This is England

'This is England'(2007) is a British realism film directed by Shane Meadows.

In 1983 during the rain of Thatcherism, lonely Shaun a 12 year old boy who's father died in the Falklands war, lives with his mother. It's the beginning of the summer holidays. Shaun with 'I don't give a shit' attitude walks home from a fight after being slagged because he was wearing his dead dad's over sized, hand me down flairs on a non uniform school day. Shaun passes a group of teenage skinheads who befriend him and cheer his life up by transforming him into one of them. Smoking, drinking, hanging with the crowd, wearing Ben Sherman and charming the ladies, Shaun has turned into a 'new man'.

An old friend of the teenage skinhead's appears freshly out of jail, nationalist hard man 'Combo.' Having had a fatherless, painful upbringing and has been mistreated by black people for several years in jail, he is as bitter as ever. Combo makes a grilling impression on the teenager's, (who happen to have a black member), shouting and swearing about his radical and political views. Combo splits the gang in two by drawing a line for proclaiming who will be with him and who will not. Angry and naive Shaun stays with Combo and waves most of his friends bye, bye.

Shaun and Combo having bonded on their first encounter of each other become closer. Combo leads 12 year old Shaun to the radical ways of extreme nationalism. They fly the English flag, rob Pakistanis, graffiti underpasses which state racist remarks, threat black people and just cause general machete swinging havoc.

Combo goes too far, he kicks and punches one of Shaun's old friends half to death after touching on a sensitive subject. Shaun decides whether or not this racist life is for him.

This is England is very confrontational. It had me laughing one minute and then made me 'rub my eyes the next'. Fantastic film which plucks emotional strings. I'm not going to lie it was a depressing film almost a little too much especially toward the 2ND half of the film.

Adding to the realism of the film is 13 year old then (2006), Thomas Turgoose (Shaun) who provides a believable and real performance, I was drawn into his character. He had the natural hurt but tough look that fitted perfectly.

Stephen Graham (Combo) I was completely immersed in his character, I can't think who else could of delivered that performance. Out of the few of the films I have seen him in, this performance tops it. Could possibly be the performance of his life time, certainly award worthy.

Brilliant performances. Good story. But possibly overly depressing.

This Film (Blog) Is Not Yet Rated

Directed by and featuring Kirby Dick (honestly?) , 'This Film Is Not Yet Rated' is a fairly biased documentary about the American movie rating system with interviews of film directors who give their opinion on the properties of censorship before and if their movie's are released.

Kirby Dick is best known for his documentary features which focus on themes of secrecy, hypocrisy and human sexuality.

Kirby Dick entertainingly investigates and exposes the secrecy of the biased American movie rating board, with the help of lesbian Private Investigators. There are several film ratings sketched out by MPAA from G(anyone can watch this film) to NC17(Only 18 and over) ratings. Though these ratings have been stretched from when they were first created.

Dick poses some question's concerning the unfairness of film ratings such as why are some films which contain moderate gay sex rated as NC17 but strong violence and moderate straight sex is only PG13? What's the controversy about? It comes down to money the difference between ratings can be a few m...m...m..million.

I was surprised at the extreme secrecy of the rating board members who acted as if they are agents of the US president. Why would they hide themselves? Movie terrorists?

The American rating makes sense to me it's simply for viewer information. The ratings don't make it physically impossible for an underager to watch it. As was mentioned in the documentary a young teenager getting hold of an NC17 is extremely easy. I do agree there should be a rating system but the American rating rules and inconsistency do get ridiculous.

As was mentioned in the documentary people could argue some content should have a right to be shown without any rating barriers but I think extremely in-humane offensive content which doesn't have any meaning or reason behind it are better if they weren't exposed and kept under the rug.

'This Film Is Not Yet Rated' was an enjoyable controversial watch.

The Searchers, Story Prediction.

Having studied the characters in the first 3 minutes of The Searchers, I found out that Ethan the main character is civil war veteran was fighting for the south. He seems a very adventurous but isolated and bitter character. Ethan is dominant around his sensible older brother's family.

Aaron, Ethan's older brother is the sensible and quieter brother, with a family and also enough essentials to keep a family a fairly large house, food etc.

