Adapted from the classic, absurdist, anti-war novel by Joseph Heller. "Catch-22" is the story of Yossarian, a pilot who trys to opt out of flying bombing missions by being declared insane, the catch being that anyone trying to avoid bombing missions by being insane must be sane. This dark classic catches much of the flavour of the book, the insanity, the corruption and the absurdity of war. Think MASH, but non-linear - flawed but awesome. find out more...

The moody 28-year-old Mifune is the violent gangster whom boozy doctor Shimura diagnoses as suffering from TB ('a hole in the heart,' says the sour 'angel', ruefully). The movie breathes the polluted air of post-war pessimism, dissipation and poetic fatalism, symbolised in the shots of the oily, malaria-ridden swamp of a Tokyo dockside, but it is dramatically qualified by Mifune's suggested redeemability and Shimura's stoical humanism. Fascinating, highly enjoyable and filled with great scenes - find out more...

Stunningly filmed in black and white, this classic slice of surrealist cinema is both touching and terrifying. A doctor, tortured beyond sanity after disfiguring his only daughter, sets out to give her back what he has taken away, at the expense of a succession of suitable young donors. A darkly disturbing marvellous movie. find out more...

A new priest arrives in the French country village of Ambricourt to attend to his first parish, but the apathetic and hostile rural congregation reject him immediately. Through his diary entries, the physically sick young man relays a crisis of faith that threatens not only to drive him away from the village, but also from God. With this, his fourth film, Bresson began to implement a stylistic philosophy in his film making, stripping away all inessential elements from his compositions, the dialo find out more...

Elizabeth is a highly renowned actress who has lost her ability to speak, Alma is the nurse responsible for helping her through her psychological, rather than physica,l ailment. As the relationship between the two women develops Alma seamlessly becomes Elizabeth's voice, the start of a metamorphosis that sees the very essence of who they both are beginning to blend. Bergman's remarkable voyage of the psyche is deemed one of his very best, visually stunning and hypnotically intense. find out more...

Set in the Sino-Japanese war, Yasuzo Masumura's black-and-white anti-war film tells of an army nurse who sexually services an amputee and falls in love with a drug-addicted surgeon. This can't be recommended to the squeamish, but neither can its nuanced eroticism nor its passionate, unpredictable moral focus, be easily shaken off. Comparable with Altman's MASH, it suggests a less comic treatment of the same theme, how to preserve one's humanity in impossible circumstances, but its ethics are con find out more...

A monumental hospital soap opera which looks exactly as though Kurosawa had taken a long look at Ben Casey and Dr Kildare, and decided that anything they could do he could do better. One has to reckon, however, with the fact that the Japanese Dr Gillespie, alias Red Beard, is played by Toshiro Mifune, and that Kurosawa really can do things better than most. While Red Beard busily demonstrates to his reluctant young intern that caring for the poor is more rewarding than a society practice, the fi find out more...

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs might be Japanese filmmaker Mikio Naruse's finest hour, a delicate, devastating study of a woman, Keiko, played heartbreakingly by Hideko Takamine, who works as a bar hostess in Tokyo's very modern post-war Ginza district. Sly, resourceful, but trapped, Keiko comes to embody the conflicts and struggles of a woman trying to establish her independence in a male-dominated society. A profoundly moving masterpiece. find out more...