LE DONK & SCOR-ZAY-ZEE - gonzo comedy at its best

LE DONK & SCOR-ZAY-ZEE is gonzo film-making at its best, and proves that you don't need millions of squids worth of CGI effects or a three hour Oscar-bait weepie to have good time at the cinema. Director Shane Meadows specialises in movies that simultaneously capture the grimy truth and everyday humour of life in Britain, and he's at it again in this short-ish feature - a movie that's more like his little character study/short NORTHERN SOUL than the more deliberate features like MADE IN BRITAIN and DEAD MAN'S SHOES. LE DONK is a mockumentary, with the real life Shane playing a fictional Shane, shooting a documentary about a Midlands roadie called Nicholas aka Le Donk, and his side-kick, wannabe rapper Scor-zay-zee aka Dean. We follow the hapless, vain, but ultimately love-able duo as Nicholas/Le Donk becomes a dad and Scor-zay-zee gets the chance to open for the "Artical Monkeys". This is a movie for everyone who laughed at Goldie Looking Chain and loves Spinal Tap and likes to see raw talent play itself out on screen. More power to Paddy Considine and more power to Shane Meadows. Now, can we have another proper full length movie please?!

LE DONK & SCOR-ZAY-ZEE is currently on release in the UK.

SOMERS TOWN - gritty humour undone by schmaltzy product placement

I'm a big fan of Shane Meadows' films and SOMERS TOWN didn't disappoint. It's a charming, laugh-out-loud funny story about a teenage boy called Tomo who leaves his no-hope life in the Midlands for London. He doesn't make it far from the railway station he arrives in - loitering in Somers Town - the area between Kings Cross and Euston. Despite being mugged, having no money and no plans, Tomo manages to survive, and even to have some laughs, through sheer bare-faced cheek. He sort of adopts a shy Polish kid called Marek and together they pash on a hot French waitress and earn money through some dodgy deals with a local Del-Boy.

Thomas Turgoose, the star of THIS IS ENGLAND, has grown up a lot but retains a winning mix of vulnerability and cheekiness as Tomo. Piotr Jagiello is sweet as his Polish side-kick. Meadows deserves praise for being able to elicit such natural performances from relatively inexperienced actors. As I said before, the movie is very, very funny, mostly because of Tomo's adolescent boasting, but also because of Perry Benson's larger-than-life wheeler-dealer. SOMERS TOWN also has some fine dramatic moments - not least an honest conversation between a Polish father and son.

My only problem with the film is its sense of unreality - the sheer ridiculousness of the fact that this young kid ships up in Camden and is basically taken in by a series of kind-hearted people. Even young Tomo can hardly believe it, questioning whether he'll have to perform sexual favours for his keep. I could almost forgive this deliberate "happy-go-lucky" atmosphere as an artistic choice, if it weren't for the final five minutes, all in colour, which basically serve as a sickly sweet ad for Eurostar. Imagine how good this film would've been if they'd have finished it as the two kids have their conversation on the balcony, Tomo returns to his polishing and they agree to meet up later......

He's definitely an actor to watch. SOMERS TOWN played Berlin 2008 and is currently on release in the UK.

Overlooked DVD of the month - ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE MIDLANDS

We all know that ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE MIDLANDS is neither as powerful nor as original as Shane Meadows' other movies - notably A ROOM FOR ROMEO BRASS, DEAD MAN'S SHOES and THIS IS ENGLAND. In his third feature, the Midlands-born director had a bigger budget, bigger stars and a less tight and focused script. Shirley Henderson plays a single mother called...well...Shirley. She has an uncertain accent, a plucky daughter, a sappy but kind-hearted boyfriend (Rhys Ifans) and a loser ex- (Robert Carlyle). A crisis is provoked when she refuses the sappy boyfriend's marriage proposal, prompting the ex to see if he still has a chance. Matters are complicated by the fact that Shirley is good friends with the ex's sister (Kathy Burke) and her flaky husband (Ricky Tomlinson.)

All the actors do a fine job, though the accents are pretty patchy. The Sergio Leone references stop at the title and the comic-strip sound-track. And there is less social commentary than we've come to expect from a Meadows film. Still, this film shouldn't be overlooked. It has a lot more heart than your average twee Brit rom-com and captures some of the messiness of real life. And you'll never see a better comic use of the reclining sofa.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE MIDLANDS played Cannes 2002 and is now available on DVD.

THIS IS ENGLAND - powerful British tragi-comedy

THIS IS ENGLAND is a meticulously put-together tragicomedy from British writer-director, Shane Meadows. It's set in England during the early 1980s and the opening credits sequence is a montage of everything good and grim about that era: Roland Rat, Rubik's Cube, the Falklands War, the Miners' Strike and the Brixton Riots. It was a time of great economic upheaval and social unrest, but also of fantastic new movements in music and fashion. The movie channels all this contradictory nostalgia and repulsion into a single story set in a Midlands town among a gang of skin-heads. At first, Meadows implicitly argues that the movement as a whole and this gang in particular were a bunch of well-meaning kids who liked to dress a certain way and listen to a certain kind of music. But despite the no-nonsense urban look, it was at heart a multi-racial movement for working class white and black kids. This was especially reflected in Two-Tone music, some of which makes it to the movie's sound-track. In the film, the heart of this happy alliance takes the form of Woody (Joseph Gilgun), a love-able white skin-head who takes pity on a lonely, bolshie little 12 year old called Shaun. He buys him cool clothes, stops him from getting bullied and gives him someone look up to - something he's been missing since his dad died in the Falklands. Woody's also best mates with a West Indian skin-head called Milky (Andrew Shim). The first half of THIS IS ENGLAND shows the gang hanging out, having a laugh and indulging in the odd bit of casual violence. It's absolutely hysterical, laugh-out-loud cinema; excellently written and delivered with superb comic timing by the whole cast, but especially the young Thomas Turgoose.

