Beginning tonight in Los Angeles, the might Cinefamily is presenting a three-day encore run of Chris Morris’s Four Lions, and a full retrospective of his classic British television shows:
The word “genius” is thrown around rather casually these days when describing talented folks who do a very good job of what they do—but Chris Morris is one of those rare people to whom the term genuinely applies, and we absolutely mean it when we say Chris Morris is a comedic genius. For twenty years, he’s been the foremost boundary-pushing satirist in British comedy, giving us savagely funny fare like the proto-Daily Show news parodies The Day Today and Brass Eye, the Lynch-meets-SNL absurdity of Jam, and the acidic hipster/Vice Magazine critique of Nathan Barley—and now, his riotous feature directorial debut, which skewers the modern-day jihadist movement! Chris’s unshakeable wit is often aimed at topics deemed controversial, but it always provides a social criticism underneath the sensationalism, lampooning hysteria and groupthink with heroic levity. We here at the Cinefamily have been Morris fans since before we can remember, and we’re thrilled to present not only an encore three-day run of Four Lions, but a full retrospective of Morris’s creations in British television!
My fellow Los Angelenos, don’t miss this rare chance to see Four Lions in a cinema setting, but gosh, which TV series to catch? The Day Today? Brass Eye? Jam? Nathan Barley? That’s hard because I’m such a big Chris Morris fan. I’ve shoved DVDs of all these shows into the paws of many a friend for about a decade now, but I still think I’d give Nathan Barley the (slight) edge when it comes to picking which of his series to watch in a room full of people. A communal experience of Jam would be great, too, but Nathan Barley’s vicious hipster satire would go down quite well with the Cinefamily audience, I think. No matter how you slice it, it’s an embarrassment of riches. The man can do no wrong in my eyes.
Below, my December 2010 interview with Chris Morris: