film D.O.A. and a film on the making of the film England's Glory. Of special interest is the now infamous TV interview with Bill Grundy.
See this film as one of the essential pieces of modern cinema not for its accuracy but for its powerful portrayal of a culture that is now gone.
The Passion of Sid and Nancy
2009-10-17 - "Sid and Nancy" is Alex Cox's electrifying biopic from 1986 about Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious and his brief, fatal fling with Nancy Spungen. Gary Oldman is excellent as the first punk rocker (there's even a cameo by the Godfather of Punk, Iggy Pop),while Chloe Webb is powerful as the deeply troubled,and most likely schizophrenic/manic-depressive Nancy. In an ironic twist, Courtney Love stars as one of Nancy's junkie friends--and that was before there was that little Seattle grunge band called Nirvana.
"Sid and Nancy" chronicles the couple's journey of sex,drugs, and rock n' roll. The couple is self-destructive- from Nancy's addiction to Sid's violence against himself. The two share a fatal attraction. Sid Vicious goes from fronting the Sex Pistols to living a claustophrobe's nightmare of addiction in his apartment with Nancy. They love each other, they hate each other, they're violent, needly--and sometimes sensual. Alex Cox perfectly depicts the punk rock era. There are some self-referential digs at its predecessor,the hippie era-such as Johnny Rotten mocking sex as ugly and degrading, or Nancy freaking out when she thinks she looks like Stevie Nicks. Music is used deftly throughout- to represent fine living, Beethoven's music is played (Oldman would later star in "Immortal Beloved") and before the credits,the final music is disco. Though the movie is about the Sex Pistols, ironically, there's no Sex Pistols music (it's Joe Strummer, the Pogues, etc) Cox is also a visual auteur-from the growing darkness of the film's harrowing final half hour, to the pair kissing among falling garbage. Vicious' rendition of "My Way" is a trippy spectacle. Sometimes,the line between reality and hallucination is thin.
"Sid and Nancy" is an excellent biopic because PUNK ROCK IS NOT FOR THE WEAK!
Sid and Nancy 
2009-08-18 - This is a pretty good depiction of life in the culture as I remember it growing up. My teen is really happy to have this.
