Fear and Punching in Reno

Last week, I did something I haven’t done in years and went to the movies.  I missed it, I really have.  I used to love going to the movies, it was my refuge; I would wait for a film to be out for a few weeks, then try to find a weekday to go and watch an early showing in what would usually end up being a mostly private theater (when I went to see Wonder Woman in 2017, I was in the theater with a single other person; we both liked it).  I saw Sonic the Hedgehog 3, but that’s not what I’m writing about today—but spoiler alert, I thought it was great.  Easily the best of the three Sonic movies, and I did like all three, even though the first one was a confusing fusion of a road trip movie and an Olive Garden commercial.  But I’m not here to talk about that; I left my notebook in the car and just enjoyed the film as a regular moviegoer.  What it did was remind me of the Paramount+ series Knuckles, so I rewatched it, pen in hand.

On the surface, Knuckles doesn’t really make any sense.  It’s a strange concept from the get-go.  Even discounting all the strange decisions in the Sonic movies, focusing a six episode series on Knuckles and Adam Pally’s character Wade Whipple was a decision a cut above in strangeness over the others.  I couldn’t really understand who the show was for—the music ran older, lots of 70s, 80s, and 90s music make up the soundtrack, the pivotal challenge for Wade is a bowling tournament, and for Knuckles, it’s boredom.  At least at first.

Knuckles is having trouble adjusting to life after his purpose has been fulfilled following the events of Sonic 2 and the mundanity of the suburbs is kind of driving him insane (I know how he feels; once I leave the concrete comforts of the city and the sirens begin to fade, I start to slowly lose my mind).  Who among us hasn’t wanted to turn their surrogate parents’ living room into a gladiator pit for the family pet to finally go mano-a-doggo with his greatest nemesis, the mailman?  Too much time in even the most idyllic of scenery can drive a person—or echidna—mad, I tell you.

After the incident with the mailman, Knuckles is grounded and in a state of meditation, has a vision of a tribal elder Chief Pachacamac (Christopher Lloyd voicing a character whom I will be referring to as Chief Doc Brown from here on) from beyond the grave.  Chief Doc Brown tells Knuckles that his new purpose is to train Wade Whipple to become a true warrior and win the Tournament of Champions, the aforementioned bowling competition.  When we cut to Wade, he is indeed bowling with his best friend Jack Sinclair (played by Julian Barratt, from Mindhorn and one of my favorite, too short-lived series, Truth Seekers), a writer and bounty hunter who talks like a Baldur’s Gate character, against a Girl Scout who proceeds to beat Wade when he chokes on the final frame.  Jack kicks Wade off the team in favor of little Susie and he is humiliated.  Knuckles attempts to train him and they embark on a journey to what is apparently the heart of the bowling world, Reno, Nevada.  Why road trips are such a staple in a series about a little hedgehog who is best known for running really fast, I have no idea, but I can’t say that I mind it.  But, as the pair leaves Green Hills, things start to come into focus.  Two rogue GUN agents, Willoughby and Mason, whom you might know as Sassy from Ted Lasso and Kid Cudi from Westworld and being Kid Cudi, respectively, track him for an arms dealer in order to capture Knuckles so he can use his energy to create more weapons.  Similar to Vulture in the MCU Spider-Man films, cleaning up after the superheroes’ wake of destruction, he has been using the quills left behind by Sonic and Knuckles to supercharge futuristic weaponry.  The dealer is played by the always imposing Game of Thrones alum Rory McCann and known only as “The Buyer”.

As Wade and Knuckles bond over their shared loss—in this case, Knuckle’s dead echidna tribe, leaving him the last of the echidnas, and Wade’s father abandoning him as a child in a TJ Maxx, leaving him in a state of arrested development, bumbling man-child.  Wade takes Knuckles to a bowling alley so he can show the little red guy his battleground.  Agents Sassy and Kid Cudi show up using specialized quill-powered weapons The Buyer gave them and they capture Knuckles, leaving Wade as his only hope.  Wade has to decide to step up or let his friend fend for himself.  As you can imagine, he decides to step up, become the warrior Knuckles says he can be, and go save his furry friend.

