Michael Fassbender Fans
Would you like to react to this message? Create an account in a few clicks or log in to continue.
Top News
WE CONTINUE TO SUPPORT MICHAEL-AN AWARD WINNING ACTOR

Congratulations to the cast and crew of "12 Years a Slave" winning an Oscar for Best Picture

Michael is currently filming "MacBeth"

Watch "12 Years A Slave" and "Frank" in theaters

Watch "The Counselor" and "12 Years A Slave" on DVD available now

Michael is set to star and produce on a film version of the video game "Assassin's Creed"

Completed projects: X-Men, Untitled Malik project

Upcoming projects Assassin's Creed, Prometheus 2, MacBeth,and more!

Header credit here

MFmultiply's Disclaimer


Order region 1 dvds-Amazon store

Order region 2-UK dvds-Amazon Shoppe

Please check the calender for films on TV, Theater, or dvd releases
March 2024
SunMonTueWedThuFriSat
     12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
24252627282930
31      

Calendar Calendar


Reviews and SPOILERS

3 posters

Page 17 of 18 Previous  1 ... 10 ... 16, 17, 18  Next

Go down

Reviews and SPOILERS - Page 17 Empty Re: Reviews and SPOILERS

Post by MissL Thu Apr 08, 2010 7:28 pm

the movie

MissL
Stelios' sword

Posts : 661
Join date : 2009-10-11
Location : IRL

Back to top Go down

Reviews and SPOILERS - Page 17 Empty Re: Reviews and SPOILERS

Post by Pilar Thu Apr 08, 2010 7:38 pm

greyeyegoddess wrote:Soooooo....

I'll have to go below....
Pilar
Pilar
Azazeal's Angel

Posts : 727
Join date : 2009-09-20
Location : London Town

Back to top Go down

Reviews and SPOILERS - Page 17 Empty Re: Reviews and SPOILERS

Post by Admin Sat Apr 10, 2010 1:30 am

http://www.isthmus.com/isthmus/article.php?article=28768

A girl toughs out a bleak life in Fish Tank
Teenage wasteland
Kenneth Burns on Thursday 04/08/2010

If you know anything about sullen teenagers, you know what a rare and fleeting gift it is when they smile. Mia (Katie Jarvis), the 15-year-old at the center of the remarkable, unhappy British film Fish Tank, doesn't have a lot to smile about. She lives in a grim housing project amid a desolate industrial moonscape. She is pawed by neighborhood toughs. Her dissolute mother (Kierston Wareing) is an emotional 15-year-old, and her father is nowhere to be seen. Mia puts up a fierce front, head-butting rival girls, ditching a social worker, drinking and swearing prodigiously.

But Mia has a secret pleasure: hip-hop dancing. She likes to break into a vacant apartment, put in earbuds and practice her moves. And when her mother's new boyfriend Connor (Michael Fassbender) compliments her dancing, Mia allows herself a smile that brightens her face — and that will come as a relief to you, the moviegoer, worn down by all the bleakness.

Director Andrea Arnold reportedly hired first-time actress Jarvis after an assistant spotted her in Tilbury, the Essex town where Fish Tank is set. It was inspired casting. I'm very excited about this performance, its honesty, its authenticity. Even in the many wordless interludes, Jarvis plumbs this character's desperation. We also see her profound sadness, in a quick moment that is as revealing as her rare smiles.

Connor could be a force for good. He is steadily employed, he is kind and gentle with Mia's younger sister, and he encourages Mia when she applies for a dancing job. But it's immediately obvious that his interest in Mia is more than fatherly, and what soon develops resembles An Education's schoolgirl-meets-older-man yarn, except you wouldn't find these people at an art auction.

A dismal but predictable revelation follows, and then Mia seeks impulsive revenge in an act so cruel it seems out of character even for this tough girl. But this is the only failing in a movie that's otherwise remarkably acute in depicting the trials of poverty — and the trials of being a teenager, which can be harrowing no matter what.
Admin
Admin
Admin

Posts : 27093
Join date : 2009-09-20
Location : California

Back to top Go down

Reviews and SPOILERS - Page 17 Empty Re: Reviews and SPOILERS

Post by Admin Sat Apr 10, 2010 1:32 am

http://journalstar.com/entertainment/movies/article_d953c7a0-435f-11df-a739-001cc4c03286.html

Review: Fish Tank

By ROBERT BUTLER / McClatchy Newspapers | Posted: Thursday, April 8, 2010 11:45 pm

This movie still released by IFC Films shows Katie Jarvis as Mia in "Fish Tank" directed by Andrea Arnold.

3 Stars

Director: Andrea Arnold

Stars: Katie Jarvis, Rebecca Griffiths, Kierston Wareing, Michael Fassbender

Rated: Unrated

Running Time: 2 hours, 3 minutes

Now Showing: Ross

The Reel Story: This gritty, near-documentary British film follows a 15-year-old girl, well-played by Jarvis, as she tries to negotiate her life in poverty, dealing with an alcoholic mother and her mother's cad of a boyfriend.

Fifteen-year-old Mia (Katie Jarvis) is an angry bruise of a girl.

She lives in high-rise public housing in one of England's provincial burgs with her foul-mouthed little sister (Rebecca Griffiths) and their mother, Joanne (Kierston Wareing), a welfare-grubbing, bleached blond hottie too consumed with booze and men to worry much about parenting.

Mia is perennially angry and sometimes crazily spontaneous. She almost gets beaten up (or worse) for trying to liberate an old horse a couple of gypsy boys have tethered in an overgrown lot. She head-butts a girl on the local playground. She has no friends.

Mia uses an abandoned apartment as a dance studio where she develops her own hip-hop routines; she'd like to become a professional dancer, though she hasn't a clue as to what that entails.

And then Joanne brings home Connor (Michael Fassbender, virtually unrecognizable as the slick Brit spy who teamed up with Diane Kruger in Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds").

Incredibly, Connor seems like a good guy. While keeping Joanne sexually satisfied, he also imposes some easygoing order on the household. Mia returns one afternoon to find the place cleaned up. Connor takes his three ladies on car rides to the country. He shares sound advice with Mia and even encourages her in seeking a dance career, letting her borrow his video camera so she can record and analyze her moves.

Sometimes Connor, Joanne and the girls just curl up on the couch for a night of TV.

It's crazily domestic, and Mia begins to let down her guard. Socially backward and unsophisticated about boys, she'd be easy pickings. But surely Connor is too responsible to take advantage?

"Fish Tank," winner of the Jury Prize at last year's Cannes Film Festival, is a prime example of British ashcan moviemaking. This descent into poverty looks practically documentary-esque and, as written and directed by Andrea Arnold, is virtually artifice-free -- these people reveal themselves through behavior, not dialogue. (Good thing, because their slang defies easy translation.)

Much of what goes on here is seriously disturbing. Be thankful, then, for non-actress Jarvis' mesmerizing performance. Her Mia isn't pleasant to be around, but she's a compelling figure who elicits our sympathy without ever asking for it.


Last edited by greyeyegoddess on Tue Apr 13, 2010 9:13 pm; edited 1 time in total
Admin
Admin
Admin

Posts : 27093
Join date : 2009-09-20
Location : California

Back to top Go down

Reviews and SPOILERS - Page 17 Empty Re: Reviews and SPOILERS

Post by Admin Sat Apr 10, 2010 1:33 am

http://host.madison.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/article_27277605-2490-5215-96b2-5d46e5e3187c.html


‘Fish Tank’ a startlingly bleak but gripping tale

By ROB THOMAS | The Capital Times | rthomas@madison.com | Posted: Thursday, April 8, 2010 4:45 am | No Comments Posted

buy this photo Katie Jarvis stars in "Fish Tank." Publicity shot

Andrea Arnold likes her audience to feel dread. In her first movie “Red Road’ (which played at the 2006 Wisconsin Film Festival) and now in “Fish Tank,” she lets her characters blunder into extremely risky situations, making the viewer uncomfortable waiting for the consequences of their mistakes.

