24 Hour Party People (2002)

Michael Winterbottom’s vivid and highly entertaining biopic of Tony Wilson, boss of Factory Records and founder of the Hacienda nightclub. Wilson is perfectly evoked by Steve Coogan, who really captures the flamboyant brilliance of the man. 

The film is witty and fairly innovative. At times it breaks the fourth wall with speech direct to camera. Real footage is woven in with recreations so, for example, you “see” Coogan as Wilson in the crowd of a Sex Pistols concert. It makes a strong case for Manchester as a thriving centre for culture from the late 1970s (punk) to the early 1990s (“Madchester”). 

Along the way we get the story of Wilson’s TV work for Granada Reports, his relationship with wife Lindsey (Shirley Henderson), and the rise and fall of Wilson-promoted bands Joy Division, New Order and the Happy Mondays. It’s very funny in places, and even the fantastical sequences such as sightings of a UFO and a conversation with God himself – the sort of gimmicks I usually hate – work well in this context, such is Winterbottom’s masterful juggling of the various threads of fact, fiction, myth and reality.