SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

hyped garbage

Brilliant and touching

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Kafka once wrote "i think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?."Well, I do believe that we need not only this kind of books, but also this kind of remarkable music and movies that shocks us, affects us and makes everyone of us a little bit more human..'Nil By Mouth' is not a colourful picture was made to please us... It's one of the few movies that wake us up to face the real true world around us, this film is not a tale or a yarn, it's exactly the opposite of that, it's a story of a real work class family could be mine or even yours!. If not check up your neighbours and you will get what I mean.. The script is so smooth like you'ed almost forget that it's a film, the dialogue is just so spontaneous, unprompted and way far from any kind of platitude, which make it very easy to believe... I really think the script is the true star of 'Nil By Mouth' by its honesty and simplicity, because the whole story is from the real world out there where people trying their bests - in their different messed up ways- just to pass each and every day with the minimum possible losses.... every character is interesting to watch, and see what's going on deep inside of them and how they think and feel, why they are not doing anything to change their shitty reality , to move on, or maybe they're!. I just don't know. Raymond's talking about his father actually brought me to tears and I think it's one of the best moments I've ever seen on movies, it's just so honest, simple, direct, pure and unaffected.And not only the script, but also the direction is by the great Gary Oldman!! He's just natural... Ray Winston and Kathy Burke are brilliant!! Again thanks for Gary Oldman for casting them and bringing the best of them..I loved this movie and I believed it. I would love to see more from Mr. Oldman as a director and a screenwriter, and I think after 20 years of 'Nil By Mouth' being released now it's the time for him to give us another masterpiece

When you're deciding whether or not a film is worth watching, you normally analyse the cast, the director, the plot and the audience reviews. All of which for this film came off very well so I was ready for a great, gritty, British drama about the realities of abusive marriage. I don't really understand why this film got all the praise it received, for one the plot line is a chewed up, over used and limp idea. What we are seeing here is a torn family, an abusive husband (yes with the pregnant wife), drugs abuse to an explicit extend and tough circumstances for everyone involved. This has been done before in so many films that when it comes to watching something like this you at least hope to experience something original and fresh. Instead we get the word c*** thrown around like it's your winning prize in bingo for no real reason - perhaps to add realism of the scenario and the families culture. It just doesn't flow - we then begin to realise that Ray's character had had difficulties relating to and getting on with his father, which could be reflected well in the story-line IF we actually met his father. Instead we have a half drunk Ray trying to paint a very vague picture of who his father was. It's these instances when we struggle to understand the characters emotionally. Instead we get a very narrow view of who they really are and who they're trying to portray. Aside from this, the editing and cinematography is great, and it depicts a very bleak world that the family and the characters live in. Using very low light and interesting use of scene selection has given the film an almost apocalyptic look. In conclusion, this film had so much potential to be a real hit (for me anyway) with a great cast, a great plot and an interesting premise. But unfortunately it misses the mark by ruining good ingredients to make an average film. Maybe you need to watch to make your own mind up?

When we are introduced to the various foul-mouthed, chain-smoking, poverty-stricken characters in Gary Oldman's one and only directorial credit, Nil By Mouth, they are gathered in a working club telling stories about people and events we are not privy to. Any establishing character introductions would betray the authenticity of Oldman's searing drama. These are real people, or seem like they are, so we get to endure their mundane and often repulsive conversations as if we've known them for years. And it feels like we have. The product of their social class means they're stuck in their routines; the men indulging in coke-fuelled benders, and the women are just happy to be out of the house.Dedicated to his father, Nil by Mouth is clearly autobiographical, or at least based on Oldman's experiences growing up in a council flat in South East London. Focusing essentially on three main characters - Ray (Ray Winstone), a booze-addled, violent abuser, Valerie (Kathy Burke), his bullied and terrorised wife, and Valerie's brother Billy (Charlie Creed-Miles), a young heroin-addict relying on his mother Janet (Laila Morse) to fund his habit - the film doesn't really tell a clear-cut story, but instead immerses you in it's environment. Dialogue is fast, naturalistic and often hard to follow, and long scenes often do little other than force you to listen to these people's everyday ramblings.Anyone looking for a pleasant experience may do better to look elsewhere, as no punches are pulled. Plenty are thrown, however, as Ray's jealousy over a man he sees Valerie playing pool with - innocently - erupts into a horrific scene of domestic violence. Even more heartbreaking is the next scene, as her mother sees her daughter's battered face for the first time and must listen to her cover story, being fully aware of Ray's violence tendencies. Laila Morse (an anagram of the Italian phrase for 'my sister') is Gary Oldman's sister, and although she had no formal acting experience before the film, she may just be the best thing in it. Her expression of helplessness at the sight of her son shooting up in the back of her van is incredibly powerful.As the film goes on, we do eventually learn more about these characters. Ray may be the clear-cut monster on the surface, but there is some sympathy to be had. In a scene following a particularly self-destructive bender, Ray explains to his friend Mark (Jamie Foreman) that he had no love from his father. Beneath the bulldog exterior lies a rather pathetic and self-pitying man, unable to communicate anything to his wife to the point where they seem to exist in different rooms in their cramped flat. Not since John Cassavetes has a film so successfully portrayed the tragedy of male machismo. With Eric Clapton's wonderfully bluesy score blaring throughout, the film is drenched in atmosphere while maintaining the sense of reality. It's by no means an easy watch, but Nil by Mouth is cinema at it's most raw.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

