Number 10
Trainspotting (1996)Dir Danny Boyle (Ewan McGregor, Robert Carlyle, Jonny Lee Miller)
Choose life, etc
At the planning stage of this survey, not a single member of the Time Out Film team would’ve expected Danny Boyle’s eye-wateringly hip, epoch-defining second feature to make much of a dent, let alone break in to the top ten. Yet here we are, and it seems that ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ (which didn’t place) was not enough to make us overlook the ambition, charisma and sheer, blood, sweat and shit-soaked brio of this 1996 Irvine Welsh adaptation which gave Ewan McGregor a role that – if we’re being honest – he has never bettered.
The film – which now bizarrely makes the mid-1990s Britpop fad appear to have been the cultural highlight of modern times – told of happy-go-lucky junkie Mark Renton (McGregor) and the band of mischievous associates he would occasionally call friends, including Spud (Ewen Bremner), Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller), Tommy (Kevin McKidd) and Begbie (Robert Carlyle). It’s still a lively watch, especially in the way its meandering, episodic first half emphasises the highs of pub fights, drugs scores, casual sex and a sub-aqua, Eno-scored mission down the world’s most disgusting lavatory bowl, only for the second half to condemn the drug culture that so many claimed it was glamourising.
Director Danny Boyle had already shown with his previous film, ‘Shallow Grave’ (1994), that he could reel off a juicy, character-driven yarn which had depth and ambiguity, but what makes ‘Trainspotting’ stand above the crowd is the industrious way in which he uses editing and camera movement to convey time, activity, violence, love, ecstasy and pain. Plus, is this the greatest opening five minutes ever? DJ
Number 64
Topsy-Turvy (1999)Dir Mike Leigh (Jim Broadbent, Allan Corduner, Timothy Spall)
He remains an Englishman
Notwithstanding ‘Naked’ and the second half of ‘Another Year’, Mike Leigh’s in some ways most atypical film – it’s a period drama, with song and dance, and rather longer than usual – is also his finest. About Gilbert and Sullivan responding to withering criticism of ‘Princess Ida’ by making a comeback with ‘The Mikado’, it’s the kind of film that perhaps shouldn’t work but does – magnificently, thanks to a clutch of great performances and unshowy but precise direction, which ensures the movie succeeds on three levels: as an illuminating, partly self-reflexive meditation on the creative process; as an unusually vivid insight into just how different the world was as recently as the 1880s (all that wariness of the newfangled telephone!); and as witty, touching, utterly engrossing entertainment. GA
full list here
link thanks to Marrymeowen
Trainspotting (1996)Dir Danny Boyle (Ewan McGregor, Robert Carlyle, Jonny Lee Miller)
Choose life, etc
At the planning stage of this survey, not a single member of the Time Out Film team would’ve expected Danny Boyle’s eye-wateringly hip, epoch-defining second feature to make much of a dent, let alone break in to the top ten. Yet here we are, and it seems that ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ (which didn’t place) was not enough to make us overlook the ambition, charisma and sheer, blood, sweat and shit-soaked brio of this 1996 Irvine Welsh adaptation which gave Ewan McGregor a role that – if we’re being honest – he has never bettered.
The film – which now bizarrely makes the mid-1990s Britpop fad appear to have been the cultural highlight of modern times – told of happy-go-lucky junkie Mark Renton (McGregor) and the band of mischievous associates he would occasionally call friends, including Spud (Ewen Bremner), Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller), Tommy (Kevin McKidd) and Begbie (Robert Carlyle). It’s still a lively watch, especially in the way its meandering, episodic first half emphasises the highs of pub fights, drugs scores, casual sex and a sub-aqua, Eno-scored mission down the world’s most disgusting lavatory bowl, only for the second half to condemn the drug culture that so many claimed it was glamourising.
Director Danny Boyle had already shown with his previous film, ‘Shallow Grave’ (1994), that he could reel off a juicy, character-driven yarn which had depth and ambiguity, but what makes ‘Trainspotting’ stand above the crowd is the industrious way in which he uses editing and camera movement to convey time, activity, violence, love, ecstasy and pain. Plus, is this the greatest opening five minutes ever? DJ
Number 64
Topsy-Turvy (1999)Dir Mike Leigh (Jim Broadbent, Allan Corduner, Timothy Spall)
He remains an Englishman
Notwithstanding ‘Naked’ and the second half of ‘Another Year’, Mike Leigh’s in some ways most atypical film – it’s a period drama, with song and dance, and rather longer than usual – is also his finest. About Gilbert and Sullivan responding to withering criticism of ‘Princess Ida’ by making a comeback with ‘The Mikado’, it’s the kind of film that perhaps shouldn’t work but does – magnificently, thanks to a clutch of great performances and unshowy but precise direction, which ensures the movie succeeds on three levels: as an illuminating, partly self-reflexive meditation on the creative process; as an unusually vivid insight into just how different the world was as recently as the 1880s (all that wariness of the newfangled telephone!); and as witty, touching, utterly engrossing entertainment. GA
full list here
link thanks to Marrymeowen
