Dr Strangelove or: How I Learnt to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Dr Strangelove wins an explosive 10 mushroom clouds out of 10.

Dr Strangelove or: How I Learnt to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, to give it it's full title, was released at the height of the Cold War in 1964. It was Stanley Kubrick's fifth film and followed closely on the heels of Lolita (in which the brilliant Peter Sellers first impressed Hollywood). Kubrick was - and remains - a filmmaking phenomenon: writer, director, producer, cameraman. His first exposure to the world of photography was as a teen in New York where he worked as a freelance stills photographer, from where he graduated to documentary shorts and eventually to feature films. His love of the camera remains visible through much of the composition of both Dr Strangelove and Kubrick's later films. The Shining, for instance, pioneered the haunting Steadicam.

Dr Strangelove (as it shall henceforth be known) began life as a straight thriller but during it's scripting transformed into a dark, terrifying satire. In a masterpiece of man management, Kubrick neglected to mention to one of his actors that the film was a comedy; he deliberately hid the script from the actors of one third of his film. Slim Pickens plays the role of Major Kong, commander of a bomber en route to Russia, completely straight. Pickens, a genuine ex-cowboy, plays the role with such earnest hillbilly patriotism as to create some of the darkest - most morbid - moments of the film. Watching him struggle gamely on to deliver his payload to Russia (with love?) gives us a feeling of creeping inevitablility.

Meanwhile, in an American air force base, a paranoid psychotic officer (the one who orders the attack on Russia) is brilliantly juxtaposed with the multi-faceted Peter Sellers. In one of three roles in the piece, Sellers is a British Group Captain on an officer exchange. His dutiful, logical, and overwhelmingly English character stands firm in the face of Bdr Gen. Ripper's crazed ravings: The Communists want his bodily fluids, ladies and gentlemen. It's a good job that he denies women his essence. This is where Mr. Kubrick demonstrates his love of the camera and it's versatility. In scenes involving the US military the shooting is done (by the director himself, naturally) on a handheld, grainy, shaking, reel camera; the sort used by crews during World War Two. The quality is reduced, the screen sways as the cameraman runs after his targets, and objects obscure the screen. We are immersed in the fraught world of the soldier.

And then we return to the War Room, where Peter Sellers' amiable President Muffley is desperately trying to inform the Russian Premier of recent developments and struggling against loud music, whores, vodka, and phone lines and we are reminded that it's a comedy after all. Very little of Sellers' script was set down. Most was improvised by the Englishman, calling on his natural comedic brilliance honed by years of The Goon Show. In one scene, the actor playing the Russian Ambassador visibly breaks into laughter at Sellers and has to quickly regain his composure. In the brewing resentment between the Ambassador and General Buck Turgiston lies some of the more pointed satire in the film. The President is forced to remind them that they can't fight in here; this is the war room!

Fast forward 40 years and you wouldn't find a studio with the stones to make Dr Strangelove. Stanley Kubrick moved to Britain to find a studio that would take him and his project on, although he recieved money from American backers. Not content with making a cinematic masterpiece, Stanley Kubrick provides us with the finest satire set to film. It's also beautifully shot and cripplingly funny.

To cap it all, it's black and white tone matches my colour scheme charmingly.

Snakes on a Plane

Snakes on a Plane wins a sibilant nine snakes out of ten.

The name, or so the legend goes, came from a Hollywood Bigwig's night out where the assembled scripters elected to invent the Worst Film Pitch Ever™. It was a producer, Craig Berenson, who put forward the idea under the name Venom. Eventually the title was changed, by an anonymous genius, to the brilliant serpent-and-aviation based one which became so widely loved. Samuel L Jackson took the lead role on the strength of the same piece of brilliant wordsmithery that led to the Snakes on a Plane cult being established a year before its release.

The film contained all that was hoped for. Snakes. A plane. Samuel L Jackson. At one point, Mr (Sir?) Jackson punches a snake in the face, which tells you virtually all you need know. At other points, he stabs them with a broken bottle, zaps them with a taser, shoots them with a service pistol, fooms them with a flamethrower, and at one point impales one with a well aimed harpoon. The film, essentially, is a series of ever more hilarious ways of battling reptiles. That said, the reptiles don't go down easily (apart from on that one guy who was bitten on the trouser snake). There is a lot of snake-fodder in this film. It's good; Sam Jackson doesn't get it all his own way. There are only around 30 people left at the end, from a planeful.

It's sufficiently well acted that the actors do not detract from the story (I use the term loosely) as I had feared they might. Apart from Jackson - who plays his part with suitably overblown drama - they were mediocre, but in a film entitled Snakes on a Plane, we're not looking for little gold statues. The special effects, equally, were passable. The addition of a Snake's Eye camera was bizarre and brilliant. Apparently snakes see things just the same as us but green and somewhat blurred. The missing snake is lost because the beginning and end of the film were too long. Essentially, it needed even more snakes being beaten up and even less talking.

The film, I understand, was not popular with critics. Perhaps they are all wrong and I am the only one who is right, and I should take their jobs and their cars and I should probably sleep with their girlfriends too. Perhaps I like this sort of thing and critics don't. Perhaps they took the hump at not being allowed to see a preview showing. In any case, it seems that they have missed the point. No-one names a film Snakes on a Plane without knowing exactly what they are doing. The film is a festival of adolescent adrenaline. Very adolescent. There are boobs. Much of the film was hilarious. When Jackson finds a harpoon gun in the hold of the plane at shoots it through a snake thirty feet away, we laughed. That moment gained the film one of the snakes in my rating. It was brilliant fun for the duration. It can't be that way by happy accident. As I keep insisting, the film was supposed to be like that. It's called Snakes on a Plane.

Snakes. On a Plane.

You shouldn't need to be reading this. The title alone should have made you run out to the nearest cinema to catch it, quickly, before it ends its run. If not? You clearly hate fun.