24.Guy Ritchie (1968 - )
Remember how we said that Edgar Wright was one half of Britain's answer to Quentin Tarantino? Well, meet the second half. Guy Ritchie made a couple of films back to back on the cusp of the late nineties and early 00s that are the kind of films he'll be able to ride on the coat tails of for his entire career. Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch energized the British gangster genre with the kind of stylistic pizzazz you don't see very often; with their brilliant use of music, endlessly quotable dialogue and some of the most memorably colorful characters of modern British cinema, the two films are found in myriads of collections and have infinite re-watch value. We can't blame him for marrying Madonna and doing the best he could to make her relevant in the awful Swept Away but things have been different nowadays. Much like his countryman Brannagh, Ritchie has been letting the current of the Hollywood mainstream whisk him away into success with the Robert Downey Jr. action hero version of Sherlock Holmes. How appropriately British of him.
Must See: Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)
23. Humphrey Jennings (1907 - 1950)
Considered to be one of Britain's greatest documentary filmmakers (read
Sight and Sound if you don't believe us), Humphrey Jennings is someone who can get easily forgotten by the general public but whose influence will forever hover over the British film industry. Championed for his use of war-time imagery to present a distinctively English outlook on the culture and politics that punctuated the environment during his peak years, Jennings made poetic documentaries like Listen to Britain and Fires Were Started which influenced a whole generation of filmmakers. One of which, Lindsay Anderson,
proclaimed Jennings to be "the only real poet that British cinema has yet produced". Likened to George Orwell for his inclusive perspective of England, its middle and working classes and the need of unity between art and industry, Jennings unfortunately passed on too early in 1950 after falling from a cliff in Greece while location scouting for his next film.
Must See: Fires Were Started (1943)
22. Steve McQueen (1969 - )
Perhaps some of you will be protesting for grouping Steve McQueen into this exclusive list of exalted and established filmmakers, but even though the London-born McQueen has directed only two feature films as of yet (with third Twelve Years A Slave coming up), they are both such feisty powerful punches of discourse on human nature that he has become a very hard man to ignore. 2008's Hunger is a powerful portrait of the Irish Hunger Strike as exemplified by prisoner, activist and eventual martyr Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender in the beginning stages of his stratospheric rise to stardom) and 2011's Shame (again with Fassbender, in even better form) is a unflinching look at the taboo subject of sex addiction. For his ultra artistic approach to filmmaking, his compelling subject matters that don't shy away from peeling the layers of hidden truths and as an indication that he will continue to rise as one of Britain's most exciting new voices, Mr. McQueen is more than welcome here.
Must See: Shame (2011)