Empire's 100 Best British Films: Now Disc. 90. Dracula (1958)

Time Out's 100 Best British Films (chosen by a poll of British Film Critics so you know that this list will be riddled with stupidity)

100. "In This World" (2002)

Dir Michael Winterbottom (Jamal Udin Torabi, Enayatullah)

Kings of the road

The first of three films by the prolific Michael Winterbottom on this list, ?In This World? is the best example of the director?s urge to explore contemporary issues on screen and to employ cinema as a sideways view on current affairs. This, ?Welcome to Sarajevo?, ?Road to Guantanamo? and A Mighty Heart were all films discussed on news pages as well as in arts reviews. ?In This World? is admirable as a feat: Winterbottom cast two Afghan refugees in Pakistan and with a small crew shooting on digital cameras took them on a journey west over land, through Iran, Turkey and Europe, eventually arriving in London. At a time of headlines about immigration and political trouble in Afghanistan, the effect was to offer an alternative spin on the news and to do it in a manner that made clear the often terrible realities of being a refugee. DC

 

The Railway Children (1970)

Dir Lionel Jeffries (Dinah Sheridan, William Mervyn, Jenny Agutter)

A real sleeper hit

"As warm and cosy as a cup of Horlicks, Lionel Jeffries?s 1970 adaptation of E Nesbit?s Edwardian children?s novel centres on a well-to-do London family torn apart when its patriarch is arrested on suspicion of treason. With a sudden urge to start life over in the country, the remaining family members ? mother Dinah Sheridan and her three children ? up sticks and settle alongside a quaint Yorkshire railway line where the film slowly begins to work its very English charm. Jenny Agutter and little Sally Thomsett are the film?s cornerstones, but a special mention to Bernard Cribbins?s archetypal British stationmaster. Naturally, the film won?t play well with today?s digital generation ? it?s far too fusty and polite in both tone and colour ? but it still has the capacity to generate fond childhood memories. Nice to see it make the list, albeit in the penultimate spot. DA"


The popularity of certain things does not compute for me. P. G. Wodehouse is one. E. Nesbit is another.

 

Is there any correlation between this and Gertrude Warner's novel THE BOXCAR CHILDREN?

 

You don't like Wodehouse? That's crazy.

 

I've tried and tried.

Give me a title. Maybe I'm reading the wrong things.

 

I used to love the Jeeves series. It's admittedly been years since I read them. But I remember loving The Mating Season.

 

Can't get that through the library. Have you another suggestion?


School for Scoundrels (1960)

Dir Robert Hamer (Ian Carmichael, Alastair Sim, Terry-Thomas)

?He who is not one up? is one down!?

?We hate it when our friends become successful,? Morrissey once said about Britain: Robert Hamer and his writers were closer to the mark in suggesting that most of us would happily put the boot into anyone who even approaches success. And amen to that! Bounders, cads and a good portion of hard cheese fill out this toothy confection of just-coherent, raffish ribaldry. It may be little more than a loose collection of sketches ? Peter Jones and Dennis Price?s ?Winsome Welshmen? car salesman schtick, for instance, was lifted from the BBC radio comedy show ?In All Directions? ? held together by a script based on Stephen Potter?s thoughts on gamesmanship, lifemanship and ?the struggle for pure prestige?, but there?s something so irrepressibly beastly and underhand about the whole business that one can?t help but ? imagine a velveteen Terry-Thomas accent ? join the club, old chap! ALD"

This sounds interesting.

 

97. 28 Days Later? (2002)

Dir Danny Boyle (Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Brendan Gleeson)


"The first scene in Danny Boyle?s symbolic UK-set zombie fest is hairy in more ways than one: a group of animal activists descend on a biological vivisection centre and release a chimpanzee infected with rage, a contagious rabies-like virus. Cut to 28 days later and Cillian Murphy?s cycle courier awakens from a hospitalised coma to find a near deserted, dystopian London populated by violent rage victims. The zombie segments, while tense, violent and gruesome, are a sideshow to the story?s main thrust: our predisposition towards outright selfishness and savagery when even our most basic of needs are whipped from beneath our feet. There have been similar plague-based apocalyptic films both before and after ? 1971?s ?The Omega Man? and its 2007 offshoot ?I Am Legend?, for instance ? but this one is especially poignant for British viewers, if only because the unfolding events are so much closer to home. This is the first of only two Boyle films to feature in this list. DA"

 

How is having 2 films out of a hundred when you've only even been widely known for 9 years an "only"? Seems like a hell of an accomplishment to me, especially when you consider just how stupid 28 Days Later could have been.

And yeah, 28 Days is a great movie.

 

Bet I can guess what the 2nd Boyle film is...........!



