The 100 best British films of all time – The Telegraph

Looking at our selection of the 100greatest British films of the past century, youll find that Britain excels at genres youd expect (kitchen sink, period drama, class-obsessed satire) as well asplenty you wouldnt(strange sci-fi, blood-freezing contemporary horror).

Whether youve fully self-isolated from coronavirus or just wanta pleasantdate night, here are the essential home-grown films to watch, listed in the order they were made.

The film that made Korda the leading producer-director of his era and Charles Laughton into an Oscar-winning international star, this is how period biopics should be done: with comic vim, unbridled theatricality and a cavalier jauntiness, thumbing its nose at history. Catherine of Aragon is omitted entirely for being too dull; step forward Merle Oberon as Anne Boleyn and Elsa Lanchester as a hysterically gawky Anne of Cleves. It still has satirical entertainment value thats not far off Blackadder-esque.

There have been four major film versions of Scottish author John Buchans 1915 thriller The Thirty-Nine Steps but the best of the quartet is Alfred Hitchcocks marvellously inventive 1935 film. The story about an innocent man accused of murder being pursued by both the police and a deadly spy ring appealed to Hitchcocks love of paranoia and the man on the run.

Hitchcock took a great Edwardian novel, about an inept terrorist and his credulous wife, and boiled it down to 76 breakneck minutes. The result is a zinging enigma of a movie, punctuated with disquieting images and haunting snatches of speech.

The film that catapulted Hitchcock to Hollywood was the second-to-last, and perhaps also the very best, that he made in Britain. In this lightning-witted comic thriller, Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgraves travellers-in-arms comb their train for a disappeared fellow passenger everyone else insists they never saw a riveting core mystery from which Hitchcock allows all kinds of secrets and deceptions to spider-web out.

When MGM remade this four years later in their George Cukor/Ingrid Bergman version, Louis B Mayer tried to buy up and burn all prints of the British film, lest it court invidious comparisons. Thankfully, he failed. The underrated Dickinson, much-championed by Martin Scorsese, did a far more tense, terse and economical job with the Patrick Hamilton play about a devious husband trying to drive his wife insane. As an elegant suspense picture, it holds its own with prime Hitchcock: Diana Wynyards fine-tuned distress and Anton Walbrooks unforgettable portrait of cunning marital sadism make it a keeper.

Alexander Kordas highgloss 1941 weepie about the relationship between Horatio, Lord Nelson, and Emma, Lady Hamilton was supposedly Winston Churchills favourite film. As a bonus, it boasts the tragic romance between Vivien Leigh and her husband Laurence Olivier in their final screen pairing. Beyond that, Leigh gives her most under-regarded performance in That Hamilton Woman by playing the tragic victim wonderfully at the films climax: listening to Hardys account of Trafalgar stricken with horror at the news he is so clearly holding back. Rainy Sunday afternoons should have all this within easy reach.

Forty years of love and war take their toll on a man and his nation in Powell and Pressburgers masterful comic drama about a Boer War hero (Roger Livesey) whose elegant ideals become increasingly at odds with the world hes fighting to defend. Pilloried on release at the height of the Second World War, its fitting that perhaps the greatest film ever made about the ebb and flow of history has been so thoroughly vindicated by it.

Youd have to have a heart of stone not to weep at the end of Brief Encounter, Leans tale of the oh-so-terribly British and painfully unconsummated love affair between repressed middle-class housewife Laura (Celia Johnson) and Dr Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard), a stranger she meets by chance at a train station. The script, based on Noel Coward's a one-act play Still Life, is infused with a poignant, pointed delicacy, evoking the way in which people not used to giving in to feelings can suddenly find themselves overcome. But the film really belongs to Johnson: its her beautifully expressive (and these days almost comically refined) voice, and huge, eloquent eyes that really hammer home the gut-wrenching emotion.

The wind-stung beauty of the Scottish islands provides a suitably mythic backdrop for this wise and wonderful romantic comedy from Powell and Pressburger: the missing link between the directors more realistic wartime films and the lush, lyrical marvels that would follow. Wendy Hiller plays the social-climbing city girl who becomes stranded on the Isle of Mull shortly before her marriage to a wealthy industrialist, where she discovers, with the help of Roger Liveseys affable young laird, that not all riches are material.

Right from the desolate establishing shots of the Kentish marshes Guy Greens glorious cinematography won one of two Oscars David Leans approach here is all contrasts: innocence versus experience, light against dark. The screenplay is a marvel of narrative economy, with just the right amount of enriching voiceover from John Millss adult Pip, but not so much that the importance of telling the story visually is ever neglected.

Powell and Pressburgers 1946 masterpiece: David Niven is the Walter Raleigh-quoting Second World War bomber pilot facing certain death with a stiff upper lip (So long Bob, Ill see you in a minute), who falls in love in his final moments with American radio operator June (Kim Hunter), cheats death temporarily and faces a trial in the afterlife as to whether he be allowed to remain on Earth. Jack Cardiffs luminous cinematography and startling special effects, such as the moving escalator to the other world, make this romance as odd and enchanted a piece of film-making as you are likely to see.

