10 Amazing Movies Nobody Knows About
1. Tyrannosaur
If you can get over its portentous title - which likely didn't help it find an audience, like, at all - Paddy Considine's Tyrannosaur is one of the most evocative British directorial debuts of the century so far.
This bleak but brilliant drama follows a self-destructive widower, Joseph (Peter Mullan), who crosses paths with Hannah (Olivia Colman), a kindly charity shop worker who is herself struggling to escape an abusive marriage.
Tyrannosaur isn't exactly feel-good filmmaking, then - and, fair warning, not one but two dogs die in it - but it is an uncommonly transfixing study of two deeply wounded people from wildly different walks of life forging an unexpected bond.
As a picture of uncontrolled rage, Mullan gives an awards-worthy performance as Joseph, while Colman typically delivers as a picture of fraught compassion, and Eddie Marsan is also terrifying as Hannah's abusive husband James.
It's easy to see why Tyrannosaur flew under the radar per its tricky subject matter, but in his debut Considine proved himself a tremendously skilled dramatist willing to go down some deeply unpleasant rabbit-holes.