A BEAUTIFUL MIND
Psychological drama. A brilliant mathematician can do amazing things with numbers, such as massively increasing expenditure, hiking taxes and binging on borrowing, and still have a competitive economy and world-class unreformed public services. Unfortunately, he then presents his Budget and it turns out it was all a schizophrenic delusion.
Starring: Russell Crowe as Gordon Brown; Paul Bettany as his non-existent friend who lives next door.
CH verdict: most members of the audience will realise eventually that they've been conned - and then the story will end very quickly.
OCEAN'S ELEVEN BILLION
Remake
of a comedy crime caper. A small gang of friends ("the Pack of Rats")
hatch a plot to steal as much money as possible from unsuspecting
punters. There are three rules to be followed: First: no blood - no one
resigns. Second: rob only who deserves it. Third: then rob everyone
else. Will they get caught? Yes. Does anyone do anything about it?
No.
Starring: George Clooney as Gordon Brown; Brad Pitt as Tony Blair; Andy Garcia as the Comptroller & Auditor-General and head of the National Audit Office.
CH verdict: People sitting on the left hand side of the cinema will probably prefer the versions of this film which were made in the 1940s, 1960s and 1970s.
THE LOAN, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE
Children's
fantasy. Some hyper-active kids are playing about in a deserted old
Party HQ when one of them opens a wardrobe and finds £14 million has
magically appeared from out of a parallel universe which doesn't seem
to be governed by the same rules applying to the rest of us. They then
go off and live in a world of their own.
Starring: nobody you've ever heard of - although they might also be appearing at the Old Bailey very soon.
CH verdict: most viewers will wish the children stayed inside the wardrobe and didn't come back.
B FOR BRUSCHETTA
Dystopian
vision of the future. Britain groans under the grip of a cruel,
authoritarian, incompetent, corrupt, out-of-touch, hypocritical
regime. One man bravely sets out to bring down the government by
forming links with "the B People", undertaking complicated tax
avoidance and, er, marrying a Cabinet Minister. People should not be
afraid of their Governments; Governments should be afraid of who
they're married to.
Starring: Hugo Weaving as David Mills; Natalie Portman as Tessa Jowell.
CH verdict: Given the risk of copy-cat crime by impressionable teenage thugs, some people may feel that the scene where Parliament is blown up should be played continuously in all inner-city schools.
CARRY ON CONSTABLE
Latest
instalment of a long-running farce. All your favourite characters are
back again. Laugh as they bumble their way through unlikely slapstick
disasters - cackhanded political correctness, gunning down an innocent
man on the Tube, gratuitously insulting the parents of murdered
children, bugging the Attorney-General, that sort of thing - until they
end up with knighthoods and a £300,000 bonus. So, no change there,
then.
Starring: Kenneth Williams, Sid James, Kenneth Connor, Hattie
Jacques, Joan Sims and Leslie Phillips combined as Sir Iain Blair;
Charles Hawtrey as Lord Goldsmith; Bernard Bresslaw as Charles Clarke.
CH verdict: hasn't this series gone on long enough?
BROKEBACK OATEN
This is not a family film, and the Editor would not appreciate a review of it.
LE JOUR DU GROUNDHOG
French
remake of a Hollywood classic. This time 50 million French voters wake
up to student rioting, Government chaos and economic stagnation and
think they're reliving 1968.
Starring: Peter Sellers as Jacques Chirac; Gerard Depardieu as Le Groundhog.
CH Verdict: Sellers steals the show with the scene where he tells
everyone that "Fronz ees seeting orn oon time berm." CH readers of a
sensitive nature may find such crude xenophobic sterotyping of a
civilised and cultured allied nation to be highly enjoyable.
***
Related links: William Norton's reviews from last week and Matthew Sinclair's more serious review of V for Vendetta.
Even more interesting, was the fact that he couldn't bring himself to say the word England.
Perhaps a sick bucket wasn't handy at the time?
Posted by: Dee | March 24, 2006 at 14:36
William,excellent as always!But in a Beautiful Mind doesn't Bettany play Balls rather than Blair who I thought was played by Ed Wood. It must have been Blair who persuaded poor Gordon to do all sort of naughty things like give a job to the Chairman of Capita who poor Gordon hadn't even met!
