Diary of a Bad Lad (2004)
My copy of The Diary of a Bad Lad was poor: It kept pixilating and occasionally freezing. At two points I could not get it to unstick except by jumping to the next scene. Consequently, I cannot give a fair and complete review. However, I can make two comments which might be helpful.
Film viewers and reviewers are usually unjustifiably concerned about “spoilers,” but it is best if you know absolutely nothing about The Diary of a Bad Lad before you see it. Well, it is okay if you know the film is about one or more seedy fellows involved in drugs, prostitution, and some other unsavoury business. Fortunately, I did not read the three pages of explanation and promotion that came with the screener, and fortunately, no one had told me anything about the film. See it cold for maximum impact.
I often had great difficulty understanding the people. For starters, they are speaking various dialects of English, I assume, from around the Manchester area. Specifically, let’s listen to a scene early in the film. Several people are sitting around a plate of cocaine, often talking at once. Several have snorted. The fellow who is the main focus of the conversation is “out of his head on smack.” The living room has poor acoustics, and the sound is recorded with a hand-held directional microphone. I was picking up 25% of the dialogue at the best of times. In two other scenes, captions are provided, and the narrator is easy to understand. If other people in North America have problems understanding the dialogue, it is unfortunate because this fresh, low-low-budget film has something worth saying.