24 Hour Party People

Year of Release:  2002
Director:  Michael Winterbottom
Screenplay:  Frank Cottrell Boyce
Starring:  Steve Coogan, Paddy Considine, Danny Cunningham, Shirley Henderson, Lennie James, Sean Harris, Andy Serkis, John Simm 
Running Time:  117 minutes
Genre:  Comedy, drama, music

Manchester, England, 1976:  Tony Wilson (Coogan), reporter for local news show Granada Reports and music show So It Goes, is inspired, after seeing a Sex Pistols gig, to open a showcase for local, unsigned bands.  Wilson's "Factory Nights" are a huge success, and he subsequently starts his own label, Factory Records.  Despite making a huge splash with the legendary group Joy Division and, later, the brilliant, but mercurial, Happy Mondays, as well as their own nightclub, The Hacienda, Wilson and his friends soon realise that the wild nights can produce some devastating morning afters.

This is the cinematic equivalent of a great night out:  Funny, wild, scrappy, sometimes weird, sometimes emotional, and leaving you blinking at the cold grey light of dawn.  I was kind of too young for the whole "Madchester" of the late '80s and early '90s but I do remember it being a thing, and I knew people who were really into it, also my Dad is from Manchester, so I enjoyed the film's celebration of the city.  The film is a heady mix of drama, documentary, comedy, music video and surrealism which doesn't as much break the fourth wall as throw a sledgehammer at it.  In one scene one of the real people depicted in the film cameos to dispute the film's version of events.  The film even breaks it's story to list some of the people who cameo in the film, including one whose scene was cut but, as the narration states, "I'm sure it'll be on the DVD" (I've seen the DVD and it is).  The film is certainly messy (the tragic real life suicide of Ian Curtis, although played respectfully in the film, feels at odds with the goofy comedy surrounding it).  Steve Coogan channels more than a little of his Alan Partridge character as Tony Wilson, a talented man who is so unapologetically and full-bloodedly a complete arse, that he becomes almost kind of heroic in a weird way.  Otherwise, the film is full of famous, or soon to be famous British stars, including Andy Serkis and Simon Pegg. I love music, but I'm not really a big music person and don't know a lot about it, however I loved this film.  It makes me feel a little nostalgic for the wild nights out and dazy, hazy mornings.   

Lennie James, Shirley Henderson and Steve Coogan are 24 Hour Party People   

Scream

Year of Release:  1996
Director:  Wes Craven
Screenplay:  Kevin Williamson
Starring:  Neve Campbell, Drew Barrymore, Courteney Cox, Rose McGowan, David Arquette, Skeet Ulrich, Matthew Lillard, Jamie Kennedy
Running Time:  111 minutes
Genre:  Horror, thriller, comedy

In the small American town of Woodsboro, teenager Casey Becker (Barrymore) is tormented by taunting phone calls from a mysterious masked killer, who brutally murders her when she fails his twisted movie trivia game.  As Woodsboro becomes a media circus, it becomes apparent that the killer is particularly focussing on Sidney Prescott (Campbell), whose mother was killed almost exactly a year before.

Some films seem to perfectly capture a particular time period, and Scream, to me, is one of the definitive films of the late 1990s.  The look, style and music really capture that period.  Horror was pretty much in the doldrums at the time, and slasher films in particular were as dead as if the genre had gone out at night to investigate a strange noise, until Scream brought it back.  The film's great idea is that, unlike most of the slashers that had gone before, the characters here are aware of slasher films, and are fully aware of the conventions of the genre.  Audiences sometimes watch horror films and scream in laughter at the stupidity of the characters, this film second guesses that audience by having the characters on screen do it for them (literally in one scene where a character is watching Halloween (1978) oblivious to the killer looming up behind him, and equally unaware that he is being recorded and watched in a TV news van, where the people watching are shouting the same things that he is saying to Jamie Lee Curtis).  The characters are frequently discussing horror films and enumerate in detail the rules of a slasher film.  However Scream is not just a spoof of horror, it works as a slasher film in it's own right, screenwriter Kevin Williamson  obviously loves and knows horror, and director Wes Craven was one of the great horror directors, cutting his teeth on the controversial The Last House on the Left (1972) and The Hills Have Eyes (1977) before unleashing Freddy Krueger onto the world in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).  In fact Craven had explored similar post-modern territory before with Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994), which I still think is the best of the Elm Street series.
The film's most recognisable star, Drew Barrymore, is killed within the first quarter of an hour, in a scene that quickly became iconic.  Star Neve Campbell was known for the TV show Party of Five (1994-2000) and Courteney Cox, who starred as tabloid TV news journalist Gale Weathers, made her name in the hugely popular Friends (1994-2004).  The characters are well-drawn and, crucially, Williamson and Craven seem to genuinely like them, so it is affecting when they are in danger, they are not just there to be sliced 'n' diced.  The fact that the film is not just a gory slasher, but it has humour, teen drama and mystery, meant that it's appeal moved beyond the horror fans.
To date, the film has spawned three sequels, and a TV series.    

Courntey Cox, Jamie Kennedy and Neve Campbell in Scream