MamaGravity good back-story, and good acting

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Bessie Smyth Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Lachlan Coulson This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

eddie_baggins A film of raw, unrelenting and passionate power, This is England remains underrated director Shane Meadows greatest singular achievement and one of Britain's all-time great feature length films.Spawning a collection of worthy mini-series follow ups in the years that followed its critically praised initial release, This is England not only deals with a politically charged time in the United Kingdom's Maggie Thatcher lead period of the 80's but examines the deep undercurrent of racism often present in otherwise civilised western countries all the while being a touching coming of age story of Thomas Turgoose's 12 year old Shaun.Meadows, who has also displayed a power as a filmmaker to make uncompromising films of almost documentary style realism, evidenced in other standout efforts like A Room for Romeo Brass and Dead Man's Shoes, directs This is England with both an unflinching eye and a compassionate hand as his believable and lovable characters experience life changing events all the while surrounded by a country that has reached a boiling point of tension and rage.Led by Turgoose's incredible well-constructed debut turn as the vulnerable Shaun who finds himself a part of a ragtag group of skinheads and rascals, This is England's cast that includes such recognisable faces as Joseph Gilgun as the lovable larrikin Woody, Vicky McClure as the deep thinking Lol, Andrew Shim as the Jamaican/British Milky and a young Jack O'Connell as feisty teenager Pukey, is one of the Britain's best ever assembled casts, the case of the perfect performers coming together as a whole that proved it was no lighting in a bottle occurrence when the large portion of the cast returned again for Meadow's award winning TV follow-ups.As good as both Meadows and his cast are in This is England, this film is owned completely by one of the modern eras most commanding and attention grabbing performances by Stephan Graham as the racist, tormented and charismatic Combo.A performer who has proved time and time again that his one of the best working in the business, yet a performer who has yet to receive his just rewards, Graham's Combo is a creation that's hard to describe, a fully inhabited incarnation that can only be achieved by actors at the very top of their game.When Combo makes his entrance into This is England's characters somewhat carefree lives at the 30 minute mark of the film, Meadows film marks its change in direction and tone and enters into an hour or so of cinematic brilliance as we're driven along by Graham's tour de force turn and a story that may seem on the surface to be simplistic, but ends up flooring us with a knockout punch that will linger days after initial viewing.Encapsulating the time and place of this period incredibly well, a landscape full of checkered shirts, suspenders, shaved heads, Doc Martins and a killer soundtrack, Meadows team-up with his performers, that is steered on its powerful course by Graham, create the world that makes This is England such a special and in many ways important film experience.Final Say – Far from an easy watch, This is England may not be everyone's cup of tea but Shane Meadow's gut-punch of a film remains to this day one of the most deceptively powerful and memorably casted films of the 21st century that includes an outstanding debut performance from Thomas Turgoose and a career best turn from Stephen Graham.5 Ben Sherman shirts out of 5

ereinion This movie is full of tragedy, yet also redemption. It is a story about one young boy who ends up in the wrong crowd. It is 1983 and Shaun is a 12-yearold boy whose father was killed a year ago in the Falklands War. Worth noting is the choice of year, as it was a time of major political and social upheaval in Britain. Miner strikes and dissatisfaction with Thatcher's regime. It is this dissatisfaction that also is shown here, albeit from a very extreme perspective of the skinhead leader Combo. Combo is a character full of contradictions, as he is both a racist and nationalist, and at the same time in denouncing the Falklands War as a rubbish Thatcher-invention, he is also talking the language of the common man, the oppressed man. Those who have been hurt by the war the most are people like him, people who had no grudge against Argentina but had to fight in that war, millions of miles away from home. While at the same time many so-called "respectable" and "politically correct" Englishmen and Britons supported that war and many still think it was right to fight it. This shows the yawning gap between the working class and the upper class. Working class is sick of having to take foreigners from third world countries "taking over" their neighbourhoods with their stores and restaurants and "taking their jobs", while the government does nothing and profits from the foreign "injection".Shaun is a kind of objective figure here, who is never too much on either side, even though he accepts Combo as a sort of father figure or big brother figure. I think even the ones among us who hold some kind of grudge towards the immigrants, especially ones from afar, will feel sickened by the scene where Combo holds a knife against an Indian boy's throat, just because he and his friends played football on "his" court. Even if some of us have had negative experiences with for instance a Pakistani or Indian, watching this makes us pity that Indian boy. I know it made me feel like that and it took away any kind of grudge I might have felt towards their kind. Stephen Graham does a great job as Combo and the young Tom Turgoose also is very effective for a debutante and for his age. This is a film everyone should watch and learn from. It is a young boy's spiritual education, as Shaun finally realizes that his father didn't die fighting for the nationalist, racist England but for a united England. And everyone must accept that their society has changed.Combo is one unhappy, tormented character. A guy who was obviously scarred early in life and cannot feel anything but anger, or can he? Despite always trying to look as cold and hard as possible, he harbours feelings for Lol, the girlfriend of his friend who then turns away from him because of his racism, after Combo returns from prison. After he gets rebuked by Lol for confessing his feelings for her, he gets more dangerous. He only wants to feel loved and to have a good life, but can't. He hangs out with losers for the most part. One exception is the mild-mannered Milky, the half-Jamaican. This all makes you wonder: is Combo really a racist? Or is it only anger and frustration that make him say and do racist things? This is a very strong character study and one of the few films I have seen to try and deconstruct what lies behind, or inside, an average racist and his mind.I give this film a 9, because it is a very compelling and important film and a good lesson for any young man who may harbour some kind of animosity towards people of other race. Feeding on hatred and living on hatred will only make you miserable and end in tragedy, as it does for Combo. But one can hope that he is headed towards finding redemption as well, while Shaun found the right way to go.

