9. This Is England
Year of Release: 2007Director: Shane Meadows Shane Meadows is renowned for depicting Britain in some of its lowest forms. This movie is no different save for the fact it centres on Shaun, a 12-year-old boy from the Midlands who joins a group of Skinheads during a time where no one quite knew what group they belonged too. How fitting that the film takes place during a time of great social and political transition. In a way, Shaun just wants to be accepted in this cruel world and he finds that in the first group he comes across, no matter what society may think of their spiky hair, dark clothes and obscene tattoos. He's recently loss his father and is having to deal with more than one transition; because of that, this film is a compelling tale of self-discovery. He falls in with the wrong and right crowd and it culminates into perhaps one of the most powerful scenes of that year. The importance of the movie is that it has to create a viable world for Shaun to live in, to make the decisions that he does. Some of those decisions, like standing in line behind the violent thug Combo (Stephen Grahame) are only clear once Meadows has meticulously depicted his taut and rugged world. Shaun has a lot to learn and if you're expecting him to make the right choices then you'd be dead wrong. It's a wake-up call, it's smart, it's terrifying, it's funny and it's one of the best movies to come out of the UK in the last ten years.