And then, just when we expect the worst, Arnold offers up a glimmer of hope for redemption. Maybe that’s the biggest twist of all in her movies; it turns out she loves her characters, as flawed as they are.

In a way, “Fish Tank,” which won the Jury Prize at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, is the inverse of “Red Road.” “Road” focused on a police surveillance officer who spent her nights watching through the video cameras trained on a rundown high-rise housing complex, looking for signs of crime.

“Fish Tank,” on the other hand, is a view from deep inside one of those complexes, this one in the dying British industrial town of Essex. Young kids play noisily in the hall, teenagers flirt on the cracked asphalt of the parking lots, and the adults stare out over their balconies, wondering how they ended up here. All the walls of the buildings are painted in deceptively tranquil shades of blue, which explains the movie’s title.

Mia (Katie Jarvis) is a product of her depressing environment. Foul-mouthed and cynical, the 15-year-old teen has been expelled from school and has no friends. In her tiny apartment, both her younger sister and mother (who is little more than an overgrown teenager herself) scream expletives her constantly. Her only oasis is an abandoned apartment where she practices her hip-hop dance routines, thinking they might be her ticket out.

Then her mother brings home a new boyfriend, Connor (Michael Fassbender of “Inglourious Basterds”). He’s clean-cut and handsome, but most importantly, he brings an element into Mia’s life that’s been absent until now; kindness. When he tenderly dresses a cut on her foot, or speaks to her with warmth, it’s like he’s arrived from another planet.

Being 15, Mia mistakes his fatherly concern for something more — or maybe she’s not mistaken. Arnold revels in the ambiguity of the relationship, so we’re never sure what either Connor or Mia’s true motives are until much later in the film. For the most part, Arnold’s shooting style is realistic and unsentimental, but she allows herself one poetic touch. At several points, when Connor and Mia are together, she slows down the speed of the film just a little — not to outright slow motion, but just a little bit slower than actual speed, as if Mia and Connor are gliding outside of life’s bleak rhythms for a few seconds together.

Of course, we know that a relationship between a grown man and a 15-year-old girl is going to end badly, and the suspense and dread mounts as we wonder exactly how badly, and for whom. Watching the film twists a knot in your gut, but “Fish Tank” moves to an ending that feels both satisfying and natural.

Fassbender makes Connor both an appealing and mysterious figure whose real motives lay hidden even to himself. And Jarvis is fiercely powerful as the combative, wounded Mia; it’s amazing that she’s not a professional actress, but was discovered by casting agents on the streets of London.

England has a long tradition of films about working-class characters called “kitchen-sink dramas.” “Fish Tank” works honorably in that tradition, while expanding the blunt realism of those films into some uneasy areas.

FISH TANK

3 1/2 stars

Stars: Katie Jarvis, Michael Fassbender

Rated: R for sexuality, language, drug use

How long: 2:02

Opens: Friday

Where: Sundance

For fans of: "Red Road," "An Education," Lily Allen's accent
Admin
Admin
Admin

Posts : 27093
Join date : 2009-09-20
Location : California

Back to top Go down

Reviews and SPOILERS - Page 17 Empty Re: Reviews and SPOILERS

Post by Admin Sat Apr 10, 2010 1:52 am

http://johnryansfilms.blogspot.com/2010/04/fish-tank.html

Friday, April 9, 2010
Fish Tank
I decided to catch Fish Tank on IFC On Demand months after its initial theatrical release, right as it is to be removed, because I've just read so many things that make it sound wonderful. I avoided it at first, as I had no special love for Andrea Arnold's previous directorial effort Red Road. But the good reviews combined with my appreciation for her Academy Award winning short Wasp finally got me to sit down and watch.

Well, Fish Tank is not, as its Metacritic score would have you believe, wonderful. It is good, with moments that really stand out, and it also features some seriously powerhouse performances. It's also much more Wasp than Red Road.

Katie Jarvis, in her debut role, astounds as a teenager in the slums of Essex, living with her single mom and her latest boyfriend, an often shirtless Michael Fassbender. Jarvis dreams of getting out of her bleak surroundings and becoming a hip-hop dancer. She and Fassbender eventually form a relationship of sorts, where he does things like give her money to get wasted and give her a camera to film her dancing for a contest entry. Then things go awry, as plots are wont to do.

Fish Tank moves leisurely through its story, letting the audience enjoy its more rambling moments of a teenager trying to gain comfort with her budding sexuality. It's when Arnold's script tries to get a real plot moving that I have problems. The increasing melodrama present in the second half of the film really works against the realistic style established in the beginning. Arnold also seems to be hung up on symbolism that too obviously hammers the impossible disconnect between Jarvis' feelings of being stuck and her dreams of dancing and getting away. Things with balloons, horses, and music videos.

But I did get to come away from this movie loving Michael Fassbender. His performance in 2008's Hunger, and I was really hoping it was not a fluke. I'm ecstatic to say he is clearly an actor capable of broad range.

I'm going back to number ratings.

Fish Tank: 7.3
Admin
Admin
Admin

Posts : 27093
Join date : 2009-09-20
Location : California

Back to top Go down

Reviews and SPOILERS - Page 17 Empty Re: Reviews and SPOILERS

Post by Admin Sat Apr 10, 2010 2:28 am

http://www.jjmurphyfilm.com/blog/?p=744


Fish Tank

Andrea Arnold’s disturbing second feature, Fish Tank (2009), tells the story of a disaffected fifteen-year-old girl named Mia, who’s stuck in a dead-end life. She lives with her single mom, Joanne (Kierston Wareing), who constantly parties and drinks too much, and her younger sister, Tyler (Rebecca Griffiths), in a housing project in Britain. Brilliantly played by eighteen-year-old non-professional actress, Katie Jarvis, Mia is full of pent-up adolescent anger. Mia and her mother are in a state of open warfare with each other. Their hostile relationship consists not only of physical abuse, but they continually trade expletive-laced insults and engage in a series of shouting matches. Joanne screams at Mia, “What’s wrong with you?” Mia snaps back, “You’re what’s wrong with me!” Even the potty-mouthed Tyler (Rebecca Griffiths) has nothing nice to say, completing this portrait of a dysfunctional family.

Mia’s sole claim to an identity is that she listens to black rap music and fancies herself a break dancer. Early on, when Mia sees a group of neighborhood girls dancing in formation, she ends up viciously head-butting one of them as they argue. She also tries to unchain an old white pony from a fenced-in area of tattered mobile homes underneath the highway. Because the horse must seem to her like a metaphor for her own fate, Mia doesn’t give up easily in her desire to free the animal. After she returns with a hammer, Mia gets roughed up by some guys. Even though she fights back with all her might, they cop free feels as she struggles. Mia eventually strikes up a relationship with a grease-monkey named Billy (Harry Treadaway), whom she helps steal a car-part from a junkyard.

But it’s not her relationship with Billy that becomes the film’s focal point, but rather the one she develops with her mother’s new boyfriend, Connor (Michael Fassbender). Almost from the moment Mia bumps into the handsome shirtless older man in her kitchen one morning, we sense something begin to percolate under her otherwise opaque surface. He comments, “You dance like a black. That’s a compliment.” Mia’s response is antagonism, but she nevertheless repositions herself to stare at his muscular back as he disappears up the stairs. Mia rifles through his wallet and steals some money afterward. Connor appears to be reasonably nice. He eventually comes to provide a welcome contrast to the strained non-relationship Mia has with her mom. Connor gradually takes an interest in Mia. He tries to build up her self-confidence, encourages her to enter an audition for dancers at a club, and even lends her his video camera to document her dance moves.