Fifty Shades of Grey can only dream of being as erotic a work as Powell and Pressburgers tale of repressed desire and simmering passions among a community of nuns at a convent in the Himalayas. Jack Cardiffs cinematography, with its rich, dark interiors and mountains painted on glass, is among the most beautiful in film.

Martin Scorsese oversaw the 2-year restoration process for the ecstatically received new print of one of British cinemas great wonders, Powell and Pressburgers hallucinatory masterpiece about dancing, death, and everything in between.

Kind Hearts and Coronets is a black comedy filmed in bright sunshine, a cool piece of heartlessness played for laughs, with a subplot preoccupied by love. Its elegant surface even homicide does not challenge Louiss sartorial clat masks uglier motives and truths: the film dares us to disapprove. It is a work of immense sophistication that combines the startlingly modern and the obviously old-fashioned. For director Robert Hamer, it would be the one film of the handful he made that would guarantee him immortality.

Perhaps the greatest thriller to come out of postwar British cinema, Carol Reeds adaptation of the Graham Greene novel (the second after 1948s The Fallen Idol) shimmers with intrigue and suspense throughout. Shot on luminous black and white 35mm film, Robert Kraskers evocative camerawork highlights the back alleys of Vienna as well as a brilliant performance by Orson Welles as opportunist Harry Lime.

This classic tale of British wartime valour was the most successful film at the British box office in 1955. Michael Redgrave stars as the real-life aviation designer Barnes Wallis who invented the bouncing bomb that was used to breach enemy dams during night-time raids. Much though we all know how it ends, the scenes where wesee the bomb in action are genuinely gripping. Richard Todd also gives a charismatic performance as wing commander Guy Gibson.

American scriptwriterWilliam Rose claimed to have dreamt the entire screenplay of this Ealing black comedy, and the plot of this hilarious London caper is certainly surreal. Katie Johnson stars as the bewilderedMrs Wilberforce, who escapes her lopsided house to tell the police of fantastical crimes. Of course, when a gang of mobsters disguised as members of a string quartet take up residency with her talking parrot, the bobbies dont believe her.

Alec Guinness was sensational as Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson, winning the Oscar, Bafta and Golden Globe Best Actor awards for his 1957 performance in The Bridge on the River Kwai. The film was directed by David Lean but it was an unhappy experience for Guinness. The pair did not speak to each other at all for a 48-hour period during filming in Sri Lanka and Guinness later wrote that Lean surrounds himself with sycophants and has no sense of humour.

MR James is the greatest ever practitioner of the English ghost story: ironic, then, that it took a French director and American money to capture his spirit this well on screen, with some of the best uses of London locations since early Hitchcock. The Ring and latterly It Follows have borrowed a cue from this pass-on-the-curse plot: Dana Andrews is the sceptical psychologist locking horns with an urbane devil-worshipper (fabulous Niall MacGinnis) while a gnarled medieval demon breathes down their necks.

There have been countless imitations but none can lay a blood-stained glove on Terence Fishers adaptation of Bram Stokers chilling novel. Christopher Lee plays the blood-thirsty Count, all curdling terror and knowing humour, while Peter Cushing provides solid support as Abraham Van Helsing. A cape-tivating classic.

Critics scorned Peeping Tom when it was released, largely due to the habits of its lead character: Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm), an amateur filmmaker with a compulsion to murder women and get kick from filming the horrified expressions on their faces as they come to realise their fate. But contemporary critics may have overlooked in 1960 was that voyeurism was its central theme. But who is the voyeur? Before his death in 1990, Powell saw the reputation of Peeping Tom rise and rise. It is now regarded as a key film in British cinema history and one of the greatest horror movies of all time.

It's easy to forget how sexy Albert Finney used to be. In Karel Reiszs feature directing debut, he plays an amoral factory worker who refuses to kowtow to the system but isnt quite smart enough to see that hes trapped in it nonetheless. Rachel Roberts, as the married woman he gets pregnant, is sensational, and Alan Sillitoes dialogue fairly crackles.

An adaptation of Henry Jamess The Turn of the Screw, The Innocents remains one of the most spine-chillingly eerie horror films ever made, as well as one of the earliest to tap into the creepyqualities of young children. Deborah Kerr is excellent as isolated nursery governess Miss Giddens, who begins to suspect that her dead predecessor isnt quite as dead as she seems, and that all is not as it should be with her young charges Sexual repression, obsession and slowly-creeping madness have rarely been so well portrayed.

There have been many attempts to portray the extraordinary and enigmatic figure that is TE Lawrence a flamboyant young English army officer that inspired and led an Arabian army against the Turks though none have been as successful David Leans 1962 classic. A debutant as Lawrence, Peter OToole channels a truly complex character that is ruthless, charismatic and, at times, self-hating.

Based on Alan Sillitoes short story of the same name, director Tony Richardson's film follows a young boy who is sent to a borstal after being involved in a bakery robbery and finds solace in his talent for long-distance running. Tom Courtney is superb as the defiant Borstal boy Colin Smith and while the film is valuable as social history, it retains its vitality.

