Stanley Kubrick

Unlike many of my pals at school, I wasn’t a fan of graphically violent movies. Gory horror movies were not my thing. Classic 80s slasher flicks were, obviously, right out. Nevertheless, I was obsessed with Stanley Kubrick. 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Dr. Strangelove led me, somewhat unwisely, to The Shining – a movie I love to this day. It was the adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s novel A Clockwork Orange that gave the 14-year-old me pause due to the controversial scenes of “ultra-violence” reported within.

Nevertheless, I borrowed a VHS from a friend, and flying below the radar of my parents, as a cossetted wee lad, I set out to watch the spree of juvenile delinquency of Alex and his gang of Droogs. So much of the film is iconic – from the oft-Halloween-worn costume of Alex, to the Nadsat slang that gave many a 90s band its name. All that said, I don’t remember being particularly shocked by what, already in 1995, seemed a little tame in comparison.

Revisiting the Korova

Rewatching in 2025, the depictions of rape and violence now seem almost quaint in comparison to grim torture-porn TV shows like, for instance, The Handmaid’s Tale. Though Malcolm McDowell’s simultaneously joyous and depraved, naive and calculating, depiction of Alex is a stand-out role across all of cinema.

I must give the superlative soundtrack a special mention. From a brutal and chilling use of Singin’ in the Rain, through a number of Deutsche Grammophon recordings, to the inimitable Wendy Carlos on her Moog synthesisers; it is spectacular from beginning to end.

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Where 2 years before, Derek Jarman illustrated his fictionalised retelling of the life of Caravaggio by representing the baroque artist’s paintings as scenes in his film, in the 1988 autobiographical masterpiece Distant Voices, Still Lives, Terence Davies portrays long, silent scenes reminiscent of family photographs, all gathered together in a vivid scrapbook of working-class family life. In the first of these photographic scenes, the camera pushes into a photograph of the absent patriarch on the wall. Depicted by Pete Postlethwaite in the film, the photograph is nevertheless a picture of Davies’ own father. It is a haunting touch in this remarkable expression of sadness.

Distant Voices, Still Lives is a diptych of 2 films, Distant Voices and Still Lives. Shot 2 years apart, with the same cast and crew, the movie is a captivating tableau of sadness, love, anger, goodness, and hate. In a film that resembles a daydream of snatches of memory summoned out of order, there is little narrative. This is the story of a working-class Liverpool family during and after the Second World War. Mum, portrayed by Freda Dowie is a gentle, good soul though she and her 3 children live in fear of the brutal, abusive violence of Postlethwaite’s father figure. Song plays an important role in the film with moving, stirring pre-rock-and-roll pub singalongs used as text and subtext to the lives of the children, seemingly destined to repeat the dynamics of their childhood. This film is, indeed, a masterpiece.

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I struggle to understand how this movie finds itself as high on the list. John Schlesinger‘s romantic-drama Darling was a critical and commercial success. Nominated for 5 Oscars, it won 3. This Julie Christie vehicle co-starred both Dirk Bogarde and Laurence Harvey and was shot on location in London, Paris, and Rome. My, it does look beautiful. It seems a British attempt to bring the cinema of Bergman or Antonioni to Blighty and I found it lacking. To be fair, the movie does not put a foot wrong, however, it left me cold and feeling there are so many better films of this period making use of similar settings and conceit.

Darling takes place in London during the swinging sixties. Christie is spectacular, if at times annoying, as the young model Diana Scott, who enjoys the affections of both Harvey and Bogarde’s characters. There is pathos, there are hi-jinks, there is love, fashion, beauty, and style, and yet there is something pretentious about it all that just wouldn’t allow me to connect. The scene pictured, however, is mesmerising.

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As a mature student who recently returned to school, a rewatch of Michael Caine and Julie Walters in Educating Rita hit me in a different way than it has in the past. While our situations are worlds apart, I shared Rita’s feelings of claustrophobia in an unfulfilling working life with school being the answer. I’ll say upfront that I love this movie, the screenplay of which was written by Willy Russell based on his own 1980 stage play, and directed by the excellent Lewis Gilbert, who had of course worked before with Michael Caine in Alfie. Both Caine and Walters won BAFTA and Golden Globe awards, while the movie itself received 3 Academy Award nominations.

Caine’s performance as the weary, jaded university professor who finds his passion for literature reinvigorated by his enthusiastic new student is a masterstroke and Walters plays the unpolished, plain-spoken, working-class Rita who grows in self-confidence, with such ease. The friendship they develop is charming and welcome. The film is both comical and moving in equal measure, and Dublin doubling for what one assumes is Liverpool is a great choice.

