The Best British Movies To Watch
Want to catch up on some peak British cinema? This list will help guide you.
Someone asked me the other day for some British film recommendations, and I ended up basically dumping a full watchlist on them, so I figured I’d turn it into a proper post, so here are some of my favorite British films.
The Wicker Man (1973)
A long time favorite since I watched it many many years ago, where a police officer arrives on a remote Scottish island to investigate a missing girl, and in usual folk horror style, everyone is friendly in a way that feels slightly rehearsed, like they’ve all agreed on the same smile.
Then it slowly gets stranger.
Folk songs, strange rituals, and this constant feeling that something is slightly off but no one is willing to say it out loud.
And then, of course, the ending - I won’t spoil it here, but it’s one of my favorite endings of all time.
Dead Man’s Shoes (2004)
This is a revenge story set in the Midlands, with a small, and personal style that makes it hard to shake after you have watched it.
You have a man returning home to deal with a group of people who hurt his brother, which is a very basic setup, but it’s it’s all about the grief, anger, and the kind of damage that just doesn’t go away cleanly - you’ll probably sit there for a bit after watching it, wondering why you feel worse than when you started.
Snatch (2000)
I like Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, but I like Snatch even more - diamond heists, underground boxing, gangsters, and about a thousand overlapping storylines that all collide together nicely.
The pacing is fast, the dialogue is even faster, and half the time you’re just trying to keep up with who is double-crossing who, and Brad Pitt is weirdly brilliant in it, doing an accent that I’m still not fully convinced is real.
Such brilliant dry humor throughout, too.
Trainspotting (1996)
This one is funny, bleak, energetic, and kind of exhausting, featuring heroin addicts in Edinburgh trying to get by, or not trying very hard to get by at all.
It swings between absurd humour and really uncomfortable reality without much warning, and there are scenes that make you laugh, and then immediately feel bad for laughing.
The soundtrack is of course, also iconic.
Mike Leigh Films (Naked, Secrets & Lies, Happy-Go-Lucky)
Mike Leigh basically specialises in messy human life without easy answers, just people being complicated and often a bit difficult.
Naked is probably the most intense of the three, following a man drifting through London, angry at everything, while Secrets & Lies is quieter but still emotionally heavy, focusing on family, identity, and long-buried truths coming out in uncomfortable ways, and then Happy-Go-Lucky flips things completely, following a woman who is almost aggressively optimistic, which sounds annoying on paper, but it’s really not.
Together, they show how wide human behaviour can actually be.
Life of Brian & Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1979 & 1975)
These two have to be included together.
Life of Brian is full of satire, confusion, and a lot of people taking things far too seriously, while Holy Grail is medieval nonsense in the best way possible - knights pretending to ride horses while clapping coconuts together, and killer rabbits.
Both films are endlessly quotable and still hold up because they don’t try to be realistic for even a second.
Withnail & I (1987)
Darkly funny, deeply miserable, and weirdly poetic, where most of the film is just drinking, arguing, and failing at life in increasingly creative ways - Withnail & I is just very very British.
The Cornetto Trilogy (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, The World’s End)
Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost basically made three films that take genre stories and twist them into something very British and very funny, which I have written about before.
Sexy Beast (2000)
Who can forget Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast? One of the most unsettling characters in British crime film history- charming in one moment, terrifying the next - and you never really feel like you know what he’s going to do.
It’s also an incredibly stylish movie to watch.
The Italian Job (1969)
Mini Coopers - a gold heist - swinging London energy - that’s basically the film, and it’s just a light, fun film and very of its time, but it also has this charm that makes it easy to watch even now.
The Descent (2005)
This is claustrophobic horror done properly, where a group of women go cave diving and, well, things go wrong, very wrong, but even before anything shows up, the cave itself is enough to make you uncomfortable, and when the actual horror elements kick in, which I won’t spoil, it doesn’t make the situation any more relaxing.
Dog Soldiers (2002)
Soldiers in the Scottish Highlands, featuring werewolves, and a lot of shouting, and probably the movie on this list with the lowest budget (I think) - it doesn’t pretend to be anything other than a fun, violent genre film though, and it works very very well.
There’s a surprising amount of humour in it too, and it’s very much a cult favourite, and for good reason.
28 Days Later (2002)
Everytime I have watched 28 Days Later, the empty streets are still probably the most memorable and haunting part, and I always feel the isolation even after all these years.
Slightly unhinged,, but in the best way.
Shallow Grave (1994)
Danny Boyle’s early breakout, and you can already see his style forming here.
Three flatmates find a dead body and a suitcase full of money, and they decide to keep the money, which goes wrong, as you might expect.
It’s tight, paranoid, and gradually spirals into something much darker than it starts as, with a simplicity to it that makes the tension work really well.