British Films Selected by the London Critics' Circle as Best Film or Best British Film
Dec 18 '05 (Updated Dec 19 '05)
The Bottom Line The London Critics' Circle (LCC) is the oldest such organization in the English speaking world and began giving film awards in 1980.
The London Critics' Circle (LCC) originated in 1913 as an association for British critics, working in the fields of drama, music, film, and dance. It is the only association of its kind in the U.K., in contrast to the U.S., where one finds such organizations in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, and Nationally. The film section of the LCC has over eighty members. Only persons employed as film critics for British publications for at least one year (and earning the bulk of their income from writing about film) are eligible for membership in the film section. The LCC initiated film awards in 1980. From 1980 through 1990, the organization recognized two films, one as Best Film and one as Best Foreign Film. During that time, the Best Film award always went to an English language film and the Best Foreign Film award to a non-English language film. During those eleven years, the London Film Critics' Circle gave their Best Film award to a British Film on four occasions, 1981, 1986, 1987, and 1989. Beginning in 1991, the LCC recognized three films each year: Best Film (usually American), Best British Film, and Best Foreign Film. This list includes the fourteen British films selected by the LCC in either the Best Film or the Best British Film categories.
I have personally reviewed ten of the fourteen films. One of the films is in the Epinions database but has no reviews. I have included links to reviews by other top Epinions writers for three of the films. Among the directors represented here, Mike Leigh (with four awards) and James Ivory (with three) have together won seven of the eighteen given. No other director has won more than one.
You may also enjoy the following lists related to film awards:
London Critics' Circle Awards for Best Foreign Film
All One-hundred and Six BAFTA Award-Winning Films
The British Film Institute's Top-100 British Films All-Time
National Society of Film Critics' Awards for Non-English Language Films
New York Film Critics' Circle Awards for Foreign Films (1935-2004)
Los Angeles Film Critics' Award Winners in the Best Foreign Film Category
All Seventy-Seven Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or Winners
All Seventy Venice Film Festival Best Film Winners
All Fifty-Six Best Foreign Film Oscar Winners
Celebrating the Oscars: All Seventy-Seven Best Picture Oscar Winners (with links to full reviews)
Celebrating the Oscar Divas: All Seventy-Seven Best Actress Oscar Winners (with links to full reviews)
*********************************************************************************************
All Eighteen British Films Honored by the London Film Critics' Circle as Either Best Film (1980-1990) or Best British Film (1991-2004):
*********************************************************************************************
1981 Best Film Chariots of Fire Director Hugh Hudson My Rating: * * * * *
Ben Cross and Ian Charleson star as two men obsessed with achieving glory through sports (the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris) for quite different reasons. Cross plays Harold Abrahams, a Jewish student at Cambridge University, who feels like a perpetual outsider and is determined to prove his worth. Charleson plays Eric Liddell, a swift Scotsman, whose passion for running derives from his devout Christian beliefs.
1986 Best Film A Room with a View Director James Ivory My Rating: * * * *
Helena Bonham Carter takes the role of Lucy Honeychurch in this Merchant-Ivory comedy of manners that finds the young aristocratic woman vacationing in Italy under the watchful eye of her spinster chaperone, Charlotte Bartlett (Maggie Smith). Lucy meets the irrepressible George Emerson (Julian Sands) and later has to choose between marriage for love and a socially appropriate alliance with the foppish Cecil Vyse (Daniel Day-Lewis).
1987 Best Film Hope and Glory Director John Boorman My Rating: * * * * *
Boorman's semi-autobiographical examination of life during the London Blitz from the vantage point of a nine-year-old boy is filled with poignant nostalgic reflections more than the horror of the times. Sebastian Rice-Edwards stars as the boy, Bill Rohan, whose life revolves most around the woman in his family, including the mother Grace (Sarah Miles), teen sister Dawn (Sammi Davis), and little sister Sue (Geraldine Muir).