Choose life

 

96 Theatre of Blood (1973)

Dir Douglas Hickox (Vincent Price, Diana Rigg, Ian Hendry)

Stage fright

"Vincent Price adopts the more psyched-out style of British horror in the ?70s in this serial-killer romp that gives the great man a crack at the Shakespearean roles he felt cinema had denied him. As Edward Lionheart, Price plays a ham passed over for the award he most cherishes: Best Actor as voted by the Critics? Circle. His years of dedication to the Bard are dismissed by his beret-wearing tormenters but prove inspirational when he plots their murders: each is to be dispatched in the manner of a Shakespearean death, from ?Julius Caesar?s? gang- knifing to a grisly rewriting of ?The Merchant of Venice? and the hard-to-swallow cuisine of ?Titus Andronicus?. It?s a gory, funny trip, as Price dons a series of preposterous disguises to entrap his victims through their own foibles. His post-homicide delivery of Shakespeare will surprise anyone who bought his popular image as a one-dimensional hack, adding yet another layer to a film that satirises both its stars and audience without ever sacrificing its disconcerting edge. PF"


This sounds intriguing...

 

95. London to Brighton (2006)

Dir Paul Andrew Williams (Lorraine Stanley, Johnny Harris, Georgia Groome)

It?s grim down South

"The post ?Lock, Stock?? landscape is littered with the corpses of a thousand pretenders to the mockney gangster pic throne. Remember ?Rancid Aluminium?? ?Love, Honour and Obey?? ?The 51st State?? ?Rise of the Footsoldier?? Aside from Jonathan Glazer?s eminently stylish ?Sexy Beast?, only Paul Andrew Williams?s pithy and relentlessly entertaining debut has managed to poke its head above the sea of mediocrity. A rape, revenge and road movie (in that order) about a distressed young girl (Georgia Groome) helped by a prostitute (Lorraine Stanley ? stunning) to flee a gang of tinpot hoods, it?s a film where no shot, line and character is wasted. Williams claims to have written the film over one weekend, and both the clamp-like tightness of its structure and the bracingly realistic progression of its characters ? if you get hurt, you stay hurt ? make that entirely believable. DJ"

 

94
24 Hour Party People (2002)

Dir Michael Winterbottom (Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Ron Cook)

Manchester, so much to answer for?

"In a national cinema prone to self indulgent rock follies (?Tommy?, ?The Wall?, ?Give My Regards to Broad St?), the best British music films are those which refuse to take their subjects as seriously as themselves. A perfect case in point is the disconnect between Anton Corbijn?s mournful, largely forgettable 2007 kitchen sink biopic ?Control?, which placed Ian Curtis on a tortured-artist pedestal, and Michael Winterbottom?s lurid, lively Madchester romp ?24 Hour Party People?, which presented the Joy Division frontman as a sadistic, sarcastic Tory loudmouth: hell to live with, perhaps, but painfully human. The film remains one of the purest pleasures in modern British cinema: scrappy, inconsistent, inventive, insightful, heartfelt and wickedly funny. TH"

 

93
Zulu (1964)

Dir Cy Endfield (Stanley Baker, Jack Hawkins, Michael Caine)

Fahsands of ?em... comin? over the hill!

?Zulu? may take a few liberties with the exact levels of Welshness on show during the Battle of Rorke?s Drift, but ? Richard Burton, Catherine Zeta-Jones and gold-standard Richard Burton impersonator Anthony Hopkins notwithstanding ?Welsh film fans have never had all that much to cheer about. So we?re keeping this one! An account of the South Wales Border Regiment?s seemingly hopeless last-ditch stand against the massed ranks of the Zulu Nation, it?s a massively successful enterprise ? especially from first-time producer (and star) Stanley Baker and a director previously known chiefly for low-budget noirs. That it still stirs the blood and moistens the eye proves that few films manage to be as expansive and yet so intimate as this. ALD"

When the surrounded men start singin' "Men of Harlech"...yeah.

 

A truly great film. Incredibly stirring. Although I suspect that John Barry is pulling half the weight, as he often did.

 

It's a good film, though as always I'm not keen on films that state they are a depiction of real events,and then go on portray real people behaving in a way they did not "for dramatic effect". If you are going to change the nature of people's character and actions, please change their names, too.

Even so, it's a film I enjoy.

 

This is reposted from a post I made in another thread:

"...the Brits are tired, thirsty, and scared, and they are sitting there endlessly, listening to the Zulus that surround them. The Zulus have a sort of humming war song, no words, which sounds like very loud white noise. It's terribly on the Brits' nerves, finally one of them (played by James Booth) starts defiantly singing the old Welsh hymn "Men of Harlech" to drown it out. He sings the first two lines, then hesitates. The commanding officer (Stanley Baker) yells at him: "Keep singing!" He sings the next two lines, and the rest of the men, one by one, join in and sing the whole song. Download "Men of Harlech" from the internet, and you will get some idea of how effective this scene is. This film is based on an actual incident.

