Rating: Summary: Fab, fab, fab: excellent depiction of counsel house life. Review: Thank you Gary for creating an artful rendition of English life. The acting was supreme. The cussing was real. The addiction gripping. The camera work smooth as silk. YEAH, but who did last chance to paradise and that other one? Who and where can I get my hands on the cd? So much of the silk was the sound.
Rating: Summary: Soundtrack Review: The soundtrack? If anyone finds it, please post here. I check back here every so often in hopes that it might have been released. :)
Rating: Summary: A disturbing story with amazing acting performances Review: The subject matter is uncomfortable, but the movie is so thought provoking it stays with you for days. The acting performances were of such caliber that I have actually seeked out other movies with these performers, especially Kathy Burke, who will now inspire me to see "Dancing at Lughnasa." Best of all, though, was the music. I can't find a THING on Frances Ashman who sang some of the music in the movie, including a song used in a very poignant scene that will stay in your head for days. WHERE IS THE SOUNDTRACK?
Rating: Summary: As real as it gets! Review: This film depicts the true council house lifestyle in London, the explicit and gory violence truly reflects our current times.
Rating: Summary: Gary Oldman's Brutal Reality Review: This film really knocked the wind out of me. Despite having very unsettling material, it is a movie that can be enjoyed for it's raw and unappoligetic approach.Basically the film is about a family in South London. Their everyday life is not exactly the sunniest (to say the very least). The focal characters are Billy, a teenager with a horrible heroine addiction, Ray, a middle age man, who drinks and fights and beats his pregnant wife, Valerie, Billy's sister. And that is what the film is about. This an interesting film. It is very anti-Hollywood. There is no real narrative structure to it. The film begins and ends with the characters being presented at no particularly significant places in their lives. Their is no rising action, or climax, but this is not to say that this film does not deliver several defining moments for the characters. None harder to watch then Ray beating Valerie and then destroying their flat in a drunken rage. The performances in this film are amazing. Oldman has presented them in their environment, without judgement, and the results are so effective. Especially Ray Winstone and Kathy Burke (Ray and Valerie). These two actors deliver some of the most devastatingly realistic characters strugling internally, against their family, and against each other. The supporting cast does not miss a beat either.
Gary Oldman wrote and directed this film. He is from South London and curiously dedicated the film to his own father. This raisied an eyebrow from me. Indeed this film is so brutally real it could almost pass for a documentary. A truely impressive film.
Rating: Summary: Very Intense! Review: This movie was a very intense portrayl of a very disfunctional family. A wonderful debut for Gary Oldman. He has now mastered every part of the movie industry. Congrats!
Rating: Summary: It's something different Review: When i first saw this movie in the store i thought it was just some kind of movie with just violence and language but when you see it it's something different for a change a family selling drugs
Rating: Summary: A mindblowing and thought/emotion provoking achievement. Review: Wonder what life can be like in the high-rise estates (housing projects in the USA) of England ? Take a look at this if you can stomach it ! It's not over-gory at all, but the sheer power of the emotions on display here really do get to you. The only downside is the two uncredited songs "Last Chance To Paradise" and "People Rising" (?). who did those songs and where are they ?!
Rating: Summary: 1000000 times more intelligent and powerful than Eastenders Review: You will not be able to determine that Gary Oldman's first film Nil by Mouth is an acted scripted film rather than a documentary. A great film depicting a working class South London family shot in candid documentary fashion. We focus in on off the cuff conversations, a junkie's (Charlie Creed-Miles) endless search for a fix, a raging alcoholic (Ray Winstone who also starred in Tim Roth's debut The War Zone), and their 4 generation family. As I said I had trouble grasping that the dialogue was actually scripted it's so naturalistic. Such a refreshing contrast to the Hollywood stuff so far removed from naturalistic dialogue it has little to do with reality. I always considered the soap opera Eastenders to be worthless...kind of weird that the same kind of working class Londoners can be depicted with such depth and power as Nil By Mouth has. Finally, the psychology behind Ray (Winstone) is delved into to the extent that this brutal guy retains humanity (unlike the Hollywood counterpart which would be a mindlessly cruel non-human monster). It's important to get to the root causes of such things and this great film does (by intentional implication).
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