But that doesn’t mean things go smoothly.

If you’re thinking that this is all weird, you’re not alone.  Many times while watching this show, I thought to myself “What am I watching?”, but I never quite wanted to look away.  As the story unfolds, Knuckles and Wade’s collective journey only worked to endear them both more to me.  Now, I’m an odd one when it comes to these franchise characters, it seems.  When I was a kid, I always preferred to play as Luigi to Mario and as Tails to Sonic.  And when Sonic & Knuckles came out, I was thrilled to play as Knuckles and played as him as much as I could and I was very happy with Idris Elba’s portrayal in Sonic 2, so he had a leg up in the endearment category.  Elba’s deadpan delivery almost always works for laughs and never feels forced, overdone, or cheap.  I could not have been happier with Knuckles, in both Sonic 2 and the Knuckles series.  But pairing him with and centering the story on Adam Pally’s Wade Whipple, the incompetent sheriff’s deputy who was equal parts Barney Fife and Launchpad McQuack?  Actually, when I put it that way, I can see why the character works for me.  But I never thought he’d make the jump from funny side character to properly endearing co-lead and I’m glad he did.  Because while I tried to peg down the reason why I enjoyed Knuckles so much, I kept getting the feeling that they made the show kind of for me.  The whole Sonic movie franchise is aimed pretty well at 90s kids, even including a gag in the new movie where someone has to blow on a USB drive to get it to work, and this is no different.  This wild fever dream of a show just felt like something they plucked out of my mind when I was a kid and put it directly on a streaming service.  The choice of music reminds me of the songs I heard growing up.  Not always ones that I sought out and listened to myself, like Real Life’s “Send Me An Angel” which features heavily in an episode, but ones that I heard around.  On the radio, in TV shows and movies, when parents of other kids would play music, etc.  When Knuckles and Wade roll down the street on a motorcycle to “Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta” by Geto Boys (censored, obviously), it took me back to the first time I heard it in Office Space and immediately went to Napster to find a copy to listen to in Winamp.  Now, if you don’t know what any of those words mean, I don’t blame you.  But you may not connect with this show the same way I did.

The series has many ups and downs, with characters being placed in peril and rescued in a game of hostage-taking musical chairs (in addition to Knuckles being pursued by the rogue GUN agents, a bounty is placed on Wade’s head, and you may remember that his friend who kicked him off the bowling team has a whiff of Boba Fett about him), which keeps it from getting stale episode to episode.  There are a lot of quick payoffs that keep the story moving; it’s not trying to be Twin Peaks where one central conflict drives the whole show and red herrings and dead ends act as barriers to resolving it.  It’s fluid, it’s dynamic, it jumps genres sometimes—in one episode Wade has a vision of Chief Doc Brown culminating in a full on, properly epic stage rock opera which tells Knuckles’s backstory with the help of Michael Bolton’s singing.  I may not have been a theater kid, but it was one of the most entertaining pieces of television I’ve seen all year.

But the show isn’t all silliness and nostalgia, there are some genuinely touching moments as well, like when Wade goes to ground at his mother’s house just in time for Shabbat dinner and Knuckles shares his story with her and she relates it to the story of Moses, with the two of them fighting side by side to keep the Shabbat candles lit.  Some of it is played for comedy effectively, but there’s a heart to the show that’s undeniable.  And to do something that can move you in the midst of such a preposterous story is, frankly, impressive.  Seeing Wade’s journey, seeing Knuckles find a new way through life, it mirrors what regular people struggle through when faced with everyday adversity and how they get through it.  It’s surprisingly relatable storytelling and I really commend that.  It could have been off the wall insanity constantly, Aqua Teen Hunger Force style, and that would have been fine, I probably would have enjoyed that too.  But that they went just that bit further and wrote in parts that could easily have been cheesy but are actually nice instead, well, that’s really great.  It’s, again, a kind-hearted, joyful show in a time when that’s needed.  It just clicked with me and I seriously doubt this will be the last time that I watch it.

