Initially repulsed by her mother's much younger new boyfriend, a teenage outcast finds herself slowly becoming attracted to him herself in this British drama starring first time actress Katie Jarvis. For an amateur actress, Jarvis offers quite a convincing performance with some great moments as she silently watches her mother dance in her underwear with a mix of pity and contempt. Whenever Jarvis opens her mouth though, it is hard not to squirm. Her character is written as someone so foul-mouthed, obnoxious and burning up with hate that it is hard to warm to her even when we see the upbringing that has led to be being so antisocial (she breaks another girl's nose simply for a rude remark within the first five minutes of the film). None of the other characters here are particularly likable either, and while her mother is probably the most intriguing character with her desire to still party and flirt like a teenager herself, she remains a secondary supporting character throughout. The film comes off as quite repetitive too. A kidnapping plot turn in the second half almost pulls the movie in a daringly different direction, but the potential of this subplot is never quite maximised. Between the innovative camera-work (full of shots that both walk and run with Jarvis) and desolate urban landscapes, 'Fish Tank' is a pretty good looking film, but one may find its appeal as mysterious as the title.

I watched a few adolescent movies recently. This one belongs to the well-done category. It's a story we all can reflect upon. There was Hollywood shallowly adolescent dramatization exited. I grossly dislike John Green's works even his stories sold millions of copies and the adapted movies made big box office hits. They only misled teenager audiences to simplify lives with some pitifully delusional dramas. Anything to strive teenagers to elevate their thinking and develop their own life philosophy was merely non- exited. I would say this movie at least would make audiences take look at their own lives. It's hard to straight out adolescent heads. It's even harder when the surroundings challenged them. Sometimes those arduous moments just stages of lives. But sometimes they became permanent scars. We all need to move on and be guided by our own struggles as long as we are able to overcome.

I have to review this title because it is another caricature of poor people. Some have claimed that the director is comparable to Loach or Leigh, but they have more awareness than this and create more complex characters.Everyone in the film is a two dimensional cardboard caricature of an unlikeable poor working class (or Andrea might say underclass) person, by someone who I strongly suspect is from a middle or upper class privileged film school background.I live in a similar, very deprived area of SE London, so I can say that I believe this is a false depiction of the reality.Firstly, where are the black people? I can think of only one, who appears for a few seconds and commits a crime (buying cider for an underage girl). If Mia is so into black music, one would expect her to have black friends whom she could empathise with.SPOILERS COMING UP Caricatures: 1. Alcoholic promiscuous single parent mum, who seems to have no feelings for her elder daughter, even saying she almost got her aborted 2. 2 delinquent,violent,alcohol abusing kids, Mia and her younger sister.3. A pit bull type dog called Tennants (FYI a brand of strong lager) 4. A philandering Irishman with a wicked way with the ladies who takes the virginity of a girl he knows to be 15 in a place where he could easily be discovered by her mum. Being drunk isn't an excuse.5. A gypsy/traveller lad who makes a living by stealing car parts from a breakers yard and fixing cars.Total plot predictability/not credible I knew Connor was married from early on. When mia abducts the little girl, nobody has called the police. I imagine Connor's virtually-unseen wife would go berserk, and then would twig that Connor knows who it is when the girl returns to describe her assailant - note that we never see that scene because the director probably couldn't handle it correctly.The dance audition which shatters her dreams is for some sort of sex work/lap-dancing. I sighed beforehand hoping this wasn't going to be the case. I think that people who recruit girls for this are very careful to check ID to make sure they are 18, so they don't get busted.All in all, I thought this was a very patronising film, which does not represent the complex and difficult life of poor people in the UK today, it's a sort of 21st Century equivalent of Bedlam, where privileged people would pay to laugh at mad people.

As someone who took Media Studies for 5 years in secondary school, reviewing a movie should really be a walk in the park. However, I really don't feel like any words I could string together would do this movie justice - but I am going to try. We follow Mia, a 15-year-old aspiring dancer who has been forced to grow up ahead of her time because of the environment she lives in, the people she interacts with and the borderline negligence of her own mother - A woman who would rather drink herself silly and try to preserve her dying youth than face her children and be reminded that she has responsibility for people younger and less independent than she is. Mia is at the centre of a lot of controversial events, such as paedophilia and kidnapping, creating a movie that is somewhat hard to watch, even if you may not be able to tear your eyes from the screen. She makes a lot of bad decisions throughout the movie, but that does not make her character unlikable. Everything Mia encounters builds her character up to the young woman we see at the end of the film, leaving with a friend to go to wales for an undetermined period of time. This is when we see the closest moment between Mia and her family, sharing a dance with her mum and a heartfelt hug with her younger sister, Tyler. The almost hand held camera work and use of only natural lighting made for a very real experience with nothing held back, depicting perfectly what life for a lot of the poverty stricken families in England is like.