‘Urchin’ Review — Harris Dickinson proves himself a tremendous director of actors

There’s something exciting happening across the pond: there’s a brilliant crop of actors from England and Ireland, a rotating class of guys who often work together, who the Internet sometimes jokes can feel like the “White Boy of the Month” but who nevertheless are turning in some of the best performances in recent memory. They are young men willing to push themselves in interesting directions, zeroing in on emotion and vulnerability in fascinating ways that can feel distinctly modern… like a new twist on the sensitive days of James Dean, Montgomery Clift, and Marlon Brando. (All of these boys, perhaps not coincidentally, have played queer; those guys in the fifties could only hint at it, despite what was happening in their personal lives.)

At the top of my list (and also perhaps not coincidentally the oldest) is Josh O’Connor, who is in four films this fall; other names include, essentially, the cast of Sam Mendes’ upcoming Beatles biopics — Paul Mescal, Barry Keoghan, and Harris Dickinson. (Joseph Quinn, I think, will get there! He’s phenomenal in this year’s Warfare.) Though he hasn’t yet entered his thirties, Dickinson in particular is already stretching himself more than some of his peers: he’s writing…