Ace in the Hole - MatthewHunt

Verma family wedding. Beneath the comedy drama, the feel-good bhangra danceathons and
pre-wedding chaos, though, secrets and lies threaten to disrupt proceedings.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
(Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, 1975)
If Life of Brian was the Pythons' most fully conceived film, this Arthurian piss-take is where the
laugh-o-meter touches the highest before the engine falls out the bottom with a postmodern
clunk. From Cleese's frustrated Sir Lancelot to the inscrutable Tim the Enchanter, mockheroic
is as much a command as a genre.
Monty Python's Life of Brian
(Terry Jones, 1979)
In the petty, crummy atmosphere of 70s Britain, just after the editor of Gay News had been
convicted on a blasphemy charge, the Monty Python team hit back against the Christian right
with a subversive comedy classic. The Pythons got some stick for their sacreligious
irreverence - Mervyn Stockwood, Bishop of Southwark, appeared on television wearing an
enormous cross to harangue Cleese and Palin - but their film was an instant success despite,
or more probably because of the fuss. In this era of Theo Van Gogh and Sir Salman Rushdie,
the fuss may seem a little tame, though with authors like Richard Dawkins and Christopher
Hitchens now venting such fierce rallying cries for the intellectual respectability of radical
unbelief, it may be a satire whose time has come again. Life of Brian was a bold and
ambitious feature, breaking free of the sketch-based comedy more completely than the earlier
movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It was shot on location in the north African desert,
and it featured an ordinary bloke called Brian Cohen who is mistaken for the Son of God.
("He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy!" his mum declares.) There is some sharp
satire of Middle East tribal politics, as epitomised by the People's Front of Judea and its
splinter groups, and a gobsmacking crucifixion scene to finish with. Some defenders wellmeaningly
insisted that LoB was merely a satire on Biblical epics. But friends and foes alike
knew in their hearts it was a wickedly funny send-up of organised religion and Christianity
itself.
Peter Bradshaw
Moolade
(Ousmane Sembene, 2004)
The final film of Ousmane Sembene, known as the father of African cinema, is a ferocious
attack on the tradition of female circumcision. It asks tough questions of the African
communities which permit it, and the western liberals too timid and politically correct to
challenge it. Fatoumata Couliably plays a woman who refuses to allow her 15-year-old
daughter to be circumcised, and offers moolaade - a folk-tradition of protective asylum - to
terrified girls from other villages who want to escape the knife.
Morvern Callar
(Lynne Ramsay, 2002)
An existential mood poem, set between a dead-end Scottish town and the Spanish rave
scene, with Samantha Morton exuding an otherworldly charisma as the eponymous amoral
heroine who pursues fun in the sun when her boyfriend kills himself. Morvern exists only in
the moment, and through beautifully textured visuals, Ramsay renders her world
extraordinary.
The Mother and the Whore
(Jean Eustache, 1973)
An experimental marathon drama about a ménage a trois between an unemployed Parisian
dandy (Jean-Pierre Léaud), his older live-in girlfriend and a flighty young nurse who shares
their flat. Hang in there: after three hours of seemingly plotless rambling and soul-searching
pillow talk, Eustache masterfully captures the 1970s twentysomething generation.
Mughal E Azam
(K Asif, 1960)