Attack the Block (Joe Cornish, 2011)

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RossyG
Joined: Sat May 30, 2009 5:50 pm

Re: Attack the Block (Joe Cornish, 2011)

#26 Post by RossyG » Sun Sep 04, 2011 10:25 am

As a fully paid up member of the Chav Haters Club, I watched Attack the Block this morning fully expecting to hate it...

...but really enjoyed it. It's really clever film-making that both humanises hoodies but also points out the moral consequences of their antisocial/criminal behaviour whilst all the while telling a great sci-fi action story.

It's annoying in a way. I spent the first ten minutes trying so hard to hate it, but it was just too good. I had to admit defeat and lahk go wiv it, bruv, and ah ain't even lying. Get me?

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manicsounds
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 10:58 pm
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Re: Attack the Block (Joe Cornish, 2011)

#27 Post by manicsounds » Mon Sep 26, 2011 11:34 pm

For me, as enjoyable as the movie was, it was a bit difficult to sympathize with the main characters. Even with movies like "The Warriors" or "Resovoir Dogs" where you have main characters that are from the other-side-of-the-tracks, I think the viewers really watch them objectively, as opposed to "Attack The Block", where in an alien invasion movie, you're supposed to feel for them in terror. But I didn't feel for them...

And the humor was OK, but with the slapping of "The New 'Shaun Of The Dead'" is absolutely misleading. Much closer to Shane Meadows than Edgar Wright in this aspect.

Still, people should give it a spin. And the Blu-ray is loaded with special features. Just a big problem for me is the bonus DVD is copy protected.... can't rip the commentary tracks....

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James Mills
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Re: Attack the Block (Joe Cornish, 2011)

#28 Post by James Mills » Tue Sep 27, 2011 7:14 pm

This debate between Nothing and MichaelB is hilarious, especially the presumption that Attack the Block couldn't make someone's top 10 for the year.

I caught this at the LA Film Festival back in June and it was not only the best film I saw (of 9), it is very well may be my favorite film I've seen all year. Not that this is saying much considering I can only think of a few other films I've even marginally enjoyed this year, but nevertheless it's pretty solid.

Also, both the director and Edgar Wright were at my screening and neither seemed at all concerned with any "executive cut" that Nothing speaks of. They were sincerely proud of their work and I didn't hear anything that suggested otherwise.

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MichaelB
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Re: Attack the Block (Joe Cornish, 2011)

#29 Post by MichaelB » Wed Oct 19, 2011 11:50 am

Image

Beaver on the US Blu-ray.

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HistoryProf
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Re: Attack the Block (Joe Cornish, 2011)

#30 Post by HistoryProf » Sun Nov 27, 2011 4:38 am

I am as appalled by this thread as I was entertained by the film that inspired it. An absolute blast from the opening frames, a lot of laughs, some good scares here and there, and just an incredibly endearing slice of genre entertainment that's among the best I've seen in years. The kids were great, it doesn't take itself too seriously and try to become any kind of social message vehicle, it simply has fun with a great premise and has uniformly great performances from all the kids. Just one hell of a fun flick that absolutely deserves a spot in any top ten list anyone damn well feels like placing it in. I know I'll give a lot of consideration to keeping it in the bottom half of mine for sure....Super 8 is the only film I had more fun with this year.

Ignore all the bollocks on the first page of this thread and give it a shot.

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domino harvey
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Re: Attack the Block (Joe Cornish, 2011)

#31 Post by domino harvey » Thu Feb 02, 2012 9:41 pm

Yes, I hesitate to discuss the film in this thread, but I'm somewhere between the cheerleaders and the skeptics. Certainly it improves on its shaky "I dare you to put this back in the red envelope" first ten minutes or so, where it looks like I'll have to follow around a group of thuggish youths joy-smashing aliens. Well, I guess that does still occur, but the film wisely layers up their motivations and audience sympathies to make a modestly appealing genre experiment. Strongest caveat: you have to give a film like this a little rope for its outlandish scenarios, but the behavior of the drug dealer towards Our Kids seems aggressively illogical and counter-intuitive to the situation he finds himself in, which even if that's the point still strikes me as convenient at-best.

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Shrew
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Re: Attack the Block (Joe Cornish, 2011)

#32 Post by Shrew » Fri Feb 03, 2012 1:47 am

I agree the drug dealer is too much the stupid-evil-guy cliche of bad horror films, but he also represents the toxic masculinity (of violence, aggression, machismo, egoism) that the kids start in. (I.E. Thuggish youths joy-smashing aliens to show how tough they are). For me the great charm of the film is how it really rips that image to shreds (quite literally), allowing Moses to create a new and much more positive path.

ianungstad
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Re: Attack the Block (Joe Cornish, 2011)

#33 Post by ianungstad » Fri Feb 03, 2012 1:50 am

I didn't think this film was all that good.The character of Moses goes through the usual heroic antics and by the credits the various denizens of the block are cheering his name and protesting his arrest which is very odd considering that nobody outside of the "gang" has really witnessed any of these heroics, besides a brief scene of him hanging outside of a window at the film's climax. It's a cheat. We know the arc of the character and why we should be cheering him at the climax but one of the plot points of the film is that the outside world seems to be somewhat oblivious that any invasion is going on, which makes the conclusion of the film seem like a cop-out. I thought the characterization in the film was quite thin and don't see this as much more than a middling genre exercise. The director showed enough talent in crafting suspense that you wanted to see what would happen next and I think he'll have a successful career at the studios but this film is highly overrated. It seemed more like a showcase for a director who'll go onto bigger and better things than a great indie film.

