100 Unmissable Film4 Movies
For over 40 years, one British film production company has had its name associated with more high quality, critically-acclaimed, and award-winning work than any other: Film4.
Present as a producer and financier of films since 1982, but officially founded under previous banner Channel 4 Films as a subsidiary of the United Kingdom’s public access television company Channel 4 in 1988, Film4 has financed more than 230 titles in total. During the 1980s, its various arms were responsible for one third of all British film releases, with its short-lived Film4 International branch contributing to further titles from beyond the UK’s borders, including legendary auteur Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice in 1986.
With annual BAFTA wins and more than 130 Oscar nominations under its belt, Film4 has long proven itself as a valuable partner to up-and-coming filmmakers and established auteurs alike. From the hyper-British representation of Rita, Sue and Bob Too and This Is England to adaptations of their own television, such as The Inbetweeners Movie, and right through to their hugely impactful work with filmmakers from further afield, such as Wim Wenders on Paris, Texas, Julia Ducournau on Titane, and Yorgos Lanthimos on everything from The Lobster to Poor Things, Film4 has been an ever-present on cinema screens across the globe for decades.
In this Movie List from The Film Magazine, our staff have come together to watch, rate and select the 100 best and most important movies released under this iconic film banner. The films selected here include works by British icons of cinema such as Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, feature actors as well-known as Emma Stone and as renowned as Pete Postlethwaite, and either have a global appeal as art pieces or are specific in how moving, interesting, or insightful they are to the ordinary British person’s experience. From the specific to the majestic, from the likes of Chris Morris to the likes of Jonathan Glazer, this list presents: 100 Unmissable Film4 Movies.
All 100 films are listed in order of UK release date and selected from Film4’s own list of official productions. The writers of each entry in this list will be referred to by their initials: Katie Doyle (KD), Martha Lane (ML), Margaret Roarty (MR), Sam Sewell-Peterson (SSP), George Taylor (GT), Joseph Wade (JW).
1. Local Hero (1983)
Texan oil developers send their representative Mac (because his name sounds Scottish), played by Peter Riegert, to find a North Sea oil base in Northern Scotland. The small Scottish village that the company chooses for its purchase is probably a little too laid back for its own good, and Denis Lawson’s Urquhart and the rest of the villagers somewhat accidentally appeal to Mac’s humanity, making for a funny clash of cultures as director Bill Forsyth (Gregory’s Girl; Comfort and Joy) imprints his signature style across every aspect of the film.
In the 1980s, Forsyth was making a name for himself with witty and unusual movies, and this debut Film4 project (the first released under any associated label) has long been beloved for its unique and heartwarming nature. Scottish in its specificity, but holding universal appeal, this film has crossed borders and boundaries, and remains one of the filmmaker’s most memorable achievements.
Local Hero was nominated for 7 British Academy Film Awards, including Best Film, and Forsyth was awarded with the trophy for Best Director. The New York Film Critics Circle awarded Forsyth with the award for Best Screenplay. JW
2. Paris, Texas (1984)
An apparently mute man named Travis (a mesmerising Harry Dean Stanton), estranged from his family for half a decade, wanders out of the Texas desert to reconnect with his wife and son.
Wim Wenders specialises in culturally specific road movies and deliberately-paced explorations of the soul. This Americana-infused modern fable has gorgeous cinematography from Robby Müller, delicate performances particularly from Stanton and Nastassja Kinski, and a poetic spirit that has ensured viewers have continued to fall head over heels with it for over four decades.
Paris, Texas was awarded the Palme d’Or in a unanimous decision from the Cannes Film Festival Jury as well as winning a Best Director BAFTA for Wenders. SSP
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3. My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)
Writer Hanif Kureishi and prolific British film director Stephen Frears encapsulated the artistic spirit of the anti-establishment Channel 4 with this at-the-time provocative gay romance between Omar (Gordon Warnecke), a Pakistani English laundrette worker, and aggressive white Englishman Johnny (Daniel Day-Lewis).
Released during the height of the AIDs epidemic, and a time when people were more open with their racism, My Beautiful Laundrette‘s very existence was like a siren call for ill-informed criticism and politically motivated bashing. But that was so much of the point. Stephen Frears’ story is about how love transcends boundaries like class, race, and sexuality, and in doing so it tells of a nation still pulled apart by division but learning to love each other nonetheless. Frears’ delicate handling of the romance at the film’s heart transcends its context even so, lasting as one of the UK’s most exceptional romantic tales put to screen in the contemporary era.
My Beautiful Laundrette is a film still taught to film and media students across the UK for its thematic elements and the clarity of its message. Its success at the time was marked by an Oscar nomination for Original Screenplay, and two BAFTA nominations (for Best Writing, and Supporting Actor for Saeed Jeffrey, who played Omar’s uncle). JW
4. A Room with a View (1985)
Helena Bonham Carter is the standout as a debutant in this iconic swooning romance movie from would-be multiple-time Film4 collaborator James Ivory.
