Brassed Off (1996)

The angriest of the decade's comedies from the north of England about lost work. Mark Herman's film follows a colliery brass band, the band of a coal-mining town, as their Yorkshire mine faces closure, drawing on the South Yorkshire mining community of Grimethorpe, with Pete Postlethwaite as the band's proud conductor, Danny. The jokes are warm and the romance around Gloria and her flugelhorn is sweet, but the film never pretends the closures are anything other than a disaster. Its Italian title, Grazie, signora Thatcher, tells you how it played abroad. Pair it with The Full Monty for the full picture of what the boom years left behind.