The boundary in their relationship becomes blurred almost from the beginning. When Mia steals a bottle of booze at one of her mother’s drunken parties and later passes out, Connor carries her up to bed, removes her clothes, and places a blanket over her. At a family outing to a lake, Connor manages to coax Mia, who can’t swim, into the water, where he catches a fish with his bare hands. After Mia injures her foot on a rock, Connor attends to her wound. He tells her to jump on his back as they head to the car. As Connor breathes heavily under her weight, Mia rests her face close to his. The two dance together in the parking lot afterward. The inevitable occurs when Connor brings her drunken mom home from the pub one night, and the he and Mia end up on the sofa together. From here, the plot takes a number of twists and turns and reversals, though I managed to predict most of what transpires. Frankly, it doesn’t much matter – the film will keep you riveted. But if I were to criticize Fish Tank (and I’m very reluctant to), it would be on the basis of its somewhat conventional plotting.

American manual writers have been spreading their screenwriting gospel across several continents now. Most affected are the national development boards that decide which films will receive government funding. Fish Tank received National Lottery Funds, so I can’t necessarily blame Arnold for the type of tight plotting she employs. It easily could be based on reader reports. For a discussion of this, I recommend that you read Kathryn Millard’s excellent article in the first Journal of Screenwriting. She writes, “Many development processes simply shape screenplays to pre-existing templates so that the distinctiveness of works can be gradually eroded, assessment by assessment, draft by draft.”

Everything else about Arnold’s Fish Tank is otherwise distinctive, especially her complex characterization. Roger Ebert writes, “Some reviews call Connor a pedophile. I think he’s more of an immoral opportunist.” The distinction amounts to splitting hairs. Does Connor take up with the mother to target Mia? No, I don’t believe so. But the film provides an almost textbook example of “grooming” – how an older man, such as Connor, sets up someone underage in order to exploit them. I find what he says to Mia in the heat of passion to be the most revealing aspect of his character, and Arnold subsequently exposes additional layers of deception. A poor neighborhood is a perfect playground for such a predatory character, who’s clearly slumming, even in striking up a relationship with Mia’s mother. Michael Fassbender does a masterful job of balancing the inherent contradictions of Connor’s character by creating just enough ambiguity to keep viewers off-balance.

It is Jarvis’s portrayal of Mia, however, that really stands out. Her feral intensity makes the screen crackle with raw energy – it’s no accident that she identifies with tigers – and serves to mask her vulnerability, confusion, and loneliness. Joanne is about to have Mia sent away, so the teenager has little to lose in running from the social worker. What she does with Connor amounts to a form of revenge, but, of course, it’s ultimately on herself. Arnold’s hand-held, highly mobile camera (the film’s cinematography is by Robbie Ryan) captures the kitchen-sink realism of the drab block buildings of the housing project and the desolate surrounding landscape. It’s no wonder that both the adults and kids drink anything that will numb the pain of their pathetic lives. Fish Tank is not nearly as depressing as it sounds. This extraordinary British independent film contains several scenes of such emotional power that days later I still can’t get them out of my mind.

Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank won a well-deserved Jury Award at Cannes last May. It is being distributed by IFC both on VOD and in theaters. It opens at Sundance Cinemas Madison this Friday, April 9.

Posted 7 April, 2010
Admin
Admin
Admin

Posts : 27093
Join date : 2009-09-20
Location : California

Back to top Go down

Reviews and SPOILERS - Page 17 Empty Re: Reviews and SPOILERS

Post by Admin Sat Apr 10, 2010 10:31 pm

http://www.salient.org.nz/arts/film/fish-tank

Fish Tank

Skip to commentsby Adam Goodall, Mon, 29 Mar 2010. 0

Film

Fish Tank’s title is obviously metaphorical, painfully so. Andrea Arnold’s interest in voyeurism is as ever-present here as it was in her feature-length debut, Red Road, but Fish Tank is far more ambitious, positioning the audience as the people watching from behind the glass. It’s in turn gripping and frustrating, as Arnold’s insistence on authenticity of experience gives us characters whose actions and thoughts are provocative and stirring, but in doing so she takes the titular metaphor too far, the characters swimming around in circles before flurries of action grab our interest.

Katie Jarvis is electric as fierce, potty-mouthed 15-year-old Mia, giving her a rough edge that belies her defensive nature. She’s wholly believable as the most ambitious fish in the tank, the one who continuously tries to leap out and make its way to the sea but never seems to succeed. Michael Fassbender plays opposite her as her mother’s new boyfriend, the charming, cultured Connor. Like Jarvis, Fassbender feels authentic, nailing his character and sucking us in with his agreeable nature. The two primarily excel, however, in the way they betray their characters’ hidden weaknesses, allowing us surreptitious glimpses of them as they slowly grow out of their pigeonholes. In a world where hostility is the status quo and life is as repulsive as it is depressing, these characters embody Fish Tank’s Glaswegian gloom, the aspiring escapee and the symbol of her hope. They are not what they seem, and what they seem is only good because of what it could grow into, rather than what it is. Arnold’s is a decidedly cynical worldview, one where escape is simply moving to another tank.

Much like this review, Arnold expounds constantly on the fish tank metaphor, even though it is never explicitly referenced in the film. The film is full of close-ups and hand-held camera shots that get us in, but not too close, almost like a glass barrier between us and the action. Meanwhile, the film sees the audience tapping the glass constantly, waiting for something to happen, only to jump back in surprise when the fish move with alarming speed and recklessness. But while this approach makes Fish Tank a sluggish film, it also makes it a captivating one, and there’s never any sense that what we’re watching is false.

FISH TANK
Directed by: Andrea Arnold
Part of the World Cinema Showcase
Admin
Admin
Admin

Posts : 27093
Join date : 2009-09-20
Location : California

Back to top Go down

Reviews and SPOILERS - Page 17 Empty Re: Reviews and SPOILERS

Post by Admin Sun Apr 11, 2010 3:13 pm

http://voraciousfilmgoer.blogspot.com/2010/04/swimming-through-teenage-wasteland-fish.html

Swimming Through a Teenage Wasteland: FISH TANK
Writer-director Andrea Arnold’s second film, Fish Tank, is focused on 15-year-old Mia Williams (Katie Jarvis, discovered by the director while arguing with her boyfriend at a train station) who lives in a run-down apartment with her lower-class family: her young, boozy and verbally abusive mother (Kierston Wareing), and her precociously profane sister (Rebecca Griffiths). Mia behaves badly, but she’s not a bad kid, or at least we don’t think so right away. Her only small escape is her love of dance. Oh, now I know what you’re thinking, and no, this is not the talent-trumps-circumstances story that it may sound like. This is a grim setting presented in gritty, unembellished style with a hand-held camera and casual framing. It’s raw. There are scenes that are hard to watch, that set my emotions churning. The film may horse around with some easy symbolism, and it’s unfortunate that, in its last act, the film has to settle back into a handful of familiar scenes with conflicts that have played out in many other films, but the angst-filled center of this particular film more than keeps the film on the rails.

In this world, Mia runs in circles. There is emphasis on the circularity and insularity of her world. Her daily route takes her on the same round trip. She moves away from the apartment and the life it represents only to inevitably get pulled back towards it, finding conflict and despair on her way. Even the squared 1.33:1 aspect ratio conspires to keep her locked in her hope-deprived cycle. As played by Katie Jarvis, in a powerful performance that deserves mentioning alongside other great young performers with recent troubled-teen roles like Gabourey Sidibe and Carey Mulligan, Mia is a volatile mix of impulses. She’s shockingly, frighteningly, violent and spontaneous in her emotions. Though some of her behavior and feelings can be excused away by her age, her temperament and dangerous actions are more directly attributable to her environment.