Now, I can’t promise you that you’ll like it, I don’t think it’s for everyone.  It’s not like it’s a masterpiece like The Penguin or a perfectly crafted comedy-thriller like Bad Monkey, but it is a truly surprising delight that I enjoyed more than I ever thought I would.  If you enjoyed the Sonic movies, Knuckles is well worth your time, or even if your kids just like them and want to watch, you have pretty good reason to stick around and watch it with them.  Plus, cameos from Rob Huebel and Paul Scheer in a reference to Dodgeball, what more could you want?

As this is the last post of the year, I want to let you know that I won’t be doing a Game of the Year post this year because I basically only played Astro Bot, which I positively adored, older games like Forza Horizon 5, and games that infuriate me on the reg, like EA Sports FC 25 (or whatever it’s called, we all know it’s FIFA by any other name).  In addition to that little housekeeping, I would like to wish you all a truly Happy New Year and all the best once the calendar ticks over.  What happens between now and then isn’t on me, you’re on your own until the 1st.  Thank you all for being here, thank you all for coming back week after week, thank you for sharing this blog with your friends.  After a long unplanned hiatus, 2024 became far and away my biggest year since I first started this as a little car blog 12 years ago and relaunched with a media focus in 2019.  I have you all to thank for that and I really, truly, deeply do.  See you next year!

Pacific Northwestern Exposure

Maybe it’s impossible to catch lightning in a bottle—look at how hard it is to follow up great projects with sequels.  Look at how bad Iron Man 2 was compared to Iron Man.  But sometimes, the third time is the charm.  I mean, not Iron Man 3, but it was an improvement at least.

Okay, that’s enough of the idiomatic cliches, but I do want to talk to you about St. Denis Medical, the follow-up to the follow-up from Superstore creator Justin Spitzer.  After suffering through 2021’s American Autos, which felt like it was written in 2016, I thought that perhaps Superstore was a fluke.  I could tell American Autos was trying to recapture the magic of Superstore, even drafting in Jon Barinholtz (brother of the reliably hilarious Ike), who probably had the highest joke hit rate in the show, for a bigger role.  But it didn’t work and while it managed a second season, I still don’t understand how.  It left me skeptical when I saw commercials for Spitzer’s new show.

But St. Denis Medical rights the ship with aplomb.  It’s not about the doctor’s office in Red Dead Redemption 2 where Arthur helps a doctor amputate an injured man’s limb, but rather a struggling, underfunded hospital outside of Portland, Oregon, even though I can’t stop myself from giving it a French pronunciation like the town from that game.  But it’s not St. Denis, it’s “Saint Dennis”.  That’s fine, I can live with that.