Telling of British expatriates of the upper class dealing with romance and the battle between love and sensibility in the act of marriage, this film spans the beautiful landscapes of Tuscany and the British countryside, brings together one of the casts of the decade (Maggie Smith, Denholm Elliot, Daniel Day Lewis, Judi Dench, Rupert Graves, Helena Bonham Carter), and presents it all with best-of-class costumes, makeup and hair design. It is an intelligently romantic, feelings-first movie; one of the great films of a filmmaker with many an unforgettable romance to his name.
A Room with a View was nominated for 8 Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, and won three: Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Costume Design and Best Adapted Screenplay. It was nominated for 14 British Academy Film Awards, winning for Production Design, Costume Design, Actress in a Supporting Role (Judi Dench), Actress in a Leading Role (Maggie Smith), and Best Film (1987). JW
5. Mona Lisa (1986)
Iconic British actor Bob Hoskins leads this thrilling and wholeheartedly British film about an ex-con trying to live clean, becoming fascinated with a call girl (Cathy Tyson) he works for, and accidentally becoming embroiled in the underbelly of London. Co-starring a menacing Michael Caine, and Robbie Coltrane, Mona Lisa is a fascinating who’s who of British film.
Hoskins’ powerful portrayal at the heart of Mona Lisa is without a doubt its strongest element, his work earning an Oscar nomination for Best Actor as well as BAFTA and Cannes wins for the same award. But this film is also notable for being one of a flurry of breakout hits for would-be Interview with the Vampire (1994) director Neil Jordan and is rightly considered to be among the best British films of the decade. Engrossing, hard-hitting, and centred around a vulnerable hard man portrayal, it is not to be missed.
As well as the acclaim earned by Hoskins in the lead role, Mona Lisa was nominated for five further BAFTA Film Awards (Best Film, Actress, Direction, Editing, Original Screenplay), and was a Cannes Palme d’Or nominee in 1986. JW
6. When the Wind Blows (1986)
A part of the decade-long trend of Cold War dread, When the Wind Blows is a piece occupied with the threat of nuclear war. It focuses on the ordinary day in the life of a retired couple, Jim (John Mills) and Hilda (Peggy Ashcroft), in their little cottage home out in the country. Change comes to their routine when the news announces a Russian nuclear strike is expected in the next two to three days; armed with government provided pamphlets, Jim and Hilda are able to build an inner refuge to work as a shelter in the event of a nuclear blast. Whilst they work, the pair reminisce the good old days of World War Two with Jim often pointing out how things will be different this time, what with science only being in its infancy back then. Jim may be more clued up on the news than Hilda, often getting the bus to the library to read the papers, but both are largely ignorant to the full horrendous consequences of a nuclear attack. It is then, to our great displeasure, that we witness their misconceptions play out in the bomb’s aftermath, confused as to why the milk bottles have melted and why they have headaches that won’t go away.
An adaption of the Raymond Briggs comic – Briggs having previously found fame with the cutesy adaption of The Snowman – When the Wind Blows was a true representation of Briggs’ dour outlook on life (he famously disliked Christmas). Despite its initial charm, the story’s idyllic setting and the huge warmth of it characters, the film itself is extremely bleak, possibly more so than the infamous Threads (1984). Compared to its live-action contemporaries, a greater sense of destruction and devastation can be achieved – the vibrant colours of the countryside are snatched away by the persisting darkness and grey of the Nuclear Winter. It also allowed for a depiction of what would actually happen in a nuclear blast – a five-minute sequence shows the very fabric of buildings being torn apart by the nuclear winds as if made out of paper.
With much of the horror derived from Jim and Hilda’s ignorance, particularly when they are in the throes of radiation sickness, Briggs’ cynicism shines out. When the Wind Blows is not necessarily a satire of ignorance but of governmental neglect. All the actions Jim and Hilda take when preparing for the nuclear strike are based on the real advice that was provided by the UK government during the Cold War – as seen in the Protect and Survive public information films produced during the 1970s and 80s, which include the building of the same inner refuge Jim builds. What is immediately obvious about this real survival advice is that it would have no effect on protecting anyone from a nuclear blast. A popular conspiracy theory today is that the advice given out by the Protect and Survive programme was that it was a practical means to organise the population doomed to die in Nuclear war into their own self-made coffins: the inner refuges and hiding in paper bags during the blast means that dead bodies are already bagged. The advice to collect all birth certificates and ID documents into the inner refuge means the dead can then be easily identified. As Jim and Hilda hide in the potato paper bags for comfort as the film closes, it is difficult to dismiss this theory as mere conspiracy. KD
7. Prick Up Your Ears (1987)
Gary Oldman stars as famous British playwright Joe Orton in this tragic true-to-life biography that presents the highs and lows of success and fame, and the violence that can underpin desire.