tomgillespie2002 Shane Meadows' This is England, like the title suggests, is a bare- knuckled, fearlessly honest depiction of England. This isn't any old England, but Thatcher's angry, graffiti-ridden, skinheaded England, a time of needless war, poverty, and, key to the film, racial intolerance. Meadows' loosely autobiographical film lays it's anger out for all to see from the off, as the camera lingers on a council-estate wall scrawled with 'Maggie is a t**t'. But there's humour here also, and heart.We witness the majority of the film through the eyes of Shaun Fields (Thomas Turgoose - his character's name a thinly-disguised spin on that of the director's), a ragged, bullied loner, who lives alone with his mother after his father is killed in the Falklands. Walking home one evening from school, he is pitied by Woody (Joseph Gilgun), a Dr. Martens-wearing skinhead who, along with his friends, enjoys some harmless vandalism taken out on derelict properties. Woody takes him under his wing, even buying him a Ben Sherman and braces, and shaving his head. His mum doesn't approve, but at least he's being looked after. All is rosy until Woody's old friend Combo (Stephen Graham) is released from prison.His time in prison taught Combo that England is no longer what it once was, and is now overrun by immigrants taking away jobs from honest folk like himself and his bare-chested, meat-head friend Banjo (George Newton). He draws a line for Woody's gang - those who want to join him on his crusade to help restore England to it's glory days, and those who don't. Woody quickly points out that Combo is out of line, especially in the presence of his Jamaican friend Milky (Andrew Shim). But when Woody leaves, Shaun stays, and is sucked in by Combo's charisma, attending right-wing rallies in countryside pubs and smashing up the local shop owned by a Pakistani man.Like Elem Klimov's Come and See (1985), the child protagonist does the remarkable thing of ageing throughout. Not a physical transformation like Florya, but in presence. He evolves effortlessly from a boy whining at his mum in a shoe shop for not buying him a pair of Dr. Martens, to a foul-mouthed, brainless thug gobbling up everything that is fed to him by those around him. Meadows makes it clear that there are two types of skin-heads - those who embrace the style and image influenced by black music such as ska, and those bigoted, entitled types, channelling anger simply because it's there. Combo is obviously the second kind, but he has own dimensions too.Stephen Graham's performance is spectacular and genuinely terrifying. Anyone who has grown up in England will know the type; the type thankfully I've only ever come across when they get on a train and quickly draw attention to themselves. His words fly like scouse venom, his every line punctured by a swear word. But his protection of Shaun and his occasional child-like vulnerability means that there's sympathy to be given somewhere. Like all great child performances, Turgoose remains a child throughout, avoiding precociousness even in his most emotional scenes. And it's 12 year-old Shaun that remains the film's anchor, our wide-eyed window into innocence manipulated.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

low_flying This movie was somewhat tough to know how to take. On the one hand - as a movie about coming of age - it's a fairly straight-forward, effective film. Shaun's anger and depression about the death of his father fighting in the Falklands is slowly eating away at him, and his new skinhead friends don't help him learn to cope with that, but they do give him a distraction and a sense of belonging that he obviously craves. Shaun is easily influenced, and Woody becomes a type of father figure to him, helping him find his own place in the world around him. On the other hand, though, the movie in very insular. Combo talks about the money and jobs lost to immigrants, but aside from the Falklands, there doesn't seem to be any real link between this group of skins and the outside world. They never seem to actually exist in the real world, other than the mob's trip to the National Front rally and when Woody's girlfriend heads to work. So when Combo decides to espouse his political points of view to the rest of the gang, it feels hollow and almost disjointed; here is this group of skinheads who never seem to work and do nothing except sit around, drink beer, smoke pot, and listen to records. And as Combo has spent the last several years in prison, he doesn't feel like someone who would be in the know about the political situation in England at the time. However, the details of the movie are fairly accurate. The National Front did play a huge role in attracting skinheads to their cause in the 80s, and the fashions are pretty spot on, as is the music. Although I think that the movie doesn't make much of an effort to pander to the uninitiated. If you don't know skinhead culture, you're going to find yourself lost on occasion. But by and large, most of the movie can be understood and appreciated without knowledge of what it is to be skinhead. Overall a decent movie, if not a bit two dimensional.