A superb portrait of Liverpudlian working class life in the 1940s and 50s. The family gather to recall their domineering father through a brilliantly realised almost episodic series of reminiscences cleverly undercut with period music. Ambitious, elegant and profoundly moving, highly rated by critics and won FIPRESCI, the International Federation of Film Critics Prize, Cannes 1988.
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HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR (1959)
Certification12 Our Rating
The story of a French actress and a Japanese man's brief affair in Hiroshima, stirring up painful memories for them both, for her wartime 'collaboration' and, for him, the bomb which quite literally destroyed everything he had known. Resnais's film is now seen as revolutionary for its time an a must for film study courses. Sadly haunting.
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KATYN (2007)
Certification15 Our Rating
Based on the novel 'Post Mortem: The Story of Katyn' by Andrzej Mularczyk this film tells the horrific story of the 1940 Soviet NKVD's massacre, and subsequent cover-up, of an estimated 22,000, mainly Polish, military officers, police and intellectuals. Rarely does a film about the horrors of organised genocide achieve in its representation such an honest and harrowing account of crimes against humanity.
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OF TIME AND THE CITY (2007)
Certification15 Our Rating
Revered Brit film director Terence Davies paints a picture of Liverpool life from his childhood days to the modern in this poetic docu-essay memoir. Heavy on poetry and classical music, heavily against the Church and the monarchy, full of newsreel and documentary footage, this is an awesome tribute to a city that he loves.
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THE BIRDMAN OF ALCATRAZ (1962)
CertificationPG Our Rating
Fascinating, factually based story of an anti-social double murderer, Robert Stroud, who used his years in the world's toughest prison to transform himself into a world-renowned ornithologist. Superb performances all round but Karl Malden is particularly riveting as the sadistic prison governer.
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THE CELLULOID CLOSET (1995)
Certification15 Our Rating
A cinephile's odyssey through a century of film clips, to take a witty and stylish look at homosexuality on the silver screen, narrated by Lily Tomlin, with interviews with the likes of Curtis, Sarandon, Hanks and MacLaine and including Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Thelma & Louise and Philadelphia.
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