ATTACK THE BLOCK Discussion Thread - Page 3

A teensy bit racist/classist?  Not at all.  If it was a gang of spoiled rich white kids instead, I would have disliked them just as much.  And really, is it so wrong to root for the aliens over the hooligans?  The kids are bad, but they band together to fight the aliens, which are worse?  The hooligans just killed the (only?) mate-able female in the area.  What the hell's an alien to do now?

I think the divide comes between those that feel the film has a class consciousness, and those that feel it doesn't.

 

To which I ask: how could you not think the movie has a class consciousness? I found it unusually observant in that area.

Mmm... just a teensy bit. Not sayin' you are racist, mind.

 

Then again...

 

www.missingtheponit.com

That was what I thought as well. It's an unusually smart and "realistic" genre movie in that sense, which helped me get over their shittiness at the beginning pretty fast. I was already on board with the idea that circumstances turn kids like this into "fucking monsters" sometimes.

 

Still, the movie is clearly making a deliberate attempt to start with dislikeable characters and win you over to their side. I always respect movies that attempt to shift the audience's perspective like this.

It amazes me that people can cock-worship Ryan Gosling's character in Drive even though he's a sociopathic nut-job, but a group of close friends growing up in a rough neighborhood mug someone and face gentrification and people have a hard time liking them at all. They're supposed to be shitty because that's what gives Moses an arc. He sets it all aside for everyone in the end, his friends (dead and alive), the block, and the country that has forgotten and ignored him. That's huge.

And if this was about a "group of white kids" they wouldn't be acting shitty. They'd be in the suburbs. And it'd be fucking E.T. or Super 8.

Well, the Driver had a rough upbringing. Mom didn't even bother to give him A NAME.

I'm calling horeshit. That's not a real link. And what the hell is a "ponit"?

Ponit misses the point?

Also, I'm afraid to ask, but what's "horeshit?" 

Obviously, "horeshit" is a combination of "horse" and "shit". If you paid attention in eng--it was a grammatical error. I can't make any excuses for it.

 

I was just kidding by the way when I was making fun of your post. There was no malice intended.

 

It's poop that anyone can get into.

I love everything about this great flick, from the various subtext to the Carpenter/Zulu-esque siege to the dialog/performances to the creature effects, everything.   Perfect movie. And, yeah, John Boyega reminds me so much of a young Denzel. Everyone was great. Believe!

I'm getting flashbacks of CLOVERFIELD complaints. And they weren't even criminals. Just "hipster douches", to quote a few.

 

I'll be honest, hipster douche is the most defining characteristic I can remember about anyone in Cloverfield.  For the most part, the Attack the Block kids felt like they had actual personalities.  Moses had as much depth as the entire cast of Cloverfield combined, including the monster (heck, you could probably throw in half the cast of Super 8 in there for good measure.)

As Mel Gibson once said, "Hipsters are responsible for all that's wrong in the world"

Wow. Completely mystified at all the praise this got. It doesn't do anything particularly wrong but there's nothing particularly great about it either. It's a couple of heavily-accented Brit thugs away from being a Sci-Fi movie of the week. It's certainly not a comedy, even though descriptions bill it that way. I suppose I can't fault the direction but the story is the same old monster movie you've seen a million times. And characters? Except for Moses, the characters are mostly bland critter-fodder. I can tell them apart for the same reason I can tell Ninja Turtles apart: they carry different weapons. And one's a chick. A great action movie? A great genre film? Hell, no.

 

Reminds me of the geek reaction to Pitch Black lo those many years ago. It's a middling, overlong Doctor Who episode. At best.

As soon as you brought up the accents, lost me. Weakest argument against that film.

Okay. They don't have heavy accents then. That better?

Too bad you had trouble telling all those black people apart. After all, they do look the same, amirite guyez?

Not really, no. Sarcasm becomes a crutch around here too often. Better to stick to your guns, I say.

I just find the accent argument to be one of those lowest common denominator charges against the film. To me, that argument is saying that this specific cultural difference was a challenge for you. Now, given that that was the first argument you used it tells me, essentially, that you're someone who does not wish to be challenged by cinema.

Cut to: "No! I just want to be able to understand the characters when they're speaking English!"

