Review by Tacitus...

Ok

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This Is England (2006, Shane Meadows)





In one word – astounding.

Shane Meadows’ semi-autobiographical tale of an 11 year old boy, befriended by a gang of skinheads in The Midlands of the early ‘80s is as visceral a piece of filmmaking as you’ll see all year. Perhaps the most visceral for a good few years, as the film it brought immediately to mind was Dennis Hopper’s almost-forgotten Out Of The Blue.

This Is England is that raw…and a lot better.

The director has a great knack of pulling wonderful performances from his actors: Bob Hoskins in Twentyfourseven, Paddy Considine in A Room For Romeo Brass and Dead Man’s Shoes and now Stephen Graham as the troubled, volatile Combo.



Graham is possibly best known as the little pitbull-faced guy in Scorsese’s Gangs Of New York. He’s been around for a while but, with This Is England, his time has definitely come. His portrayal of the skinhead-in-chief will probably be compared to Ed Norton’s turn in American History X, but that wouldn’t be fair as, in my eyes at least, Graham’s Combo blows Derek Vinyard right out of the water in terms of humanity, believability and pathos.

It’s an Oscar-worthy performance in a film that’s not going to get within a million years of The Academy’s nonagenarian dodderers. Shame.

The rest of the cast are on top form, with Meadows regulars such as Andrew Shim, Vicky McClure (who’s grown into a fine-looking young woman – think Keira Knightley with attitude ), Jo Hartley, George Newton and ‘Big’ Frank Harper peppering the supporting roles. Thomas Turgoose, in a debut performance as the 11 year old Shaun, is solidly believable.

In fact, anyone who’s seen A Room For Romeo Brass can testify to the aplomb that Meadows writes and directs children, and This Is England is definitely seen through a child’s eyes.

The film evoked strong memories in myself – I was around Shawn’s age in 1983 and can well remember gangs of skinheads, mass unemployment, grotty council estates and the Falklands war. The spectre of Thatcher haunts This Is England but echoes remain today in attitudes toward immigrants. We’ve not learned much, have we?

That was England and, in some respects, it still is…

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

Great review Tatty so nice to see you back reviewing

Ah, another great recommendation. Seriously man, you should do this more often

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Thanks guys. Did you ever get to watch Dead Man's Shoes, adi?

You wouldn't believe it but some bastard on Demonoid quit on me while on 88.8%. I've been downloading it for some 2 weeks now...I still have hopes that someone will show mercy and continue to seed. I'm gonna give it a couple of more days, I wanna see it badly but kinda feel it deserves to be seen in good quality. But if that can't be, I'll certainly download the xvid, along with This is England... I know I'm gonna like them both...

I've been craving for some good European films for a while now...

Shiver me timbers, for the life of a pirate can be hard indeed.

Arrrrrrrrr Jim lad!!!

I finally saw it. Amazing film. Didn't understand half the dialog (for one, the accent is rather thick, and blast the xvid version I was forced to download, the sound was quite terrible at times), but I still enjoyed it immensely. Gotta get me the proper version so I can watch it again....it is worthy of my (soon to be) incredibly cool DVD collection...

Meadows seems like an awesome talent, to make this kind of movie at his age (my God, he was only 32) is quite an achievement. Love the soundtrack too...
Paddy was great (quite scary too ), but his (film) brother impressed me even more, one of the most believable interpretations of a mentally challenged person I've ever seen. And I loved the very Loach-ian improv from the supporting cast.

Tonight I'm watching This is England. Yay!

Shane Meadows is the same age as me, and that's a sobering thought.

I did a proper review of Dead Man's Shoes on this thread's first page (here) if you're interested, and I'd highly recommend that you track down the R2 DVD. It has some great extras including a fantastic commentary track by Shane & Paddy and an excellent short film starring Tony Kebbell (Richard's brother in DMS).

Once you've seen This Is England then it's time for Twentyfourseven and A Room For Romeo Brass...

Very well done, Tac. Thanks for the time and effort!