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A quintessentially British story is the next entry on the BFI 100, released in the mid-nineties while the concept of Cool Britannia was just beginning to simmer. Brassed Off, directed by Mark Herman, also stars Ewan McGregor, Tara Fitzgerald, and the late Pete Postlethwaite, all of whom were, at the time, riding the crest of that particular wave. I first watched the film, a tale of a Colliery brass band coming to terms with the impending closure of their coal mine, in a room of teenage brass musicians. My high school girlfriend and her sister both played brass instruments. Indeed, her sister later played in a colliery band.

Charming, Funny, and Poignant

While there is humour and romance, the film was inexplicably promoted in America as a romantic comedy between McGregor and Fitzgerald which is as reductive as I’ve ever found promotion to be. The plot itself is loosely based on the struggles experienced by a living, breathing brass band in Grimethorpe as their pit closed. In fact, it is the Grimethorpe Colliery Band who soundtrack the film. Coming near the close of an interminable Tory rule that brought the end to so much industry in the UK, Thatcherism looms unspoken over the movie as it shows the loss of hope and pride of this previously proud and determined mining community. Brassed Off is a charming, funny, and poignant movie and one I’m very happy to have revisited, if only for some more time with Pete Postlethwaite.

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It’s funny how things change. When I took my first shot at this BFI project, I watched Genevieve and remember enjoying it. On re-watching, the film left me irritated, and I wanted it to end. Released the day after my dad was born, the film is 70 years old this year and while it did make me smile, it bored me. The 3rd of 5 films directed by South-African, Henry Cornelius, the film tells the story of 2 couples getting involved in all sorts of hi-jinks competing in a vintage car rally. It is odd though, through the prism of the post-millennium craze for all things retro, to imagine there being the first mania for vintage cars in the early 1950s. It’s not a bad film, and there is plenty of farcical fun. I was not in the mood for it, I suspect.

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With 4 Academy Award nominations and Glenda Jackson‘s win for Best Actress, Women in Love is a worthy inclusion. Ken Russell‘s masterful direction makes this 1969 romantic drama, adapted from the D.H. Lawrence novel of the same name. The movie tells the story of sisters, friends, and love in a small English mining town between the wars. The film stars Oliver Reed, Jenny Linden, Alan Bates, and the aforementioned Jackson, and uses this abundance of talent to great effect.

Women in Love has beautiful, sweeping, cinematic photography by cinematographer Billy Williams, who later won an Oscar for his work on Ghandi. Ken Russell, already known for pushing boundaries, scandalized audiences with an explicit scene of Reed and Bates wrestling naked together, underlining the undertones of homoeroticism throughout. The film cemented his reputation as a pioneer. Women in Love is a captivating, emotionally complicated film worth watching for Glenda Jackson’s performance alone.

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This film begins with one of the most recognisable chords in music history then introduces 4 of the most identifiable faces in popular music, The Beatles‘: A Hard Day’s Night (88). Full disclosure, I’ve seen this film so many times I’ve lost count and it has been one of my favourite movies since I was a primary school child.

It’s certainly the best of the films The Beatles made and the supporting cast of Wilfrid Brambell, Norman Rossington, Victor Spinetti, and others makes this movie stand out. It is a delight. Dick Lester weaves the script and music together with perfection and there are so many stand out moments it’s hard to choose one, though for today I’m going to mention the Beatles meeting the city gent played by Richard Vernon, later to become Slartibartfast in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy TV series. on the train. We’ve all had that experience, haven’t we?

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The second world war theme continues into film number 89 with Humphrey Jennings pseudo-documentary, Fires Were Started. This is a fiction, however, the film tells the story of a wartime sub-fire station and its officers. It does so, not with actors, but instead using the firemen themselves and this lends the film a veracity and immediacy it may not have achieved otherwise. Coming hard on the heels of a light wartime comedy, the frightening realism of Jennings film is particularly stark; not only dropping you at first into the firehouse as we are introduced to a new recruit, but also into an out-of-control fire on the wharf as the film reaches its climax. Watching the film for a second time, it kept my attention. I was reminded how many of the scenes are shot in a style reminiscent of wartime documentary photography.

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As charming a film as John Boorman’s Hope and Glory (90) is, I must admit I couldn’t connect with it. It’s a light comedy set in London during the blitz of the second world war and as endearing as it is, for reasons I can’t articulate well, it didn’t move me. Strange given the cast – David Hayman making his second appearance in a row on this list after appearing in number 91, My Name is Joe – but the acting felt wooden and didn’t raise more than a smile throughout. That said, the film is not without charm. Sebastian Rice-Edwards is engaging as Billy, the young boy at the centre of the film, and Ian Bannen is excellent – if a little ridiculous – as Grandfather George. It’s a pleasant enough tale of stoicism and adolescence during wartime but I expected more from the critical acclaim the film has received.

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