Lindsay Andersons feature debut is one of the strongest films to emerge from the kitchen-sink movement that swept across British filmmaking in the Sixties. Richard Harris stars as Frank Machin, an up-and-coming rugby league star, who enters into a fraught, agonised affair with his widowed landlady Margaret Hammond (Rachel Roberts). Roberts delivers the best performance of her short career, while the scrum scenes remain among the best depictions of sport ever captured on celluloid.

Director Terence Young's 1963 caper was James Bonds second screen outing. Generally favouring the claustrophobia of the westbound Orient Express over grandstanding set-pieces, it has a first-rate villain (Lotte Lenyas Rosa Klebb), henchman (Robert Shaws Donald RedGrant) and girl (Daniela Bianchi as Tatiana Romanova), not to mention the mighty Connery in his pantherine prime. The plot is deliciously preposterous and that long section on the train positively crackles with tension, finally exploding in a fight-sequence that is still unmatched in the 007 canon.

The Battle of Rorkes Drift, in which 150 British soldiers eventually defeated 4,000 Zulu warriors, is brought to dramatic life in Cy Enfields military masterpiece. Michael Caine is pitch-perfect as the pompous Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead, but its Stanley Baker as the heroic Lieutenant John Chard who really captures the sense of panicthat rattled through the British camp thatswelteringday in 1879.

More than 50 years on, A Hard Days Night still feels as fresh and cheeky as when it was first released. Its the first and best of the five Beatles films, and follows the band on a brief trip from Liverpool to London, where they play at a televised concert. The opening sequence recalls French New Wave cinema proving, once again, the Beatles ability to see a trend approaching, and slip in ahead of it smiling. Its visions of Britain and stardom are as peculiar and vivid as they were half-a-century ago, and it all remains roaringly funny.

Michael Caine stars as Army sergeant Harry Palmer in this gritty espionage film that pitted itself as the antidote to the fantasy gleam of the Bond franchise. Palmer finds himself in the middle of a brainwashing plot laden with red tape, and must fight against time to save himself and his colleagues.

Halfway between The Servant (1963) and The Go-Between (1970), Losey, that American ex-pat and clever dissector of the English class system, also teamed up with Harold Pinter on this prickly drama of extra-marital peccadilloes among Oxford dons, played by Dirk Bogarde and a superbly insinuating Stanley Baker. With its boldly experimental approach to form, its a splintered enigma of a movie about the skull beneath the skin of genteel provincial life. On each viewing it reveals new facets, like a puzzle-box gradually unlocked by giving it a different quarter-turn.

John Schlesingers spellbinding adaptation of Thomas Hardys novel rings with the rhythms of rural life. The story it tells isnt just of Bathsheba Everdene (Julie Christie) and her trio of imperfect suitors, but also of the frontier society that sustains all four: its songs and traditions, and bedrock-deep relationship with the landscape. The Dorset scenery seems to glow from within (the cinematographer is a pre-Walkabout Nicolas Roeg), as do the fashionable cast not least of all Terence Stamps snugly trousered Frank Troy, whos a scoundrel for the ages.

Lindsay Andersons anarchic vision of English public-school life etches itself into the memory of even those who didnt grow up familiar with it. In part thats thanks to David Sherwins shocking, revelatory script, and in part due to Malcolm McDowell before the stardom of Kubricks A Clockwork Orange whose disgruntled anti-hero Mick Travis prowls around the stately premises with menace and fulfills the dark fantasies of many a schoolboy.

Not just a nonpareil revenge-horror film but something close to a British Western: theres much spirited riding around the Suffolk countryside and a moral battle to be won at great cost. Resurrecting the fabled cruelty of 17th century witch-hunter Matthew Hopkins (an insatiable Vincent Price), then-24-year-old director Reeves, a year before his death from an overdose, whipped this up into a thunderous allegory about violence and its capacity to beget more. The insane blood-lust of the finale wont be forgotten in a hurry.

To call Kes timeless isnt quite right. For its a film thats steeped in a very particular time and place. It was made in 1969 by a director credited as Kenneth Loach; when teenagers like its dirty-nailed hero Billy Casper (David Bradley) still read The Dandy and the most miserable fate that could befall a young adult would be to labour down the mine. Now, it still cries its authentic song of rage. As Billy, David Bradley is eloquent when describing his kestrel and touching in his ability still to feel hurt. He is as romantic as Truffauts Antoine Doinel, and as enduring and vital a Northern outsider as Mark E Smith, Morrissey and Jarvis Cocker.

Mick Jagger makes his acting debut in this twisted dark crime film from Cammell and Roeg, but dont expect tales of rock n roll. Instead, Jaggers character Turner, a reclusive musician, becomes captor toChas, a sadistic thug on the run from more evil villains. Drugs, sex and violence warranted mixed reviews when Performance was first released, but Cammells death in 1996 collided with a critical reappraisal. The fact that Performance has influenced everyone from Tarantino toThe League of Extraordinary Gentlemenhas helped cement its position in British cinema.

