A dryly comic cinéma vérité-style biopic about Factory Records and the Manchester music scene of the late-70s to the early-90s. It zooms from post-punk to madchester at too fast a clip to really explore those musical trends or even some of Factory’s biggest bands (New Order, somehow, gets shafted), but it largely works because of its fuck-up characters and performances. Steve Coogan is great as Factory founder Tony Wilson, a man who takes himself too seriously and who somehow manages to shepherd some of the greatest music of the era despite having no idea what he’s doing and shooting himself in the foot financially at practically every step. Andy Serkis goes for it as an erratic, drugged out, gun-toting Martin Hannett. And as the movie shifts into madchester and the rise of rave culture, Danny Cunningham captures the unchained and unbelievably maniacal rancid drug-fueled dipshittery of Happy Mondays frontman Shaun Ryder, portraying him as a force of pure chaos as he runs around naked, poisons pigeons, snorts drugs off the floor of the Manchester airport and writes the worst lyrics you’ve ever heard. Unbelievable that that band managed to make anything coherent let alone become a major fixture of early-90s Manchester music