Early in the film, Mia’s mother throws a rowdy party, shutting her daughters away in their rooms. Mia sneaks down and steals an unattended bottle of vodka, chugging it down in solitude while the sounds of the party thump through the thin walls. She and her sister smoke and swear with ease, move provocatively and speak insolently. They’re racing too quickly into the world of adults without even understanding how much danger they are opening up for themselves. Mia, especially, is filled with churning, foreign, and fleeting desires that are matched by a paradoxically stubborn malleability. Into this volatile environment comes a stranger, a new variable. It’s mom’s new boyfriend (Michael Fassbender). He’s handsome and seems level-headed. He’s kind to the daughters, but there’s a squirmy sexual tension between Mia and him. It’s uncomfortable and clearly headed to a place that will not prove beneficial for anyone involved, especially since Mia and her mother stare at him with similar gazes and he returns them with similar smolders.

And yet, this is no mere wallow in the uncomfortable. There’s a zest and life to Arnold’s harsh mise-en-scene that traps the characters within small spaces and behind cramped fences. Even open fields, with brown grass and gray sky stretching to the horizon, seem to close in on them. There’s a sense of real lives being lived, not quietly in desperation, but rather in hollow shouts that land on deaf ears. It’s not a feel-good film, but it’s a good film, one that nobly has no answers, one that can be hard to watch but always remains tightly, respectfully focused. It’s a modest character study with great performances and plenty character to study.
Posted by The Voracious Filmgoer at 2:47 PM
Admin
Admin
Admin

Posts : 27093
Join date : 2009-09-20
Location : California

Back to top Go down

Reviews and SPOILERS - Page 17 Empty Re: Reviews and SPOILERS

Post by Admin Sun Apr 11, 2010 8:49 pm

http://sinefilmelisb.blogspot.com/2010/04/iff-day-7-fish-tank-perriers-bounty.html

Fish Tank has Michael Fassbender. It also has a stellar cast and a solid narration. The story of the 15 year-old white trash (or whatever they call them in Britain) girl who can dance could have gotten mushy and/or preachy, but director Andrea Arnold successfully avoids that. Nonetheless, I would like there to be a rule about not using fishtanks and birdcages as a metaphor, for possibly the next 30 years or so. One funny (or disturbing, depending on how you look at it) detail: this film was running up against An Education at the BAFTAs. The Brits seem to like their little girls...

Posted by melisb at 22:35
Labels: Andrea Arnold, Cillian Murphy, Fish Tank, IFF, Jim Broadbent, Michael Fassbender
Admin
Admin
Admin

Posts : 27093
Join date : 2009-09-20
Location : California

Back to top Go down

Reviews and SPOILERS - Page 17 Empty Re: Reviews and SPOILERS

Post by Admin Sun Apr 11, 2010 11:39 pm

http://joaopedrocanhenha.blogspot.com/2010/04/fish-tank.html

Sunday, April 11, 2010
Fish Tank
Movie name: Fish Tank
Year of release: 2009
Director: Andrea Arnold
Stars: Katie Jarvis, Michael Fassbender, Kierston Wareing, Harry Treadaway
Genre: Drama
Score out of ten (whole numbers only): 7

Synopsis:
Director Andrea Arnold's second feature film following "Red Road" is another look at the reality of suburbia in England, focusing this time in a young woman's life. "Fish Tank" follows Mia, a 15 year old girl who pours her whole energy into dancing hip-hop. She is at odds with everyone, including her mom and younger sister. Her mother is also more occupied trying to get boyfriends and parties going and Mia is desperately trying to find some meaning to her life. When her mom brings home a new boyfriend Mia is intrigued by his behavior and how much attention he pays her. He supports her in her efforts to go on a dance audition and that attention evolves into something else that ends up having troublesome results. Andrea Arnold captures in this film the reality of growing up without many perspectives and of feeling lost and unloved. Her young heroine is trying to find a place in the world, some reference and guidance, something her mother can't provide, since she's lost in her own world and references. Much like the central character of "Red Road", Mia is looking for meaningful connections, for patches of something, in all the wrong places and with all the wrong partners. Katie Jarvis is perfect in the role: she conveys the aggressiveness and simultaneously tenderness and fragility that the young Mia has. Michael Fassbender does a good job as the troubled Connor, but Katie Jarvis holds the film in her grip. A film worth watching.
Posted by pedro at 7:06 PM
Admin
Admin
Admin

Posts : 27093
Join date : 2009-09-20
Location : California

Back to top Go down

Reviews and SPOILERS - Page 17 Empty Re: Reviews and SPOILERS

Post by Admin Sun Apr 11, 2010 11:41 pm

http://babetteflix.blogspot.com/2010/04/fish-tank-2009.html

Sunday, April 11, 2010
Fish Tank (2009)
Judy loved and I liked this multi-award winning British movie about a 15 year old bad girl in Essex (a county northeast of London near the North Sea). Sadly, I get motion sickness watching jumpy handheld camera work, and there's a lot of that here. Katie Jarvis delivers a powerful performance as the unhappy Mia and perhaps she knows something of the life she portrays: a high school dropout, Jarvis had a daughter in 2009, a bit before her 18th birthday. Having no previous acting experience, she was having an argument with a boyfriend on a train platform when she was spotted by a casting assistant (coincidentally, that same station, in Tilbury, which she pronounces TIL-bray, is in the movie). Mia loves to dance, works hard at it, and there's quite the hip hop soundtrack with a couple of ballads for balance. Co-star Michael Fassbender has an Irish accent, but is really half Irish and half German, and has used both languages in his film work (Eden Lake and Hunger (both 2008) won a bunch of awards and are on my to-see list, and he was in Inglourious Basterds, playing a Brit who goes undercover as a German). Fassbender's Connor has many layers; not so much Mia's mom (Kierston Wareing, who nonetheless has 6 more movies scheduled for release this or next year), who is predictably raising another bad girl in their council housing (the projects to us Yanks). Both Jarvis and Wareing are originally from Essex, as was Dudley Moore. Their accents can be pretty thick at times but you'll get most of it. I can't tell you Jack's opinion, because he was out of town, but I think he would have liked it, too.
Posted by babetteflix at 7:45 PM
Admin
Admin
Admin

Posts : 27093
Join date : 2009-09-20
Location : California

Back to top Go down

Reviews and SPOILERS - Page 17 Empty Re: Reviews and SPOILERS

Post by Admin Tue Apr 13, 2010 7:53 pm

http://www.theworstseats.co.uk/2010/04/12/fish-tank-2009/


The Worst Seats
Fish Tank (2009)

2009 / Drama / Featured
April 12, 2010 0
Written by Grace
VN:R_U [1.8.5_1061]

Oscar winner Andrea Arnold hits home in tale of forbidden romance

Say farewell to overdone, predictable, shallow Hollywood blockbusters and hello to Andrea Arnold’s Fish tank: a brutal, urban classic. As she proved in her previous films, Red Road and the Oscar winning Wasp, Arnold has a passion for examining the harsh realities of working class life and Fish Tank certainly follows suit, being without a doubt her most visceral production to date.

Arnold’s sets her newest film on a depressingly grey council estate inhabited by a moody, troubled teenager, Mia (played by debutant Katie Jarvis). Mia has been kicked out of school, is full of hate and apparently unloved by her alcoholic, party-loving mother. Fish Tank’s urban setting is not too dissimilar to that of many British indie films, however, there is something unique about it that you can’t quite put a finger on.

One of the picture’s unusual strengths is its ability to show shocking subjects without forcing the audience to view the situation in a predetermined way, leaving them open to interpret it as they wish. For example, it is not clear whether Arnold wants you to think that Connor (played by Michael Fassbender) is a predator or a friend when Mia’s mum (played by Kierston Wareing) introduces him to her family. It is also unclear, even at the end of the film, whether Arnold wants you to sympathise with Mia or to just think she is another naive teenager. It is almost as if Arnold herself does not have an opinion, an imposing viewpoint, she simply wants to film life as it is and let the viewer make of it what they wish.