As vengeful gangster Jack Carter, Michael Caine returns to a rabbit-warren Newcastle that has ceased to exist in recent years of regeneration. There are no good guys in this quietly gripping adaptation of Ted Lewiss1969 novelJacks Return Home, but cinematographer Wolfgang Suschitzky brings out the stark beauty of the North-East while capturing their attempts to kill each other.

Stanley Kubricks dystopian crime drama, based on the novella by Anthony Burgess, is a disturbing study of juvenile delinquency. Malcolm McDowell gives a tour de force performance as the sociopathic gang leader whose violent tendencies land him in a creepy psychiatric experiment. The film was passed uncut by the British censors and was nominated for several Baftas and Academy Awards, but after it was linked to a series of copycat crimes, Kubrick himself withdrew it from distribution. It was only after Kubricks death in 1999 that the film was made available in the UK.

Russell was already the enfant terrible of British cinema, thanks to his mad music biopics and sexually frank Women in Love (1969). Then he dropped this whopping payload of orgiastic anarchy right in front of the establishments nose. Warner Brothers refused to release it uncut: out went the scene where deranged nuns sexually assault a statue of Christ, and most of the one where Vanessa Redgrave masturbates with the charred femur bone of Oliver Reed. Its like nothing else, now restored and rightly hailed as the Russellest film of them all.

Scottish cinemas Oresteia: a pinnacle, in three parts. From the raw material as in flayed-raw of a grindingly impoverished upbringing in 1940s Newcraighall, south-east of Edinburgh, Douglas wrought tender poetry in black-and-white, starting with My Childhood (1972) and continuing through My Ain Folk (1973) and My Way Home (1978). The fortunes of Jamie (Stephen Archibald) from ages 10 through 16 make this Boyhood with borstals: theres grit under its nails, and a vision of neglect that wont fade, but also sublimity in the tiny satisfactions a day can bring.

What begins as a meditation on grief winds up one of the most chilling, devastating ghost stories in British cinematic history. Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie, then a real-life couple, star as the parents of a dead child who take a healing trip to wintry Venice, only to experience strange premonitions and constant reminders of their tragedy. The denouement, in particular that red plastic mac, is terrifying.

Christopher Lee is thrillingly eerie as Lord Summerisle in this horror mystery. A deeply Christian policeman (Edward Woodward) tries to investigate the disappearance of a girl from a pagan community on a remote Scottish island. But he finds the islands imperious leader (Lee, in one of his greatest roles) and its secretive inhabitants less than helpful. Britt Ekland also stars.

Kubricks adaptation of Thackerays 1844 novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon, a satirical picaresque about the fortune and status-hungry Irish rogue, pushed the directors technical ambition to new limits. Determined to shoot as few scenes as possible without electrical light, Barry Lyndon is consciously a museum piece.Subjected to the directors infamous regime of many, many arduous takes, the actors faces light up the film and the era, like a series of fine, carefully hung, oil portraits. Kubricks cast may have been required to sit for these for days and weeks on end, but no one could say the results werent worth it.

As the first member of his family to be born in Britain, teenager Tony (Herbert Norville) finds two very different worlds jostling him on either side: his Trinidadian heritage on one, the beckoning dream of English middle-classdom on the other. Horace Ovs debut feature remains as vibrant, honest and humane an exploration of the black British experience now as it was in the mid-1970s. Its the last great (and perhaps also most under-appreciated) film of the British New Wave.

This hysterical comedy about an accidental Messiah caused no endofcontroversy when it was released in 1979. It was Monty Pythons second film, released four years after The Holy Grail, and told the storyofa Jewish man who happened to be born on the same day as Jesus and is later mistaken for the prophet. The films biting yet upbeat tone and religious satire drew accusationsofblasphemy and was even banned in a handfulofcountries.

A road trip and a mindset, a time and a place the late 1970s, with Thatcher just in and a hypnotic shoestring exercise that thrives on having virtually no plot at all. A DJ played by David Beames drives from London to Bristol, after his brother is found dead in a bath. Borrowing a camera assistant from Wim Wenders, Petit makes of this a resonant statement about certainties gone astray, and with Kraftwerk, Eno, and Bowies German version of Heroeson the soundtrack, it feels like an aural memory-map for its moment.

Anyone weary of the British geezer gangster films of the Nineties and 2000s should go back a decade to this masterly exercise in guvnor filmmaking, which is as much a vehicle for Helen Mirren as for Bob Hoskins. Theres a sleek parallel between Michelle Pfeiffers moll in Scarface and Mirren, wife to Hoskinss gangster Harold. But where Pfeiffer came covered in cocaine and trauma, Victorias elegant self is more than a match for Harold, an East End gangster making a very botched attempt at going legitimate. Watch out for Pierce Brosnan and Daragh O'Malley (Bond and Sharpes Sergeant Harper) in early roles as IRA hitmen, as well as the almost obligatory Dexter Fletcher child cameo.

Was there ever a more charming film than Gregorys Girl? It may not contain many jokes, and there are only one or two laugh-out-loud moments, but almost every scene puts a smile on your face. From the opening, in which a sex-starved schoolboy faints off-camera at the sight of a nurse removing her bra, to the closing sequence, in which Gregory (John Gordon Sinclair) and his new girlfriend dance in the park while lying down, the film is filled with quirkiness and, well, charm. Gregorys Girl put Scottish director Bill Forsyth on the map. He went on to make bigger films, but he never found a more engaging blend of offbeat comedy, warmth and insight into the peculiarities of the teenage mind.