Going back to the mockumentary well for a feel good comedy may seem like a tired mechanic now, after shows like The Office, Modern Family, Parks & Rec, and Abbott Elementary, and the show does borrow heavily from the Parks & Rec playbook, but it’s all the better for it.  The talking heads don’t take anything away from the flow of the show and it allows for layered jokes and it never detracts from the episodes’ stories.  Ensemble comedies like this can often hinge on casting and St. Denis’s cast is well chosen.  Wendi McLendon-Covey of Reno 911! and The Goldbergs plays the head of the hospital, doctor turned administrator, a real Leslie Knope-type; well-meaning and overbearing, she wants her hospital to be seen on the same level as big city hospitals, but she genuinely cares about her staff and the patients.  I’m talking about the complete opposite of Dr. Kelso from Scrubs, it’s genuinely refreshing to see.  Josh Lawson returns from his too short stint as Tate in Superstore (and Kano in 2021’s underrated Mortal Kombat, where he offered most of the comic relief) and, while he plays a version of Tate here, surgeon rather than pharmacist, he shines in every scene.  I love his comedic timing and delivery, he serves up laughs every time he’s on screen.  Veteran comic actor David Alan Grier also features heavily and the cast is really stabilized by his presence.  He plays the jaded old doctor who is just past it, but in a charming, funny, Ed-Asner-at-the-end-of-Up kind of way.  Alison Tolman’s Alex is the star of the show and she continues to delight in every role I’ve seen her.  Her stint in the first season of the Fargo series was a standout performance, her recurring role in Brooklyn Nine-Nine showed she had the chops for a full on comedy, and in St. Denis she keeps up the record of strong performances.  Rounding out the cast is a number of somewhat familiar faces, like Kaliko Kauahi (Sandra from Superstore), Mekki Leeper (from Jury Duty), and Kahyun Kim (from Cocaine Bear).  Some great one-off appearances too, like Erinn Hayes, who has done the comedy doctor thing before in Childrens Hospital and its criminally underrated and too short-lived spin-off Medical Police and Nico Santos from Crazy Rich Asians, another Superstore vet.

It’s a time-tested formula.  Understaffed, underfunded, with a new guy there to help the characters explain things to the audience, this time in the form of a wide-eyed young nurse who comes from an insulated religious community.  His upbringing lends itself to some great comedic moments, where his family, who doesn’t believe in medical science and disapproves of his career as a nurse, tells him to be more like his cousin—whom unfortunately died of strep throat.  The lack of staff and funding means there are always problems to deal with and it gives the characters something to work around; in a drama, it makes for conflict, in a comedy, it gives you plenty of awkward situation for comedic moments to grow.  St. Denis sits on the shoulders of giants, sure, but it does it really well.  Sharp writing and strong actors make it so it doesn’t seem like it’s just a copy trying to chase the feeling of another show, a trap Parks & Rec managed to avoid as well.  In this post-Ted Lasso world, one where you feel increasingly yelled at by everyone and everything, where everything is vying for your time and attention and wants your rage and anger to fuel it, I can’t get enough of watching good people trying to do good things and that’s what St. Denis is all about.  Even David Alan Grier’s lovable curmudgeon gives a damn about his patients and his fellow coworkers; the normal doctor v. nurse conflicts aren’t a focus of the storytelling, rather they approach the job as if they’re all in it together.  It’ll never not be refreshing to see; I am so glad the era of comedies about “friends” who just constantly snipe at each other and go for the jugular is over.  A friend isn’t supposed to just be someone who knows you well enough that they can hit at your insecurities and you’re supposed to shrug it off and, boy I have had lots of coworkers I couldn’t stand and some that I’ve become lifelong friends with, which makes a show like St. Denis Medical such a relatable, fun, and uplifting watch.

One thing that does make St. Denis unique is its focus on the nurses for the viewpoint of the show.  It’s not a show about heroic doctors—Lawson’s surgeon Bruce has a god complex, but he’s not the hero of the show, rather, he’s the butt of jokes.  Grier may be a jaded doctor who has seen it all, but he’s used most effectively as a foil for Tolman’s Alex, who is the heart and soul of the show, and most of the characters are viewed from the lens of her perspective.  She’s the one who interacts with admin the most, she manages the other nurses, and the doctors look to her first.  Leeper’s Matt may be the FNG, but he’s not the star like JD from Scrubs, he’s more of a bit player.  Tolman’s Alex is the one who makes this show what it is and while she sets very high standards for the character work, no one in the cast disappoints and most live up to those standards.  Lawson and McLendon-Covey especially, who was toned down very quickly into a believable, likable, and funny character.  She started with the needle pointing a little too far towards Michael Scott, but was deftly redirected towards Leslie Knope, much for the good of the show.  The pilot had some rough edges that needed to be smoothed out, but by the end of the second episode, I was hooked.  Again, taking a page from great comedies like Abbott Elementary, this focus on the on-the-ground characters gives a comedic look at the very real problems in backbone industries like healthcare and education.  They’re downstream, affected by decisions made miles above them, but while they take a moment to acknowledge them, the show isn’t about that.  Even COVID is given just a small mention, whereas Superstore made it a front and center issue.  St. Denis Medical is a show with something to say and, lucky for us, it says it in a really, really funny way.  It’s airing weekly on Tuesdays on NBC, streaming Wednesdays on Peacock, and frankly, it’s become one of the shows I look forward to every week.  With all six aired episodes on Peacock, there’s plenty of time to catch up over the holidays before it returns on January 14th.  And I definitely recommend you give it a try.