Reminds me of the story of the relief of Lucknow (another famous siege in British history, this one in India.) The besieged suddenly hear bagpipes in the distance. Very, very faintly. And the bagpipes are playing "The Campbells Are Coming." That's how they know they are about to be rescued. Also a true story."

 

What a great movie. Just great.

 

Pure ferocity, some of the battle scenes are just brutal. And Michael Caine going against cast as a sort of snobby soldier who isn't likable at first. One of the most underrated films of all time, this deserves to be talked about in the same breath as the best films of the sixties.

 

It's long, but it feels incredibly taut. It is, I guess. It's a slow boil of suspense and tension for nearly its entire running time; it never really lets up - it's either being unbearably suspenseful or else rampagingly violent. Some of the battle scenes are among the best ever filmed; Peter Jackson claimed to be thinking of this movie as he did Helm's Deep and it shows, though maybe not enough. Great score, great ensemble. Just wonderful.

 

92.
Dead Man's Shoes (2004)

Dir Shane Meadows (Paddy Considine, Gary Stretch, Toby Kebbell)

Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord

"Shane Meadows?s fourth film shows the importance of staying true to your instincts. The Midlands director?s third film, ?Once Upon a Time in the Midlands? had seen him working with a bigger budget and a more recognisable cast (Rhys Ifans, Ricky Tomlinson, Robert Carlyle, Kathy Burke) and the result, if amiable, was much less raw, personal and anarchic than his first two features and earlier shorts. ?Dead Man?s Shoes? was an uncompromising and successful attempt by Meadows to rediscover his old voice. He cast old pal Paddy Considine, who had been gripping as a volatile loner in ?A Room for Romeo Brass?, and went for the jugular with this tale of a man who seeks and dishes out violence in revenge for something terrible that happened in his family?s past. Considine is terrifying, and Meadows pulls no punches in painting a portrait of just how low men can go ? for fun and for love. DC"

 

Land and Freedom (1995)

Dir Ken Loach (Ian Hart, Icíar Bollaín, Tom Gilroy)

Homage to Catalonia

"Ken Loach?s 1995 film about fatal splits on the Left during the Spanish Civil War ? told from the viewpoint of David (Ian Hart), a Liverpudlian Communist who travels south to Spain to join the cause ? achieved an epic look and feel while remaining committed to the cut and thrust of ground-level debate. It remains one of Loach?s most ambitious and important films both for its raw combat scenes and for the way it shines a light on a crucial moment in twentieth-century history. The focus of Jim Allen?s script on one group of militia allows for strong personalities with varying motivations and ideas to emerge, while the book-ending of the story with the discovery in the present of David?s letters by his granddaughter gives it a powerful immediacy. The film doubly confirmed Loach?s return from the wilderness in the 1980s and set a precedent for his later films exploring global stories in Nicaragua, Los Angeles and Ireland.DC"

 

Blue (1993)

Dir Derek Jarman (voices of Tilda Swinton, John Quentin, Nigel Terry)

Distant voices...

?My mind is bright as a button, but my body is falling apart.? It?s rare that a ?last film? is conceived as such, but Derek Jarman knew he was dying from Aids-related illnesses when he made ?Blue? in 1993 ? a film simultaneously broadcast on television and radio months before his death in 1994 at 52. It was his encroaching blindness, much referred to in the voiceover read by several actors, which gave Jarman the idea to apply words to an unchanging, blue screen for 76 minutes. The voiceover is a mix of diary and poetry, relating variously to Jarman?s illness, art and the colour blue. It?s a bold, moving work, but it?s Jarman?s ability to conjure up such a unique, experimental event as ?Blue? that we must remember and honour ? the way that, with this avant-garde work, he drew attention to him, his work, sexuality and illness and made an unembarrassed, deathbed claim for art itself. DC"

 

89. The Go-Between (1970)

Dir Joseph Losey (Julie Christie, Alan Bates, Dominic Guard)

The boys of summer

?The past is another country. They do things differently there?: one of two Joseph Losey-Harold Pinter collaborations to feature in our poll (the other is ?The Servant?) is this radiant and evocative adaptation of LP Hartley?s tale of thwarted love and class prejudice set against the halcyon British summer of 1900. It was dumped initially by MGM because of its supposed ?difficulty? but was subsequently the winner of the Cannes Palme d?Or and a box-office and critical success in the US. The reputations of both the film and late-career Losey went into decline in Britain (if not elsewhere) by the mid-1990s ? in 1994 The Independent?s Anthony Quinn, typically, thought this film ?overrated? and part of Losey?s decline. But its complexity of feeling, the undoubted chemistry of its reunited stars Julie Christie and Alan Bates, the lushness of cinematographer Gerry Fisher?s Norfolk landscapes and the critical late-1960s sensibility provided by the acute eye and complex psychological insight of Losey ? plus the revelatory use of time-frames, flashback and point-of-view in Pinter?s script ? guarantee its lasting appeal. WH