Stan & Ollie (2018)

Poignant account of Laurel and Hardy’s UK tour of 1953, directed by Jon S. Baird. 

The duo were very much on a decline, career-wise, but there was still enough affection for their old routines for them to be able to perform in theatres. This is set against Hardy’s declining health, and also the evolution of their long and complex relationship. 

Steve Coogan and John C. Reilly are superb in the lead roles, really nailing the mannerisms and voices. It’s touching to see how they interact after years of friendship and as a working unit. It’s also quite funny.

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.

Greed (2019)

Anything directed by Michael Winterbottom and starring Steve Coogan is worth watching – see also Twenty-Four Hour Party People, A Cock and Bull Story or The Trip.

Wiki politely calls this “A satire on wealth, centred around a billionaire high-street fashion mogul’s 60th birthday on the Greek island Mykonos.” Others have suggested it is based on the life and career of Philip Green. Arrogant, ruthless and teeth-whitened, Steve Coogan is utterly convincing as the brusque bully in the lead role – Sir Richard “Greedy” McCreadie – as is Isla Fisher as his ex-wife. David Mitchell is perhaps too shy and indecisive as the biographer, although it makes sense that someone more ruthless would be denied access to such a controlling figure. 

There are several interwoven strands:
• The life of the entrepreneur, from school days to the present.
• The build-up and aftermath of his outlandish, stupidly expensive themed party.
• A look at (mostly dysfunctional) personal relationships: father/son, husband/wife, husband/ex-wife, employer/employee.
• A vain daughter attempting to be the star of her own reality-TV show.
• A biographer attempting to research the life of McCreadie.
• A savage satire on wealth and success.
• A searing condemnation of the way the fashion industry is built on a brutally exploited slave underclass.

It does all this and manages to be funny. There’s high drama, too: I certainly didn’t predict the way the party would end...

At the closing credits, the film presents you with some sobering statistics about the pitiful wages people get paid working in sweatshops.