[As this post is going up on Tuesday, December 24th and not Monday as usual, I would like to take a moment to both apologize for the delay and wish everyone who is celebrating Christmas a merry one.  Have fun, have food, and make some memories—at the end of the day, they’re more important than presents anyway (but I do hope you get some good presents too).  In case you missed it and still need to pick a movie to watch with the family or you just want to get in the holiday spirit for any reason, you can check out my 2024 Christmas Special here.  Have a fun and safe holiday!  I’ll see you in a week.]

It’s a Wonderful Strife

I am a huge Grinch.  Every time I watch that movie, I root for the fuzzy green guy to complete his plan and finish off the denizens of Whoville once and for all (I’ve never seen How the Grinch Stole Christmas, he was trying to kill those Whovillains, right?).  But, honestly, I think it’s Christmas music that I can’t stand.  It’s such a strange genre of music, where something like 90% of the songs exist solely to tell you that it’s Christmas, as if it’s a surprise that it comes towards the end of the year, every year, since 336 CE.  But, every once in a while, the mood hits and I like a Christmas movie.  After spending about an hour going through my streaming apps and giving a thumbs down to everything that even looked like Hallmark Christmas movie, I came across 8-Bit Christmas on HBO Max.  I like video games, I like Neil Patrick Harris (or as I know him, Dr. Horrible), and it’s sitting on an 84% RT score, so I decided to give it a try and see if it can break into my top 5 Christmas movies.

It starts with a familiar scene for parents these days.  Jake Doyle, played by NPH, is talking to his daughter who desperately wants a phone for Christmas while on the way to grandma’s house.  When they get there, she sees his Nintendo and asks how he got it, because she always thought he wasn’t allowed to have video games growing up.  He goes on to tell her the story of how he got his NES.

From here, the story starts to unfold, Princess Bride style, with NPH flashing back to his childhood in the late 1980s and cutting back to the present for his daughter to try to hide her growing interest in his tale of Christmas hijinks.  And hijinks they are indeed.  You see, the only person in the neighborhood with an NES was the rich douchey kid who loved to lord his Nintendo over everyone.  This kid gives off mega 80s movie villain vibes.  He made kids line up in front of his house before he would choose the ones he’d let come in with the promise of play, sometimes making them pay some sort of tribute before doing so.  He wore a karate gi, casually, over not one, but two polos with popped collars.  He teased the kids once they got in, almost never letting them actually get their hands on the Nintendo.  He’s the kind of kid whose dad owns a dealership and has definitely tried to shut down a ski resort so he can develop on the land.

The movie has fun with the unreliable narrator mechanic, changing the story in front of your eyes as Jake tries show himself in a more responsible light to his daughter, as parents do sometimes, I’m sure, and it’s very well possible that the rich kid wasn’t nearly as monstrous as he made him out to be, but that’s part of the fun of a movie that’s told like this.  Realizing that Christmas was his best chance to get his parents to buy him a Nintendo, he goes on a campaign to trick them into agreeing to get him one because they, as Jake’s daughter rightly noted, did not allow video games in the house.  I can commiserate with this; nothing was worse as an indoor kid than being told that I shouldn’t be inside playing video games and I needed to go outside and play.  My response then was as it is now—if the outside is so great, why has all of human existence been an endeavor to wall ourselves off from it, thus creating the far superior inside?  I digress, and I love all you outdoorsy types and all the gear (I want a camp stove, I don’t know why), but for kids growing up in the 80s and 90s as video games were making their initial foray into homes, this felt very relatable.