Jarvis’ lack of screen experience doesn’t show, and her natural flair for acting is certainly apparent, imbuing the film with a kind of naked truthfulness. Fish Tank seems to be more of an observation on life rather than a fictional story. Jarvis, originally scouted on a train platform screaming abuse at her boyfriend, naturally morphs into her character, needing no practice to slip into her role.

The sharp, clear filming with no obvious Hollywood edits resembles that of a documentary, allowing you to feel completely involved in each scene. Arnold still shoots her movies in the unusual 1:33:1 aspect ratio creating an almost square picture similar to an old TV. The colours Arnold uses are at the epicentre of the film and hold as much importance as the characters and script, allowing as they do for you to feel uplifted even when the characters are down, making what is at first glance a very simple film emotionally complex.

When asked about how she chose the title of the film, level-headed Arnold said “I don’t really know why…I guess a Fish Tank has a lot of life in it which can’t escape”. This explanation is the perfect synopsis of the film – a vibrant but claustrophobic setting filled with beating hearts and minds. The film is full of emotion and can be quite depressing but Arnold somehow finishes the film with a moving and uplifting feeling, a sensuous shot of Mia, her sister and her mother all dancing in unison in their tiny living room. The shot is so powerfully intimate that as a viewer you almost feel a sense of awkwardness as you watch and intrude their privacy.

Fish Tank is truly spectacular and although a year old still feels relevant and timeless. The passion and love that you can feel went into making the film is complimented with its genuine and honest aura.
Admin
Admin
Admin

Posts : 27093
Join date : 2009-09-20
Location : California

Back to top Go down

Reviews and SPOILERS - Page 17 Empty Re: Reviews and SPOILERS

Post by Admin Tue Apr 13, 2010 9:11 pm

http://www.theolympian.com/2010/04/09/1200249/hard-to-tell-villains-from-heroes.html

Hard to tell villains from heroes in 'Fish'
Review: Cannes Jury Prize winner is a strong addition to English filmmaking tradition

COLIN COVERT; Star Tribune (Minneapolis) | • Published April 09, 2010

The most honored British film of 2010 is Andrea Arnold's "Fish Tank," and rightly so. The Cannes Jury Prize winner is an intimate look at teen alienation and first love in an English tenement.

Mia (Katie Jarvis) is a scrappy 15-year-old living with her young, neglectful single mom and foul-mouthed little sister, a family unit where “I hate you” is a tender emotional exchange. Mom’s new boyfriend (Michael Fassbender, unrecognizable as the suave spy from “Inglourious Basterds”) looks as if he might be a positive influence. He treats everyone tenderly and encourages Mia to follow her dream of being a dancer. Director Arnold plays their evolving relationship for every ounce of suspense as the hormonal girl and the ruggedly handsome newcomer move from friendship into more treacherous waters.

The characters are guarded, and as we come to understand them scene by scene, they become ever harder to sort into convenient categories of hero and villain. Mia is a delinquent in the making; with love and attention, she softens, but that vulnerability comes at a cost.

The film is a strong addition to the English filmmaking tradition of welfare-class humanist melancholy where the state of the dishes in the kitchen sink tells us all we need to know about the emotional arc of the characters. Arnold gives us reason to hope that once Mia escapes the fish tank of her shabby council flat, she will learn to swim in open water, but she provides no guarantees.

FISH TANK

*** 1/2 *

Director: Andrea Arnold

Cast: Katie Jarvis, Michael Fassbender

Running time: 2 hours

Rating: Unrated

Where: Grand Cinema, 606 S. Fawcett Ave., Tacoma
Admin
Admin
Admin

Posts : 27093
Join date : 2009-09-20
Location : California

Back to top Go down

Reviews and SPOILERS - Page 17 Empty Re: Reviews and SPOILERS

Post by Admin Tue Apr 13, 2010 9:15 pm

http://www.thedailypage.com/isthmus/article.php?article=28768

A girl toughs out a bleak life in Fish Tank
Teenage wasteland
Kenneth Burns on Thursday 04/08/2010
Dancing is Mia's secret pleasure.

If you know anything about sullen teenagers, you know what a rare and fleeting gift it is when they smile. Mia (Katie Jarvis), the 15-year-old at the center of the remarkable, unhappy British film Fish Tank, doesn't have a lot to smile about. She lives in a grim housing project amid a desolate industrial moonscape. She is pawed by neighborhood toughs. Her dissolute mother (Kierston Wareing) is an emotional 15-year-old, and her father is nowhere to be seen. Mia puts up a fierce front, head-butting rival girls, ditching a social worker, drinking and swearing prodigiously.

But Mia has a secret pleasure: hip-hop dancing. She likes to break into a vacant apartment, put in earbuds and practice her moves. And when her mother's new boyfriend Connor (Michael Fassbender) compliments her dancing, Mia allows herself a smile that brightens her face — and that will come as a relief to you, the moviegoer, worn down by all the bleakness.

Director Andrea Arnold reportedly hired first-time actress Jarvis after an assistant spotted her in Tilbury, the Essex town where Fish Tank is set. It was inspired casting. I'm very excited about this performance, its honesty, its authenticity. Even in the many wordless interludes, Jarvis plumbs this character's desperation. We also see her profound sadness, in a quick moment that is as revealing as her rare smiles.

Connor could be a force for good. He is steadily employed, he is kind and gentle with Mia's younger sister, and he encourages Mia when she applies for a dancing job. But it's immediately obvious that his interest in Mia is more than fatherly, and what soon develops resembles An Education's schoolgirl-meets-older-man yarn, except you wouldn't find these people at an art auction.

A dismal but predictable revelation follows, and then Mia seeks impulsive revenge in an act so cruel it seems out of character even for this tough girl. But this is the only failing in a movie that's otherwise remarkably acute in depicting the trials of poverty — and the trials of being a teenager, which can be harrowing no matter what.
Admin
Admin
Admin

Posts : 27093
Join date : 2009-09-20
Location : California

Back to top Go down

Reviews and SPOILERS - Page 17 Empty Re: Reviews and SPOILERS

Post by Admin Tue Apr 13, 2010 9:22 pm

http://theotherpaper.com/articles/2010/04/09/movies/reviews/doc4bbcfafa789cf238271638.txt

Fish Tank
He understands her: Mia (Katie Jarvis) and her mother’s new boyfriend (Michael Fassbender) in Fish Tank
Published: Wednesday, April 7, 2010 5:42 PM EDT
Is Mom’s boyfriend the cure for teen rebellion?

“Kitchen sink realism,” a decades-old arts movement that gives voice to England’s working class, returns to the screen with writer/director Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank.

Fifteen-year-old Mia (Katie Jarvis) is living a life of poverty and classic teenage rebellion. She’s at war with her mother, her sister, the neighbors, her schoolmates, you name it. She seems to find comfort only in her secret love of dance and hip-hop music.

Mia’s world changes when party-girl Mom brings home a new boyfriend, Connor (Michael Fassbender). Connor treats Mia as an equal and encourages her dreams of dancing. He manages to break through her anger, and they grow closer.

Jarvis, an 18-year-old newcomer who reportedly was “discovered” while having a very public fight with her boyfriend, brings a wonderful vulnerability to Mia. She delivers all of the teen’s surface rage without allowing it to mask the pain and confusion underneath.

Fish Tank can’t escape comparisons to both Precious and An Education, and not only for the breakout performance by a young actress. Arnold mixes the unflinching eye of the former with the coming-of-age lessons of the latter, but falls a bit short of both counts.

It’s a gritty film, with no original score and an “eavesdropping” quality that at times makes it seem uncomfortably close to real life. The story, though, takes some turns that don’t ring as true, as if a greater insight is there, but just out of reach.

