Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Colin (Tim Roth) is unemployed and a little slow. His father Frank is also unemployed and so is almost everyone else he knows. Only his mother Mavis works in the family. His brother Mark (Phil Daniels) and skin head friend Coxy (Gary Oldman) drink their days away. They live aimless, hopeless lives in the jobless underclass of London. Mavis' sister Barbara and her husband John (Alfred Molina) are better off. Barbara gives Colin a job at her house which only turns the family relationships toxic.This is early Mike Leigh and it is straight into his favorite subject, the English underclass. It's a full length TV movie filled with future stars. It is compelling and not only due to their performances. There is a real sense of these characters and their world. Like most Mike Leigh movies, this is very much a character study. These actors are buzzing with power and soul.

An odd film, primarily looking at how the dole affects the underclass in Britain. Tim Roth stars as Colin, a slow and possibly intellectually disabled man living with his parents and brother in a housing project. He and his sarcastic manipulative brother still behave like teenagers, living with their parents, harassing each other.According to the critic Michael Coveney, "The sapping, debilitating and demeaning state of unemployment, the futile sense of waste, has not been more poignantly, or poetically, expressed in any other film of the period." Now, I don't know about all that. I actually found the movie to be rather bland and not overly interesting. What makes it even worth viewing at all is the debut performance of Gary Oldman, as well as an early appearance by Tim Roth doing his "slow person" routine (a strange acting tic he does).

Doctor Octopus, Commissioner Gordon and The Abomination all join forces in this 80's gem. Displays real people in a real environment trying to get on with their daily struggles of unemployment. Leigh certainly has an eye for realism, but not an ear for music. It's probably the fact this was 24 years ago now, but the music is jarring and off-putting. Roth and Phil Daniels are brilliant as brothers, displaying the right amount of bitter hatred and genuine love and concern. No matter what, Leigh captures families by approaching each individual as exactly that, but always keeping an eye on how the family forms the roots and influences these characters. You never question their relationships because of Leigh's detail.

What happens here happens in the space between events that usually constitute a plot, in the meantime. There are only temporary allegiances between characters, if at all, before one will turn on the other, destroying any impulse that reaches upwards, beyond the meantime. A film like this works or doesn't work depending on the acting. The characters are not merely collections of traits, they do not represent abstract ideas. Their complexity and opacity alone make or break the film, whether or not it is grounded in reality. No answers, only questions. No ideas, only experiences.I came to this after hearing solid praise for Mike Leigh's work.