Contrasts

The BBC may be achingly woke but you have to admit that iPlayer is a magnificent resource. After our exertions each day here in Northumberland (of which more anon) the Groupie and I settle down to a bit of televisual culture.

Two films have presented themselves and it would be difficult to imagine a greater contrast in style and content. First up was the coruscating satire of In The Loop. Anything from the mind of Armando Ianucci has to be treated with respect and this film (spun out of the equally arresting television series The Thick of It) does not disappoint. Peter Capaldi reprises his devil incarnate Malcolm Tucker role and other familiar faces flit in and out in a brilliant ensemble piece. You laugh at the educated profanity so much that the disspiriting message can glide over you - there is no redemption on display, merely malevolence and blind self-interest. The film is now more than a decade old but the same soulless half-wits are still running Britain and America. The political badges they wear may change but they are all the same. So if you fancy a dose of The Thick of It mixed with Ianucci's later American triumph, Veep, look this out. 81/100.

Joan of Arc (1948) is altogether a different kettle of fish. A worthy, wordy (though those words are mostly, and rather divertingly, American in timbre) film marked by a compelling central performance by Ingrid Berman. The English (and their Burgundian allies) don't come very well out of this, but that's history for you. History has us bang to rights on this one. The first half of the movie rumbles along adequately enough but really heats up when Joan is put on trial and, inevitably of course, martyred. At this point it achieves genuine drama. An old-fashioned sort of a film but none the worse for that. 70/100.