Thatcher-era Britain is poignantly illuminated by Mike Leigh in this funny-sad chronicle of two brothers on the dole – UK unemployment – and living in public housing. Colin (Tim Roth) is shy, and Mark (Phil Daniels) is angry, and both are spinning their wheels. An upwardly mobile aunt & uncle and a skinhead played by a young Gary Oldman offer them different lifestyles by which to define themselves. In a Vanity Fair interview last year, Leigh described his process of working with actors to create their characters from an amalgam of three people that they know. That commitment to real life is what makes him, as the Criterion Channel calls him, “the great prickly humanist of British cinema.” – Lina Fisher