Once they see through his plan, Jake learns of a wreath selling contest for his Boy Scouts-like group with the top prize being a Nintendo Entertainment System.  There it was.  Right in front of him, in the form of a flyer in his little hands, was the proverbial golden ticket.  If he wins the Nintendo, he doesn’t need his parents to get it for him.  He was the master of his own fate, ready to pave the way to 8-bit heaven with a road of holly, fir tree branches, pine cones, and those little red berries you always see.  And the way Jake tells it, just about every boy in the neighborhood (as adult Jake pointed out, the 1980s were a less inclusive time) went all in on, turning it into a cutthroat, dog-eat-dog competition that would definitely get a reality show called Wreath Wars on A&E if it were happening today.  Unfortunately, Jake isn’t exactly what you’d call a natural salesman, but in exchange for helping to convince their parents to get her a Cabbage Patch Kid, his sister is willing to give him advice that will potentially give him a leg up on the competition.  Now, if you’re of the age where you don’t remember what it was like for there to be a hot toy of the Christmas season, you might not fully understand what kind of ask this was.  Cabbage Patch Kids were the Tickle Me Elmo and Furby of the 80s.  Forget Talkboys and Beanie babies, parents were decking the halls and decking each other in the aisles of toy stores to get their hands on one.    This was a big ask.  (Good god, I wanted a Talkboy so much after seeing it in Home Alone 2 and, frankly, I still do)

And from then on, things get, well, complicated for Jake, in ways I don’t want to spoil for you, but suffice it to say, 8-Bit Christmas is a wild ride of plans and schemes.  It has sufficient twists and turns and surprises to keep even the most jaded of viewers (like me) engaged, and the movie almost changes genre multiple times, and each time, it does it in a fun manner.  In some ways, it’s set up like a heist movie, with planning stages and everything, including the full on planning board like a Grand Theft Auto 5 mission.  The whole thing comes together as part Home Alone, part Ocean’s 11, part Boiler Room, part A Christmas Story, and all fun.  At the end of the film, Jake, in both real time and in the past, realizes that the really important things about Christmas—about life, really—are what you do with the time you have and who you spend that time with.  Stuff is stuff, it’ll always be there; there will always be the next Nintendo, the next Tickle Me Elmo, the next Beanie Baby or Cabbage Patch Kid.  But they aren’t making any more time and at some point, we all reach those empty shelves where the Cabbage Patch Kids and the Tickle Me Elmos and Tamagotchis all used to be.  8-Bit Christmas is a reminder that the consumerism of Christmas, and indeed daily life now, isn’t the be all, end all of existence.  The memories, the experiences, the look of joy gifts put on the faces of the people you care about, that’s what really counts.  It’s what makes this not just a great Christmas movie, but a great movie for any time of year.  It could have been set at any time, at any birthday or holiday (I know I wait with bated breath every year for my Arbor Day presents, I’m not immune to this), and still tell the same, fun, impactful story.  I’m not going to lie to you all, when the movie came to the closing of the third act, some pepper or something got into both of my eyes at the same time and they watered uncontrollably for a little while.  So it was kind of hard to see through all the not-emotional-even-a-little-bit-because-I-hate-Christmas tears in my eyes, but I’m pretty sure it was a good ending.