George Wolf

Rating: ***
Admin
Admin
Admin

Posts : 27093
Join date : 2009-09-20
Location : California

Back to top Go down

Reviews and SPOILERS - Page 17 Empty Re: Reviews and SPOILERS

Post by Admin Wed Apr 14, 2010 2:38 am

http://sweetmysteriousfeast.blogspot.com/2010/04/movie-updates-and-reviews.html

Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Movie updates and reviews
In the past few weeks, I've seen the following films:

Fish Tank (2009, UK)
SMF Rating: 4/5 stars
This film is about a teenaged girl, Mia (newcomer Katie Jarvis), who lives with her little sister and her negligent and abusive mother. Mia meets her mother's new boyfriend, Connor (the excellent Michael Fassbender), and she has an almost instant curiosity/attraction for him--probably because he's decent to her and her sister. Mia loves dancing and Connor encourages her to pursue her dream. This film's story and characters are pretty bleak, but they are not hopeless. I liked the film enough to watch it twice. It's not an uplifting movie, nor is it visually appealing, nor is it any fun, but it's good.
Admin
Admin
Admin

Posts : 27093
Join date : 2009-09-20
Location : California

Back to top Go down

Reviews and SPOILERS - Page 17 Empty Re: Reviews and SPOILERS

Post by Admin Wed Apr 14, 2010 2:42 am

http://media.www.vainformer.com/media/storage/paper1335/news/2010/04/14/MovieReviews/Fish-Tank.Proves.Captivating-3905287.shtml

Fish Tank proves captivating
Mary Sollosi |
Last Updated:4/14/10

Bobby Womack's cover of the song "California Dreamin'" features prominently in the 2009 British drama Fish Tank, and it serves as an appropriate anthem for the film's isolated, angry heroine, the fifteen-year-old Mia Williams. Portrayed by newcomer Katie Jarvis, Mia lives in a dreary council estate (a kind of lower-class UK public housing) in Essex, from which nothing must feel farther than the warm, open American west coast.

Nobody cares for Mia and she doesn't care for anything, the exception being a passion for hip-hop dance, which she practices in secret in an abandoned flat on the estate. Her other hobbies apparently include occasional violence and heavy drinking, the latter of which she had to have learned from her selfish, irresponsible mother Joanne (Kierston Wareing). Completing her dysfunctional family is Tyler, Mia's foulmouthed little sister, and Connor (Inglourious Basterds's Michael Fassbender), her mother's new boyfriend and, for Mia, an object of irresistible fascination.

Poor Mia drifts aimlessly, picking fights with and alienating her friends, trying to free a malnourished horse from its owners, and of course, dancing away her frustrations in the empty flat (though neither the dancing nor the release is very good). When she meets the handsome Connor, who is probably the first person to ever demonstrate kindness towards her or express an interest in her life, he engages something in her she didn't even know was there, and which she certainly can't explain. Her relationship with Connor, at first innocent, develops into an ambiguous, tense flirtation, which finally culminates in an awkward sexual encounter, the aftermath of which is shocking.

Jarvis is inspiring as Mia, constantly revealing new layers as she seamlessly transitions between fragility and aggression. Director Andrea Arnold (Red Road) discovered Jarvis, a seventeen-year-old of a similar background to Mia's, at a train station, haranguing her boyfriend from across the platform. Arnold has been quoted as saying she wanted "a girl who would not have to act, could just be herself." She found just that; Jarvis's honesty is almost painfully apparent.

Arnold's film grittily depicts Mia's life in the projects without romanticizing or sugarcoating. It's hardly uplifting to watch, but impossible to look away. Fish Tank simultaneously disturbs and mesmerizes. Making liberal use of hand-held camera techniques, Arnold lends the film an uncomfortable sort of realism, making such indelible images as Mia, breaking into a house and urinating on the floor or vengefully manipulating a trusting little girl, all the more upsetting. Fish Tank succeeds because it is brutally honest and free of delusion, both in regards to its volatile heroine and her dismal circumstances. It's no wonder Mia's California dreamin'.

Fish Tank will be playing at the Kimball Theatre April 27 through May 2.
Admin
Admin
Admin

Posts : 27093
Join date : 2009-09-20
Location : California

Back to top Go down

Reviews and SPOILERS - Page 17 Empty Re: Reviews and SPOILERS

Post by Admin Wed Apr 14, 2010 3:19 pm

http://www.dailycardinal.com/arts/fish-ing-for-creepers-1.1341513

'Fish'ing for creepers

By Mark Riechers

Published: Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Updated: Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Fish Tank

Hollywood Pictures

“Fish Tank” is stuffed to the gills with sexual tension and uncomfortable relationships in exposing the tenuous life of Mia, a teen left on her own to figure out who is trustworthy and who isn’t.

The world of “Fish Tank” teems with images that should shock audiences—children wander the road side looking for booze, money and general mischief while the few adults that are around scream obscenities at them, pushing them out of view to make way for their own drunken revelry and denials of responsibility. It’s clearly a wretched place to grow up, and it’s in that hell of urban waste that we find Mia, a 15-year-old aspiring break dancer who responds to this world with violent, obscenity-spewing rage towards her family, peers and even strangers.

Despite Mia’s abrasiveness, it’s not hard to see what she rebels against. Her mother clearly despises her, stuck in a drunken stupor that prevents her from stringing together a coherent sentence against her daughter’s wild streak. Her younger sister calls her an expletive whenever they speak. Early in the film, she’s assaulted and nearly raped by a pack of boys wandering the wastes on the outskirts of the city. Mia has nobody to trust in this world, and that sad fact fills her with boundless rage.

For her first film, Katie Jarvis brings an impressive, dark and brooding performance to Mia. She starts the film hardened and closed up, but as the character meets her mother’s “friend” Connor, she becomes a vulnerable, tragic victim of circumstance.

Mia meets Connor, a muscle-bound Michael Fassbender (“Inglourious Basterds”), when he creeps into the kitchen to sneak a peek of her practicing dance moves to a Ja Rule video on TV. “You dance like a black,” he comments crassly, preparing some tea for himself and Mia’s mother, who awaits ravished in her bedroom.

Fassbender jumps between this horrid classlessness and sincere compassion for Mia as he becomes a more frequent visitor in their home. He seems to be the male presence that Mia and her sister were always missing in their lives, but there’s a very real sexual tension between Mia and Connor that makes us uneasy about her trusting him as some kind of father figure.

There’s a scene where Connor carries Mia back to her bed after passing out at a party. He slowly removes her boots, unbuttoning her pants to pull them off as well. We hang on the moment, fearful of what happens next. But then he simply tucks her in and heads back to her mother’s room. We breathe a sigh of relief.

Similar to our impressions of Peter Sarsgaard’s character in last year’s “An Education,” it’s hard to not be suspicious of Connor’s true intentions for Mia and her family. He takes them fishing in a small man-made pond and makes the seemingly innocuous comment, “People don’t come here often. The fish are stupid and easy to catch.” He frequently takes mysterious phone calls from “his mother.” Something isn’t right, and we become increasingly uncomfortable with Mia opening up to an unknown quantity of a man.

“Fish Tank” becomes the story of a girl learning whom she should trust, and figuring out how to save herself from her own situation. The rough, gritty film shows its characters at their lowest, their ugliest—but when we reach the end, we can at least hope they’re better for their suffering.

