Directed by John Mackenzie • 1980 • United Kingdom

Bob Hoskins delivers a powerhouse performance in his breakthrough film role as a London crime boss fast losing control of his gangland empire. Cockney mobster Harold Shand (Hoskins) is on the cusp of completing a massive deal with the American M...

Directed by Terry Gilliam • 1981 • United Kingdom
Starring John Cleese, Sean Connery, Shelley Duvall

In this fantastic voyage through time and space from Terry Gilliam, a boy named Kevin (Craig Warnock) escapes his gadget-obsessed parents to join a band of time-traveling dwarfs. Armed with a map...

Directed by Bruce Robinson • 1986 • United Kingdom
Starring Paul McGann, Richard E. Grant, Richard Griffiths

London. The 1960s. Two unemployed actors—acerbic, elegantly wasted Withnail (Richard E. Grant) and the anxiety-ridden “I” (Paul McGann)—drown their frustrations in booze, pills, and light...

Directed by Nicolas Roeg • 1988 • United Kingdom
Starring Theresa Russell, Gary Oldman, Christopher Lloyd

The ever-provocative Nicolas Roeg brings his flair for the strange, the kinky, and the surreal to this outré Oedipal psychodrama. Unhappily married to a neglectful husband (Christopher Lloy...

Directed by Neil Jordan • 1986 • United Kingdom
Starring Bob Hoskins, Cathy Tyson, Michael Caine

The brilliant breakthrough film by writer-director Neil Jordan journeys into the dark heart of the London underworld to weave a gripping, noir-infused love story. Bob Hoskins received a multitude of ...

Directed by Bruce Robinson • 1988 • United Kingdom, United States
Starring Richard E. Grant, Rachel Ward, Richard Wilson

Richard E. Grant is the endlessly suave Dennis Bagley, a high-strung advertising executive whose shoulder sprouts an evil, talking boil. The boil speaks only to Bagley, is sil...

Directed by Jonathan Wacks • 1989 • United Kingdom, United States
Starring A Martinez, Gary Farmer, Joanelle Romero

The road-movie genre gets a lyrical twist shot through with Native American spirituality in this bittersweet portrait of two Cheyenne men on a journey through the American West and...

Directed by Jack Clayton • 1987 • United Kingdom
Starring Maggie Smith, Bob Hoskins, Wendy Hiller

Maggie Smith delivers a tremendously moving performance as a woman grappling with loneliness, love, and faith in this sensitive character study adapted from the novel by Brian Moore. Middle-aged spi...

Directed by Malcolm Mowbray • 1984 • United Kingdom
Starring Maggie Smith, Michael Palin, Bill Paterson

Harkening back to the classic Ealing comedies, this shrewd social satire (scripted by Alan Bennett) features marvelous performances from Maggie Smith and Michael Palin as Joyce and Gilbert Chi...

Directed by Bob Hoskins • 1988 • United Kingdom
Starring Dexter Fletcher, Bob Hoskins, Zoë Nathenson

Acclaimed actor Bob Hoskins made a striking directorial debut with this curiously captivating fable that plays freely with gender, fantasy, and magic. Stationed somewhere in Eastern Europe, a you...

Directed by Philip Goodhew • 1996 • United Kingdom
Starring Rupert Graves, Julie Walters, Laura Sadler

A most unusual love triangle takes shape in this diabolically dark comedy based on a shocking true crime. In a small town in 1950s England, sailor Harold Guppy (Rupert Graves) takes a room in t...

Directed by Dick Clement • 1983 • United Kingdom
Starring Alan Shearman, Ronald E. House, Diz White

This goofily good-natured slapstick parody of the popular gentleman-adventurer series Bulldog Drummond (played on film, perhaps most famously, by Ronald Colman in the 1930s) brings us the decidedl...

Directed by Tony Bill • 1987 • United States
Starring Jodie Foster, John Turturro, Tim Robbins

Youthful idealism collides with matter-of-fact violence in a working-class Bronx neighborhood in the early 1960s in this captivatingly offbeat urban mosaic featuring an extraordinary ensemble cast. A w...

Directed by Alan Metter • 1990 • United Kingdom
Starring Randy Quaid, Frank Whaley, Christine Harnos

A Zen taxi driver, a dead dog, and one memorably surreal night . . . This singularly eccentric black comedy casts Randy Quaid as the enigmatic, koan-spouting cabbie whose fare for the night (Fran...

Directed by Mai Zetterling • 1982 • United Kingdom
Starring Chrissie Cotterill, Amanda York, Elizabeth Edmonds

Something of a companion to Alan Clarke’s youth-in-revolt bombshell SCUM (both were written by playwright Roy Minton), SCRUBBERS is a viscerally gritty immersion into the harrowing worl...

Directed by Michael Blakemore • 1983 • United Kingdom
Starring John Cleese, Denis Quilley, Patrick Pearson

This gloriously gay adaptation of the play by Peter Nichols centers on the exploits of SADUSEA (it’s pronounced “sad you see”)—the Song and Dance Unit, Southeast Asia, a theatrical troupe s...

Directed by Dick Clement • 1985 • United Kingdom
Starring Michael Caine, Valerie Perrine, Bill Persky

A typically sharp comic performance from Michael Caine is at the center of this nutty satire of Britain’s colonial exploits (partially inspired by the then-recent invasion of the Falkland Island...

Directed by David Leland • 1989 • United States
Starring Jeff Daniels, Melanie Mayron, Michael Tucker

“Why don’t Italians like barbecues?” When his best friend drops dead in the middle of telling this groaner, it brings about an existential fear of death for successful airline executive and fami...

Directed by Bill Jones, Kim Leggatt, and Ben Timlett • 2019 • United Kingdom
Starring Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam, George Harrison

This heartfelt tribute to the little studio that could charts the unlikely rise of HandMade Films—the independent producer/distributor that revitalized the 1980s Br...