If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Best movie of this year hands down!

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

This isn't the first time Christina Ricci disappointed me, she's a great little actress but this isn't the best movie she has ever done in her film career. That's only just my opinion!I felt the movie was very confusing, are we concentrating on Christina Ricci's character or the boy. Even though the plot says it's about the boy but it's also about Dino Chalmers. Which one are we concentrating on here? Thanks to the movie making me bored, I did not get to see Christina Ricci's and Ruby Rose's love scene. Yeah it was my fault for not seeing it but really, Ruby Rose didn't seem to appear much. It would be far better off if they concentrating on one story and not have them lumped on top of each other! This movie is all over the shop, it seriously needs redecorating!

Over the years it's been good to see that Christina Ricci has not only stayed in control of herself but has stuck to good roles. Her appearances in movies like "The Ice Storm", "The Opposite of Sex" and "The Laramie Project" proved that she wasn't going to be another one of these child stars who turns into a train wreck. One of her latest efforts is "Around the Block", in which she plays a woman teaching poverty-stricken Australian children Shakespeare. I understand that the movie focuses partly on the 2004 Redfern riots, which resulted from the death of an Aboriginal boy. The movie gives one a sense of what things are like for Australia's indigenous population. The Aborigines are 1% of Australia's population but 40% of its prison population (this even though Australia's white population is descended from people sent to jail). But anyway, it's a really good movie. I recommend it.

The film depicts life down under in Spillane's birth city of Sydney. She focuses on a white American teacher, played by Christina Ricci whose character of Dino Chalmers is trying to make a difference in the inner-city suburb of Redfern. She gets a class of Aboriginal teenagers to perform Shakespeare's Hamlet with her lead being Liam Wood, a 16-year-old Aborigine who has a talent for dancing and acting. Unfortunately, his future is threatened when he gets in trouble with the law and police.Spillane was herself a teacher in Redfern from 2001 to 2005 at an Aboriginal arts college where she instructed students of all ages, including teenagers. She wrote the screenplay in 2004 after learning about a real-life Aboriginal teen who also got into trouble with the law and police.Spillane's film has this racial tension rippling in the background, or on the side. Her aim is more to take a step back and not focus on the specific incident, but rather examine the neighborhood and show the situation, which led to the racial tensions, or the needless death, much in the same way Spike Lee did in 'Do the Right Thing' (1989).

Around The Block leans on a wide array of emotions and generates a lot of power from the relationships that the boy Liam has in his life, including the ones with his father, mother and brother. Because of the strength in those relationships, Around The Block runs so much deeper than the teacher-student relationship that the majority of the film is centered around. Hunter Page-Lochard's performance as Liam is quite simply a standout. I enjoy emotionally-charged movies and that's where this one will resonate with me. It is also a highly-stylized and vibrant film which makes it an enjoyable experience aesthetically. Despite the familiar setup, there are very interesting fault lines running under the surface of Around The Block.