8) Pride (Now playing)
While American cinema is full of stories of uplift, no country knows how to make an earnest, inspiring crowd-pleaser quite like Great Britain. Films like Billy Elliot, Made in Dagenham and Kinky Boots – all of which were turned into hit stage musicals – are tales that use the struggles from working-class communities to launch into stories of adversity and artistic expression. The newest title to fit this mold seems to be Pride, a new fact-based comedy from director Matthew Warchus.
Pride looks at a bond between two kinds of English citizens marginalized by Thatcher’s conservative government in the early 1980s: the gay community, shunned by the mainstream due to the AIDS crisis, and miners, who were striking a bid to thwart the government’s plans to close the pits. Two groups that at first seem divisive end up working together to help the miners’ union.
The festival favorite boasts some of the most distinguished English actors working today – Imelda Staunton, Bill Nighy, Dominic West, Paddy Considine – and some of the country’s rising stars, including George MacKay, Ben Schnetzer and Sherlock’s Moriarty, Andrew Scott. It’s earned a lot of strong word-of-mouth from showings in Cannes and Toronto and in his review of the drama, We Got This Covered’s David James writes that its “kind of political earnestness is rare in modern mainstream cinema.”
For a season filled with heavier films baiting for awards love, Pride could be this year’s Philomena: a riveting true story punctuated by sharp comedy that stays in theatres for months.