Censor (2021)
Premise: Enid’s sister disappeared without a trace when they were kids and she was taking care of her. Fastforward to today, the year 1985, and Enid is now a censor for the british goverment. You know, if you’ve ever heard about the video nasties and all that? All that Thatcherian thing where instead of trying to find what was wrong with the UK then they just went “i guess it’s the movies!” and started banning them? That’s us, that’s now in this movie. So yeah her job’s watching the movies but instead of writing hilarious reviews she needs to go “this scene should be cut”, “remove this part” or “yeah this movie’s banned”, which, seriously, is kind of a bummer.
Anyhoo, one day she’s watching one of those movies and wouldn’t you know it, the situations there remind her a bit too much of what happened That Fateful Day…
Under 90 minutes? Yup it is!
Do they say the title? Yes they do!
One sentence review:
Okay, more: I’m biased because I like the whole video nasty controversy thing (it’s kind of bonkers to be honest), and it also was very fun that this movie went for “actual british 80s” looks (and not super neon colours all the time). They also did some fun neat stuff with the aspect ratio and whatever which at times was super subtle but cool? Yeah this was a fun little movie that didn’t overstay its welcome and had a lot of “movies within the movie” which is cool when done right. Neat.
A simple way to improve it: i want every single movie shown or mentioned in the film to be available, and I want to have them yesterday. Don’t go in the Church? Sure, I won’t! Stationery Massacre, a movie where people are being killed with uh, stationery? Like, a compass, a pen, those crappy scissors you had in preschool? hell yeah just hook it to my veins!
Trivia about the IMDb trivia:
Enid is seen using a home telephone answering machine - this is unlikely to have been the case in mid 1980s Britain as the machines had only become readily available in the USA the preceding year.
It must suck to know so much trivia about everything that any detail in a movie can ruin the experience. Like, seriously, who cares. Why did you (the IMDb maniac that wrote this) have a little smug smile while typing this? Why are you this dude?
