During a hot and sultry 1935 summer an embryonic relationship between rich Cambridge graduate Celia (Knightly) and the housekeeper's son Robbie (McEvoy) is left in tatters when Celia's precocious sister falsely accuses James of molesting another young girl. The accusation, based on the misperceptions and childish hurts of a fevered imagination, leads to James's arrest and imprisonment. As the movie progresses, from an English manor house to the war-ravaged wastes of northern France and to bli find out more...

In the middle of the Second World War teenage Alyosha is commended for destroying two German tanks, but, rather than take a medal, he requests a four day pass to visit his mother. Ballad of a Soldier is about this journey and the life enhancing encounters therein. Nominated at the 1962 Academy Awards for Best Screenplay, this classic of post-war Soviet Realism won many international film awards on its release, most notably a BAFTA Award for Best Film. find out more...

The object of this massive tribute died as he had always lived, without wealth, without property, without official title or office. Mahatma Gandhi was not the commander of armies, nor the ruler of vast lands, he could not boast any scientific achievement or artistic gift, yet men, governments, dignitaries from all over the world, have joined hands today to pay homage to the little brown man in the loin cloth who led his country to freedom. This quote is from his funeral, one of the greatest s find out more...

Lacombe is a young French peasant who wants to join the resistance but is considered too young, so instead he joins the Gestapo! He enjoys his power but soon falls in love with a Jewish girl. This can be seen as Malle's answer to the question who colloborates? The film maps the mechanics of compromise with precision and without histronics. Another superb film from the great French director. find out more...

Based on a true story set against a Germany under the grip of fascism. Spielberg's epic looks at one man Schindler and his efforts to save his Jewish workforce from the Nazi Genocide. Outwardly decadent Schindler devoted his wealth to the saving of over 1,000 people from certain death. A fine and moving film. find out more...

Howard Hughes was an insatiable man, a billionaire whose success within Hollywood and obsession with aviation made him more famous than many of the movie stars his studio employed. This lush dramatisation of Hughes concentrates on the man, as a rebel within the ordered system of big business, charming, glamorous, decadent and ruthlessly focused. We witness the beginning of his fall from grace and decent into reclusive paranoia, but this is more an epic of Hughes glory years and, though lacking t find out more...

Guinness restores the morale of British PoWs by building a bridge which is of military value to the Japanese, and then attempts to thwart the RAF's destruction of it! A classic film which swept 7 Oscars including "Best Picture". find out more...

Sweeping romantic drama of epic proportions. Fiennes's WWII pilot lays badly burned and in the care of an army nurse. As the unnamed, stiff-upper-lipped "English Patient" begins to recover, memories emerge of a past life as an archaeologist/cartographer in the Sahara, and a passionate affair with a married woman, Katharine. Though Anthony Minghella's adaptation of Michael Ondaatje's novel simplifies, jettisons and changes certain elements of the original story, it remains a rich, complex, entran find out more...

A biography of Aisin-Gioro "Henry" Pu Yi, who at the age of three was named the Emperor of China and died as a gardener at the Botanical Gardens of Peking. Told in an interesting flashback/flashforward style, we learn of Pu Yi's childhood, the time he spent in the Forbidden City, his term as the emperor of Japan's Manchukuo, his imprisonment by the Communists and his eventual release back to public life in 1959. A true epic with a cast of millions. find out more...

Wladyslaw Szpilman is a brilliant Jewish pianist trapped in Poland after the Nazi invasion, managing to avoid deportation to the concentration camps Wladyslaw struggles to survive in the increasingly desperate Warsaw Ghetto, all the while dreaming of the way things used to be. The Pianist is a tour de force, deeply moving, horrific, tragic, thought provoking, the only hope provided by Wladyslaw's intense will to live. Polanski has created a beautiful cinematic masterpiece while Adrien Brody's p find out more...