Jeff Bannow
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Re: Attack the Block (Joe Cornish, 2011)

#34 Post by Jeff Bannow » Tue Feb 14, 2012 5:01 pm

I'm torn on this film - on the one hand, it seemed well made and was entertaining. On the other hand, I had trouble feeling any sympathy for the main characters. In the end, I found myself rooting for the aliens instead of the thugs!

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MichaelB
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Re: I demand a refund!

#35 Post by MichaelB » Thu Nov 15, 2012 9:43 am

Nothing wrote:(eg. did you bother to see/review Tony Scott's Unstoppable, just to take one random high profile example?)
I have finally "bothered to see" Unstoppable, which was indeed enormous fun.

I still haven't the faintest clue what Nothing was on about, mind - it doesn't affect my opinion of Attack the Block, and I can't see why it would have done.

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jazzo
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Re: Attack the Block (Joe Cornish, 2011)

#36 Post by jazzo » Thu Apr 11, 2019 11:18 am

Since there’s no dedicated thread to his (two) major works, this place seemed as good as place to drop this, but I’d like to offer up an enthusiastic recommendation for the new Joe Cornish film, The Kid Who Would Be King.

I have a lot of love for Cornish’s first film, Attack the Block. It was witty, big-hearted, and its scrappy DiY approach to genre went down very smoothly to a jaded horror fan, scratching that same itch that Joe Dante’s films used to for thirteen year-old me in the mid-eighties.

The Kid Who Would be King (TKWWBK) is all that and more.

It’s best to go in fresh, but I can honestly say that this and Roma were my two favourite films this year, and that TKWWBK is probably the best film made for older children since The Iron Giant (and trust me, with two young film fans in the household, I feel like I’ve become a connoisseur of the horseshit shovelled at kids for consumption). Perhaps the best way to describe how special it is, is by describing what it most definitely isn’t.

It's not cocky or ironic, and it doesn’t suffer from that flat tone and story beats that the Harry Potters and Percy Jacksons seem have imbued in every lifeless frame, until everything feels as though it was processed and reprocessed until it was all safe enough for absolutely everyone of every age to see to see. That’s speaking as someone who doesn’t even hate those films (well, I guess I hate the first two Harry Potters). I’m clearly not the audience, young or old, for them, but they’re just…there.

And that’s maybe the worst thing a film can do; not attempt to raise my expectations, just meet them at every turn.

That’s not this film.

A more apt (and very specific) comparison of what TKWWBK actually is would probably Brad Bird’s Tomorrowland, which, while admittedly wonky and deeply, deeply flawed, I stuck with and wound up admiring for that very oddity. If you found your heart swelling like mine did in that last scene – a scene that, in my opinion, irons out the many creases in the earlier parts of the film - you’ll be as affected by TKWWBK as I was, because that swelling is present in almost every frame of Cornish’s picture.

The absorption and reconstruction of the Legend of King Arthur within a modern context is respectfully, but cleverly done, and the journey our young heroes take is honest, often quite frightening, and most importantly, sad. Like adolescence.

It doesn’t overwhelm though. It’s too earnest for that.

TKWWBK has the spirit of an 80’s Spielberg adventure film, and the dignified air of classical folklore, all ensconced within a fairly honest account of what its like to be one of the outsider kids at the most awkward time of your life. It’s about trying to figure out where you belong. It also still has that same DiY nature that Attack the Block did, but on a much more ambitious scale. There were moments where I laughed out loud, and moments when my wife and I, separated by our two children, turned to each other in the theatre and held our hands to our hearts.

I’m not entirely sure why this picture has flown under the radar of most folks, both as a young person’s film, and more specifically as a Joe Cornish film, whom I’d like to think has engendered some good will with film aficionados because of the pleasant surprise that his first effort was.

Perhaps, outside of the UK, there’s no cultural pull for the Arthurian Legend, or perhaps it was because of its oddly off-putting trailer. I thought it looked terrible when I first saw it months ago, completely missing that it was a Joe Cornish film (speeding through the film’s credits, as they tend to do). But my eight year-old leaned over and said that looked really good and he really wanted to see it, and my wife and I reluctantly made a promise to take him.

In either case, we made good on our promise, and I’m so glad that we did. We loved it, as did both of our children.

I urge anyone with children or a passing interest in engaging stories filled with magic, wonder and heartbreak to please try and see it.

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Lost Highway
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Re: Attack the Block (Joe Cornish, 2011)

#37 Post by Lost Highway » Fri Apr 12, 2019 5:12 am

I didn’t think there was much which distinguished The Kid Who would be King from many other children’s films. Like in Attack the Block, Cornish tries to bring us round to warming to some kids who are introduced as villains. Again, he didn’t entirely convince me.

Otherwise this is standard fare. Meek, nerdy kid with even nerdier side-kick save the day. The main kid is raised by a struggling single mum. Rebecca Ferguson, one of two big names, is wasted in a one-note villain role and it all wears out its welcome in a CGI heavy action climax. The kid characters never transcend their stereotypes and I never quite believed that the two bullies got turned around by anything other than being shocked into submission by supernatural threats. I didn’t think the film was visually interesting, with undistinguished creature designs, one aspect where I thought Attack the Block came up with something original. If one dives into British folklore, I’d expect a film to make more of its locations

There are so many movies and TV shows which have used the Arthurian legend in a modern, comedy or children’s film context, so that wasn’t fresh to me either. I didn’t hate it, I just thought I’ve seen this movie many times before. A few days ago I watched The House with a Clock in Its Walls, which hits a lot of the same beats and while I didn’t think it was great shakes either, I enjoyed that a great deal more. It takes place in a Tim Burton/del Toro world, but does a good job of it, with plenty of visual gags and diversions. I didn’t feel like it cast its two movie stars merely to give the film a higher profile, it gave those stars roles to have fun with, which in turn drew me in as an adult.

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