“Fish Tank”’s run at Sundance will end Thursday. See it before it leaves, or catch it on DVD.
Admin
Admin
Admin

Posts : 27093
Join date : 2009-09-20
Location : California

Back to top Go down

Reviews and SPOILERS - Page 17 Empty Re: Reviews and SPOILERS

Post by Admin Thu Apr 15, 2010 9:33 pm

http://thefastertimes.com/film/2010/04/15/fish-tank-review-in-brief/


Film
“Fish Tank” Review in Brief
Jonathan Kiefer
April 15, 2010 Jonathan Kiefer

It’s not fair to describe British writer-director Andrea Arnold’s second feature as more or less Precious meets An Education, but it’s not wrong either. Arnold’s vision is carefully calculated to bring the gritty with the pretty; she seems to want us to understand that even in the projects, teenage girls still swoon for white horses. It helps a lot to have the girl so magnificently played by nonpro newcomer Katie Jarvis, who holds the mostly handheld camera’s attention like her life depends on it. She’s a tough and tender 15-year-old, dreaming of stardom as a hip-hop dancer, sassing her boozy, floozy mother (Kierston Wareing) and crushing on mom’s troublingly receptive new boyfriend (Michael Fassbender). How moved you are by the hidden grace of getting by in the gutter probably will depend how well you tolerate a poignant/laughable late scene of mother and daughter coming to terms by dancing together to Nas’ “Life’s a Bitch.” For reals.
Admin
Admin
Admin

Posts : 27093
Join date : 2009-09-20
Location : California

Back to top Go down

Reviews and SPOILERS - Page 17 Empty Re: Reviews and SPOILERS

Post by Admin Fri Apr 16, 2010 7:41 pm

http://www.californiachronicle.com/articles/yb/143837223

Visiting England's rough edges
By John E. Mitchell, North Adams Transcript, Mass.

Apr. 16--Existing in that teenage netherworld where callous, knowing rebellion and aching naivete co-exist, 15-year-old Mia (Katie Jarvis) mopes around the low-income projects of Essex, England, looking for meaning in a landscape that offers little variation from the usual emptiness.

"Fish Tank" screens at Images Cinema starting tonight, running through Thursday, April 22.

Mia's one secret passion is dancing -- specifically break dancing, which she practices in a decrepit abandoned apartment in her neighborhood. It's her one escape from the realities of her life, which don't stink of tragedy so much as hopelessness. The antagonistic relationship with her mother (Kierston Wareing) -- a self-involved party girl who seems to view her kids as obstructions to her good time -- and her alternately hostile and clingy younger sister (Rebecca Griffiths) send her to this inner sanctum to play out her desire in private, free from ridicule.

So low is her threshold for anger that she routinely bullies a gang of girls who practice their dance routines in the neighborhood playground. It's a form of posturing that seems more preemptive, taking the girls down a notch before they do the same to her.

It's when an apparent one night stand of her mother's blossoms into a relationship that Mia begins to see a light at the end of her gloomy tunnel. Indulgent of her interests and treating her on equal terms rather than as a child, Connor (Michael Fassbender) exudes a calm, intimate air that grows slowly and agreeably over several days as Mia's manner becomes more and more familiar with him, lapsing into flirtation, and setting up a situation in which she gets to know about his life far better than her mother does.

One of the film's great strengths is that Fassbender exudes a kind of easy charm that causes you to backtrack on his possible intentions even as he seems to cross lines.

The other strength is Jarvis, who is in some ways the real deal -- discovered by the director during the middle of an argument with her boyfriend at a train station at age 16. She was on track to go to a technical college and had never considered acting. Plucked to audition for the lead role in this small British film. Jarvis proved to be an amazing choice -- her performance is natural and unforced.

Director Andrea Arnold made an earlier splash with her quiet suspense film, "Red Road," which also studied the psychology behind sexual expression for purposes other than love, and quite effectively.

In "Fish Tank," the sympathy is most decidedly with Mia. Even at her worst, you feel her armor crackling under the atmosphere of her daily life and witness for yourself how little an arsenal she has to wield against its tyranny. Her one possible salvation -- dancing -- offers no real opportunities, and her abilities aren't impressive beyond her enthusiasm. In fact, her presentation betrays the core of her innocence underneath her combative exterior.

She's a multi-faceted character, both wise and unwitting, depending on her situation, and Arnold's film uncovers further -- it's reminiscent of Shane Meadows' "This Is England" and "Somers Town" -- the broken nature of British society at the bottom.
Admin
Admin
Admin

Posts : 27093
Join date : 2009-09-20
Location : California

Back to top Go down

Reviews and SPOILERS - Page 17 Empty Re: Reviews and SPOILERS

Post by Admin Fri Apr 16, 2010 7:52 pm

http://www.thestarphoenix.com/Fish+Tank+reels+viewer/2913728/story.html

Fish Tank reels in viewer
By Cam Fuller, The StarPhoenixApril 16, 2010

FISH TANK

STARRING: Katie Jarvis, Michael Fassbender

DIRECTOR: Andrea Arnold

THEATRE: Roxy

RATING: 3 1/2 out of 5

- - -

Cannes winner Fish Tank achieves everything it sets out to do. That makes it a successful movie. But it's not the kind of film you "enjoy.''

It's a dark, gritty and unflinching look at poverty, hopelessness and adolescence set in a welfare housing complex near London. Fifteen-year-old Mia Katie Jarvis isn't in school and doesn't have much to do other than emulate the dance moves in the sexually charged music videos that the TV is constantly tuned to.

Before the first act is over, she has picked a fight with some neighbourhood girls who can dance better than she can, drawing blood with a vicious head butt on one of them, and she's been swatted in the head by a mother who has long since given up on her. Oh, and she's also tried to steal a horse. The emaciated animal is chained near some campers on a weedy lot. It's the only thing Mia can invest her affection in. But she's attacked by some punks and scared to death when she tries to break its chain.

Later, Mia develops a crush on her mother's latest boyfriend Connor (Michael Fassbender). There's a moment of incredible tension when Mia passes out after stealing a bottle of vodka from the party downstairs and Connor carries her to bed. You sit through that one in a full body clench waiting for the worst to happen. When it doesn't, you realize that Connor might be a good guy, and might become the first adult she's ever been able to trust.

Director by Andrea Arnold, highly regarded for previous films Red Road and Wasp, gets amazingly honest performances from everyone in the cast. Jarvis is very real, maybe because she's not a professional actor. Kierston Wareing as the boozy, floozy mother is incredibly cold and cruel. Fassbender is, suitably, harder to read. Is Connor going to become a surrogate father or does he have other intentions?

The story progresses fairly predictably until, suddenly, it doesn't. The turn it takes is another white-knuckle moment than leaves you breathless.

Fish Tank will be too real for some. Even so, it's the kind of take-no-prisoners film-making that's rarely attempted.

©️ Copyright (c) The StarPhoenix
Admin
Admin
Admin

Posts : 27093
Join date : 2009-09-20
Location : California

Back to top Go down

Reviews and SPOILERS - Page 17 Empty Re: Reviews and SPOILERS

Post by Admin Sat Apr 17, 2010 11:55 pm

http://reversedirection.john-seven.com/?p=5714

Review: Fish Tank

0John Seven • 16th Apr 2010 • Film • Andrea Arnold, British film, Katie Jarvis, Michael Fassbender

Existing in that teenage netherworld where callous, knowing rebellion and aching naiveté co-exist, 15-year-old Mia (Katie Jarvis) mopes around the low-income projects of Essex, England, looking for meaning in a landscape that offers little variation from the usual emptiness.

Mia’s one secret passion is dancing — specifically break dancing, which she practices in a decrepit abandoned apartment in her neighborhood. It’s her one escape from the realities of her life, which don’t stink of tragedy so much as hopelessness. The antagonistic relationship with her mother (Kierston Wareing) — a self-involved party girl who seems to view her kids as obstructions to her good time — and her alternately hostile and clingy younger sister (Rebecca Griffiths) send her to this inner sanctum to play out her desire in private, free from ridicule.

So low is her threshold for anger that she routinely bullies a gang of girls who practice their dance routines in the neighborhood playground. It’s a form of posturing that seems more preemptive, taking the girls down a notch before they do the same to her.

It’s when an apparent one night stand of her mother’s blossoms into a relationship that Mia begins to see a light at the end of her gloomy tunnel. Indulgent of her interests and treating her on equal terms rather than as a child, Connor (Michael Fassbender) exudes a calm, intimate air that grows slowly and agreeably over several days as Mia’s manner becomes more and more familiar with him, lapsing into flirtation, and setting up a situation in which she gets to know about his life far better than her mother does.

