
This review was originally published during the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival. Somers Town opens at Film Forum in New York on Wednesday.
I saw six films at Tribeca this weekend, and five of them were completely blown off the map by Somers Town, Shane Meadows’ practically perfect follow-up to his 2007 triumph, This is England. England was one of my favorite films of last year, but its political/historical aims, admittedly, occasionally overwhelmed Meadows’ more subtle, character-based observations. Somers Town is less ambitious but more impressive, a 70-minute portrait of a moment with zero fat to cut and not a false note.
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Shane Meadows has very quietly followed up his skinhead instant-classic This is England with Somers Town, a black-and-white, 75-minute feature fronted by England’s young star, Thomas Turgoose. The film popped up unexpectedly at the Berlin Film Festival last month, where it earned a rapturous Variety review and very little other press. Now Twitch has a slide show of images from the film, apparently put together by Meadows himself in lieu of a trailer. See it above.