Nil by Mouth is proof that actor-turned-director for this piece Gary Oldman has an eye for grotty, grimy cinematography which he knows compliments his idea of raw; down-and-dirty, urban set films. His idea of dark, night-set streets and neo-realist inspired sets that encompass apartment flats, as the sorts of people that inhabit the screen are introduced to us, plunge the viewer into a world of anxiety; danger; near-poverty and a gross sense of unpredictability as we realise Nil by Mouth will not follow conventional narrative formula. Instead, it'll spend a lot of time with pent-up, aggressive males doing whatever it is they do. If there's a reason not to be blown away by Nil by Mouth, and this is linked to why I don't think Gary Oldman has directed much since, then it's because the film is a documentation; a hark-back to times and conditions of old brought into the 1990s. It's a basic re-telling of hostile people living amidst low-level living conditions more than it is a substantial study of anything.This is not an eerie look into the life and world of a drug addict alá Trainspotting and this is not a study of one man questioning his identity and role within a 'group' further still within society alá The Football Factory, although the look and structure of the film, particularly the opening, will remind you of these examples. I'm not sure what Nil by Mouth is; perhaps a faux 'grab the camera and shoot on street level' urban drama that utilises necessary acting heavy weights to carry it; perhaps a very straight forward and simplistic look at life in a specific place at a specific time as the proverbial bottle of fizzy liquid is shook and shook before opened and just exploding in a fury of anger, activity and mess.The film is about a collection of individuals living on a less than glamorous London housing estate, while it predominantly covers Ray (Winstone) and his no-nonsense, mess-about mate Mark (Foreman) with supporting turns from a number of others including Oldman's real-life sister Laila Morse, who he gets to swear a lot, (playing Janet) and Valerie (Burke) who's Ray's wife. Oldman peppers the opening twenty minutes, which turns into the opening thirty and then onto the opening forty before quickly becoming an hour; with a number of seemingly random and unconnected incidences. Characters go to a pub; some try to acquire drugs; others go to strip-joints whereas in other scenes, characters target and set up organised attacks on other men whom, in rather a sick 'in joke' on the writer's behalf, step out of a fast-food restaurant named 'Wimpy'.Ray and Mark drive the early scenes almost entirely on their own. The scenes are accompanied by the sorts of dialogue that land you in the world within a film, creating the illusion you're in the room with them, or that you've seen and heard people exchange words like this before. The things these people talk about are pithy, undemanding and feel improvised in their realism and the effortless delivery on the performer's behalf. We see, or observe, these people through the wary and watchful eyes of Valerie and a young man called Billy (Creed-Miles); we see them as they see them: we are made aware of their presence and what sorts of people they are as they drink with us; dine with us; drive us and occupy our living rooms. But Nil by Mouth is one long, and I think somewhat deliberately, arduous building and building to a certain scene much later on. We are plunged into the fire of the world and these people that inhabit it, but it's a one note tune; setting up the characters and the setting and everyone's relationship to one-other and the setting; but we don't get much else afterwards.After an hour or so of Mark and Ray and friends standing around talking of things they've been up to lately; swearing a little; smoking and cursing the police whenever a siren revs up in the distance, we get a little tired. Nil by Mouth has no direction bar the scene it gives us involving Ray and Valeire nearer the end. Trainspotting and The Football Factory give us an equally street-set, low level look at a 'group' of people you would never, and I mean never, want to get involved with or interact with. But as it progressed its characters, peppering their journeys with light comic relief, towards an inevitable confrontation with their way of life ("Was it worth it?" in The Football Factory and "Choose life" in Trainspotting); we were interested and engaged with these low-lives as a seemingly random passage of events propelled them through their existences. If Nil by Mouth could be compared to a piece of this ilk at the time, it'd be 1999's Human Traffic; a film that nothing more than documents the lives of specific no-body individuals; the protagonist of which, horrifically, just needed a good sex session to figure everything out. Whilst it isn't as bad as Human Traffic, it's as disappointing.Surprinsignly and annoyingly, Nil by Mouth goes on a bit more after the 'scene' has occurred. It would've been better if it'd ended after we get the obligatory 'angry male trashes room' scene; a scene that carries no dramatic weight in cinema anymore. The film looses all interest and engagement after 'the scene'; descending into a series of nicey-nicey interactions around which one character is jailed for involvement in drugs giving off a false sense of actual closure. If the film is anything at all, then it's a few would-be neo realistic scenes that are carried by some great dialogue and some two dimensional characters being brought to life by talent that can do better anyway. The rest is somewhat of a chore.