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Films: N is for...

Network

Peter Finch has a mid-life crisis because he works in American telly and it’s all rubbish. Another of those films we keep changing our opinion on whether it’s any good or not every time we see it. It seems great one viewing, crap the next. Peter Finch is good but not brilliant, the satire is, let’s be honest, not “becoming all the more prescient by the day” but is starting to look very dated indeed in the particulars, with its audience participation discussion show event horizon and ’70s economic preoccupations, and the global conspiracy endgame is a bit of a nihilistic copout. On the other hand, it’s got a crazed, manic energy you just don’t get in Oscar-nominated flicks as a rule, which is a good enough reason to keep its flame alive. Of course, one of the best bits of this is the scene where Faye Dunaway has her meeting to hear the proposals from Universal for the new season on UBS, a series of dismal pilots – The New Lawyers, etc. – all constructed around precisely the same formula which, as any daytime film watcher will know all too well, is more real than real.

1 Comment

1 Comment

  1. Lee James Turnock

    March 30, 2016 at 4:22 pm

    ‘Let him do his angry man thing’ – that pretty well sums the whole film up.

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