Posted by: malcolm | March 24, 2006 at 14:45
And my own suggestions for a biopic of the late Humphrey:
The Cat Came Back
Oscar-nominated animated comedy about a pesky black and white cat which becomes the bane of Mrs Blair's life as it constantly outsmarts her increasingly desperate attempts to get rid of it.
Verdict: Both children and adults will laugh again and again at this cartoon caper, which will never fail to entertain.
Cats & Dogs
Fast-paced family action movie about the top-secret, high-tech espionage war going on between a cat and Cherie Blair, which the general public are kept blissfully unaware of.
Verdict: British audiences may find the unsympathetic portrayal of man's best friend a bit of a turn-off.
The Cat, The Witch and The Cabinet
Modern adaptation of the famous C.S. Lewis classic novel about a once-mighty land, accessible either via an indefinitely large but empty Cabinet made from dead wood or by making large donations to the Labour Party, now ruled by an icy witch and her evil minions, in the absence of her mighty feline enemy Humphrey, who is betrayed by a naive public duped by the witch's deceitfulness. Featuring Tilda Swinton as Cherie Blair, Liam Neeson as the voice of Humphrey and millions of extras as the witch's suffering subjects.
Verdict: Not as far-fetched as you might believe...
Posted by: Daniel Vince-Archer | March 24, 2006 at 15:02
Gordie Browno - The tale of a man in the Past who thinks he is in the Future.
Posted by: Christina | March 24, 2006 at 19:46
Great stuff, William!
My own contribution:
[b]Memoirs of a Prime Minister[/b]
Drama set in 2010 featuring Tony Blair as he tries to sell his memoirs for staggering amounts of money. With a £3.5 million mortgage on his new Connaught Square home, and his wife running up increasingly large salon bills (which seem to have little effect on her appearance), will Tony raise enough cash from his memoirs in order to pay off his debts? Or can he rely on his old friend Lord Levy to find him a "loan"?
Posted by: Melissa Bean | March 28, 2006 at 10:27
This is getting addictive...
V is for Vendetta
Futuristic action-adventure film set in Westminster.
Gordon has a Vendetta. A vendetta against the man who reneged on a deal that would have made him Prime Minister.
Tony Blair has been Prime Minister for 16 years now, despite announcing after 8 years in office that he would be stepping down at the next election. But that was not to be.
After sneakily pushing a bill through Parliament in May 2006 using the newly approved Leglislative & Regulatory Reform Bill, Tony became the first "Prime Minister for Life". He will hold office until he dies, to be succeeded by his son, Euan Blair MP (Bethnal Green & Bow).
Now Gordon wants revenge, and hatches a plan to blow up the Houses of Parliament with Tony and Euan inside. Will Gordon succeed? Will Tony survive? Will somebody repeal the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill?
Bumbling Lord Prescott of Kingston-Upon-Hull adds a comic touch to an otherwise dark and harrowing film.
Posted by: Melissa Bean | March 28, 2006 at 10:45
Charlie and the Whiskey Factory
Poor old Charlie is feeling very down on his luck, until he wins a ticket for a tour of a magical Whiskey factory with a group of three other spoilt children (Chris, Simon & Mark).
Charlie and his grandad (Ming) have lots of fun in the whiskey factory, where they drink some Willy Wonker Special Brew which makes them float up to the top of the ceiling. Charlie eventually manages to ground himself by hiccupping and burping.
Fun is also in store for Chris who demands a golden egg, Simon who is desperate to be on TV, and Mark who loves eating chocolate.
However, the winner at the end of the day is Ming, who takes control of the Whiskey Factory, imposing a 50% corporation tax rate on it and promptly puts the factory out of business.
Verdict: Not suitable for minors.
Posted by: Melissa Bean | March 28, 2006 at 14:31
Iraqnaphobia
School boy bully Bushie and his toady Blair release a tarantula from the school lab because "it was looking at them in a funny way". It eats everything it sees and gets bigger. Whenever they try to speak to anyone a great big thread and grins at them. Caning and explusions all round.
Posted by: True Blue | March 28, 2006 at 15:04