FILM REVIEW Hollywood highlights Film 2003.2 review by Jonathan Toss....

Title: Meet the Press
Starring: Al Pacino, Roy Scheider, Melanie Griffith, Martin Short and Vincent Gallo
Director: Ron Howard

Indolent and impotent politicians are upsetting everybody (not least the hookers they hire but can’t get hard enough to fuck!). A frustrated, ignorant and disenfranchised public (played by a stunning Al Pacino) subscribe to the assumed truth that all politicians are corrupt, whilst the most socially significant industry — the media (I’ve never seen Roy Scheider play an industry before but he is in devastating form as the three-passport-trick media mogul Ashley Carver) is governed by the profit principle like any other global business but has sufficient number of loyal (well-paid) hacks to explain away this apparent contradiction when and where necessary.

Although slow moving to begin with (slower than the effort to gather evidence in a Michael Barrymore murder trial!), it really hots up when an apology of a left-wing government is elected (the film is based in Estonia and set ten years in the future), led by a thoroughly malleable Prime Minister (played by Martin Short in a break from his usual marital aid roles).

The party Short leads had always been pigeonholed as extreme by the Estonian press and, thus, easily excluded from power but this new guy Andonnius Bollockian (Short) makes the right noises about decreasing support for the unions, carving up certain sections of the state for an auction to the private sector and (more Christian) religion in schools. The scene where he receives the backing of Ashley Carver is one of intense eroticism and performances of great conviction (think Last Tango in Paris meets Scum but with smiles, laughter and penthouse furniture).

Things move on and after a couple of terms in power, media moguls have increased the conditions upon which their support is based and even Bollockian can’t accept these (his body isn’t wide enough), so he is consistently lambasted by the press and exposed as a bum chum of Estonia’s most infamous child killer (played by Melanie Griffith, in her most convincing role to date).

Vincent Gallo plays the Estonian rock star (Arvo Slart) who emerges as the most likely challenger to the Bollockian crown. His record company is owned by Ashley Carver and with no policies on anything, the corporations of the world round upon Estonia and divvy up everything worth owning and quickly become an unelected and unaccountable government. The only thing Slart has to ensure is that fascists run the police force and that the word "progress" must be in at least four daily newspaper headlines. The television gave up broadcasting news some time ago once it was decided (by three people) that the public wasn’t interested: "If they want that sort of thing they can look out of the window, ungrateful cunts," as Carver (Scheider) says.

With Meet the Press, Ron Howard reasserts his reputation as one of the most limited and pointless movie directors. That said, he keeps the action moving and the language English in an admirable way and extracts marvellous performances from the brains and bodies of the actors. And Al Pacino must get an Oscar, otherwise he’ll be more angry than a Soham resident whose neighbour has hidden her kids in an isolated barn for two days as a joke!

More tasteless comment and insular coverage with Jonathan in the News of the Bald next week, when he reviews God Save my Salad (feat. Demi Moore and Clive Owen), Schooling Marvin (feat. Jeff Daniels and Michael Keaton) and, guaranteed to be the blockbuster of the century so far, 1-2-3 Creationists Are We (feat. (posthumously) Michael "Cancer" Landon, Matt Damon, Ron Travolta, Halle Berry and, introducing, Click Brewer as Samuel).