3.18.2011

Rev-ewe 17: This Is England

This Is England
England (duh)
Shane Meadows

This film. Dizzam! I was really surprised when I first watched it because I suppose I was expecting some sort of light-hearted British humor something or other. What I got was a pretty intense look into a bit of English history I had no idea existed. Though I saw this film about 2 years ago, it is still a movie I love going back to from time to time.

A young 12-year-old boy, Shaun, is having trouble at school but meets some older skinheads who take him in. Through that group he meets an even older skinhead, Combo, who has just gotten out of jail (Tommy the Tit from SNATCH! I know you've seen that movie..) and then Shaun chooses to follow Combo.

I don't want to give too much away in terms of plot but the fact that it's about skinheads and their sortof social origin was really, REALLY interesting for me. Very beautiful visually, music choice was on point, and it uses violence to just the right purpose--which is usually an issue for me. I'm not fond of violent films if they're over-the-top violent for no reason.. but this film definitely gets it. I truly love films that put faces to socially taboo issues and give them dimension. Similar to one I reviewed earlier (Paradise Now), it really deals with how people were feeling at the time and why it happened the way it did.
This movie really gets me into the punk vibe and even inspired me to buy my first pair of doc martens, though they're the ridiculous steel-toed ugly-red-that-goes-with-nothing docs.. oh well, ebay wins. ANYWAY, IT'S A GREAT MOVIE.

3.04.2011

rev-ewe 16: Dogtooth

Kynodontas (Greek: Dogtooth)
Greece
Giorgos Lanthimos


uhhh... yeah. This film was a whole lot of weird. The only movie I could think of while watching it was Napoleon Dynamite. But, a darker way creepier version. It had the same awkwardness as N.D. but used it in a way different manner. There was no plot, there was really no conflict, and then it just ... ended. While I will give credit to the film that I did not turn it off and was compelled to see the thing all the way through, at the end I was just unhappy and disturbed. If its point was to do that, it wins. But, for what purpose?

The film focuses on a family that shelters its 3 children to the point where they have no idea what the outside world is like (at ALL) and have stayed only on the premises of their house. When the eldest daughter acquires films from the real world, things begin to change.

I usually like weird, but this was intensely creepy weird and didn't really work for me. Though I may need to see it again, and usually seeing it again makes me like it more, I'm not so sure how long it'll take me to watch it again. It was really, really intense! And just.. crazy. Mindfuck, for sure, but I suppose its point was something along the lines of "don't shelter your children" but.. I don't know. I'd say watch it, but know what you're getting into.. I certainly didn't, and got a whole lot of opened-mouth scenes and NO, NO, NO!! moments.