Attack the Block
(Reviewed on 10/12/2011)
The "Teamin Up To Fight Back" ROSSMAN
If someone were to just watch the first five minutes of Attack the Block (wherein we see a young, cute woman getting mugged by 5 completely assholic youths in South London), and then be told that we would be rooting for these 5 gang-bangers to save the day by the end of the movie as much as we ever cheered for John McClane in the original Die Hard, that person would call "horse shit" on us. But, as much as I could not believe it myself, that's exactly what happens.
I personally detest little freaks who need to join gangs in order to feel important and to pick on those weaker than themselves, but even though the five lead characters in Joe Cornish's British, sci-fi, action, horror movie (Attack the Block, cunt-brain) are the dickiest of the dicky punk-ass-bitches at the beginning of this story, they eventually pull their shit together (in a very believable way) and do the right (and pretty brave) thing by the final end credits.
Let me back up and talk about Attack the Block from the beginning. Things start off on the night of November 5th (with fireworks going off everywhere in celebration of Guy Fawkes Day) with the mugging of 20-something nurse Samantha on her way home to "the Block" (a giant apartment building in the bad end of South London). The 5 teenagers who do the mugging are seriously enjoying scaring the shit out of Sam, but they're soon distracted by something falling from the sky and blowing up a car right behind them. Sam uses the distraction to run to safety, and the 5 muggers investigate the act of vandalism they weren't lucky enough to create.
They're attacked by a small, ugly as sin, fanged creature that emerges from the wreckage (looking like a creepy, vicious, eyeless orangutan), but they immediately chase the thing down and beat the shit out of it till it's dead. Thank Christ E.T. didn't land in England.
The 5 kids (led by one bad ass mo-fo called Moses) then parade the dead beastie around their 'hood before storing it in their dealer's "weed room" until they can decide how to use it to become rich and famous. That's about the time that they begin to notice a whole shit-ton more meteorites crashing down into the city amid the country's celebration, and they proceed to arm themselves in order to go out and kill some more extraterrestrial intelligent life. Unfortunately for our gang of hoodlums the newest arrivals are not pussy-like pushovers like the first alien they whacked. The new arrivals are the size of medium-sized bears, furry, pitch black (so black that even getting close enough to touch one you can't see any details beyond "black"), and have glowing fangs. And they're PISSED.
This is when hell breaks loose, people start dying horrific (yet entertaining) deaths, and everybody around the Block begins running for their lives from the pitch-black aliens, the cops, and some pissed off drug dealers. Samantha gets caught up in the shitstorm herself after joining the pigs in a street search for the perps who attacked her, and soon the blood and guts get almost as thick as the South London slang that keep piling up (the dialect and slang is not unintelligible, but it does require some quick translating in your head to understand what the kids are saying some of the time).
That's all I'll tell you about this thing. You really don't want to know any more details. Watching Attack the Block for the first time is like watching the original Nightmare on Elm Street, or Alien without knowing anything about how the characters will react and save themselves from what seems to be an unstoppable foe that only wants to kill or eat them. Writer/director Joe Cornish's debut film is so much goddamn fun that it'd be a crime to ruin any of the big saves, terrible deaths, and explosive finale just for shits and giggles. It's scary (not as frightening as I had hoped for though), it's intense (especially scenes like the "smokey hallway" run), and its humor is just a step or two darker than Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz (meaning it's gross, but funny as fuck when it wants to be). Cornish seriously knocked one way out of the park on his premiere project. I would have sworn that this was a film by Edgar Wright if I didn't know its lack of pedigree ahead of time. The pacing, the look, the angles, the gore, the suspense... Cornish has appeared on the British movie scene as a full-fledged director; no sloppy early work where he has to find his own footing first (Like Peter Jackson's Bad Taste). I am amazed.
Not much more to tell... Good movie, great gore, fun special effects, fantastic characters, bizarre situations (in a good way — meaning it's something new, and strange... Strangely new?)... It's almost the perfect Halloween movie. Or, if you wait a week it's the perfect Guy Fawkes Day movie too, right up there with V for Vendetta.
The Happy DR. DAVE
........I have not wanted anything more in my entire life than to dissect one of those absolute-black furred and glowing-fanged alien creatures. I would surgically remove my own left testicle. I would preserve the head of the creator of Two and a Half Men so that he could torture future generations with his inane and idiotic craftsmanship. I would create a mutation of the modern yellow jacket by splicing in some genes from a silverback gorilla and let it loose in the city. I would marry a corpse. Again. I would do almost anything I previously decried as "unethical" or harmful to myself for the chance to slice up one of those creatures... Then reanimate it with a slave collar and have myself a genuine hellhound to keep those goddamn kids off my lawn!
High-larious HITLER
Ach mein! Sehr Abschluss! Diese wilden, dennoch sehr Deutscher in der Natur, ausländische Geschöpfe schlossen fast den Job ab, den ich begann. Aber leider fielen sie außerdem aus. Nein! Nein! Wenn nur die Ausländer ein bisschen blonder waren und Arier dann bin ich sicher, dass sie groß gefolgt haben würden. Aber sie waren zu dunkel. Gerade wie die Juden! Ach mein! Ich verwirklichte gerade, dass ich für jüdische Ausländer gewurzelt habe! Zu guter Gott, was ist diese Welt gekommen?
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