20th Century Flicks, Bristol

A wonderfully adapted film based round the exploits of Cicero, aka Elyesa Bazna, the Albanian born valet (Mason at his best) of the British ambassador to Turkey, who sold secrets to the Germans during 1944. The valet's gentlemanly pretensions are put to the test in this tale of espionage and romantic intrigue. Ace.

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A GENERATION (1955)

CertificationPG Our Rating

Part 1 of Wajda's trilogy of wartime films, the hopeful one, is set in Wola, a working-class area of Warsaw in 1942, and deals with the graduation of a bunch of semi-delinquent street kids, through individual acts of defiance and courage, into a youth resistance group. The heroism is not simple, neither loyalties nor self-sacrifice are assured, but united they will be. find out more...

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ALAN BENNETT: TELLING TALES (2007)

Certification15 Our Rating

Alan Bennett reminisces about his early years as a schoolboy, growing up in Leeds, and on to undergraduate life at Oxford University. find out more...

ASSEMBLY (2007)

Certification15 Our Rating

A Chinese soldier's tale; Guzidi was a child of poverty who became a successful guerrilla soldier and then officer in the Liberation Army. After a fierce battle with the KMT Guzidi and his remaining 46 troops are sent to a front line defensive position, where they are abandoned by the main army corps to a fight to the death. After a heroic act in the Korean War Guzidi, riddled with guilt and loss of meaningful identity, fights a long battle to atone for the loss of his company by gaining recogni find out more...

AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS (1987)

CertificationPG Our Rating

In a Catholic boarding school during the Nazi occupation of France, Julien Quietin, played by Gaspard Manesse as the character based around Malle, is no ordinary student, he is intelligent and different from the others. A new student arrives at the school one day and becomes a sort of intellectual rival to Julien, but, after some early hostilities, the boys begin to connect and eventually become good friends. Malle does not rely on overly dramatic sequences where not necessary as a way to build find out more...

BEYOND THE SEA (2004)

Certification12 Our Rating

A biopic, from impoverished Brooklyn roots, life-threatening rheumatic fever, to a meteoric rise to stardom, of the life and times of crooner Bobby Darin. Spacey, if totally miscast, gives an impassioned performance in this run of the mill story which he also directs. find out more...

CHAPLIN (1992)

Certification15 Our Rating

Robert Downey Jnr demonstrates his prowess by giving a riveting performance as the little master. The cast delivers despite a disjointed narrative, and Chaplin's fall from grace, brought down by McCarthyism is very moving. Kevin Kline is excellent as the flamboyant Fairbanks Jnr. find out more...

CONSPIRACY (2008)

Certification15 Our Rating

A chilling dramatisation of a meeting between 15 top ranking Nazi officials, organised and led by Reinhard Heydrich, deputy head of the SS, and assisted by Adolf Eichmann in the winter of 1942. The reason for their coming together? To discuss and sanction the systematic annihilation of all Jews living within the confines of the Third Reich's recently acquired Lebensraum.

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DAYS OF GLORY (2006)

Certification15 Our Rating

This is the story of a group of North Africans who enlisted in the French Army to fight for the motherland, freedom and equality, and against Nazism. We follow their travails through France's first military defeat of Germany, by raw Arab conscripts, through to being the first French troops to fight their way into Alsace. Throughout they are treated as second rate people by French men, though oddly not always by the women, denied full rations, promotions or leave - they do and they die. As a war find out more...