1989 Best Film Distant Voices, Still Lives (This film is in the Epinions database at Listing but there are currently no reviews for it.) Director Terence Davies Rating: Undetermined
Davies autobiographical and bittersweet reminiscences about his upbringing in postwar Liverpool combine nostalgia and horror. In a household dominated by an emotionally unpredictable father (Pete Postlethwaite), children are badly scarred. Two family weddings serve as bookends for this film, as the grown children recall, through a series of flashbacks, the brutal influence of their father.
******************************************************************************
1991 Best British Film Life Is Sweet (see thevoid99's Review.) Director Mike Leigh thevoid99's Rating: * * * *
The first of Mike Leigh's four Best British Film awards from the LCC was for this charming though sometimes unsettling film about lovable eccentrics living in London. Alison Steadman plays the irrepressibly optimistic Wendy, married to a laid-back tinkerer, Andy, played by Jim Broadbent. Rounding out the household are a pair of far from identical twin daughters, consisting of the quiet and focused Natalie (Claire Skinner) and the sullen, bulimic Nicola (Jane Horrocks). Small events provide the engine in this observational character study.
1992 Best British Film Howards End Director James Ivory My Rating: * * * * *
Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson are the stars in this fine Merchant-Ivory production that earned Thompson an Oscar as Best Actress. When Ruth Wilcox (Vanessa Redgrave) passes away, she leaves her family home to a woman who brightened her last days, Margaret Schlegel (Emma Thompson), much to the chagrin of her children and husband, who discard the note declaring Ruth's intentions and do not honor it. Later, however, Ruth's widower, Henry (Anthony Hopkins), discovers himself falling in love with Margaret.
1993 Best British Film The Remains of the Day Director James Ivory My Rating: * * * * *
Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson reprised their co-starring arrangement in this film, but it is Hopkins who this time has the plum role. Hopkins plays a man dedicated to the service, as the butler of Lord Darlington (James Fox). It is the thirties, and Darlington is playing an active role in rapprochement between Britain and Germany (what would later be viewed as Nazi appeasement). Thompson plays the housekeeper, Miss Kenton, who carries a torch for the butler, a man out of contact with his emotions.
1994 Best British Film Four Weddings and a Funeral Director Mike Newell My Rating: * * * *
Hugh Grant is Charles, a bachelor whose timing is perpetually off. He falls in love with an American girl, Carrie (Andie MacDowell), but when he's available, she isn't, and vice versa. Told almost entirely through the observance of the eponymous five touchstone events, the story culminates in a final desperate decision when Charles learns on his wedding day that Carrie is now unattached.
1995 Best British Film The Madness of King George Director Nicholas Hytner My Rating: * * * *
Nigel Hawthorne provided a performance for the ages in this delightful period comedy about the British monarch who suffered intermittent insanity as a result of a blood disorder called porphyria. Ian Holm plays the physician whose radical treatment methods subject King George to indignities that contrast sharply with the privileges of being a reigning sovereign.
1996 Best British Film Secrets and Lies Director MikeLeigh My Rating: * * * * *
Mike Leigh is a master at getting great performances out of an ensemble cast. In my opinion, this is the best Leigh film to date. Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), a young black woman living in London, decides to seek out her birth mother after the death of her adoptive mother. She's shocked to learn that her birth mother was a white woman, Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn), but only half as shocked as Cynthia and her other illegitimate daughter, Roxanne (Claire Rushbrook). Blethyn won a Best Actress award from the Cannes Film Festival for her work in this film.
1997 Best British Film The Full Monty Director Peter Cattaneo My Rating: * * * *
This bittersweet comedy uses the plot device of six middle-aged and somewhat pathetic unemployed men desperate enough for work to stage a male strip act at the local pub. Robert Carlyle, Tom Wilkinson, and Mark Addy star in this wacky story. The "full-monty" refers to full frontal nudity.
1998 Best British Film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (see artbyjude's Review.) Director Guy Ritchie artbyjude's Rating: * * * *
This crime picture finds four decent chaps up to their eyeballs in a crime land drama. Cardsharp Eddie (Nick Moran) hopes to turn his game stake, partly borrowed from pals Tom (Jason Flemyng), Bacon (Jason Statham), and Soap (Dexter Fletcher), into a windfall, but the game is rigged and Eddie walks away broke and in debt to the local hoodlum, Hatchet Harry (P.H. Moriarty). Harry's mod will take over Eddie's dad's pub if Eddie doesn't pay up.
