This Is England.

Has anybody seen this one yet?

not yet, its been on film four quite a few times but keep missing it..

It's wicked, but very violent and the language is terrible!

Look out for the punk, Smell, played by Rosamund Hanson. I think shes well up for it!

wasn't it filmed in Nottingham.

I was going to that I wasn't sure, but I remember seeing the beach in the film. I'll look it up and edit the place onto this post.

I think it was, in snienton i think.

The info on the film says Grimsby.

maybe some parts where film in nottingham.

We've would have heard about it if it was. I'm down in Sneinton nearly every week since 2003.

Good film.

I thought it was filmed in Nottingham to,for some reason?

Director Shane Meadows is from Nottingham. Here's what IMDb has in the way of filming locations.

Not one sign of interest from Americans on here, which is a shame indeed (I've recommended Meadows's films many times on here; I think some board members would love his stuff).

This is what I wrote on This Is England upon watching it the first time round.

An expansion upon A Room for Romeo Brass (and this is his most autobiographical film since that film), early on - in fact as early as the credits and opening establishing shots - it has an air of obviousness about it; one might be forgiven for groans of "It's not going to be like this, is it?" It gets better, though, even if Meadows is a decent storyteller at best, and a lazy one at worst - whenever he hits a narrative pitfall, he'll use a montage sequence to some sort of acoustic tune (predictable way of evoking some emotion and sense of time lapse), and the ending is almost insulting. But whatever of story-telling deficiencies, this is his most ambitious film yet, a multi-threaded tale of literal gang-culture and political allegory (it covers the Falklands War and immigration at a time of endless and futile efforts in Iraq), and does so in psychologically and morally complex ways. These two levels of narrative are weaved together by a third, the contrived but excellently-performed father-son relationship between the film's young protagonist and the older gang-leader and would-be nationalist. And if it's a messy 100 minutes or so, it is not without moments as explosive, powerful and intense as anything Dead Man's Shoes had to offer. That film's star, Paddy Considine, is absent here, but in his place is Stephen Graham, whose performance is nothing short of staggering; he steals all the film's best moments - his first scene proper, in which he tells of his time in jail with racist abandon; giving a speech on immigrants and the government and the Falklands; when he explodes into fury upon an underling who asks him if he really believes in "all this shit"; an attack on an Asian corner shop; a subtler moment of half-convincing affection; and he's completely convincing as a torn psychopath in the climax. Meadows is incredible at evoking tension and portraying power struggles, and he is at his best when he is simply showing several men in one place with their egos threatened by other forces.

On reflection, I think I prefer the simpler but more powerful Dead Man's Shoes.

Thanks Capo de La Cosa Nostra for clearing the location place up. I don't know why I wasn't told it was being filmed when it was here in 2006.

Maybe because you're the first one who actually talked about the film. I added it to Neflix as the preview looked pretty good...

Check out Meadows's earlier films, too.

TwentyFourSeven (1997)
A Room for Romeo Brass (1999)
Dead Man's Shoes (2004)

You can miss Once Upon a Time in the Midlands (2002), which had too much studio interference (though as a semi-comic throwback, however awkwardly judged, to Leone's Spaghetti Westerns, it might tickle you the right way), and suffered from bloated production and messy narrative.

Romeo Brass isn't on the list, and 247 isn't yet available, but Shoes is... I'll see if I like this one first. There's a Somers Town (2008) listed as well with an unknown release date...

Good movie! Kinda disturbing, the racism and seeing an 18 year old girl passionately kissing a 12 year old boy. And the mother was, well, not the most attentive mother on the planet. But the acting was really good all around. I'm not sure about the direction - some of it looked fabulous, but more the pacing seemed to be slightly out of whack. Maybe that was intended, or just me. Overall, recommended.

Well, it's meant to be disturbing. It's made in the vein of "social realism", or "kitchen sink dramas", which is a 1960s genre of British film and TV (made by the likes of Ken Loach and Mike Leigh), intended to be far-from-flashy, naturalistic social commentaries that the working class can relate to. Meadows sets it in the 80s, when he was growing up himself (the script is fictional, but borrows from his own adolescence), but it has much political resonance in today's climate, of fathers not returning from war, of disillusioned youths, of issues such as immigration, and the racial tensions that it may bring about.

Yeah, Thomas Turgoose is great - he was too young to even attend the film's premiere. Stephen Graham (previously seen in Snatch) steals the show, for me.


Could you be more specific? Did you find it slow at times?

I find Meadows very much influenced by Scorsese (and the aforementioned British directors), but he's not as good a storyteller; whenever the narrative hits a dead-end, he'll cut to a montage of archive footage of 80s popular culture, to overcome the emotional stance of the film that's become problematic. Storytelling isn't his strongest asset; he's at his best when portraying power relations between men, when prides and egos are threatened in the same room as one another. There's some incredibly tense stuff in his films; from this film alone: the raid on the corner shop ("I will slay you now you Paki [BadWord]"), the scene between Combo and Lol in the car (thought he was going to flip!), when Combo stops the car after Pukey questions the whole nationalism thing, the climactic turn between Combo and Milky ("What makes a good dad, then?").

Anyway, I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'd definitely see Dead Man's Shoes next (and soon), which is a simpler film (less ambitious), but possibly better. I think you'll like it more.

Yeah, in places. Which is fine, it just didn't seem exactly right. And I think you're right about the montages - too overdone. We already know what year it is!

Just added DMS to my Top 5.