Bovie Movie

Fans of the MTV-spawned Jackass series will be delighted to hear that actor Johnny Knoxville and his daredevil pals haven’t calmed down with age. Instead, they’ve become even wilder since 2002’s feature-length Jackass: the Movie, hilariously raising the stakes for bad taste stunts and pranks with this superior and more darkly imaginative sequel. The sick-puppy laughs come thick and fast as the adrenaline junkies combine agonising tests of human endurance with moments of utter grossness and juvenile stupidity. Whether it’s danger man Steve-O being used as live shark bait or The Ringer star Knoxville riding a giant rocket, this random procession of often life-threatening skits is a wince-inducing testament to just how far some people will go to amuse others. Ultimately, if you didn’t get the concept before, you certainly won’t get it now, but if car-crash entertainment is your idea of fun, then this strictly adults-only film is hard to beat. 

Interesting narrative, excellent computer generated images (for its time), extensive interviews with numerous scientists (mostly Americans and Russians-thank goodness this documentary isn’t biased towards any country) and a memorable soundtrack combined to make compelling viewing for anyone interested in astronomy.

This documentary chronicles the lives of two youngsters in one of the coldest places on Earth. Watch as Seela the walrus and Nanu the polar bear grow from newborns to teenagers and what it takes to survive in an environment that’s rapidly shrinking thanks to climate change.

This film is not the even-handed trial the “Tipton Three” were denied during their time at camps X-Ray and Delta, the USA’s “extra-legal” detention centres at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It is a personal account of events, told partly to camera, partly dramatised. And it is a devastating piece of reportage that provokes shame and indignation in equal measure. In October 2001, British citizens Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Ruhal Ahmed left their homes in the Midlands to attend Asif’s wedding in Pakistan, took a side trip to Afghanistan on a whim and were eventually imprisoned, interrogated and tortured as suspected members of al-Qaeda, spending around 25 months in “Gitmo”. They were never charged. This is a heated critique from director Michael Winterbottom — the rapidity of the editing (and indeed production schedule) reflects the anger driving the film, but also makes it hard to follow at times. The lads’ naivety is occasionally stupefying and the film’s brevity frustrates those looking for more context. As documentary cinema, it is far from perfect and better suited to the small screen. As an impassioned, thought-provoking piece of political film-making, however, it is unmissable. 

After the ferocious shotgun blast of a documentary that was Fahrenheit 9/11, one might well have wondered what Michael Moore would do for an encore. The surprise is that he has followed it with Sicko, a thoughtful, somewhat idealistic critique of the US healthcare system that uses few of his usual grandstanding stunts and rarely resorts to his trademark sarcasm. At two hours, it’s a little long and, initially, a little repetitive, with Moore evoking countless emergency-room nightmares that boil down to the same root of insurance company penny-pinching. After that, the European leg seems rosy by comparison, with Moore treating the National Health Service and its French counterpart as a sort of public health Shangri-La. But even those unphased by the differences cannot fail to be astonished by the extraordinary final 20 minutes, in which Moore takes ailing 9/11 heroes to Guantanamo Bay to get the care they must pay exorbitant prices for at home, but is given free to al-Qaeda suspects. His methods may be questionable, likewise his motives, but Moore certainly knows how to push buttons — his government’s and ours. 

This controversial Palme d’Or winning documentary from Michael Moore is a blistering attack on George W Bush’s administration. The film investigates the legitimacy of Bush’s presidency, his links to the Bin Laden family, the role that oil played in the response to the World Trade Center attacks and how the pursuit of the Taliban led to the Iraq war. He even takes us up to the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers that dominated the news in the first half of 2004. The assembled news footage and street interviews are always riveting, contentious and one-sided — so much so as to make Bowling for Columbine appear even-handed. This agitprop reflection on the dubious agenda of American foreign policy inevitably preaches to the converted, but it also uncovers or highlights many thought-provoking facts — such as members of Congress not reading the bills they pass and the fact only one had a child (a son) serving in the conflict. The most affecting moment of all, however, comes when a grieving mother reads out the last letter received from her son before he was killed in action. 

In 1938, two aspiring comic strip talents, Jerry Siegal and Joe Shuster, published a character that would create a new genre of fantasy, Superman, the first superhero. This film explores the creation of the character and his subsequent evolution over the decades through various media. With various interviews of noted creative luminaries, the film shows how the character has adapted to the times and bounced back from times when he felt irrelevant to always regain his prominence as one of the great heroes of popular culture.

Describing himself as the “producer/director/guinea pig” of this, his first feature documentary, healthy 30-something Morgan Spurlock wondered what would happen if he ate nothing but McDonald’s food for a month. With this headline-grabbing experiment at its core, Super Size Me looks more broadly at the hold fast food has over Americans in an age of ever-increasing obesity. An initially chipper host without a political axe to grind (he admits he enjoys the odd Big Mac, despite the protestations of his vegan chef girlfriend), Spurlock soon finds his strict new diet hard to stomach. After one “super-sized” meal from a drive-thru, he vomits profusely on the tarmac. After a few weeks, Spurlock’s doctor tells him his “liver is like pâté” and the gross-out comedy takes a darker turn. Like Michael Moore, Spurlock presents his statistical material light-heartedly to make a serious point, but the success of his film depends on the likeability of his ubiquitous presence. Which is very likeable indeed.