Mike Leigh directs Tim Roth, Phil Daniels and Gary Oldman in this British kitchen sink drama about two unemployed brothers living an abrasive, unfulfilling life in Thatcher’s Britain.

One of Leigh’s better ones in that the class caricatures seem a little more complex and far less prescribed. There’s nothing snide about Meantime. These days it is Oldman’s smaller role as a skinhead that gets the movie re-released but in all honesty the central turns from Daniels and especially Roth still have a thumping power. How do I feel about it all? A life on benefits conditions the dispossessed to fear work and cancels any chance of a future… I don’t know. I agree up to a point but I think that ultimate message, though sincere, plays into the Tories hands a bit too readily. Yet it is absorbing to watch a film that asks a lot of uncomfortable, and still valid, questions about this country without having all the answers. And Tim Roth’s useless herbert is heartbreakingly funny, innit.

8

Perfect Double Bill: Naked (1993)

My wife and I do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/