Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

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

***Spoilers Ahead*** Damn, talk about sad & depressing, this movie was sad & depressing from start to finish.This is a movie I'll watch 1 time & 1 time only.I hoped that something good would come out of it but nothing ever did.I hoped that nothing would happen to either of the 2 boys but something does.I saw it going that way but I was hoping I'd be wrong.The Selfish Giant was a good movie but definitely not something you'd watch more than once unless you're trying to depress yourself.If the director was trying to make me feel some type of way with this movie then he definitely got what he wanted.If this movie doesn't make you feel some type of way then there might be something wrong with you.I don't know how anybody can watch it & not feel something at all.The Selfish Giant wasn't just sad & depressing but at times, bleak, brutal & tough to watch

While not audacious and brave in it's style as Barnard's smashing debut "The Arbor", it explores much of the same territory – poverty in northern England. But this time Barnard uses a more neo-realist bent that recalls the films of Ken Loach, among others. And after two viewings, while I missed the wild rule-breaking she did in her first film, I felt she had made a film of gritty honest and emotional force. The story centers on two young teens (very well played by non-pros). Diminutive Arbor is hyperactive, angry, and so on the edge he can be frightening and simultaneously heartbreaking -- Arbor needs meds just to allow him to be calm enough to function. And there's Swifty, his best friend who is introvert to Arbor's extreme extrovert. Swifty is willing to go along with Arbor's schemes to a point, but he also wants to honor his mother's wish that he get an education, and try to move up and out of poverty. The two begin collecting (and sometimes stealing) scrap metal to sell to a tough local junk metal dealer, Kitten. This is a man who is capable of being almost a father figure one moment, and stomping you into the ground the next. A sort of modern Fagan, using the boys to do his bidding (although, to be fair, the boys come to him). A dark, moody and ultimately deeply disturbing film, that refuses to let us or society off lightly when it comes to kids growing up in the cycle of poverty.

Painfully truthful social realism at its most painful and fragile form . Fully brilliant and abstract genius. When that little is so much and when that is large so little - what's a few pounds extra in Bradford's poorest and vulnerable areas really worth? Is it worth a few scrape? A few broken bones? Some blood? Someone's life?Last time I saw something like this incredibly vulnerable and genuine was 2011 in Warp X-film Tyrannosaur, also a British film that plague one's mind with soiled hyper-realistic social realism. But regarding genuineness in every single small frame, The Selfish Giant is even better.It hurts a little extra in the chest, a lump is in my throat - oh, this was a movie! I thought I was teleported to Bradford. I'm sold , take my extra pounds, I do not care - you have tortured me enough.The spectacle is so incredible that I do not for a second think of the fictional character that is playing in front of my eyes.What hurts most is that I can not give the movie or the play, or motion pictures, more than a 7/10, that is a little hard, but that's all I can spare when I put the film in context to other movies I rated.

Every once and awhile a movie comes along and rattles your core. It doesn't use graphics or fantasia - just raw human grit.It picks you up gently, rising you ever higher. You peer from this mountainous peak of mortal avidity as you gaze upon the truth that which it shows with such grotesque purity. You then realize you're helpless at such a height - as if suddenly finding yourself uncomfortably aware of the precarious position you're in as your heart, your mind, and your soul yields to its every whim; forcing you to confront the harsh reality that is life.In the midst of the aftermath, you emerge anew, humbled, adapted - for one more jaunt into the fray.This my friends, is one of those movies.