Martha is Aaron's wife in the first few minutes it comes across she is caring, polite, thoughtful, organised and loving.

There seems to be some tension between Ethan and Aaron over Martha. Even though Martha is married to Aaron she longs for the love of Ethan. We know this because of a few signs Martha was waiting at her porch for Ethan coming home as she does every day at this time. Ethan kisses Martha on the forehead, she cherishes this moment. Also Aaron and Ethan barely utter a word to each other and when they do it seems a little abrupt. This gives the picture there is some bad history between them over Martha.

The Searchers could turn out to be a sort of Love triangle. From the title, I think Martha could possibly be captured by thugs and Ethan will go with his brother Aaron and try and rescue Martha. It would seem there would be a lot of tension and conflict if the story went this way throwing issues of love, trust and jealousy up in the air.

Twelve Angry Men

Twelve Angry Men (1957) directed by Sydney Lumet (Dog Day Afternoon) was the story of a Jury sweating out a the decision of whether or not they should send the accused an 18 year old boy to the electric chair. With the evidence given every one is sure the boy is guilty except one man in shinning white suit, Henry Fonda. Fonda has doubts on whether the evidence is enough, he manages to gradually convince the angry, impatient crowd. The whole entire film is set in one Juror room on the hottest day of the year with one or two exterior shots.

I have watched this film before, I genuinely think this is a classic. The performances by each individual character were realistic and three dimensional, each one of them having a story behind their faces. The feud through out the film between Henry Fonda and Lee J Cobb's character was like a guitar string being tightened and waiting to snap. The emotions of anger, justice, empowerment and opinions flowed out of this tense and gripping drama.

There were a use of a range of lenses to compress and oppress the character's actions and emotions in each scene. There was clever sound design toward the end when tensions are rocketing the noise of a storm is brewing outside, torrential rain is heard adding to the atmosphere.

I believe you have to be in the right mood to watch it, I wouldn't say it was visually entertaining but the character development and their decisions make it worth watching.

The Conversation

A paranoid and expert electronic surveillance bugger is convinced his suspects are going to be murdered by his employer, he decides he has to investigate further.
A story about invasion of privacy, written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The Conversation was far too long and was drawn out especially the first scene. In my opinion some scenes were far too long, slow and bleak are the words to describe it. For me it was not stimulating at all.

The main character Harry Caul, played by Gene Hackman, fitted hand in hand with his job, a lonely character clearly obsessed and protective of his job. There was great character depth but the story failed there didn't seem to have great conflict, just a man getting wound up by his own works.

The use of sound throughout was impressive there is a range of taped and muffled voices, electronic sounds and ambient noises and also instruments. The use of a whole closely researched, Erie sound scape added to the paranoia and loneliness of the character and strangeness of the film.
The Sound scape and character were the strong points in this film but the story was not intriguing.

Garapa 3/10

Garapa directed by Jose Padhila is a documentary looking at three  different families who live in one of the most poorest areas of native Brazil. This touching documentary was focusing on the sad and harsh realities of the families conditions covering malnutrition and bad health conditions. 

I know it is an extremely serious topic and it should be known in the western world but after an hour I wish I followed the paths of several members of the audience who walked out the screening. The documentary had a good unnecessary 2 and half hours which should have been cut. It required too much time  of the audience. The look of it was not alluring at all, it was black and white it had subtitles to follow. As one of my fellow class mates mentioned, It was like the documentary was not edited it was just a showing of tape rushes. Also to top it off the families were starting to irritate me and instead of feeling sorry, I was annoyed. Garapa was a very forgettable documentary. 

Running in Traffic 4/10

Running in Traffic, Two main characters  who coincidentally keep crossing paths and spiral into darker and more dangerous worlds.

The story didn't seem very clear to me, there were too many plot lines to follow. It seemed a little too complex and I don't mean in the clever sense.  The stories were possibly trying to link together but it failed miserably. The story wasn't original it just seemed like a really average depressing film, I didn't connect at all. The saving factor of  the film was the cinematography which looked fantastic. I mostly enjoyed the start of the film  which was emotional but then  the film took a downward spiral imitating it's characters.  Not a film I would want to watch again.