this is england

Now that Mr. Snow is no longer Mr. Bicycle and is back to being Mr. Snow, we are finally getting to work through our massive heist of DVDs from my last trip to Indonesia (all certified genuine legal copies of course, Mr. Customs Officer, in case you are reading this).

One of the best of this batch so far has undoubtedly been This Is England. I never thought I would describe a film about skinheads in early 80’s Midlands Britain as sensitive and funny, but this film really is that. The opening montage sets the scene perfectly with scenes from then: Atari’s Space Invaders, Charles and Diana’s wedding, the Falklands war and great music that continues throughout the film.

Shaun, a 12-year old boy who lost his father in the war, gets drawn into and is slowly adopted by a bunch of older skinheads, and then by their more hard-core friend Combo. The sight of the little boy with his shaved head may seem shocking, as is the rascist abuse they literaly train Shaun in. But the film says just as much about the sad and depressed lives in the city where they live.

More a snapshot of one summer than a story about the movement, and all the more moving for it. Possibly the best film I have seen so far this year… and others would agree.

how long could you survive in the vacuum of space?

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eastern promises

I have to say, the last time Mr. Snow and I watched a film by David Cronenberg, we swore never again. eXistenZ was body horror with a plot that neither of us got (maybe plots are not so important here?). I steered well clear of Crash but finally felt brave enough with Eastern Promises.

In this tale of Russian mafia in London, the gore is limited to a couple (!) of bloody assasination scenes. There are several larger-than-life characters, both the mafia boss and his driver, brilliantly played by Viggo Mortensen who really isn’t Russian at all. Naomi Watts plays the much more down-to-earth midwife who delivers the baby of a 14 year old Russian girl who was tied up with the crooks.

To be fair, there are a couple of things that didn’t quite gel, like all the baddies speaking to each other in heavily Russian-accented English, and the kingpin’s son, Kirill, played by Vincent Cassel whose character never seems to progress much beyond swigging booze right from the bottle. But while sometimes seeming to be a parody of itself, there are several great twists to the story (one of which Mr. Snow managed to guess) as well as a couple of heart-stopping moments (a bath house fight scene, anyone?) that made the film for me.