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Saw This is England...yes, yes, yes! Another great film from Meadows. This chap's soon to become one of my favorite directors! He's got a brilliant understanding of the child psyche...I was utterly gleeful while watching the first half hour of the film, so much fun...I felt ten all over again. Brilliant mix of comedy and social drama.

I don't know if it's because he's totally new to me, but his films feel so fresh, youthful and electrifying! Once again, thanks for the recommendation, I probably never would have heard of him if it weren't for you.

It's off to Twentyfourseven and A Room For Romeo Brass for me then.

I have finally seen this Doco, i was glued to the TV, I saw a very socially phobic person over come his anxiety to be a very respected and loved person.
Thanks Tatty for a great review

It's great innit?

First time I watched Mayor Of The Sunset Strip I was half-convinced it was a Spinal Tap style mockumentary, knowing the fag-end of nothing about Rodney on the Roq and being confronted by this strange, tragicomic little man who seemed so ill at ease with the world in which he chose to live his life.

I must watch it again soon, thanks nebbie!

Orson Welles: The One Man Band (1995, Oja Kodar & Vassili Silovic)




An interesting, if slightly melancholy, look at the final years of one of the greatest mavericks to grace the silver screen.

The Orson Welles I remember (as opposed to the Orson Welles who's films I have come to love) was the gigantic black-clad bloke from the Sandyman Port adverts. The mellifluously toned voice-over exponent. The chat show regular.

That he was taking these gigs to finance his own film projects was unknown to me. In fact, until I saw F For Fake around a decade and a half ago, I had no Idea that Welles' talents extended to anything other than Citizen Kane and the War Of The Worlds radio spoof which I picked up as a free cassette on the front of a magazine.

Heh, I say 'anything' as though that's not a big deal...



The look at snippets from 2 decades of unfulfilled dreams (courtesy of his long time love, and one of the best looking women who's ever lived, Oja Kodar) prompted a strange feeling of both sadness and emptiness. The films were shown in the roughest possible cut and the incoherent quality made me wish that the man had had even semi-reputable backers. They might well have turned out to be dogs but at least they'd have been shown as the director had intended. The documentary also shows a number of short comedic sketches that Welles had written and filmed in 70s England which, if I'm blunt, translate three decades later into a 3rd rate Monty Python script, binned before Graham Chapman had the chance to spill a drink on it.

Definitely worth watching, though, if only to hear the great man thunder his way through a few chapters of Moby Dick.

Thanks Tatty, I am a big Orson fan, I did a one day seminar about him a few years ago. There was a woman in the audience who had worked with Him when she was young. She said, she was in awww of him, very difficult at times, but she loved working for him.

I think that this is one of the extras on the Criterion edition of F For Fake.

Kantoku - Banzai (2007, Takeshi Kitano)

It's hard to know where to begin with Kantoku - Banzai, it really is. Perhaps the best way to approach things is to first offer a potted filmography of Kitano's recent work.



After the divisive critical responses to Brother and Dolls (though I still maintain that Dolls is one of the most affecting films I've seen), Japan's Renaissance Man and all-round auteur found himself going in a completely different direction with the supremely enjoyable (and accessible) Zatoichi (2003).

How on earth does one follow that up without being further pigeon-holed and making a quick yen with Zatoichi 2 or another existentialist Yakuza drama?

The answer, for Kitano, was to look inward. This resulted in the essay in deconstructionalism that was Takeshis'. Takeshis' was everything that Zatoichi was not - willfully impenetrable to the casual observer and more than a little self indulgent to even a devoted fanboy such as myself.

Kantoku - Banzai sees the director attempting more self-analysis, this time with a comedy not seen since 1995's Getting Any? (a film that I do not have an awful lot of time for). The basic premise has Kitano (playing himself in a similar, though not identical, fashion to Takeshis') attempting to overcome a succession of box office flops by making films in a variety of different genres; accompanied by the voice of a wonderfully bitchy narrator who details each effort's shortcomings to the nth degree.



