My Beautiful Laundrette (Criterion Collection) (Blu-ray)

Stephen Frears (The Hit) was at the forefront of the British cinematic revival of the mid-1980s, and the delightfully transgressive My Beautiful Laundrette is his greatest triumph of the period. Working from a richly layered script by writer Hanif Kureishi (Intimacy), soon to be internationally renowned, Frears tells an uncommon love story that takes place between a young South London Pakistani man (Gordon Warnecke), who decides to open an upscale laundromat to make his family proud, and his childhood friend, a skinhead (Daniel Day-Lewis, in a breakthrough role), who volunteers to help make his dream a reality. This culture-clash comedy is also a subversive work of social realism, which dares to address racism, homophobia, and sociopolitical marginalization in Margaret Thatcher's England.

Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Gordon Warnecke, Saeed Jaffrey, Roshan Seth, Shirley Field, Rita Wolf, Souad Faress, Derrick Branche, Richard Graham, Winston Graham, Dudley Thomas, Garry Cooper, Neil Cunningham, Gurdial Sira, Stephen Marcus, Dawn Archibald, Jonathan Moore, Ram John Holder, Badi Uzzaman, Chris Pitt, Colin Campbell