Popular reviews

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  Review by davidehrlich ★★★★½ 7

  fuckkkkkkkkkkkk.

  staggeringly great. like a brutal & unintelligibly hardcore Good Will Hunting set in the bowels of a scummy British prison. unmissable.

  look at David Mackenzie's filmography. *that* guy making *this* movie is kind of like if Jonathan Liebsman followed TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES with fucking ALIENS (Mackenzie's previous work was waaaaay better than Liebsman's, for anyone keeping score at home). this is just savage stuff... overreaches a teensy bit at the end, and might be a bit too clipped, but still utterly essential.

  full review to come next week for Complex.

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★★½ 5

  Riveting, brutal, bruising, and heavy stuff; Starred Up is one of the greatest prison dramas ever made and one of the most boldly potent experiences that I've seen in a very long time. The camerawork, the incredible acting by Jack O'Connell and Ben Mendelsohn, the vulgar and snappy script; It all builds and builds to a film that left me stunned and vulnerable. See it as soon as possible.

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  Review by reibureibu ★★★★ 18

  I am not my father's keeper. I do not control him, nor am I accountable for his actions.

  I am not responsible for the way he raised me. The way he taught me how to survive in this world by lashing out to get what I want, unless what I want is something he doesn't. The way he looks out for me when I'm in trouble, except when he's the one causing trouble for me. The way he steers me clear from predatory influences, unless that predatory influence just happens to be him.

  I am not responsible for being born. I never asked to deal with a man who shouts at me just as much as he says he loves…

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  Review by Matt Singer ★★★½ 10

  If you have the opportunity to see this movie with subtitles, see this movie with subtitles.

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  Review by Eli Hayes ★★★★½ 15

  I couldn't possibly count the amount of F-bombs in this movie, even if I tried... yet ironically it has some of the "least forced" dialogue I've seen all year. Gritty as can be, and flawlessly acted & directed. No complaints here and no excuse not to give this film at least a 4.5/5 (I was THAT close to giving it a perfect score).

  A major success of a movie in a been-there-done-that genre; possibly my second favorite prison themed film (after Hunger) since the turn of the century.

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  Review by Christian Di Leo ★★★★ 5

  I wouldn't last one fucking week in prison. I'm such a delicate boy 😣

  🔐🆙️

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  Review by DirkH ★★★★½ 4

  Starred up’s premise may sound sappy and dime a dozen, but the actual execution is anything but that.

  A young boy (19) gets ‘starred up’ from a prison for young offenders to a maximum security prison. His dad, who he doesn’t really know, happens to be incarcerated there as well and he soon falls under the care of a volunteering social worker who wants to help him manage his anger issues.

  Reading that you’d never expect the places this film goes. The moment the social worker was introduced I started to get fidgety and apprehensive. The notion of reform, hope against hope, is something usually handled in the tackiest of fashions. Even though it is very clear from the start…

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  Review by MK ★★★★

  Absolutely loved this film... Jack O'Connell and Ben Mendelsohn are outstanding. They pull it off very well. Gritty, violent and intense, but very deep and sad at the same time. I'm just blown away. Highly recommended!!

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  Review by 👽hayley👽 ★★★★ 14

  i hate myself so much there's a part in this film where there's a note in ben mendelsohn's cell that says "love you daddy" and i immediately turned to my friend and went "i wrote that"

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  Review by davidehrlich ★★★★½

  Before press screenings of Starred Up, critics were handed a comprehensive glossary of British prison slang. That piece of paper was very...educational, the idioms on it ranging from your basic jail verbs (“top” = “to kill," “kick off the back door” = “anal sex”) to more curious slang like “bacon” (any type of sex offender) and “fraggle” (a vulnerable prisoner).

  Needless to say, it was a most ominous harbinger of the film that was about to start—you don’t get a sheet like that before settling in for Planes: Fire and Rescue. But what makes Starred Up such an intense and riveting experience is that, despite the often unintelligible brogues in which its characters speak, director David Mackenzie’s essential new film so vividly depicts the cutthroat culture of prison life that nothing gets lost in translation.

  FULL REVIEW ON COMPLEX: www.complex.com/pop-culture/2014/08/starred-up-movie-review

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  Review by The Saltburn Drainpipe ★★★★½ 2

  When I saw this movie pop up in my Twitter feed of all places, I thought it was just another clip of a great moment from a terrible movie like the other spam tweets that have taken over that site over the past year. Nonetheless the clip got under my skin and I had to watch the film. Boy am I glad I did. 

  This is the kind of British movie that I love. Yes there is drama and the stakes are high, and yes some of that drama is of the ‘melo’ variety. However the bulk of this film is unapologetically real. It is very very bleak and dark and really highlights how horrible men’s prisons are in this…

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  Review by {Todd} ★★★ 3

  "You got a couple of nice little letters behind your name right.... WELL I GOT NUMBERS." -Neville Love,

  The scariest part about this movie was the idea of being in prison with my dad... that's just hell.

  Despite the intensity of this film I believe that many men are like Eric Love, or many men feel like they have a little bit of Eric Love in them.... we get trained that way. Society teaches us that angst is more okay for us, that we have a secret natural genius that just needs to be recognized, that we're tough and that our flaws are forgivable because we are such unique and special talents. I think that's part of the appeal of…