Hugh Hudsons Oscar-winning biopic is as sincere and courageous as the two men at its heart: Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson), the Olympic runner spurred on by his Christian faith, and Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross), his Jewish teammate marginalised by his. Whatever the films nostalgic 1920s setting suggests soundtrack-wise, its probably not plangent electronica from Greek keyboard whizz Vangelis, but that inspired mismatch of sound and vision only reinforces the sense that the story were witnessing is timeless.

Spectacularly original, The Draughtsmans Conrtact seemed to herald a thrilling new filmmaking talent from Peter Greenaway. An artist (Anthony Higgins) is commissioned to draw a 17th-century estate from 12 different angles at different times of the day for a modest stipend and 12 sexual favours from Mrs Herbert (Janet Suzman), the lady of the manor. But Greenaway applies a surreal sensibility to a thoroughly conventional genre format, the country-house murder mystery. The audience remain in the dark about the mystery in this minor masterpiece by a consummate English eccentric.

Withnail and I are louche unemployed actors who live in squalor and drink themselves silly. Grants delivery of mordant mutterings is superb. The lines, from Bruce Robinsons semi-autobiographical script, are an oddball joy and mostly involve drink and the inevitable hangover. An escape from urban squalor in Camden lands them in rural squalor in Cumbria. To add to the chaos, there is a scary bull, a malevolent poacher and a flirtatious Uncle Monty (Richard Griffiths), who unexpectedly turns up with amorous designs on a decidedly unwilling I. Once regarded for many years as a cult film, Withnail and I now stands as one of the finest British films of the Eighties. Whats not to like about a film with the line: Dont threaten me with a dead fish?

Terence Daviess lyrical portrait of post-war working-class family life in Liverpool is tough but rewarding viewing. Carefully composed shots depict an alarming tension between pub knees-ups and domestic abuse. Pete Postlethwaite plays damaged father Tommy, whose brutal beatings are made more severe to the strains of Ella Fitzgeralds Taking a Chance on Love.

One of Ismail Merchant and James Ivorys finest collaborations, this adaptation of EM Forsters novel about a class-obsessed family earned nine Oscar nominations. Emma Thompson, who won one for her portrayal of poor relation Margaret Wilcox, carries this sumptuous film.

Sally Potters ambitious adaptation of Virginia Woolfs 1928 gender-bending journey through English history, based on the family history of her close friend and lover Vita Sackville-West, brought the storys events right up to the films present day of 1992. Tilda Swinton stars as the eponymous nobleman in the Elizabethan court. The aging Queen, played by Quentin Crisp, promises Orlando a castle and land provided he [does] not grow old. At her command, Orlando lives on for centuries, but encounters trouble keeping the entitlement to his land when he wakes up one day as a woman.

Emma Thompson was reunited with Merchant Ivory for this meticulous imagining of Kazuo Ishiguros novel of the same name. Thompson won another Oscar nomination for her performance as sensitive housekeeper Miss Kenton, who attempts to find the human side of obsessively devoted butler Mr Stevens (Anthony Hopkins, also Academy Award-nominated for the role). Combining impeccable acting with upstairs, downstairs and an inter-war period, its a near-perfect British film.

The Angry Young Man has never been angrier than in David Thewliss blistering performance as Johnny, a sour but clever cynic who wanders aimlessly through nocturnal London, insulting everyone he meets.MikeLeighs characters are often full of pent-up rage, but here it comes bubbling to the surface in an emotional explosion.

Written by Richard Curtis at the peak of his powers, this story of a group of friends and their endless trails round dreadful Home Counties weddings is an absolute joy. Sharper, wittier and sweeter than you remember this also applies to leading man Hugh Grant it strikes the perfect balance between hilarity and heartbreak. As much as paean to friendship as it is to the eccentrities of British poshness, Four Weddings is one of the all-time great comedies. A sole mis-step in casting Andie McDowell as Grants phenomenally wet love interest can be forgiven.

Theres lots that makes Ang Lees Sense and Sensibility one of the best Austen adaptations around, from a glittering Best-of-British cast (including Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman), to a script that retains some of the acidity of the original novel. But the most compelling reason to watch of all is Emma Thompson. Alongside Kate Winslets impulsive Marianne, Thompson is an absolute delight as level-headed heroine Elinor, the sensiblesister. Watching her overcome by emotion at the end of the film, when she realises that she hasnt lost her longterm love-interest for good, is pure cinematic cartharsis.

Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. In fact, do what the hell you want but for Gods sake find the time to watch Danny Boyles hilarious, heart-breaking tale of sex, drugs (a few more drugs) and rock n roll. Adapted from Irvine Welshs novel, the film follows five party-loving wastrels trying to make sense of their dead-end existence in mid-Nineties Edinburgh. Boasting the finest soundtrack in 20 years and a cast that includes Ewan McGregor and Robert Carlyle, Trainspotting is a life-affirming wonder.

