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.

1 comment:

  1. Your blog is so interesting!

    I watched a movie in class (Arte, Cultura y Estetica Mapuche {who are indigenous people in Chile]) and totally thought of you. It is a french film called Man to Man (but we watched it with Spanish subtitles). It has a few well-known actors but I can't recall their names... It is about French scientists "discovering" pygmies and taking them back to France to study, so it is pretty anthropological. Anyway, there was one scene where I felt so emotional that I literally had to stop myself from walking out of class. I secretly allowed myself a few tears though, haha. Anyway... watch it! Let me know what you think! :)

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