Johnno (Cristian Ortega) dances around a bedroom that’s streaked with wood-panel walls he’s the closest thing this friendship has to a Michael Cera, though his tuft of brown hair and sunken field of energy suggest Ian Curtis wandering into a Taika Waititi movie. Two 15-year-old boys talk on the phone without saying a word - instead, they thrash about to the sweet anarchy of a pirate radio signal that’s blasting Ultrasonic’s “Annihilating Rhythm Part 1.” Everything is in black-and-white save for the red power button on the one stereo they share between them, the warmth of a memory splashed with the ugly shock of a cold shower. The opening scene unlocks an entire world. Wes Anderson's Favorite Movies: 35 Films the Auteur Wants You to See 'Bridgerton' Season 2: Everything You Need to Know About the Netflix Hit 'Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin' Review: Amish Country Gets Creepy in Breezy Faux Documentary New Movies: Release Calendar for October 29, Plus Where to Watch the Latest Films
And while even the movie’s best moments are derivative enough to deserve that kind of mix-and-match categorization, Welsh shoots the whole thing with such a knowing sense of time and place that its age-old story of revolt can feel like it’s happening for the very first time - like it’s now or never, and there’ll be no going back once the sun comes up. So convincingly set in 1994 that it feels like it was made 26 years ago, Brian Welsh’s “Beats” is a burn-it-all-down bildungsroman about a country in transition and the kids who’ll be left behind an ecstasy-fueled barnstormer that somehow manages to thread the needle between “Trainspotting” and “Superbad” (with a little “Footloose” sprinkled in there for good measure).
For the former ravers and ruffians of mid-’90s Scotland, whose already fading dreams were squelched out completely by a government decree that criminalized public music characterized “by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats,” that last gasp of disobedience has now been re-crystallized in all its raging glory.
Every generation has that moment right before they’re forced to grow up and everything goes to shit - before society herds them into the adult lives they never wanted, but had to accept in lieu of a better stable.
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