Some of these films-within-films are great: the tardy Ringu rip-off Noh Theatre; the homage to everything Chop Socky (and more than a nod to Zatoichi) that is Blue Raven: Ninja Pt II and the tale of family strife set in the 1950s, Coal-Tar & Rikidozan.

This last slice of picaresque fantasy is especially diverting, harking back as much to prime Mike Leigh as it does to Ozu. If Coal-Tar & Rikidozan had been made feature-length and left at that I'd have been a lot happier, in fact.

Around the film's half-way point, Kantoku - Banzai shifts focus towards just one film, the supposed Sci Fi thriller The Promised Day, and this is where things take a marked turn.



Superficially, the Promised Day segment is merely an excuse for Kitano to indulge in the broad slapstick of Getting Any? - cue tons of knob gags, people falling over, cross dressing and general mayhem. It even gets a little Pythonesque in places...crossed with an adult episode of the Tellytubbies...

Maybe I just don't 'get' Japanese humour. Maybe this is why I found Getting Any? such hard going.



Maybe this is why I found parts of Kantoku - Banzai almost toe-curling in their crassness.

Gloom was beginning to descend on Chez Tatt, let me tell you, so I forced myself to watch the entire film again and, putting cultural differences/expectations to one side and trying to focus on what the director was trying to tell me, the patient viewer. The answer is probably (I say 'probably' because Kitano has a fantastic habit of not giving a flying **** about what people think) nothing more than a sideways look at how the Japanese public expect one of their idols to behave.

It's quite apparent that the 'Kitano' character turns into an indestructible fibreglass mannequin whenever the going gets tough. In fact the scenes between the various film-ettes on show portray our hero desperately attempting to kill off his static alter ego...

...Make of that what you will.



In summation, then, Kantoku - Banzai reminded me of Monty Python's Meaning of Life - A succession of disparate sketches hung on one tenuous hook. Heck, there's even a Gilliam-esque animation sequence and the closing Glory To The Filmmaker title comes straight out of Life of Brian.

The movie's second half is tough going. Indeed, were it not for the decidedly daffy interplay between Kayoko Kishimoto and the achingly cute Anne Suzuki I might have found myself reaching for the FF button in places. *

Unlike Getting Any?, however, Kantoku - Banzai has a heart the size of a heavyweight wrestler (and there's a wonderfully daft wrestling scene here - how's that for a segue? ) and is rescued by an interestingly pointed first half with one genuinely great chapter - if you liked Kikujiro the the film is worth getting for Coal-Tar & Rikidozan alone - and just enough cultural commentary and loveable characters in the second.

As the doctor says at the end (after giving the mannequin Kitano an MRI scan, natch), "Mr Kitano, your brain is broken."

For all its flaws, Glory to the filmmaker!



* For those of a lecherous disposition, the first half features a few appearances by Yuki Uchida (including one where she's wearing the tightest jeans in the known world) who is, and I'll stop before I dribble over the keyboard, one heck of a fine lookin' woman.

Good write up Tac, and pretty much what I thought too.

You've got to wonder sometimes, yeah I know we probably don't get half the allusions in films like this, but how far does the mischievious person that is Kitano go in making films for personal indulgance - just for a laugh? Let's think ourselves into his shoes, we know he has a wicked sense of humour, we know he only makes films he wants to, not what other people want him to, so why not make a film where you have a lot of fun with your mates and stand back and see how flummoxed reviewers are and how they scrabble to put any meaning to what they've seen? It'd make me laugh if I was him

Aye, the reason why I gave Kantoku - Banzai a second viewing so quickly after the first is because one of Kitano's many sides (and one which I admire the most) is his complete refusal to do what the public expect him to. On a personal level it backfired a few times here but you always get the feeling that he's giving a wink here and there to both fans and critics alike.


Of course, after two such self indulgent pieces of cinema, the public will expect a third so it'll be just like Kitano to select a different gear once again and serve us up something more, shall we say, traditional.

What did you think of the short film on the DVD, Chris? It was charming enough to have made it into the first half of the main feature.

I've not watched the short film yet, I've lent the film to a friend of Jims who I'm making into a Kitano fan I'll watch it when I get it back and let you know.