Oldman had already starred as Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy (1986), but this was only his 2nd major film role. He is, as has come to be expected by now, utterly exceptional. So good that he won the London Film Critics Circle award for Actor of the Year, and was a nominee at the 1988 BAFTA Film Awards. He shares the screen with his character’s lover, Kenneth Halliwell, played with nuance by the at-the-time relatively untested Alfred Molina (now a 2-time BAFTA Film Award nominee), as well as Wallace Shawn, Julie Walters, and Vanessa Redgrave. Redgrave won the New York Film Critics Circle award for Supporting Actress in 1987, and was nominated at both the Golden Globes and BAFTA Film Awards for her portrayal of Peggy Ramsay, our eye into this extraordinary story.
Despite the recognisable names and generally easy-going celebrity biography genre, Prick Up Your Ears is an utterly devastating experience. Alan Bennett, who adapted the biography of the same name written by John Lahr a decade prior, writes a recognisably tragic screenplay, with My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) director Stephen Frears offering the most consistently dark work of the first half of his fabled career.
As well as awards nods for the acting, Prick Up Your Ears earned multiple nominations for writer Alan Bennett and was a nominee for the Cannes Palme d’Or in 1987. Composer Stanley Myers was unanimously voted to receive the Best Artistic Contribution award at the same festival. JW
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8. Rita, Sue and Bob Too (1987)
Rita, Sue and Bob Too tells of two teenage girls (Michelle Holmes and Siobhan Finneran in career-defining breakout roles) having an affair with a married man (George Costigan). It is set in a run-down estate in Bradford, West Yorkshire, and juxtaposes the hopefulness and light-heartedness of youth and young love with the darkness underpinning the UK’s class structures and the lack of opportunities that come with that.
Described as “Thatcher’s Britain with her knickers down”, Alan Clarke’s adaptation of prodigal playwright Andrea Dunbar’s award-winning theatre production is emotive and funny, and always real. Dunbar wrote from a lot of her own experiences, and her encapsulation of underclass northern upbringings radiates out of the screen, speaking to the humanity, empathy, and relatability we all hold towards time gone, time lived, and time imagined.
A wholly British affair, with very specific local dialogue and national ideas, Rita, Sue and Bob Too earned a number of accolades at UK critics awards and film festivals but unsurprisingly barely made a splash abroad. Its legacy lives on, however, and as the years pass it continues to be re-evaluated for the better. JW
9. Wish You Were Here (1987)
Wish You Were Here is fondly remembered as a nostalgic comedy about 1950s Britain and the outdated perspectives of its citizens. But, beneath the laughs are a number of more serious explorations of sex, sexism, and the prejudices that guide our contemporary culture’s ignorance towards both.
Emily Lloyd plays Lynda, a 16 year old girl in the midst of grief over the death of her mum, though you wouldn’t know it from afar. She’s energetic, playful, and child-like, but she is seen by the people of her town to have a woman’s body, and she likes how that attention can get her the things she likes. She flashes her leg at passers by and has a happy-go-lucky attitude, and over the course of the film she undergoes a coming-of-age that acts as both a thoroughly engaging narrative and as a rich commentary on the themes of the film. It is a movie that at the surface level appears to be light-hearted but, like Rita, Sue and Bob Too, holds more important messaging beneath the surface; Wish You Were Here being even darker and perhaps remaining more relevant to our modern day than its fellow Film4 brethren.
Then 18-year-old Emily Lloyd was nominated for Best Actress at the BAFTA Film Awards in 1988, while composer Stanley Myers also earned a nomination. David Leland, in his feature debut as both a director and screenwriter, won the award for Original Screenplay at the same BAFTAs and was the winner of the FIPRESCI prize at Cannes in 1987. JW
10. Maurice (1987)
From James Ivory, director of Howards End (1992) and The Remains of the Day (1993), and writer of Call Me By Your Name (2018), comes Maurice, a timeless gay romance starring Hugh Grant in a pre-Four Weddings and a Funeral breakout role.
Based on the 1971 novel by E.M. Forster, Maurice follows the titular character (James Wilby) as he falls in love with and ultimately confesses his feelings for his Cambridge University friend, Clive Durham (Hugh Grant). We then witness the extent of their romance from university halls to wider life in this typically soft and beautifully presented James Ivory film.
For his work, Ivory was awarded the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival, while Hugh Grant won Best Actor and Richard Robbins won for Best Score. Jenny Beavan and John Bright were nominated for Best Costume Design at the 1988 Oscars. JW
