Food as a means of expression is at the heart of this painfully funny film from British writer-director Mike Leigh (Bleak Moments, High Hopes). Dad (Jim Broadbent), Mum (Alison Steadman) and their grown twins, Natalie (Claire Skinner) and Nicola (Jane Horrocks), enjoy eating in front of the telly. But now anorexic Nicola has taken to bingeing in private. Dad, a chef, has bought a mobile snack bar and dreams of the road, while Mum helps pal Aubrey (Timothy Spall) open a gourmet restaurant in which he cooks such revolting dishes as pork cyst.

Within this exceptionally acted comic framework, Leigh dissects a family coming apart. In a specifically British idiom, Leigh again proves himself a world-class filmmaker. He achieves a universal resonance by showing how a look or a pained silence can capture what words cannot.

“Is It True”

As the British Invasion reached its peak in 1964, Brenda Lee went from Nashville to London to record one of her hardest-rocking hits, her perky vocal backed by a stuttering, squalling guitar. That guitar was played by session musician Jimmy Page, yet to skyrocket to fame with first the Yardbirds and then Led Zeppelin. "She said to me, 'I've come here to make a record with the British sound,'" remembered producer Mickie Most. "She felt she wouldn't get the same sound in Nashville because they're only just catching up on the British beat group sound of about six months ago."