My thoughts on the two films…

Blood Simple

I love the Coen brothers work and had been wanting to see their first commerical feature length film for a few years now I finally got around to seeing it today. I really liked it. It definitely felt Coenish? Intrigue, slow pacing, great noirish feel and soundtrack. Open wide shots of Texan countryside. So much to love. The cast was pretty top notch and did a great job projecting the characters. The thing that stuck with me the most was the sense of dread and emotional heaviness, that though not always existent, was very palpable in certain scenes, like the finale in the apartment or the scene where Marty is buried alive..

This is England

Watched this earlier in the week. It is a simple film about a boy’s troubles growing up without a father in England during the 1980’s (his father was lost in the Falklands War). A major portion of the plot revolves around a group of Skinheads who sort of “adopt” the boy. The film gets quite heavy at times when examining the Skinhead movement and the way it devolved from a sub-culture focused on Ska, reggae and Jamaican rude boy culture into a more explicitly racist and Neo-Nazi subculture. My favorite part of the film was early one when the kids are running around the countryside just mucking about. It reminded me of the childhood pastimes my two British friends Nitai and Sita always talk about, how much fun they would have just running about and stirring shit up.

Buy the films here and here