“In the Loop” (2009)

This English gem is the best satire since “Dr. Strangelove”.  Low level politicians and their media minders on both sides of the Atlantic blunder into an anonymous Middle Eastern war more concerned with their own careers, petty point scoring and expressing themselves in the most vitriolically foul mouthed way possible than with high moral or strategic issues.  In a cast littered with semi-familiar faces - from TV’s “Sledgehammer” to Tony Soprano to the now all-grown-up, one-time “My Girl” Anna Chlumsky - the stand-out is Peter Capaldi in a role transparently based on Tony Blair’s old spin doctor Alistair Campbell.  If the movie proves nothing else it’s that no one swears like a Scotsman: Capaldi gives terms like “arse spraying mayhem” and “lubricated horse cocks” a kind of poetic grace.