| 100 |
Salon.com
One of the year's best movies...It's one of the simplest and best re-creations of downscale urban England during the gritty post-punk years ever put on screen, and it's both upsetting and very funny.
|
| 100 |
San Francisco Chronicle
David Wiegand
The script and direction are virtually flawless.
|
| 100 |
Boston Globe
As its title implies, This Is England isn't a hyperstylized head-trip a la "Trainspotting" but a straightforward calling to account.
|
| 100 |
Chicago Reader
Masterfully charted and acted.
|
| 91 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Taut, tense, and self-consciously stylish.
|
| 90 |
The New York Times
A modest, near-flawless gem, This Is England is the fifth feature by the young British director Shane Meadows, doing his best work since he first hit the festival scene in the mid-1990s with his hilarious, raw-hewn shorts “Small Time.”
|
| 90 |
Los Angeles Times
The writer-director brilliantly juxtaposes the personal and the political, bookending a stirring coming-of-age drama with the provocative opening and an equally affecting end sequence.
|
| 90 |
Newsweek
It has the feel of a classic coming-of-age story. It's the sleeper of the summer.
|
| 90 |
LA Weekly
The result is a film marked by eruptions of brutal violence, but also passages of extraordinary tenderness.
|
| 88 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Authentic, fresh and utterly relevant.
|
| 88 |
Chicago Tribune
Sid Smith
A small film that packs a big wallop.
|
| 88 |
Chicago Sun-Times
The movie is taut, tense, relentless. It shows why Shaun feels he needs to belong to a gang, what he gets out of it and how it goes wrong.
|
| 88 |
Premiere
Eric Alt
This Is England may be best summed up as a "coming-of-age" story that puts aside the clichéd baggage often carried by the description and ultimately ends up being moving, genuinely funny, thought-provoking, and highly recommended.
|
| 83 |
Portland Oregonian
It's a remarkably sure-handed film, taking us with Shaun on a journey through alienation, anger, trepidation, ebullience and fear.
|
| 80 |
Washington Post
This Is England, set in the social dystopia of Margaret Thatcher's Great Britain, gives us something far more humane and complex than a culturally specific memoir about Doc Martens shoes, reggae music and mindless aggression.
|
| 78 |
Austin Chronicle
Somewhere between the pop jouissance of Guy Ritchie and the social realism of Ken Loach, this ballsy drama freeze-frames bleak Thatcherite Yorkshire and exposes its racist underbelly.
|
| 75 |
Entertainment Weekly
Sad, menacing, empathetic story.
|
| 75 |
New York Daily News
Turgoose, in his first film role, is entirely convincing as the strong-willed but naïve Shaun, and Graham is a genuine fright as the feral prototype of the violent skinhead culture on the horizon.
|
| 75 |
New York Post
The 34-year-old Meadows has assembled an effective cast, especially newcomer Thomas Turgoose as Shaun and veteran Stephen Graham as Combo.
|
| 75 |
TV Guide
British director Shane Meadows' strongest film to date is also his most personal: A stylish fictionalization of his own wayward youth, spent among a group of working-class skinheads in Thatcher's England.
|
| 75 |
ReelViews
In addition to telling an involving story, This Is England is insightful and informative.
|
| 70 |
Variety
Leslie Felperin
With its knockout lead perfs and taut if slightly familiar construction, this '80s-set dramedy about a skinhead gang reps Meadows' most fluently made film so far.
|
| 60 |
Village Voice
Nathan Lee
Facile pop psychology is the real tragedy here, a double disappointment given the film's smart take on pop culture.
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