“That's an alien, bruv, believe it!"

Hello everyone :-)

Last Thursday I went to see the first directorial offering from Joe Cornish of ‘Adam and Joe Show’ fame. Aliens descend on Brixton; welcome to ‘Attack the Block’.

The story goes a gang of 5 kids mug a trainee Nurse as she’s walking home. As they’re taking her things something falls from the sky, crashes into a car and the Nurse seizes the opportunity to run away. The gang look into the car and before they know what’s going on, whatever fell from the sky lashes out at Moses (the gang leader) and runs away. Moses, whose pride has taken a beating, sets out with his gang to kill whatever it was that scratched his face. The gang find the creature, discover it’s an alien and promptly dispatch it. This unleashes an alien invasion on the tower block where they live and they must all band together to protect the Block.

People are understandably talking about the language. Every other word is ‘blood’, ‘cuz’, ‘bare’, ‘fam’, ‘peak’, ‘murk’, ‘bruv’, ‘shank’, ‘shiv’ and whatever else. I think of it a bit like French. I can understand it, if someone asked me a question and spoke like that I’d know what they were saying, but I wouldn’t be able to answer them in the same language… I understand it but I can’t speak it. I really love the way the gang talk, it adds a lot of humour and it’s true, there really are kids that talk like that. There have been some who have suggested that because the language is so South London, the movie will find it hard to travel. I’d have harboured the same concerns but during the South by Southwest festival Cornish did a Q and A where he asked the audience if they could understand the slang and they all said yes, and that’s in Texas…

The cast are awesome. I cannot fault them. The five that make up the gang have been given a mammoth task as for most of them this is their first time in a feature film but also they’ve been given the task of making chavs likeable and I think they totally succeed on all counts. 
Sam the Nurse played by Jodie Whittaker is good. She’s the audience’s point of reference amongst the drug dealers and gang members; Sam is the bastion of normality.
There are a few smaller parts I like. Nick Frost is the Block’s resident drug dealer Ron. He raises a few chuckles along with Brewis played by Luke Treadaway, a thoroughly middle class stoner. On the flipside of that is High Hatz, Ron’s boss, drug lord and self proclaimed owner of the Block, he is pretty terrifying.
Most of the praise however must be heaped on the five young actors that play the gang members. They make this film.
Leeon Jones, Franz Drameh and Simon Howard play Jerome, Dennis and Biggz respectively. They add different things to the group, Jerome is clearly a bit brighter than the others, Dennis is the brooding bad boy and Biggz tries to put on a front but really he’s a kid that wants to play FIFA.
Pest is my favourite, played by Alex Esmail. He has all the best lines, all the biggest laughs and a seemingly endless supply of fireworks. Esmail pitches it perfectly between endearing and annoying; you love him and laugh at him at the same time.
Moses is the leader and newcomer John Boyega makes a proper impact. I love him as Moses (no points for getting the biblical reference to ‘setting his people free’). A great performance as the ostensibly amoral, teenage gang member that’s torn between what’s right and what he needs to do to get on in the world of the Block.

I feel like I should say, it's possibly not as funny as is being suggested. I know the poster says 'From the Producer of Shaun of the Dead' and yes I did just say the language is funny but there are some shocks. I found parts of it funny but then to be fair I have an odd sense of humour, there are a few deaths that are pretty bad (one of which owes a lot to the end of 'Raiders of the Lost Arc') and I'd hate for people to go thinking 'lets laugh at the way the chavs talk' and then get an awful shock when they see someone being eaten by a monster. Be prepared for a bit of blood.

I love that everything seems to have come together to make for a wonderfully cohesive whole, it's really nice to see something that just works. The music is innocuous when it needs to be and punchy in the more action filled scenes (Basement Jaxx have done a sterling job). The film had a budget of about £8,000,000 and although the visuals aren’t flashy it looks really good. The monsters are live action with a little bit of computer trickery which makes them simple yet effective; proving that the best monsters are the ones you can’t see when the lights are off, save for several rows of bioluminescent teeth. 
The Block itself is full of little idiosyncrasies; time lag lights, union flags and all. I can’t help but feel a touch of ‘what ifs’ about it though. ‘What if they’d had a bit more money, imagine what it could have been’ but in all honesty the film succeeds in spite of its small budget and I was never left wanting.

I haven’t seen or heard anything Cornish has done before so I went to this with no expectations but I definitely left a fan.  It’s evident that Joe Cornish knows what he’s doing. He’s painfully cine-literate and ‘Attack the Block’ owes more to films like ‘Assault on Precinct 13’ and ‘Escape from New York’ rather than full on alien invasion films like ‘War of the Worlds’ or ‘Independence Day’ but there’s also an obvious comparison with stuff like ‘Kidulthood’. What Cornish has managed to do is to acknowledge these influences and still create something that is shiny new.
He has a real talent when it comes to visuals, creating the desired effect and for a film that comes in at under 90 minutes he’s managed to develop his characters but avoid skimping on the action. I doff my proverbial cap to you sir.

I found it a funny, scary and exciting watch. This is exactly the kind of cinema that should be coming from the UK; we need to aim high just like ‘Attack the Block’ does. It’s a great idea executed with flair and weirdly has a kind of truth about it. I mean, aliens’ aside the characters could be real people living on an estate round the corner. Cornish has made his mark as far as I’m concerned. I’ll be keeping an eye on what he’s doing next.

Now I think it’s time for…

Reasons to be Cheerful
1. ‘Pala’ is released this week! The new offering from Friendly Fires is hotly anticipated because their first single from it, ‘Live those days Tonight’ is brilliant also they were the soundtrack to the entire of my 2009 so I’m looking forward to this. It should be delivered to me today so I’ll let you know what it’s like.

2. Donald Trump isn’t running for President. Thank God. I mean the whole thing was mental anyway but the idea of having that badly syruped megalomaniac in charge of arguably the most powerful nation on the earth is just too much to bear. And quite frankly Obama is far too cool to be kicked out of office. After Trump publicly questioned whether Obama was born in the US, at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner Obama said that since his birth certificate had now been released, the businessman could focus "on the issues that matter, like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and 2Pac?" Mr Trump, you sir, have been OWNED!

3. Watermelons have been exploding in China. Another example of a story that sounds like a euphemism but isn’t.

That’ll do for today.

Goodbye till next time :-)

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