I watched This Is England last night. It's my new favorite movie right now. It's not, like, my all time favorite or anything (I don't even know what my all time favorite movie is, anyway)... but it's what I'm going to be recommending for like the next month or so.
Being an 11 or 12 years old kid, is hard. Also, 1983 in some shit coastal town in England. There is cool hair and cool clothes.
On another level, the movie illustrates the gradual partial appropriation of English skinhead culture by nationalist and race driven political movements of early 80s. When Shuan first joins the local skinhead crew, they are basically apolitical. There's a great scene in the beginning, where Shaun is invited to go haunting with the rest of the kids (who are all older teenagers). They dress up in funny clothes and raid abandoned houses and break windows. But things change, and Shaun is pulled away from the loose egalitarian anarchism of the initial group, toward political activism and racist thuggery. Anyway, the movie has some heavy shit going on, too. I mean, it's warm and touching, and you sort of wish that these kids were your crew when you were young. Even Combo, who's sort of the antagonist of the movie (and he does some pretty fucked up, violent shit)... you want to like him too. He's just fucked, and trying to find something to cling to.
word.
oh, and the soundtrack is friggin awesome.
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