Director : Mark Herman
With : Pete Postlethwaite, Ewan McGregor, Tara Fitzgerald

Why some films can make it big while others disappear anonymously I cannot fully understand. Let’s look at “Brassed Off” and “The Full Monty” as examples. Both films are set in blue collar English towns where unemployment, and its prospect, create all sorts of emotional conflicts and dysfunctional family situations. In “Brassed Off” the plot focuses on coal miners who play in a brass band, while in “The Full Monty” the cast are steel workers who attempt to become strippers. Both films are somewhat heartwarming and inspire the audience to really feel for the underdog protagonists. Both films star popular British film actors (Robert Carlyle and Ewan McGregor) but “The Full Monty” has grossed well over $100 million, while “Brassed Off” probably didn’t break $20 million.

“Brassed Off” seemed to me to be the better film, tackling more serious issues with the same casual and often comedic flare as “The Full Monty.” Both films depict a working class population that seems more at peace and more sophisticated than their counterparts in the states. And although I have even lived in Britain, it is hard to tell whether or not this portrayal is genuine or merely a cinematic creation.
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This is arguably one of the funniest books in recent history. A contemporary retelling of Huck Finn, Banks has turned Huck (named Bone) into a 14 year-old stoner from upstate New York, who drops out of high school and eventually meets the Jim character (called the I- Man) who is a 40 year-old Rastaman living in an abandoned school bus in Plattsburg, NY. Together they make a pilgrimage to Jamaica where Bone believes his father is living, and where I-Man can resume his life as a marijuana dealing shaman. Although the premise might sound a bit sophomoric, the story so neatly and creatively translates Twain’s classic into the modern world that you can’t help finding the time to read the whole thing in a day or two.

Director : David Mamet
With : Steve Martin, Rebecca Pidgeon

David Mamet can be very good (“Glengarry Glen Ross” and “House of Games”) or he can be very average (“The Edge”). But in the end there is always a cleverness and linguistic precision that very few writers have ever been able to accomplish. “The Spanish Prisoner,” easily Mamet’s best film in years, combines both the patented Mamet-speak dialogue with a slickly orchestrated scam that is about as intelligently entertaining as a movie can get.

The film begins on a ritzy island in the tropics, where Cameron Scott discloses the potential impact of the process that he has just finished to his company’s top executives. In the air hangs a veil of secrecy which hangs thickly throughout the film. Shortly thereafter Scott is introduced to a host of new characters (Steve Martin a millionaire from New York, Mamet’s wife Rebecca Pidgeon as the cute, witty secretary) and then returns to Manhattan to finish his invention.

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