Director Stephen Frears started out as a street-level social realist, and in that vein Bloody Kids (’79) was the first serious “Frears film” I saw. (I caught it at the old Magno screening room on Sixth Avenue near 55th Street, and I recall that afterwards Frears stood up and took questions.) For the next 10 years Frears was on a roll — The Hit (’84), My Beautiful Laundrette (’85), Prick Up Your Ears (’87), Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (’87), Dangerous Liaisons (’88), The Grifters (’90). The ’90s wasn’t the greatest decade for Frears, but he came back big-time with High Fidelity (’00). Anyway, I bought Bloody Kids on Amazon and watched it two or three days ago. I was surprised to discover that while it’s a reasonably interesting portrait of unruly British youths galavanting around, it’s not quite the knockout that I’d built up in my head. Memory does that sometimes.