100 Unmissable Film4 Movies
11. The Dead (1987)
John Huston, the director of The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The African Queen (1951), The Misfits (1961), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), Annie (1982) and many, many more, would bring his long and heralded feature directorial career to an end with his final release The Dead in 1987.
Set in Dublin, Ireland, in 1904, this period drama centres upon relationship tensions between Donal McCann’s Gabriel Conroy and Anjelica Huston’s Gretta Conroy, which develop upon the revelation that Gretta is thinking of a deceased lover. It is a tender film filled with regret, and an honest assessment of life, death and relationships. It is, in all the ways that it can be, a fitting final film.
A true family affair, with John Huston directing a script written by his son Tony Huston and casting his daughter Anjelica Huston in the lead role, The Dead feels like the summary of a great film legacy.
The Dead earned Tony Huston a nomination for Adapted Screenplay at the 1988 Academy Awards, while Dorothy Jeakins was nominated for Costume Design. The New York Film Critics Circle nominated it 5 times (Best Film, Director, Screenplay, Actress, Supporting Actress) at their 1987 awards. Cahiers du Cinema, one of the most highly-respected film publications in the world, voted The Dead as the 5th best film of 1988. JW
12. Alice (1988)
In its first decade, Film4 went to great lengths to associate itself with provocative artists. It was legendary Czech surrealist Jan Svankmajer whom they partnered with for the 1988 release Alice, an unusual art-first piece that combined stop motion animation and live-action in a creepy adaptation of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”.
The first effort of the artist’s acclaimed feature directorial career, Alice set the marker for what to expect from his films moving forward. Filled with nightmarish imagery, and told through animation mastery, Alice earned the type of reputation that Guillermo del Toro’s work would come to earn in the 21st century, and the filmmaker’s dedication to unusual concoctions only ensured his work would resonate with all who saw it.
This is a film that can be firmly placed in the “you won’t see many films like this” category, and it’s all the better for it. Film4 was developing a reputation for supporting unique visions of this kind, and Alice is one of the films that helped to cement that. It may not have won many awards, but its legacy is perhaps as strong as any of its contemporaries. JW
13. A World Apart (1988)
Chris Menges, a renowned British cinematographer for the likes of Comfort and Joy (1984), Notes on a Scandal (2006) and Stop-Loss (2008), made his dramatic feature directorial debut with A World Apart (1988), an anti-apartheid drama set in 1963 Johannesburg, South Africa.
Made and released during ongoing apartheid debates in the nation – which upheld apartheid until the early 1990s – and based upon the lives of the parents of the film’s screenwriter Shawn Slovo (a BAFTA winner for his Original Screenplay), A World Apart had the real-world contemporary relevance of Menges’ own renowned documentary features from earlier in the decade. Its contextual importance (its message) mixed with its empowering narrative and emotive story beats ensured that A World Apart would earn critical acclaim. For Film4, it was yet another film celebrating love in the face of hate.
In 1988, Menges was a nominee for the Palme d’Or at Cannes for his work, and took home the Grand Prize of the Jury as well as the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury. Actresses Barbera Hershey, Jodhi May and Linda Mvusi shared the Best Actress win at the same film festival, with Mvusi making history as the first black woman to ever win the award. JW
14. Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988)
Few filmmakers encapsulated the working class experience of the British people quite like Terence Davies did. Over the course of close to fifty years, the great visionary of the form would return from time-to-time to offer a great lesson, or some great insight, or simply a spotlight, to the people of his nation, and Distant Voices, Still Lives was perhaps his most memorable, brilliant, and striking film.
Told through a disjointed narrative that highlights different figures in well-defined sections (including Pete Postlethwaite in one of the truly great performances of a career with immeasurable impact), Distant Voices, Still Lives melds the work of great novels to great theatre, and of both of those things to great cinema – it reads beautifully, it takes risks, it celebrates performance but it never abandons purpose, and it is visually stunning nay wholly cinematic.
Distant Voices, Still Lives is widely regarded to be one of the greatest British films ever made. During its time, it was awarded the FRIPESCI Prize at Cannes, was nominated for Best European Film at both the European Film Awards and César Awards, and was named the film of the year in 1990 at the London Critics Circle Film Awards. JW
15. Drowning By Numbers (1988)
Peter Greenaway is one of the United Kingdom’s most unique filmmakers. His films are often so evidently different to those of his contemporaries that it is difficult to imagine them being made by anyone else. Greenaway’s films are ones that shun convention, are offerings that bring a lot more of the stage to the screen than perhaps anyone else has been able to do in British cinema. Drowning By Numbers, the writer-director’s 1988 black comedy starring Bernard Hill, Juliet Stevenson, Joely Richardson, David Morrissey and more beloved names from British cinema, stage and television, is one such film; the type of project you’ll enjoy ticking off your watchlist whether you fall in love with it or not.
Greenaway has never been for everyone. He’s not the type of personality to pursue such a goal, and his films being to an extent anti-traditional is perhaps the greatest proof of that, but there is heart, personality and love evidently behind the work here. This is more than simply an experiment with the form, it’s something tangible and likeable in a way that much of the the filmmaker’s other work may not be. It tells of marriage problems and generational issues through a uniquely British lens. As well as the actors listed above, a number of recognisable names and faces from 1990s and 2000s British comedy are key to setting the film’s unique tone.