Cannes was impressed with Brenda Blethyns performance in Secrets & Lies, in which she plays Cynthia, a weary, troubled, over-emotional single mother whose burden is increased considerably when the 30-ish Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) turns up out of the blue with the news that she is Cynthias daughter. Surely some mistake, thinks Cynthia, especially since she is white and Hortense is black. But, no, there has been no mistake. Serious issues are addressed, but and this is typical of Leighs films that doesnt mean it isnt funny and heart-warming, too.

A family drive around the English, Welsh and Scottish coastlines becomes a camper-van trip to the outermost fringes of Britishness in Andrew Kttings surreal and soul-nourishing documentary. The director goes on the road with his 87-year-old grandmother Gladys and his seven-year-old daughter Eden, born with a rare and potentially life-shortening genetic disorder, for possibly the last shared journey the three will make. But though mortality looms on the horizon, the film throbs with life and fun, delighting in the songs, traditions and folklore the trio encounter on their meandering quest.

This gritty comedy based in post-industrial Sheffield experienced as much of a rags-to-riches journey as its characters: made with a tiny budget of 3 million, the story of former steel workers stripping for a better life captured the nations imagination bringing with it box-office earnings of 170 million. Simon Beaufoys script brought issues of suicide and homosexuality side-by-side with quintessentially British tokens: garden gnomes and building-society books.

Henry James is notoriously difficult to adapt well, but this is the darkly shimmering exception, thanks to Hossein Aminis shrewd wrangling of ambiguity in the script. Helena Bonham Carter still hasnt topped Kate Croy, conniving but also trapped by her circumstances, as a leading role; the masquerade of her and Linus Roaches motives makes the film a psychological thriller of sorts. Softley directs the Venice sequences with bewitching gamesmanship, then tears your heart out at the end.

Gary Oldman made his directorial debut with this unflinching portrait of life in a London family. Bleak, violent and foul-mouthed, its the story of people battling their way through miserable lives that are all theyve ever known. Ray Winstone and Kathy Burke star as spouses locked in a cycle of abuse. One of the toughest films to watch.

Director Shane Meadows proved his mettle with his second film, a seemingly lackadaisical tale of two 12-year-old Nottinghamshire lads (Andrew Shim and Ben Marshall) whose friendship is upended when unemployed sad-sack Morell starts hanging out with them. Meadows coerces funny and touching performances from the two youngsters (Shim, incidentally, would go on to play the friendly Milky in Meadowss This is England series), but its Paddy Considine, in his first professional acting role, who shapes a thoroughly believable creation in the nasal Morell, balancing a goofy likeability with an ominous instability.

Lynne Ramsays 1999 debut feature won its director the Carl Foreman Award for Newcomer in British Film at the Bafta Awards. The film follows a 12-year-old boy, Jamie, growing up in Glasgow in 1973.

Terence Daviess adaptation of Edith Whartons 1905 novel charts the unjust downfall of New York City socialite Lily Bart, played by a never-better Gillian Anderson, at devastating close quarters. Daviess film doesnt linger on period set-dressing: the interiors its more fascinated by are those of its characters, with sustained close-ups revealing whats concealed within their souls. Very different in habitat from Daviess early, Liverpool-set work, it nonetheless shares those films elegance and patience, and sharp awareness of the power of social status.

The film no-one thought Mike Leigh could pull off has become one of the directors defining achievements an elegant, eccentric period drama about the making of The Mikado without a kitchen sink in sight. Jim Broadbent gives a career-best performance as the librettist WSGilbert, whose creative partnership with Arthur Sullivan (Allan Corduner) has run aground but, inspired by an exhibition of Japanese art and culture, he sets about writing what would prove to be his masterpiece. With an enormous, uniformly wonderful ensemble cast, who perform Leighs dialogue like music.

Years before Downton Abbey took the world by storm, Julian Fellowes brought country estates, service and Maggie Smith to the screen in this successful period drama. Kristen Scott Thomas, Charles Dance, Stephen Fry, Richard E Grant, Michael Gambon, Helen Mirren and DerekJacobi join Smith in an enormous ensemble cast, who are brought together in a murder mystery after an American filmmaker (Bob Balaban) arrives at Gosford to observe British aristocracy.

Simon Pegg and Edgar Wrights British zombie comedy, which pays homage to George A RomerosDawn of the Dead, is hilarious, smart and, towards the end, nail-bitingly tense. Shaun (Pegg), a Londoner in a dull job and a fractious relationship, finds his humdrum routine disrupted when almost everyone else in the country turns into a zombie. Theres a special geeky pleasure in spotting all the film buff in-jokes.

The French writer and artist Hugues de Montalembert was blinded in 1978, at age 35, when a drug addict in New York threw paint-stripper in his face. It was like falling into a pot of dark honey, he says of slipping into sightlessness. Gary Tarns remarkable documentary has him recount all the adjustments he had to undergo, and his new experience of the world as a blind person. Meanwhile, every image in his films experimental tapestry of visuals makes us meditate on what it means to see.