8-Bit Christmas is without a doubt, a wonderful, joyful, and nostalgic film that’s a fun and easy watch for the everyone, thanks to its PG rating.  I’m not sure if it cracks into my top 5 Christmas movies, but if it doesn’t, it is very, very close.  It’s definitely one I will watch again, of that I am sure.  So if you’re looking for something to watch with the family this weekend or over the holidays, I suggest adding this one to the list.  If you’re celebrating this holiday season, I hope you have a safe and wonderful time, some good food, some good presents, given and received, and above all else, I hope you make some memories you cherish with the people you care about.

Regular service resumes Monday, so I hope you enjoyed this holiday bonus post and I’ll see you then!

Tube Stop Troopers

Remember, remember the 5th of November. Roman candles, aliens, and pot.  I see no reason why Attack the Block should ever be forgot.

South London is bathed in the glow of fireworks on Guy Fawkes Day, but those aren’t the only things lighting up the night sky.  As a young nurse is coming home from a late shift at work, she’s accosted and mugged by a group of masked youths as she turns a blind alley.  In the middle of this mugging, something comes crashing down into a Volvo, pretty much turning it into a smoldering hunk of metal and glass.  She uses this distraction to escape and the youths check it out.  Leaping from the car, a small white creature with no eyes attacks and runs away.  They follow it, soften it up with fireworks, and kill it.

This is the first five minutes of Attack the Block (currently streaming on HBO Max), a hidden gem from 2011 that not enough people have seen and fewer still are talking about as much as they should be, despite its RT score of 91% at the time of posting.  I really appreciate a movie that doesn’t hang around and gets to its story quickly.  You went to the theater (or, increasingly scrolled and clicked on it from your sofa), because you know what it’s about; we don’t need a half hour preamble before the action starts. It’s a fairly simple plot.  On Guy Fawkes Day, aliens drop from the sky and land in South London with the festivities covering their landing.  These kids, aspiring gang members and drug dealers, see the scale of the invasion while showing off their extraterrestrial trophy like Hector dragging Achilles through the streets, and gear up to protect the block, their tower block council estate (essentially a high rise British version of a housing project) from the invaders.  What ensues is a fight for survival, sure, but it’s so much more.

Attack the Block is not only a pulse-pounding sci-fi creature feature, it’s also seriously funny, smartly written, and has something to say about racial and economic tension in England (which, sadly, feels very universal, still, over a decade later).  A movie this polished and well acted makes it hard to believe that it was not only a debut feature for the writer/director Joe Cornish and many of the then-unknown actors, but it was also made for a relatively scant reported $13 million dollar budget.  John Boyega plays Moses, the leader of the group, who went on later to play Finn in Star Wars; Jodie Whittaker plays Sam, long before she became the first woman to play The Doctor in Doctor Who, the young nurse who is mugged in the opening scene; Franz Drameh plays Dennis, who you may know from the CW’s Legends of Tomorrow as one half of Firestorm (the half that isn’t Victor Garber), as well as other unknowns were cast in their roles and played them very naturally.  One of the major standouts is Alex Esmail, who plays a kid called Pest and is anything but, offering a lot of the movie’s comedic relief and a large part of its heart as well.  He’s a great character and adds a lot to the ensemble’s dynamic.  Also in a minor role is Nick Frost, who, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, is kind of a legend when it comes to this sort of sci-fi action horror-comedy.  While he doesn’t have much screen time, he is a real delight.

When the teens see what’s happening to their block, their neighborhood, their home, they don’t hesitate to do whatever it takes to protect it.  And this is England and they’re teenagers, so their options are fairly limited.  Bottle rockets and other fireworks take the place of guns; baseball bats, pipes, and a sword, somehow, handle things when it gets up close and personal.  But it turns out the rest of the aliens that have come to earth aren’t like the small one they killed.  They’re bigger, meaner, have rows of sharp, shark-style glowing teeth, and they’re so dark, they’re almost Vantablack—a very convincing effect used by overlaying CGI on to physical effects (most impressively for a low budget film, the glowing teeth were done using animatronics)—so they’re kind of outgunned, so to speak.   At one point, one of them says “Right now, I feel like going home, locking the door, and playing FIFA” (which is how I felt almost every day at my old job, so I can relate), but they don’t; they step up to protect the block when nobody else will.  And here is where this movie really starts to differentiate itself from most big budget blockbusters.  This isn’t about the military response, the police play a small, antagonistic role to our heroes, and there are no drawn out high level discussions or political backstabbing.  It’s a very ground level world they’re in, despite being stories up in the block.

