Six of the Best - Charlie Brooker

01 October 08

Guardian columnist and TV-star Charlie Brooker hands out his very own BAFTAs.

Worst DVD Cover Image of All Time
This has to go to the 2001 re-release of the original Planet Of The Apes, which had a whopping great image of the Statue of Liberty protruding from the beach slap-bang on the front, thereby spoiling the ending for anyone who hadn’t seen it yet - even if they just happened to be wandering past in the shop.

Biggest Lurch of Tone
Awarded to little-known movie Miracle Mile (1988), which starts out as a twee rom-com in which a nerdy musician and a waitress meet and fall in love in downtown LA – until a wrong-number call informs them that a nuclear war has broken out, with Soviet missiles due to hit the city in 70 minutes. From that point on, it’s pretty much realtime, and not very comforting.

Least Likeable Characters
Cloverfield. Saw this for the first time the other day. Jesus Christ. The first 20 minutes are supposed to make you care what happens to them. And you do care, but only in the sense of wishing each of them an unnecessarily lingering death, preferably at the hands of a methodical lunatic armed only with a tiny sharpened peg.

Best Audience Reaction
There’s an especially harrowing moment in Dead Man’s Shoes where Paddy Considine’s character knifes one of the dealers whose tea he’s spiked. When I saw it at the cinema, a woman in the row in front stood up, shook her head, said ‘NO’ loudly and firmly, then marched out. I’d never seen a proper real-life walk-out before so I was pretty impressed.

Most Gung-Ho Performance
I went to see Thundercrack! at the Scala, back when it was a cinema. There’s a scene early on where a mad woman in a spooky mansion hears some young folk arriving, and she runs to the toilet to make herself vomit so they won’t smell the booze on her breath. She sticks her fingers down her throat and spews - un-simulated - and the wig falls off her head and lands in the bowl. Undeterred, she retrieves it and puts it back on her head, covered in sick. All in one shot. That’s one of the least extreme scenes in the movie.

Best Dialogue, Like, Ever
Network, innit.

Charlie Brooker writes for The Guardian and appears in Charlie Brooker’s Screen Wipe on BBC4.