Narrated by Tilda Swinton, Deep Water is a gravely compassionate and piercingly sad account of Donald Crowhursts fate in the 1968 round-the-world yacht race. Crowhurst was a weekend sailor and amateur inventor, whose curious, reticent personality the British media took to their hearts. It quickly became clear that he hadnt a snowballs chance in hell of winning, and his best hope of coming out of the race with his pride intact was merely completing the circumnavigation as planned. But at a certain point was it in the Sargasso, or the Bermuda Triangle? he couldnt face turning back. Before vanishing at sea, he scrawled more than 25,000 words in his logbook, and the window these records open on his unravelling mind is devastating.

Unrelated is an emotionally and sometimes wince-inducingly acute debut that looks and feels and sounds like few other British films. Thats partly to do with its setting (Tuscany),its social milieu (the characters are all solidly, unashamedly middle-class), and its story a subtle and largely internal journey on the part of a middle-aged married woman who has been invited by her oldest friend Verena to stay at an Italian holiday villa.

Despite having a questionable final act, this gripping tale of a space crew sent to detonate a nuclear bomb in the heart of the dying sun in order to save humanity does not lack ambition. It seldom looks anything less than stunning, the mood is close to eerily spiritualthroughout, and its a testament to what can be done with a reduced special-effects budget.

Gideon Koppels documentary about vanishing ways of life in the remote Welsh farming community of Trefeurig is a patchwork quilt of beautiful images, snug and lovingly stitched. Two lines of sheep file across a rain-darkened field; a plump, yellow mobile library winds down valley roads; a town cryer pads along a lane, ringing his bell at no-one in particular. The title comes from a grammatically correct but meaningless sentence formulated by Noam Chomsky, and suggests a deep, underlying order to the everyday activities Koppels camera observes.

The 1981 Maze Prison hunger strikes, in which provisional IRA member Bobby Sands famously died, gave McQueen his first subject for a feature as scalding, uncompromising and intellectually rigorous a debut as any British filmmaker has managed in decades. Michael Fassbender devotes himself body and soul to the role, but its the long-take rigour of McQueens directorial approach, reprised harrowingly in 12 Years a Slave, that makes you feel the slow-drip agony of solitary confinement and self-inflicted annihilation.

Andrea Arnold works wonders almost everywhere in this film: the drip-drop drabness of kitchen-sink drama is stilled, alive, and newly dangerous. Set in an Essex housing estate, 15-year-old Mia (Katie Jarvis) tussles with her single mother (Kierston Wareing), who wants to pack her off into juvenile care. Entering the fray is Michael Fassbender, who delivers a spellbinding turn, and the film shifts gears unmistakably whenever its around him.

Easily the most authentic film in a generation about British gay life, but also a tender, open-hearted romance about sudden connection and ideas of belonging. Tom Cullen and Chris New play two young guys in Nottingham who pick each other up in a bar, and realise theres something more between them than the usual substance-fuelled, bleary attraction. Haighs film captures the nervous rhythms of a new mutual crush beautifully, but also makes their pillow-talk dig bravely down into the loneliness and frustration of contemporary gay culture.

Jay (Neil Maskell), a soldier-turned-hitman jaded by the unspecified horrors of a previous assignment, is hired to carry out a string of executions a priest, a librarian, and an MP although his client seems to have even bigger things for him in mind. Ben Wheatleys blood-freezing state-of-the-nation horror film grabs hold of a familiar British kitchen-sink setting drab housing estates, fading business hotels and wrenches it out of its socket, creating an atmosphere of hyperreal panic and dread.

Sound is a sacrament in the Berberian Sound Studio: it enters innocuously through the ears before transubstantiating into something more sinister. That might be the most straightforward way of describing what happens in this thrillingly unstraightforward film from the English director Peter Strickland about the odd goings-on in a fusty Italian post-production suite.

The Selfish Giant, the second feature by the English filmmakerClio Barnard, is a brilliant and soul-scouring fable about scrap men and scrap children; two outcast generations doomed to forever sift through lifes rubbish dump. So hauntingly perfect is Barnards film, and so skin-pricklingly alive does it make you feel to watch it, that at first you can hardly believe the sum of what you have seen: the astonishingly strong performances from her two young, untutored leads; Barnards layered script; Mike Eleys snow-crisp cinematography that makes the streets of Bradford shine.

Nine years in the making and worth every microsecond of its torturous development, Jonathan Glazers science-fiction horror film shows us Britain from the ultimate outsiders perspective. Scarlett Johansson plays a nameless alien creature whos harvesting men for their meat, seducing them into her transit van and taking them to be pulped. The early hunting scenes, shot undercover in Glasgow, have a skin-tightening coldness to them, but then the alien starts warming to her prey a flicker of humanity that alters the course of her mission. Indelible images, sounds and ideas come in such quick succession they leave you reeling. Not that youd ever want to, but this is not a film that can be shaken off.

This brilliant farce by satirist Chris Morris, which finds the funny side of terrorism, was met with controversy on its release, and shows no signs of losing its bite. It charts the journey of five hapless British would-be jihadists, including family man Omar (Riz Ahmed), as they plan a mass suicide attack. What ensues is a comedy of errors, as they all are distracted on their road to paradise.

