100 Unmissable Film4 Movies
71. Room (2016)
Emma Donoghue adapted her own novel for this Lenny Abrahamson film about a woman and her young son (Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay) who are kept in captivity in a small room for the best part of a decade until they manage to escape and face a massive readjustment period to the outside world.
Room might be emotionally rending but it will leave you feeling uplifted in the best possible sense and taking in every little wonder in our expansive existence. Abrahamson, Donoghue, Brie Larson, Jacob Tremblay and everyone involved in making this remarkable film have produced a tribute to the resilience of love and the importance of physical and emotional freedom that is nothing short of transcendent.
Room won Brie Larson her Best Actress Oscar, but the lauded 9-year-old Jacob Tremblay deserved far more major awards recognition than he received for a performance that was wise far beyond his years. SSP
72. American Honey (2016)
Renowned British filmmaker Andrea Arnold took her unique visual style and collaborative approach to the road for a coming of age movie that takes place across the United States’ Midwest.
Starring Sasha Lane (known subsequently for How to Blow Up a Pipeline and Twisters) in her debut acting role, with support from a rehabbed Shia LaBeouf and rising talent Riley Keough (herself a director-to-be), American Honey centres itself around Lane’s troubled runaway teenager and the life of crime and partying that she embraces upon finding kinship.
It’s easy to melt into the worlds of Arnold’s pictures, such is the realism she presents, but American Honey contains a rich visual tapestry too (as had been the case with Arnold’s Wuthering Heights in 2011). Robbie Ryan, an Oscar nominee for his work on The Favourite and Poor Things, photographs the United States in golden hues, capturing natural light with the beauty he would become renowned for in the decade to come.
The cinematographer won the British Independent Film Award for cinematography, with the film receiving a further 5 nominations and earning 3 more wins for Best British Independent Film, Best Director, and Best Actress (Lane). American Honey was also nominated for Outstanding British Film at the 2017 BAFTA Film Awards. JW
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73. I Am Not a Witch (2017)
Zambian filmmaker Rungano Nyoni’s debut feature film takes place in her own country in Africa’s central south, and tells of a nine year old girl accused of witchcraft and imprisoned in a touring witch camp for her “crime”.
Zambian born and raised in Wales, Rungano Nyoni’s unique life experience and different approach to feature filmmaking in the UK ensured that she was the perfect partner for the usually against the grain Film4, and her debut piece – equally rich with surrealism and truths not often present in Western cinema – was a breakthrough with the promise of even better things to come.
Starring a wholly immersive lead performance from child actor Maggie Malubwa, Nyoni’s feature promised empathy and delivered bold directorial strokes to go with it, ensuring a film as unique as her upbringing. For her work, Nyoni was chosen as a nominee for Breakthrough of the Year by the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain and was the winner of Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer at the 2018 BAFTAs. I Am Not a Witch was also a 13-time British Independent Film Awards nominee in 2017, earning awards for Best Debut, Best Director, and Breakthrough Producer (Emily Morgan). JW
74. The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)
Yorgos Lanthimos’ 2nd feature partnership with Film4 following The Lobster (2015) is a dark thriller masquerading as an unusual family drama. Colin Farrell plays the cardiovascular surgeon patriarch of a young family in the American suburbs whose good intentions to bring fatherless teen Barry Keoghan under his wing are taken advantage of by the increasingly sinister young stranger.
Director Emerald Fennell has gone on record to state that this is the film that convinced her to cast Barry Keoghan in Saltburn (2023). It was Keoghan’s biggest break, coming before Dunkirk (2017) and American Animals (2018), and he is truly exceptional in his portrayal of a truly evil human being; a man with eyes like a shark. That he steals the show in a film co-starring Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman is a remarkable achievement for someone who was at the time so inexperienced.
Yorgos Lanthimos’ usual off-kilter sensibilities are on show here, but this film has much more in common with the films of Michael Haneke than it does with Poor Things. This is a cold movie, a clinical movie; a knowing film that beckons you in and clubs you around the head. There are more universally beloved Lanthimos films released by Film4, but The Killing of a Sacred Deer is unmissable in its own right.
Yorgos Lanthimos and co-writer Efthimis Filippou earned the Best Screenplay award at Cannes in 2017 (tied with Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here), with Lanthimos also being nominated for the Palme d’Or. The Killing of a Sacred Deer was a 3-time European Film Awards nominee too, for screenwriter, actor (Farrell), and director. JW
75. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2018)
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri Review
Martin McDonagh’s third feature film, the part-Western, part-reworked-Biblical Epic Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, is arguably the filmmaker’s biggest crossover hit to date, yet it doesn’t abandon any of the filmmaker’s usually antagonising traits nor his career-long exploration of deplorable humanity. It is dark and powerful, and will make you laugh even when you know you shouldn’t.