One of the film’s great strengths is that Fassbender exudes a kind of easy charm that causes you to backtrack on his possible intentions even as he seems to cross lines.

The other strength is Jarvis, who is in some ways the real deal — discovered by the director during the middle of an argument with her boyfriend at a train station at age 16. She was on track to go to a technical college and had never considered acting. Plucked to audition for the lead role in this small British film. Jarvis proved to be an amazing choice — her performance is natural and unforced.

Director Andrea Arnold made an earlier splash with her quiet suspense film, “Red Road,” which also studied the psychology behind sexual expression for purposes other than love, and quite effectively.

In “Fish Tank,” the sympathy is most decidedly with Mia. Even at her worst, you feel her armor crackling under the atmosphere of her daily life and witness for yourself how little an arsenal she has to wield against its tyranny. Her one possible salvation — dancing — offers no real opportunities, and her abilities aren’t impressive beyond her enthusiasm. In fact, her presentation betrays the core of her innocence underneath her combative exterior.

She’s a multi-faceted character, both wise and unwitting, depending on her situation, and Arnold’s film uncovers further — it’s reminiscent of Shane Meadows’ “This Is England” and “Somers Town” — the broken nature of British society at the bottom.
Admin
Admin
Admin

Posts : 27093
Join date : 2009-09-20
Location : California

Back to top Go down

Reviews and SPOILERS - Page 17 Empty Re: Reviews and SPOILERS

Post by Admin Tue Apr 20, 2010 12:00 am

http://welcometothedreamfactory.blogspot.com/2010/04/fish-tank-2010.html

Monday, April 19, 2010
Fish Tank (2010)

Andreas Arnold's new film Fish Tank (2010) provides a unique glimpse into the scourge of poverty. It's set mainly in the projects of Essex, amidst run-down buildings, overgrown highways, and strangely enough, pristine wind turbines (more on them later). Given this depressing milieu, it is understandable that Mia (Katie Jarivs), the film's fifteen-year-old protagonist, is so angry.

Her mother brings home random men, she is a social outcast and we learn that she is about to be shipped off to boarding school, but Mia dreams of escaping these proletarian circumstances. Wehn she is not arguing with her mother, she spends her time practing her dance moves in an abandoned, apartment building. It is during an impromptu dance session in her kitchen when Mia meets Connor, another one of her mother's guesthouses, played by Michael Fassbender who play Lt. Archie Hicox in Inglourious Basterds.

There is an immediate connection between the volatile Mia and the affectionate Connor. Connor takes a paternal interest in Mia, something we gather her mother's usual friends don't bother with. Mia certainly enjoys her role as Connor's new-found daughter, but it is obvious that she is also physically attracted to Connor. As the film progresses, Connor continues to nurture Mia and her younger sister, providing them with the fatherly love they have missed their entire lives. Connor is excellent in the role--almost too good. Ultimately, Mia's desires win out, and the newly constructed family is over just as quickly as it was established.

And now back to the wind turbines. When I noticed these white propellers situated in the middle of the Essex projects, I couldn't help from thinking about The Great Gatsby, another commentary on social class, and the the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg. These turbines, like Eckleburg's eyes, are consistently hovering above the landscape. They remind us of the dichotomy between those with the luxury to worry about issues such as energy consumption, and the families in these projects that are simply focused on feeding themselves.

Arnold amplifies the message during one scene where Mia's younger sister and her sister's friend are watching television. I don't think it is a coincidence that they are tuned in to MTV, which just happens to be airing an episode of Cribs. Although subtle, it provides one of the most poignant moments of the film, as these two young girls are transfixed by the foreign world displayed on the television. But, we see the star of the show as a fool in contrast to the two young girls. Even though it is not the central message of the film, it is hard to ignore these delicate renderings of what, perhaps, and equally promiscuous British politician might call the "Two Englands."


A note of on the format:

I watched Fish Tank at home through IFC On Demand. Normally, I would loathe the idea of watching a theatrical release on television or, even worse, a computer. However, the chances of this film playing in my area was remote, and I didn't want to want six months for the DVD release. I would never want to replace the experience of watching a film in the cinema, but I think this format might caught on and provide smaller films like Fish Tank a greater audience.
Posted by Rg at 6:44 PM
Admin
Admin
Admin

Posts : 27093
Join date : 2009-09-20
Location : California

Back to top Go down

Reviews and SPOILERS - Page 17 Empty Re: Reviews and SPOILERS

Post by Admin Tue Apr 20, 2010 10:38 pm

http://www.thetranscript.com/northberkshirenews/ci_14895783?source=rss

Visiting England’s rough edges
By John E. Mitchell
Posted: 04/16/2010 02:09:28 AM EDT

Katie Jarvis stars as Mia in the British film ‘Fish Tank.’ (Photo courtesy of IFC Films)

Friday April 16, 2010

North Adams Transcript

Existing in that teenage netherworld where callous, knowing rebellion and aching naiveté co-exist, 15-year-old Mia (Katie Jarvis) mopes around the low-income projects of Essex, England, looking for meaning in a landscape that offers little variation from the usual emptiness.

"Fish Tank" screens at Images Cinema starting tonight, running through Thursday, April 22.

Mia’s one secret passion is dancing -- specifically break dancing, which she practices in a decrepit abandoned apartment in her neighborhood. It’s her one escape from the realities of her life, which don’t stink of tragedy so much as hopelessness. The antagonistic relationship with her mother (Kierston Wareing) -- a self-involved party girl who seems to view her kids as obstructions to her good time -- and her alternately hostile and clingy younger sister (Rebecca Griffiths) send her to this inner sanctum to play out her desire in private, free from ridicule.

So low is her threshold for anger that she routinely bullies a gang of girls who practice their dance routines in the neighborhood playground. It’s a form of posturing that seems more preemptive, taking the girls down a notch before they do the same to her.

It’s when an apparent one night stand of her mother’s blossoms into a relationship that Mia begins to see a light at the end of her gloomy tunnel. Indulgent of her interests and
treating her on equal terms rather than as a child, Connor (Michael Fassbender) exudes a calm, intimate air that grows slowly and agreeably over several days as Mia’s manner becomes more and more familiar with him, lapsing into flirtation, and setting up a situation in which she gets to know about his life far better than her mother does.

One of the film’s great strengths is that Fassbender exudes a kind of easy charm that causes you to backtrack on his possible intentions even as he seems to cross lines.

The other strength is Jarvis, who is in some ways the real deal -- discovered by the director during the middle of an argument with her boyfriend at a train station at age 16. She was on track to go to a technical college and had never considered acting. Plucked to audition for the lead role in this small British film. Jarvis proved to be an amazing choice -- her performance is natural and unforced.

Director Andrea Arnold made an earlier splash with her quiet suspense film, "Red Road," which also studied the psychology behind sexual expression for purposes other than love, and quite effectively.

In "Fish Tank," the sympathy is most decidedly with Mia. Even at her worst, you feel her armor crackling under the atmosphere of her daily life and witness for yourself how little an arsenal she has to wield against its tyranny. Her one possible salvation -- dancing -- offers no real opportunities, and her abilities aren’t impressive beyond her enthusiasm. In fact, her presentation betrays the core of her innocence underneath her combative exterior.

She’s a multi-faceted character, both wise and unwitting, depending on her situation, and Arnold’s film uncovers further -- it’s reminiscent of Shane Meadows’ "This Is England" and "Somers Town" -- the broken nature of British society at the bottom.

John Mitchell is the Transcript’s arts and entertainment editor.
Admin
Admin
Admin

Posts : 27093
Join date : 2009-09-20
Location : California

Back to top Go down

Reviews and SPOILERS - Page 17 Empty Re: Reviews and SPOILERS

Post by Sponsored content


Sponsored content


Back to top Go down

Page 17 of 18 Previous  1 ... 10 ... 16, 17, 18  Next

Back to top

- Similar topics

 
Permissions in this forum:
You cannot reply to topics in this forum