To which I'll reply: GTFO

I find that particular complaint interesting because I'm someone who generally has a dislike of cinematic portrayals of any type of gang culture and slang (and in real life as well).  I'm also not very good at deciphering accents.  This movie and its characters should've been a problem for me, but Cornish must've worked some kind of miracle, because I got attached to these kids really fast (once it is revealed that they are really just kids).  And I had very little difficulty understanding them.  It was really amazing.

 

Shit, even my mom liked it.  Though she's the type of viewer that forgets most movies by the next day.

 

My favorite was the troubled young punk who ran away from the aliens and used salty language. He was the standout of the bunch.

 

 

You realize simply using "heavily-accented" as an adjective isn't the same thing as a criticism? Unless you think describing the cast (accurately) as having heavy accents is automatically a criticism rather than a description. My beef was that the movie was a glorified Scy-Fy flick except for that element, which itself I took no issue with.

See, I think the problem you're having is that you think the aliens were the point of the film.
 

While I did not have an issue with the accents, I can see that as a legitimate complaint about this film: those accents were THICK! And it is not unreasonable to want to understand what the characters are saying.

Not being a dick with this question, I seriously don't know the answer. Do SyFy movies typically employ heavily-accented thugs in them?

PMR, thanks for your clarification. We disagree about the film but them's movies. I'll back off.

Cylon, the thing about it for me was that it was for all intents and purposes an accurate representation of the culture. So while it might be difficult for you or I it wouldn't be to someone from that walk of life. Cornish was a big fan of Dante and wanted to take some of those ideas and put them in a setting he was intrigued by. For me the dialogue is understandable and more than that I think it took balls not to scale it back.

I actually had the chance to ask Cornish about the accents when I was with GUY. His feeling was that it was something the press ran with. I'd like to believe Sony was never seriously considering subtitles but... he did concede that many of the same phrases (bruv, respec) were used more than once to help ground the dialogue for the audience.

 

No, which is what I meant.

 

Though now that I look at the way I said it, it sort of looks like I'm saying that it needs a couple more accented thugs to be one of those when my meaning was "Remove the Brit accents and it's just another alien movie".

Gotcha.

Loved the Movie!

Favorite parts: Alien sinking teeth into the leg and the blacker than black of the alien appearance.

Are there any other concepts in the works?

 

STToad

 

I can't, because it isn't.

 I agree.  I hated this movie, but complaining about something that can be easily solved with a button push on the remote can't be taken too seriously.

The accents were not a problem it was the slang. Accent problems happen in South Carolina.
 

I can, because it is.

I don't think I've ever seen a movie where I've had a hard time picking up accents and slang. Maybe it's difficult for somebody at first but paying attention always works for me.

 

 

And even if somebody didn't like the movie the idea that it's somehow like one of Sci-Fi's original movies is absurd. The film obviously has more than a few thoughts going on in it's head involving racism, and classism and that's more than can be said for any of those films.

Agreed!

when when when do we get it on Netflix Instantview? Or DVD for that matter...?

The DVD is out now.

I picked it up at Walmart however I found a better place for buying DVDs online called:

www.familyvideo.comthey are cheaper than walmart including shipping.
 

Just saw this and enjoyed it a lot. I'm always a sucker for monster movies.

Also this movie is the first movie I've ever purchased off amazon instant view. At $6.99 it is by far the cheapest I've found.

I paid $14.95 at Walmart and an satisfied. I can watch it now any time I want and anywhere I want. It was worth it.

 

STToad
 

But where did you pick up the DVD?

At Walmart. . .
 

I know this is a little bit after the main discussion of the movie, but there was a little nitpicking piece of my brain that couldn't let it rest so I'll pose my question here.

The movie admonishes Moses and his group for being alpha male/tough guys and violence before thinking types of characters. After all it was that attitude that was the driving force behind Moses and his group killing the female alien which resulted in the Block being attacked.

Now, I was wondering (after watching Slither again) did Moses do the world a big favor by killing the female alien?

I think it is quite likely that he prevented a potentially dangerous spawning of these carnivorous creatures. Who knows what kind of damage the babies would have done?

It was not his killing of the female alien that caused the societal concern it was his casual attack of the woman.

His killing of the creature was at first self defense and then secondary a part of his societal enforced violent behavior.

The block being attacked was a secondary manifestation of the pheromone signature from the female. They carried it back to the block and the attack was nothing more than an animalistic natural response.

 

Yes it was a big favor.

 

The damage the spawn would have done would have been no worse than the damage caused by present day Elite and their quest for riches through false flag wars.

 

STToad