In some ways, it’s kind of an anti-Independence Day.  It’s so refreshing to see a movie about an alien invasion that isn’t focused on the top level response.  There are no secret conversations or talks about the right time to inform the public.  Even brilliant, cerebral sci-fi films like Arrival and Annihilation often spend their time with the best and brightest, with all the resources at their disposal, with their efforts behind closed doors.  In Attack the Block, the conversations that happen are there to disseminate information to those who need it and to talk about society as whole—when someone suggests they call the police for help, the immediate reaction is distrust.  They’re more afraid of the police than they are of the aliens.  At one point, the idea is even floated that the creatures were created in a lab as a way to hunt down Black people because the police and drugs weren’t killing them fast enough.  Very heavy shades of the theory that the CIA introduced crack cocaine to Black neighborhoods in the US—there is no trust here.  And it makes sense. These are young, mostly Black “hoodies”; youths who have little to no prospects, grow up in poverty, and are often vilified as nothing but a criminal element, a state of decay in the culture.  For a time in England, it was hoodies that were the most terrifying monsters imaginable.  It became slang, dehumanizing the young and the poor; laws were passed, children were arrested, and stores that sold hoodies banned the wearing of them.  [Certainly, I am not the most qualified to talk about this; I am not English, despite the amount of Top Gear and Fawlty Towers I’ve watched over the years, and I am not and was never an impoverished inner city youth.  But I found a great deep dive analysis of the film and its place in that time and society here if you are so inclined to learn more about it—after you watch the film, of course.]

Here, the hoodie, whether the garment or person, is a symbol of the real economic tensions that exist both in the world and in the film; crime was the only viable option they felt they had and when Moses was bumped up by drug dealer Hi-Hatz, a secondary antagonist who comes to the block to make money off them, to selling some coke for him, that was a huge glow up worthy of celebration.  When they wanted to warn their friends and family of the alien invasion, their remaining minutes and texts on their prepaid phones became a limiting factor.  There is no glamor here; the movie is very clear about the issues at play, but it’s quick, it’s subtle, and it takes you paying attention to see it.  The writing is very astute and effective; it doesn’t need long winded soliloquies or speeches and the way it goes about making its point is as sharp as the aliens’ teeth.  There’s the block and there’s everyone else.  But being in the block, living there, being a neighbor, even if they didn’t know you, that meant you were on the same side.  They were together then, they were a team.  It’s together that they have a chance to survive.

It’s a film that works on every level and gets better with each repeated viewing.  As a piece of entertainment, it is funny, it is clever, it is full of great action.  The pacing is excellent; not quite breathless, you do have moments to recover and exhale, but it doesn’t waste any time in its 90 minute length.   As science fiction, it is a satisfying fantastical look at the real world.  As an action movie, it has pretty much everything you could ask for—explosions, chases, fights, gunplay, the lot.  It has genuine moments of horror and very real stakes.  The first time I saw it, I liked it a lot.  The second time, I loved it.  The third inspired me to talk to you about it.  I would strongly recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys any of the genres in which it exists.

Attack the Block is a thrilling science fiction action comedy if you just want to leave it at that.  You can pop some corn, veg out, and just enjoy the spectacle.  It never looks or feels low budget.  It never lags.  It’s doesn’t trap you with a bloated 150 minute runtime.  But, if you look deeper, it’s a movie about how easy it is to forget that other people are human too and what extremes it takes to remind us that at the end of things, we should all be on the same side and that empathy is always called for.  Because that’s how we have a chance to survive.