Trainspotting
1996 · Directed by Danny Boyle
Edinburgh heroin addicts navigate the early-nineties UK. Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a fucking big television. Boyle directs it like a hyperactive music video.
Why It's Cult
Trainspotting is the British New Wave moment of the nineties — Boyle, McGregor, Welsh's source novel, the soundtrack that runs the gamut from Iggy Pop to Underworld. The toilet scene. The baby. The opening monologue. The pacing that turned a movie about heroin into the most exuberant film of the decade. Spawned a sequel two decades later. Original still levels.
The Plot, Officially
A wild, freeform, Rabelaisian trip through the darkest recesses of Edinburgh low-life, focusing on Mark Renton and his attempt to give up his heroin habit, and how the latter affects his relationship with family and friends: Sean Connery wannabe Sick Boy, dimbulb Spud, psycho Begbie, 14-year-old girlfriend Diane, and clean-cut athlete Tommy, who's never touched drugs but can't help being curious about them...
Starring
Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller
Where to Watch
via JustWatch →