Frances McDormand’s Mildred is a mid-western woman grieving the murder of her daughter. She is fuelled by rage, and keen to maintain her stiff upper lip, as she fights local law enforcement (including Woody Harrelson’s restrained and respectable Chief Willoughby) and anyone who gets in the way of justice. Co-starring some of the biggest character actors of the era – Sam Rockwell, Caleb Landry Jones, Kerry Condon, Lucas Hedges, Zeljko Ivanek, Peter Dinklage, and more – Three Billboards is as rich in performance as it is in nuanced, well-threaded dialogue, and it looks (and at times feels) like a Coen Brothers film, too.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was a huge awards success, earning 7 Oscar nominations and winning twice: Sam Rockwell in Actor in a Supporting Role and Frances McDormand in Actress in a Leading Role. It was also nominated 9 times at the 2018 BAFTA Film Awards, winning 5 times (Best Film, Best British Film, Original Screenplay, Lead Actress, Supporting Actor), and 11 times at the British Independent Film Awards of 2017, winning for Best Music (Carter Burwell) and Best Editing (Jon Gregory). JW
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76. You Were Never Really Here (2018)
Director and writer Lynne Ramsay’s 2017 neo-noir crime thriller You Were Never Really Here, based on the novel by Jonathan Ames, follows Joe (Joaquin Phoenix), a brutal assassin for hire who specializes in rescuing young women who have been sex trafficked. Joe’s handler John (John Doman) gives him a new assignment from New York State Senator Albert Votto (Alex Manette), who is offering a hefty cash reward for the safe and discreet return of his daughter, Nina (Ekaterina Samsonov), who has been kidnapped. What should be a simple job quickly turns into a fight for their lives when Joe and Nina find themselves tangled in the complex web of the criminal underworld.
You Were Never Really Here is unforgiving in its depiction of violence and trauma, specifically the PTSD often suffered by members of the military. Ramsay’s script is sparse and her direction is staccato and unassuming, revealing the mundanity of violence and suffering that runs like a current through our world. Phoenix’s performance is remarkable as a man struggling with the deepest sorrow, searching for meaning and purpose in a world that simply does not care. For his work, Phoenix won Best Actor at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, while Ramsay won Best Screenplay. At the British Independent Film Awards, You Were Never Really Here won Best Sound and musician Johnny Greenwood won Best Music for composing the film’s score.
Haunted and unflinching, You Were Never Really Here is a film that pulls no punches, exploring themes of suicide and grief with a kind of brutal frankness. Although it is dark, bleak, and almost unbearable, there is a tender hope buried in the center of You Were Never Really Here; a hope that kindness and connection are still possible even when faced with an endless night. MR
77. Beast (2018)
While the depressed Moll (Jessie Buckley) seeks meaningful connection and clashes with her uncaring family, a serial killer is at large on the Isle of Jersey. She makes an instant connection with beguiling stranger Pascal (Johnny Flynn), but is he bad news?
Beast is a deliciously dark mystery and an intense study into mental health and social alienation that pivots around layered and star-making turns from Buckley and Flynn. It is a beguiling puzzle box of a British independent.
The film won the BAFTA for Outstanding British Debut for writer-director Michael Pearce and Most Promising Newcomer for Buckley at the BIFAs. SSP
78. Lean on Pete (2018)
Andrew Haigh’s rich history for detailed explorations of life and relationships turned to a story between a teenage boy and a retired racehorse due for slaughter in 2018’s Lean on Pete. It is a moving, hopeful portrayal of coming-of-age and coming to terms with loss.
The would-be director of All of Us Strangers, a phenomenon of a movie to those who saw it (and still to come on this list), offers exceptional depth to this story, encapsulating the humanity his career has become known for. It is, equally, an American road movie, filled with all the iconography you might expect of a film of its type.
For their work, lead Charlie Plummer and supporting actor Steve Buscemi were nominated for British Independent Film Awards, while Haigh was nominated for Best Director and Magnus Nordenhof Jønck was nominated for Best Cinematography. Andrew Haigh was also nominated for the Golden Bear at Venice International Film Festival, with Charlie Plummer winning the award for Best Young Actor or Actress. JW
79. American Animals (2018)
Bart Layton’s quasi-documentary tells the true story of one of the most audacious heists in U.S. history, committed by a group of seemingly ordinary college students. The film follows Spencer Reinhard (Barry Keoghan) and Warren Lipka (Evan Peters), who, feeling trapped in their mundane suburban lives, hatch a plan to steal rare and valuable books from the special collections library at Transylvania University. They are soon joined by two other friends, Eric Borsuk (Jared Abrahamson) and Chas Allen (Blake Jenner), who are drawn into the excitement and potential payoff of the heist.
The cast’s chemistry is crucial for a film that relies so heavily on the dynamics between its characters. The actors effectively convey the escalating tension and fraying trust within the group, making the heist feel even more precarious and doomed from the start. In particular, Evan Peters and Barry Keoghan shine.
Director Bart Layton blurs the line between fiction and documentary by weaving interviews with the real-life participants into the narrative, offering a unique and compelling perspective on the events. This approach not only adds depth to the characters but also explores questions of memory, truth and unreliable narrators. It is this directorial authorship which permeates the film and makes it one of the most electrifying of the 2010s. GT
80. Widows (2018)
An Americanised take on an 80s British TV show, we follow Veronica Rawlings (Viola Davis) who recruits her fellow widows of criminals (killed when her husband’s heist went south) for one last job to secure their future.
Widows is a stylish, gripping and resonant contemporary crime thriller with layered characterisation and a real social conscience. Every character is given room to breathe. Viola Davis bears much of the dramatic weight in the lead role, but Elizabeth Debicki’s performance as the used and abused Alice also leaves a lasting impression, proving her versatility and lightness of touch in a part that could have easily been one-note.
Unusually for a Steve McQueen film, Widows was largely shut out of major awards contention, though Davis did receive a well-earned BAFTA Best Actress nomination. SSP
