Lee Hall Movies

The landmark obscenity trial surrounding a satirical Australian magazine becomes a metaphor for a wild ride through swinging 1960s-era London in director Beeban Kidron's adaptation of Richard Neville's memoir Hippie Hippie Shake: The Dreams, the Trips, the Trials, the Love-ins, the Screw Ups: The Sixties. Cillian Murphy stars as Neville in a film that follows the editors of Oz as they relocate to London and are forced to defend a sexually explicit issue of their irreverent magazine after it raises the eyebrows of the Obscene Publications Squad. The resulting legal battle would become the longest obscenity trial in the history of English law. Though the publishers of Oz were initially sentenced to hard labor, a subsequent appeal would find their sentences commuted under the agreement that they cease publication of the controversial magazine. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

While many people want to get into heaven, one young man looks to it as a good employment opportunity as well as a spiritual path in this offbeat comedy. Jimmy Spud (Sean Landless) is an 11-year-old boy growing up in a working-class neighborhood in Newcastle, England. Like many boys his age, Jimmy already has a clear idea of what he wants to do with his future, but his ambitions are a bit different than those of his peers -- Jimmy wants to be an angel. In fact, Jimmy is so set upon doing good deeds and being able to fly that he submits a resume to a nearby church, hoping to apply for work in Heaven. The archangel Gabriel (Billy Connolly) arrives (in street clothes) to take Jimmy's C.V., and informs him that he'll pass it along to the proper authorities. When Jimmy doesn't get an immediate answer, he decides that he needs to do more good works to prove he's worthy of the job, and in his homemade angel's costume (complete with feathers), Jimmy saves a Boy Scout from drowning, then befriends the lonely lad. Jimmy's father (Iain Glen) thinks his son has gone a bit mad, but Jimmy decides saving his dad is his next project -- his father has been out of work for some time, and the stress is taking a fearful toll. However, that soon turns out to be the least of his father's problems; it turns out he has cancer, which is likely to soon prove fatal, and Jimmy wants to find a way to save his dad and earn credit with Heaven. Gabriel & Me was written by Lee Hall, who also penned the script for another film about a British lad with unusual aspirations, Billy Elliot. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide