Though danger lurks around every corner, it’s a testament to Meadows’s upbeat worldview that the film never once lurches into grim miserablism.

| Dec 15, 2022

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 24, 2011

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 17, 2011

Turgoose continues to convince as a kid whose personality wavers daily if not hourly, while Jagiello playfully suggests that Marek is becoming the perfect straight man.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 17, 2009

Somers Town is a small-scale jewel that will surprise you with its buoyant look at blighted lives.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 28, 2009

Somers Town is a funny and endearing character comedy whose extra-brief, 70-minute running time proves perfectly adequate for its slender, episodic story.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 7, 2009

However thin, the story of these rootless youths, estranged from mothers and native cities, has a certain universality and appeal.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 30, 2009

A small but important film about small but important lives, the latest drama from Shane Meadows further confirms that more people should know about this gifted director.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 17, 2009

Like its star, the movie is too short and a little thin but just about perfect.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 16, 2009

Meadows has made a lovely film about the ability of the imagination to offset the harshness of reality.

| Jul 15, 2009

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 15, 2009

Shane Meadows has been busily carving out his own corner in British cinema.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 14, 2009

Shane Meadows has a rare ability to convey the drama and humor of everyday life in well-observed, well-acted scenes that rarely drag on interminably or try too hard to dazzle.

| Original Score: B+ | Jul 14, 2009

Thomas Turgoose reunites with writer-director Shane Meadows in this shaggy, endlessly charming dramedy set in working-class London, wistfully shot in black-and-white... Witty and warmhearted, it's a feel-good movie that never seems forced.

| May 12, 2009

Funny, raw and gentle, bearing national identity issues with enviable lightness, it's essentially a beautiful piece of black and white observation, buffed from many hours of improv.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 22, 2008

Somers Town is Meadows' first venture outside his East Midlands stamping-ground. It has its lyrical moments, but I watched most of it through splayed fingers.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 22, 2008

If Somers Town were any more unassuming, it would risk disappearing completely. Seventy-two minutes long, in black and white, with a cast as starless as a cloudy night, it is a British triumph.

Full Review | Aug 22, 2008

As a result, he has not only been able to stick two fingers up to the anti-Pole hate-mongers of the popular press, and to create an enchanting portrait of growing up in a British city; he has made his best film to date.

| Aug 22, 2008

It's a slight, gentle, sweet-natured comedy shot in black and white, and blessed with a lovely performance from Meadows' great find, Thomas Turgoose.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 22, 2008

For all the sly humour, though, Somers Town is a hollow pleasure. It aspires to the new wave of London immigration thrillers by Stephen Frears and Anthony Minghella. But it's not cruel enough.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 22, 2008