But much as with the movement, the gang gets hijacked by a darker, nastier strain of violent racism when an ex-con called Combo (Stephen Graham) turns up. He sees a world of mass unemployment and social under-privelege and comes to resent the immigrant population for their apparent success - with appalling results. The second half of the movie ratchets up the tension, with tour-de-force dramatic exchanges. The only weakness is that the film has about three endings. What this means is that we get some provocative use of Falklands war footage. I'm not sure whether Meadows had any clear idea what he was trying to say with the juxtaposition of the domestic drama and these images. Moreover, we get a final shot that references THE 400 BLOWS and, to my mind, is a lot less powerful than it should've been because of this distraction.

THIS IS ENGLAND played Toronto and London 2006 and Berlin and Dublin 2007. It opens in the UK on Friday, in the US on July 27th and in Australia on August 16th.

Overlooked DVD of the month - DEAD MAN'S SHOES

So, a friend of mine gave me a copy of DEAD MAN'S SHOES to watch because it is filmed in his home town of Matlock. I was not entirely thrilled. I have a well-known aversion to parts of the United Kingdom that lie outside Zone One of Central London, and it's not like I don't have enough movies to watch every day. I couldn't have been more stupid.

First off, the countryside surrounding the small town of Matlock looks stunning, and comes complete with a castle. It is captured in all its drama and sinister quietude by cinematographer Danny Cohen. Second, this movie takes the conventional revenge story and gives it a really novel re-telling. Paddy Considine, an outstanding actor, plays Richard. While he was in the army, his mentally retarded kid-brother Anthony (Toby Kebbell) fell in with a bunch of local goons who abused him terribly. Back from the army, Richard decides to take his revenge: "God will forgive them. He'll forgive them and allow them into Heaven. I can't live with that." He starts off pulling pranks, but soon the violence escalates. In a much shorter space of time, and with a fraction of the cash used to make that over-blown wreck MUNICH, director Shane Meadows and actor Paddy Considine show us the ravages this necessary revenge unleashes on Richard. In one tiny little scene, we see Richard alone in a bus shelter and he simply closes his eyes. It is hard for me to describe how powerful such a simple action is in the context of this drama.

Another thing I like about DEAD MAN'S SHOES is that the reactions of the goons seems so plausible. These aren't hardened criminals but dumb, weak-minded small-time crooks. And when they aren't being scared shitless, they roam the country in a comedy 2CV and use the kind of jargon we'd expect from our mates down the pub of a Friday night. This sort of familiar environment makes the brutal and casual violence even more dramatic.

If I have any criticisms of the film they lie in the fact that, presumably due to lack of cold hard cash, a lot of the special effects look a bit ropey. The old cine-film used to show Richard and Anthony as kids is authentic and looks it, but the black and white recreations of "time past" are rather poorly done. Sometimes the poor make-up can detract from the unfolding drama. However, if these unfortunate lapses in production quality prevent DEAD MAN'S SHOES from being a great film, it remains a fascinating piece of British drama, and well worth checking out.

DEAD MAN'S SHOES premiered at Edinburgh 2004 and played at festivals throughout 2005. It goes on limited release in the US on May 12th 2006. It is also available on Region 2 DVD complete with the superb bitter-sweet comedy short film, NORTHERN SOUL.

NORTHERN SOUL - Funnier than The Office; shorter too!

NORTHERN SOUL is a 30 minute film by director, Shane Meadows, the man behind the fantastic British movies A Room for Romeo Brass, Once Upon a Time in the Midlands and Dead Man's Shoes. It is a great little comedy, displaying the same kind of dead-pan uncomfortable humour that we find in Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's TV series, The Office and Extras. The film features Toby Kebbell as the gloriously named Mark Sherbert. (Sherbert rhymes with Herbert, and I'm not sure if this also applies in the Midlands, but where I grew up, to call someone a "Herbert" was a great insult.) Anyhoo, Mark Sherbert is a skinny little short-ass who dreams of being a pro-wrestler. In a sort of Timothy-Treadwell-like state of delusion, he brushes aside the reality of his situation. He couldn't care less that he has never actually practiced wrestling with, like, a real opponent. After all, he tells the camera, Bruce Lee practiced on himself. And what's good enough for the Fist of Fury is good enough for Sherbert. Alls I can say, is that I have never laughed so much as when watching Sherbert run around in a tarzan outfit, nor felt so pained as when I watched him fight his first match. British humour does not come more black than this. All fans of Gervais and Spinal Tap should check this out.

NORTHERN SOUL is included as an extra on the DVD version of Meadow's movie DEAD MAN'S SHOES.