Peter Greenaway was a Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or nominee for his work here, and won for Best Artistic Contribution at the same festival in 1988, though the film was absent of wider acclaim (as seems to be the case for most visionaries in their time). JW
16. High Hopes (1988)
“A comedy about optimism in the face of pessimism,” High Hopes follows a couple (Phil Davis and Ruth Sheen) living in the King’s Cross area of London and their efforts to stay positive despite clashes with neighbours and a difficult relationship with an erratic elderly mother (Edna Doré).
Mike Leigh’s films are often considered rather bleak, but his extended, highly collaborative rehearsal process that goes towards creating his scripts, and his commitment to letting conversations play out naturally with all their imperfections and awkwardness intact, ensures that they always feel honest. High Hopes is a funny and hard-hitting examination of class and social interaction.
Leigh’s third feature film won Best Actress for Sheen and Supporting Performance for Doré at the European Film Awards, plus the Peter Sellers Award for Comedy at the Evening Standard British Film Awards. SSP
Recommended for you: Where to Start with Mike Leigh
17. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989)
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover Review
Peter Greenaway’s reputation is one that precedes him. His films are rich and complex, and rarely offer exposition for the sake of helping us to keep up. The shots are often still, and all presented at the same height. Takes go on for minutes at a time, line readings are more akin to what you might see on the stage than on the big screen. In fact, most of Greenaway’s work is more reminiscent of theatre than traditional cinema – and yet his work is arguably some of the most cinematic you’ll find. His 1989 film The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover is the filmmaker’s magnum opus; the most memorable and accomplished of his long list of authored works.
The filmmaker’s prominent use of sex and the body as symbols with a myriad of meanings is evident here, the very narrative twisting around an extramarital affair and all the baggage that comes with it. Helen Mirren plays the wife whose eyes go wandering in this film, while her husband is played by would-be Dumbledore actor Michael Gambon. The film reunites Greenaway with a pre-Reservoir Dogs Tim Roth, and also features Alan Howard, Ciarán Hinds, Richard Bohringer, Alex Kingston, Roger Lloyd Pack, Ewan Stewart, and more reputable stage and screen performers. Greenaway’s work by its very nature has always been considered actors-first, and as such his films have long attracted the most exceptional of ensemble casts.
This brilliant, unique and thoughtful feature earned a nomination for Production Design at the 1990 European Film Awards, but missed out on further accolades likely due to its unique nature (as almost all of Greenaway’s work has done over the decades). JW
18. Life Is Sweet (1990)
Life Is Sweet tells the story of a dysfunctional working-class family and their friends in North London, as well as their relationships with food – a successful food van run by Andy (Jim Broadbent) and a more ill-advised restaurant venture from Aubrey (Timothy Spall) – and each other.
This one is all about dreams and aspirations, about trying to raise yourself beyond where you came from while never forgetting what made you who you are. Young Claire Skinner and Jane Horrocks playing chaotic twin sisters were revelations, and the horrific offerings on jury menu of the Regret Rien are among the funniest gags of Leigh’s career.
Life Is Sweet won British Film of the Year from the London Critics Circle and Best Supporting Actress for Horrocks from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. SSP
19. Riff Raff (1991)
Film4 landing British filmmaking icon Ken Loach within a decade of being founded was quite the coup, even for an organisation already carrying dozens of awards and proudly listing plenty of filmmaking hall of famers as alumni. Riff Raff, or Riff-Raff as it is sometimes titled, is typically Loachian in its approach to a working class British story, in this case the return to work of a former convict, but it may surprise some in how funny it is.
A pre-Trainspotting, pre-The Full Monty Robert Carlyle leads a rag-tag group of working class people trying to get about their days at work on a construction site, collectively dismissing and disliking their overactive boss. Amongst the support is Ricky Tomlinson, who is now TV royalty for his performance in ‘The Royle Family’ (1998-2012). There are clashes of cultures as men from different backgrounds and home nations are brought together by work in the melting pot that is London, and as is usual with Loach’s films there is plenty of time dedicated to exploring issues of class disparity.
Riff Raff is widely believed to be an honest celebration of working class life rather than a dour kitchen sink drama, and the film was a long-time see-it-on-TV favourite for those growing up in the United Kingdom. For his work, Ken Loach earned the FIPRESCI Prize at the 1991 Cannes International Film Festival, while the film won Best European Film at that year’s European Film Awards. JW
20. Hear My Song (1992)
To save his Liverpool nightclub, the owner (Adrian Dunbar) travels to the Republic of Ireland to find the infamous singer Josef Locke (Ned Beatty), who fled there 25 years prior to avoid paying tax debts. What follows is an imaginative, warm-hearted romantic comedy built around this seemingly silly premise. It’s probably director and co-writer Peter Chelsom’s best film.
As with a lot of Film4 releases of this era, the comedy in Hear My Song is sharp, at times brutal, and always tinged with just a hint of tragedy. There are fights and insults, there’s sex and existential dread; it essentially ticks every box of the typical British comedy, and that’s why it works.
Hear My Song director and co-writer Peter Chelsom would go on to helm Serendipity (2001) and Hannah Montana: The Movie (2009). For his work here, he was nominated for the Original Screenplay award at the 1993 BAFTAs, while the film won the 1992 British Comedy Award for Film of the Year. JW