A gang of inner-city youths come face-to-face with a deadly alien invasion in this sci-fi horror film written and directed by Joe Cornish. The gangs south London housing estate is suddenly transformed into an extraterrestrial battlefield as the kids try to defend their turf. Its fast, funny, at times frightening, and has a sharp and intelligent script.

Mike Leighs biopic of the great Victorian artist features Timothy Spalls finest performance sinceSecrets& Lies. We begin in 1826, with Turner 51 years old and in the ascendant. Spall makes him tenderly human; this has the effect of making his talents seem even more God-given. The lisping John Ruskin is hilariously played by Joshua McGuire. Its a subtle and observant piece of film-making one of Leighs very best.

Charlotte Rampling has never been better than in AndrewHaighsfollow-up to his acclaimed indie filmWeekend. A couple (played by Rampling and Tom Courtenay) are celebrating their wedding anniversary when news of an old flame causes a cold nugget of realisation to sink to the bottom of their marriage and staythere. This story is about whether the knowing or not knowing is more injurious.

Aardmans beloved TV character is a gloriously crackpot, silent comedy wonder, tickling the same neglected folds of your brain and gut as Chaplin, Keaton, and Laurel and Hardy. In this fun-packed tale, Shaun and his flock scour The Big City for their suddenly amnesiac farmer.

Yorgos Lanthimoss comedy stars Colin Farrell as David, whose wife is leaving him bad news in this dystopian world where singletons must find a mate within 45 days or be transformed into an animal. Hes carted off to a spa resort for processing where Olivia Colmans manager delivers some coldly hilarious lines. The emotions that the film stirs and the fallacies it attacks are all too real.

Shia LaBeouf has never looked worse or acted better than in Andrea Arnolds rapturously scuzzy road movie. A bunch of magazine sellers, including LaBeouf and magnetic newcomer Sasha Lane, embark on a trip so scrappily open-ended that almost anything goes; but its the lack of rigid narrative structure that makes it an electrifying experience.

Whit Stillmans adaptation of an early Austen curio, her long-unpublished epistolary novel Lady Susan, opens out the adulterous games of Austens surprisingly risqu text and elaborates on them with impish, often breathlessly funny verve. Kate Beckinsale springs back to form with a deliciously controlled performance.

What begins as a story of wretched life in 1980s Tehran soon develops into something more darker and weirder: a paranormal horror tale that seesShideh (Narges Rashidi) and her daughter Dorsa (Avin Manshadi) terrorised by a malevolent djinn. Or are they? Partly a parable of life in wartime, partly a straight-up scareathon, this will have your heart and head thrumming alike.

When professor John Hull realised that he was losing his sight, he determined to understand his condition so that it wouldnt destroy him. He kept an audio recording detailing how his way of seeing the world was transformed. Peter Middleton and James Spinneys intelligent and reflective film dramatises Hulls inspiring journey.

Director ChristopherNolan takes a novel approach to theDunkirkevacuation. Told through three separate perspectives, taking place in the air, the sea and on land, thefilmis a disorientating, dazzling, superbly crafted tribute to their bravery. Tom Hardy, Kenneth Branagh, Mark Rylance and Harry Styles are among the cast.

Gheorghe (Alec Secreanu) is a handsome Romanian farmhand who arrives in Yorkshire for lambing time; Johnny (Josh OConnor) is the 24-year-old son of the ailing sheep farmer (Ian Hart) to whose estate Gheorghe comes. Johnny is suspicious of the hand at first, calling him gypsy, but both men are gay, and the tension between them steadily rises, laBrokeback Mountain, to a boil.

Paul Thomas Andersons exquisite work finds Daniel Day-Lewis (in what hes since declared his final film) as Reynolds Woodcock, a Fifties couturier with a muse (Vicky Krieps) whos bad news. Reynoldss sister Cyril (Lesley Manville) serves as the third point of their rather uneasy domestic triangle. The film is an instant classic, with hints of Alfred Hitchcock but a strangeness all of its own.

Olivia Colman, playing Queen Anne, won a Best Actress Oscar for this period comedy from renowned absurdist Yorgos Lanthimos, who finds himself very much at home in the court of the Restoration. Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz co-star as Annes courtiers, trying every trick in their corsets to come out on top.The Favouriteis warped, wily, sexy and ticklish an uproarious history lesson.

In a quiet corner of Charles Saatchis 1997Sensationshow was a collection of snapshots from another world. Taken by the photographer Richard Billingham, they documented the goings-on in his parents putrefying West Midlands tenement flat. Billinghams work, a vision of a Britain haunted by itself, got into the cultural bloodstream.So in a sense, his directorial debut brings things full circle. This autobiographical period piece is often darkly funny, though describing it as comedy wouldnt feel quite right.

In Eighties London, a naive film student is seduced by a chalk-striped civil servant. JoannaHoggsformally dazzling period piece is superbly acted; its breath-catching intimacy belies its state-of-the-nation oomph.

Link:
The 100 best British films of all time - The Telegraph

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero