An all time classic 60s movie glamourising the real life story of the Barrow gang who terrorised the American South in the early 30s. 'Reclaiming the American gangster movie, after it had been stolen by the Nouvelle Vague, Penn's film was so successful (and so imitated) that it inevitably met with some grudging devaluation. But it's still great, half comic fairytale, half brutal fact, it reflects the essential ambiguity of its heroes by treading a no man's land suspended between reality and fant find out more...

Russia, 1936: revolutionary hero Colonel Kotov is spending an idyllic summer in his dacha with his young wife and six-year-old daughter Nadia and other assorted family and friends. Things change dramatically with the unheralded arrival of Cousin Dmitri from Moscow, who charms the women and little Nadia with his games and pianistic bravura. For most of its running time, the film seems to follow suit: it's a placid, languorous country-house comedy far removed from the realities of the Stalinist te find out more...

Polanski has a go at the film noir detective thriller, very bleak, very twisted and very menacing it is to. Nicholson plays a private-eye in pre-war LA who is hired to pursue an adultery case, but finds himself embroiled in a complicated murder investigation. find out more...

A landmark in the history of the cinema; it was ranked Number 1 in the American Film Institute's 100 greatest films of all time in two polls (1998 and 2007) of more than 1,500 film industry movers and shakers and again by UK directors in a BFI poll. "Citizen Kane" narrates the rise and fall of a newspaper tycoon driven by a childhood obssession and is loosely based round the life of William Randolph Hurst, who tried to have it banned, but incorporates elements from the lives of other fat cats il find out more...

Grace is on the run, and in the small backwater town of Dogville it would seem she has found some safety. But the town's inhabitants are not so understanding when the Mob turn up looking for the errant outsider and as Grace's former saviours begin to turn against her she sets in motion a string of events that may leave the townsfolk of Dogville rueing the day she ever entered their lives. Dogville is the latest from the master of mainstream experimental, Lars Von Trier, a dark, hypnotic, visuall find out more...

Phyllis Dietrichson is trapped in a loveless marriage to a man who inspires in her nothing but contempt, but rather than leave him Phyllis decides to kill him and collect on the insurance policy she's had set up with the help of her lover, and naive partner in crime, insurance salesman Walter Neff. The only flaws in their plan are the company's reluctance to pay out so much, the diligence of Neff's increasingly suspicious colleague, (and his 'little man'), and the exemplary ruthlessness of Ph find out more...

Texan rancher Bick Benedict visits a Maryland farm to buy a prize horse. Whilst there he meets and falls in love with the owner's daughter Leslie, they are married immediately and return to his ranch. The story of their family and its rivalry with cowboy and (later oil tycoon) Jett Rink unfolds across two generations. James Dean earned his second Oscar nomination in this tale of frustration and revenge, wealth and racial oppression in Texas. find out more...

The year is 1932 and the world of the aristocracy is drawing to an inevitable close, but in the house of Sir William McCordle such realities are forgotten for a weekend shooting party. As the eclectic mixture of guests arrive so the belly of the house also swells with various valets and personal servants; but as characters develop it becomes clear that some have neglected to know their place and before the weekend is out a murder has been committed. 'Gosford Park' is a quite stunning recreation find out more...

The series (11 episodes) tells the story of the village of Schabbach, in the impoverished Hunsrueck hills in Germany through the years 1919-1982. The central character is Maria, at the beginning a teenage girl, by the end an elderly matriarch, and her family who, like the rest of the German people, live through the crises of 1920s, Nazism and eventual rebirth following WWII. Heimat is a superb cinematic chronicle of social and political change, beautifully shot and breathtaking in its depth and find out more...

An actor most famous for his portrayl of Mephisto, the man who sold his soul to the devil, sells out to the Nazi regime. His ambition over-rides all other concerns as he climbs his way to the top. A brilliantly made study of ruthless egotism. find out more...