In hindsight, I can't believe I didn't opt to see the screened-once Cracks during the nine o'clock hour Thursday night. Yeah, I've had Shane Meadows' films on the queue for ages, and I don't mind the Arctic Monkeys, but c'mon. Talk about up my street: "Sexual tension between a teacher and her students simmers to a boil in a 1930s female boarding school?" Um, hello, Maedchen in Uniform meets The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie with a dash of Picnic at Hanging Rock. Yesssss. Maybe I worried it'd be too St. Trinian's? Whatevs. There's no turning back now. [Although I would LOVE A SCREENER OF CRACKS, universe. KTHX]
OK, so, Le Donk. Kind of a fuck up. Well-intentioned. Yeah. Both the character [played by Paddy Considine] and the film, which is a very self-aware and meta story of a roadie trying to position a pudgy Midlands rapper named Scor-zay-zee as the next big thing. There's a bunch of addressing the camera, a la "Shane, don't film this shit" when our hero goes to see his knocked-up ex-girlfriend, and so on. One-liners like "I feel like Donnie Darko going to fuckin' infiltrate the mafia" are not enough to elevate this flick above a mere trifle, a bit of a laugh. My notes say "Neil Young Ones," which sounds about right.
