Though it falls a hair short of their fantastic 24 Hour Party People, a chronicle of Tony Wilson's influential Manchester based Factory Records (home to Joy Division and New Order, among others), this spiritual companion piece by director Michael Winterbottom and actor Steve Coogan is still a fascinating, stylish, swiftly paced, and, in the end, touching film. This time, the 20th-century British counterculture icon in their viewfinder is Paul Raymond, a larger-than-life magazine publisher, nightclub proprietor, and theatrical producer who pushed the envelope of erotic entertainment and became a central figure in swinging London. The film turns in particular on the loving, but also fractured and tragic bond shared by Raymond and his daughter, played as an adult by Imogen Poots, an indulgent aspiring singer whom he welcomes into his nocturnal world of sex, fame, celebrity, and long lines of cocaine, protecting and promoting her even as he facilitates her self-destruction. Top-notch costume and production design bring period London to colorful and vivid life. The performances are of a consistent high quality (Coogan, an actor the American studio system has never understood how to utilize to his full potential, is always at his best and most engaged in Winterbottom's independent cinema), and the moral conundrums with which the characters wrestle are engaging and moving despite a largely predictable rise-and-fall trajectory. The actor and director are both aware they have a rich, unusual true story at their disposable, and they bring it to the screen with care and wit.

A-

More people here should see this. I believe a lot of you would enjoy it.

Anna Friel is hot.

Steve Coogan is not .

I guess that's true.