Death of a Party

24 Hour Party PeopleOh yeah, so two days ago I saw “24 Hour Party People,” Michael Winterbottom’s chronicle of Manchester impressario Tony Wilson and his Factory Records empire.The trailer was half wildly promising and half very worrisome, but I’m happy to say that the former part won out, thankfully. “24 Hour Party People” is consistently hilarious and restlessly inventive, engagingly manic and deeply comic. I had a great time watching it. And if director Michael Winterbottom fawns a little too much over the Ian Curtis character, the movie is still loaded with far fewer pretensions than the average pop history movie.

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