1999 Best British Film East Is East (see ChrisJarmick's Review.) Director Damien O'Donnell ChrisJarmick's Rating: * * * *
This film festival hit finds Om Puri in the role of George Khan, a Pakistani immigrant living in Salford in Manchester, in 1971, while war is raging back in his native country. George is fighting a losing battle trying to instill a sense of Pakistani traditions in his offspring, who have a British mother and are inculcated with English culture. George is a bit of a hypocrite, however, having abandoned his first wife, a Pakistani, in the old country. Behind George's back, his sons flirt with white girls and all of the kids sample various aspects of Western culture. The conflict comes to a head when one of the children, Maneer (Emil Marwa), refuses an arranged marriage.
2000 Best British Film Billy Elliot Director Stephen Daldry My Rating: * * * * *
Billy Elliot (Jamie Bell) is an adolescent who would prefer to kick up his heels at ballet than throw his fists in the boxing gym, despite his father and grandfather having been amateur boxers. That doesn't sit well with Billy's father (Gary Lewis) and brother (Jamie Draven), but at least he has the feisty Mrs. Wilkinson (Julie Walters) on his side and a gay friend (Stuart Wells) who understands the pressure of gender stereotypes.
2001 Best British Film Gosford Park Director Robert Altman My Rating: * * * *
This is an upstairs-downstairs kind of film set in the thirties in a country estate where Sir William (Michael Gambon) and Lady Sylvia McCordle (Kristin Scott Thomas) have invited guests including Sylvia's aunt, Lady Constance Trentham (Maggie Smith) and Sylvia's two married sisters. Also there for the weekend is William's second cousin, Ivor Novella (Jeremy Northam), who is a Hollywood actor, and his producer, Morris Weissman, who have come to study English country customs in preparation for a new film. The film turns into a classic murder mystery when one of the characters is murder halfway through. The highlight of the film is the ensemble performance from an all-star cast.
2002 Best British Film All or Nothing Director Mike Leigh My Rating: * * *
This film looks at the lives of three working class families who live in a housing project in South London. At the center of the story are the Bassetts, including Phil (Timothy Spall), a depressed cab driver with a hangdog face, his common-law wife, Penny (Lesley Manville), and their two obese progeny, Rory (James Corden) and Rachel (Alison Garland). Neither the Bassetts nor their neighbors derive much joy from life, but a family crisis forces the Bassetts to rediscover what it is that makes it all worthwhile.
2003 Best British Film The Magdalene Sisters Director Peter Mullan My Rating: * * * *
This film's bleak content is based on the true stories of three girls committed to one of Ireland's Magdalene Sanctuaries during the 1960's, where they were expected to clean clothes 364 days a year without compensation, as "penitence" for such sins as having a child out of wedlock, being a temptress, or flirting. The film begins by recounting the circumstances by which each of the three main characters ended up in the facility and then examines the brutal conditions to which they were subjected.
2004 Best British Film Vera Drake Director Mike Leigh My Rating: * * * *
This film takes a rather emotional look at the effect of anti-abortion laws in England in the 1950's by examining the lives of a kindly woman, Vera Drake (Imelda Staunton), who helps young girls who find themselves in a family way, and the young women requiring her services. Also central to the film's focus is the response of Vera's shocked family when she is suddenly arrested. Staunton won a Best Actress award from the Venice Film Festival for her marvelous performance.
******************************************************************************
2005 Attenborough Award for Best British Film – Nominees:
Pride and Prejudice
Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
The Constant Gardener
The Descent
Mrs. Henderson Presents
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
metalluk
|
 - Top 100 |
|
Location: Saunderstown, RI, USA
Reviews written: 930
Trusted by: 230 members
About Me:
Five ... Four ... Three ... Two ... One ...
Blastoff!
|
|
|
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.