Films on TV round-up: vandals and landfills

This week I've decided that picking out a film from the schedules and ripping it to shreds for being awful is an acceptable contribution to a films on TV round-up. If you've ever seen Green Street, you won't blame me for it.

Commencing: Monday 5th September 2011

Green Street (2005) Wednesday, ITV4, 11.50pm (also Friday 10.35pm)



On no account should you watch Green Street. It is by some distance the worst thing mankind has ever created. Given that it seems to have been a genuine attempt to portray football hooliganism on film, without the merest hint of tongue-in-cheekery, it's astonishingly bad. I mean, astonishingly.

Elijah Wood (yes, Frodo the hooligan) gets kicked out of Harvard and comes to London to stay with his sister, Claire Forlani. She's married to that blonde, rapey guy off Hustle and probably Spooks who's everywhere these days despite a CV that basically says 'I've played these various blonde, rapey guys. Can dye the hair but the rapeyness is a dealbreaker'.

This guy.

Anyway, Rapey Raperson's brother is a PROPER FACKIN' 'OOLIGAN called Pete, who wears a Stone Island coat and Reebok Classics, has a ludicrous geezer swagger, and is honestly and without exaggeration the least convincing character I have seen portrayed in film, television or theatre. And that includes street theatre. And I am broadening the definition of 'street theatre' to include the Special Brew-fuelled outbursts of tramps raging against unseen aggressors.

Pete bowls into Frodo's life with his absurdly poor cockney accent and rhyming slang and takes him dahhhhn Upton Park to watch the FACKIN' 'Ammers, and he and his mates, I don't know, Tegsy and Gonch or something, turn out to be proper tasty in a scrap. Frodo's a bit scared but then he joins in and comes to be a part of their gang and he learns stuff about what it means to truly belong and all the rest of it.

I think the mission statement was to illuminate why hooligans do what they do; the sense of belonging; the camaraderie, etc etc. The film falls a long way short if so: its attempts to show that hooligans are - hey! - actually just guys who operate under a gentlemanly code and only kick the living shit out of each other, not the public at large, so that's OK then, are comically misjudged, such as when it makes a big point of revealing that Pete is actually a teacher, and showing him give up his seat to a woman on the Tube.

On second thought, do watch it: it has to be seen to be believed.
Garden State (2004) Sunday, Channel 4, 1.10am



This is more like it. Garden State is the brainchild of Zach Braff, aka JD off Scrubs, who starred in, wrote and directed it, all while The Janitor was trying to make him slip on floors he'd just mopped.

Braff is Andrew Largeman, an LA actor who's been heavily medicated since his teens, who stops taking his meds and goes back to New Jersey for his mother's funeral. At which point ... uh, I'm not sure, to be honest. He meets a girl and sort of ... learns stuff about himself? You couldn't say that much actually happens in it.

But stuff happening's overrated, if you ask me. This is still one of the best debut auteur pieces west of the Pecos, with bona fide indie credentials (weakened slightly by Paul Giamatti's not being in it, of course) including a Sundance Grand Jury Prize nomination and a really indie soundtrack. Don't Panic by Coldplay was indie at the time, believe it or not. Here's one of the best songs on it, New Slang by The Shins, to 'play us out'. (*rolls credits over band miming on stage*)


Also on this week

X-Men Monday, Film4, 9pm (also Saturday 9pm)
Mission: Impossible III Monday, C4, 10pm
Syriana Monday, ITV1, 10.35pm
The Wedding Planner Tuesday, Film4, 7pm
Shooter Tuesday, Film4, 9pm
Knocked Up Tuesday, ITV2, 9pm
Full Metal Jacket Tuesday, ITV4, 10pm (also Thursday 11.45pm)
School of Rock Wednesday, Film4, 6.50pm
Face/Off Wednesday, BBC3, 9pm (also Saturday 9.15pm)
Batman Begins Wednesday, ITV2, 10pm
Crank Wednesday, ITV4, 10pm (also Saturday 10.55pm)
In the Cut Wednesday, Film4, 11.20pm
Star Trek: Generations Thursday, Film4, 6.45pm
I Am Legend Thursday, ITV2, 10.45pm
King Kong (2005) Friday, ITV2, 8pm
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story Friday, Film4, 9pm
Aliens Friday, Channel 4, 11.05pm
United 93 Saturday, ITV1, 11pm
Rosemary's Baby Saturday, Film4, 11.05pm