Jackie works as a CCTV operator. Each day she watches over a small part of the world, protecting the people living their lives under her gaze. One day a man appears on her monitor, a man she thought she would never see again, a man she never wanted to see again. Now she has no choice, she is compelled to confront him.
Zoë is a single mother who lives with her four children in Dartford. She is poor and can't afford to buy food. One day her ex-boyfriend drives by and asks her to go on a date with him. ... See full summary »
A teenage girl with nothing to lose joins a traveling magazine sales crew, and gets caught up in a whirlwind of hard partying, law bending and young love as she criss-crosses the Midwest with a band of misfits.
A poor boy of unknown origins is rescued from poverty and taken in by the Earnshaw family where he develops an intense relationship with his young foster sister, Cathy.
Director:
Andrea Arnold
Stars:
Kaya Scodelario,
James Howson,
Solomon Glave
A teenage girl gets ready to go out to meet her boyfriend, despite her mother's loud verbal disapproval of her clothes. She goes out to a deserted area with him and he begins to touch her ... See full summary »
Director:
Andrea Arnold
Stars:
Joanne Hill,
Freddie Cunliffe,
Veronica Valentine
From the get-go, Arnold was fascinated by the careless, seemingly simple choices people make in their day-to-day lives that lead to unintended, complicated consequences.
Strange events happen in a small village in the north of Germany during the years before World War I, which seem to be ritual punishment. Who is responsible?
Director:
Michael Haneke
Stars:
Christian Friedel,
Ernst Jacobi,
Leonie Benesch
A New York woman (who doesn't really have an apartment) apprentices for a dance company (though she's not really a dancer) and throws herself headlong into her dreams, even as the possibility of realizing them dwindles.
Mia, an aggressive fifteen-year-old girl, lives on an Essex estate with her tarty mother, Joanne, and precocious little sister Tyler. She has been thrown out of school and is awaiting admission to a referrals unit and spends her days aimlessly. She begins an uneasy friendship with Joanne's slick boyfriend, Connor, who encourages her one interest, dancing.Written by
don @ minifie-1
Included among the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", edited by Steven Schneider. See more »
Goofs
As Mia is leaving the dance audition, she passes a mirrored wall and the cameraman and his equipment is clearly reflected. See more »
Quotes
[first lines]
[Mia calls Keeley using a cellphone]
Keeley:
[from an answering machine]
Hey, it's Keeley. Leave me a message.
Mia:
Keeley, it's me. What's going on? I've left like three messages. I said sorry, didn't I? You know what I'm like. I was pissed off. Ring me back, you bitch.
See more »
Life's a Bitch
Performed by Nas
Written by Ronnie Wilson / Oliver Scott / Nas (as Nasir Jones) / Az (as Anthony Cruz)
Published by Minder Music Ltd / Imagem Music / Life's a Bitch Publishing, administered by The Royalty Network
Licensed courtesy of Sony Music Entertainment UK Limited See more »
User Reviews
Bitingly realistic, discomforting and hauntingly beautiful
Fish Tank hits you deep and hard, in the soul. It drew me in to its world without me hardly noticing it - a world of ultra-realism, burnished, you must say, by some quite incredible performances from Katie Jarvis and the rest of the cast.
One night of disturbed sleep after watching it and I am still in their world, out on the bleak and beautiful flatlands bordering Essex and London which so many people speed through every day as they journey between London and mainland Europe on the Eurostar trains. I myself have taken that journey a few times and wondered what the people's lives were like who lived in this strange landscape where London has parked so much of the stuff that it doesn't want to see - the giant container terminals, the power plants and the chemical works.
Fish Tank perhaps gives a taste of those lives, but it does much more than that. Especially it gives us a heroine who we can't help caring for deeply, despite and partly because she is on the outside so nasty, rude and violent. Through some of the things she gets up to as she wonders around we see a natural love of life bursting to get out though. We also have an attractive and kind man come into the picture who, through his natural goodness, offers an outlet for her yearnings for understanding, fun, and intimacy.
The story starts off slowly as we get to know 15-year old Mia, her family and the wider (and very limited) world around her. But it picks up and becomes tautly gripping at times - and it never slips into sentimentality or offers false redemption. It is all the better for that.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.
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Fish Tank hits you deep and hard, in the soul. It drew me in to its world without me hardly noticing it - a world of ultra-realism, burnished, you must say, by some quite incredible performances from Katie Jarvis and the rest of the cast.
One night of disturbed sleep after watching it and I am still in their world, out on the bleak and beautiful flatlands bordering Essex and London which so many people speed through every day as they journey between London and mainland Europe on the Eurostar trains. I myself have taken that journey a few times and wondered what the people's lives were like who lived in this strange landscape where London has parked so much of the stuff that it doesn't want to see - the giant container terminals, the power plants and the chemical works.
Fish Tank perhaps gives a taste of those lives, but it does much more than that. Especially it gives us a heroine who we can't help caring for deeply, despite and partly because she is on the outside so nasty, rude and violent. Through some of the things she gets up to as she wonders around we see a natural love of life bursting to get out though. We also have an attractive and kind man come into the picture who, through his natural goodness, offers an outlet for her yearnings for understanding, fun, and intimacy.
The story starts off slowly as we get to know 15-year old Mia, her family and the wider (and very limited) world around her. But it picks up and becomes tautly gripping at times - and it never slips into sentimentality or offers false redemption. It is all the better for that.