skopia
Kubrick pulled it from British cinemas himself after the reaction, and it stayed unavailable there for twenty-seven years: a state that enforces goodness, an invented slang, imagery nobody forgets.
A zombie comedy that works as an actual zombie film: Wright plants every joke twice, so the second half pays off setups you laughed at an hour earlier without noticing they were setups.
Wright's parody is better constructed than most of the films it mocks: a London supercop is exiled to a picture-perfect village, and the final act is staged better than the real thing.
A Danish audiologist reportedly died laughing during a screening: Charles Crichton was seventy-seven and made the fastest farce of the decade, with four thieves who all intend to betray the others.
Richard E. Grant does not drink and had to be taught to be convincing: two unemployed actors leave London for a cottage in 1969 with no money, no food and no plan whatsoever.
Guy Ritchie raised the money out of favors and cast a professional footballer who had never acted: four London friends owe half a million pounds by Friday, and five plots collide getting it.
Brad Pitt asked for a part and got one nobody can understand a word of: an unlicensed boxing promoter, a stolen diamond and several sets of London criminals converge at considerable speed.
Audrey Hepburn's singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon and Julie Andrews was passed over for the part she created on stage: the Cecil Beaton costumes remain the most beautiful ever filmed.
Tom Stoppard rewrote the script and you can hear him in every scene: a blocked Shakespeare finds his Juliet, and nothing else is this funny about how theater actually gets made.
Nine storylines, two hours, and half the country reruns it every December while the other half writes essays about why it is bad: Richard Curtis knew exactly what he was doing.