{"id":5897,"date":"2011-10-07T20:28:33","date_gmt":"2011-10-07T10:28:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=5897"},"modified":"2014-05-16T08:55:30","modified_gmt":"2014-05-15T22:55:30","slug":"attack-the-block","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=5897","title":{"rendered":"Attack The Block"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"attacktheblock\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Director:\u00a0 <\/strong>Joe Cornish
\n<\/em>Writer:\u00a0 <\/strong>Joe Cornish
\n<\/em>Cast:\u00a0 <\/strong>John Boyega, Jodie Whitaker<\/em><\/p>\nI<\/span>n a dimly lit backstreet of South London an alien creature crash lands onto the roof of a car.\u00a0 The alien’s fur is black as midnight and would be near impossible to spot in cover of darkness but for its luminous set of fangs.\u00a0 The alien creature pounces on the nearest human being it finds and…is promptly beaten to death by a young black teenager and his group of\u00a0 friends.\u00a0 Very quickly it becomes apparent that Attack the Block<\/em> is not your typical monster movie.<\/p>\n

Attack The Block<\/em> is a British monster flick created by Joe Cornish, who directed Hanna<\/em><\/a> earlier this year and wrote the screenplay for the upcoming Tintin<\/em> film.\u00a0 It tells the story of a group of young kids who, on the night of an alien invasion, are besieged in their council flat and are forced to defend it.<\/p>\n

The gang is lead by a boy called Moses who looks and I guess acts like a young Fifty Cent.\u00a0 Although he ultimately inherits the mantle of being the film’s protagonist, we are first introduced to him when he mugs a woman on the street.\u00a0 Moses is an intriguing anti-hero.\u00a0 On face value, he is violent and aspires to be a drug dealer.\u00a0 Yet we come to admire the way he fights for his home – the Block – and inspires courage in his friends.<\/p>\n

Moses’ character, which is multifaceted and has shades of gray, is not unlike the content of the film as a whole.\u00a0 Attack the Block<\/em> can be enjoyed first and foremost as a well-constructed and fast paced action comedy.\u00a0 The film does not have a particularly high budget or much in the way of special effects but clever use of camera angles and razor sharp editing help bring the film to life.<\/p>\n

Look beneath the surface however and the film has a host of social issues which it touches upon.\u00a0 It explores race, class divide, police profiling, negligent parenting and drug use.\u00a0 The interesting thing is that the film doesn’t really offer any easy answers to these issues.\u00a0 They are simply there to provide some colour and context to the tale.\u00a0 Best of all, despite being a film about troubled working class kids fighting drug dealers and aliens, the film has a surprisingly optimistic and cheery tone throughout.\u00a0\u00a0 And that comes from the sheer enthusiasm of Moses’ friends who appear to treat the alien invasion as just one of the many activities that you do with your mates during the summer holidays.<\/p>\n

On a side note, I’d like to make a point of saying what a good job the creators of Attack the Block<\/em> did with the design of the alien creatures.\u00a0 It is a simple, effective and distinctive design.\u00a0 One of my few gripes with Super 8<\/em><\/a> from earlier this year is that despite its larger budget and production values, the creature itself was an overdesigned mess that didn’t really look like anything.<\/p>\n

In summary, Attack the Block<\/em> is a hugely enjoyable monster movie.\u00a0 It has a unique style, has the capacity to elicit both tension and laughter, and is one of the best films the genre has seen in years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s a hard block life<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":5898,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1059,1060],"class_list":["post-5897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-films","tag-attack-the-block","tag-joe-cornish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5897"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15000,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5897\/revisions\/15000"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}