Set in 16th century Ukraine two Cossack brothers find themselves battling each other when one wants to recover land from the treacherous Poles and the other falls in love with a Polish girl. A breathtaking epic of romance and nationalism. find out more...

Nominated for five Academy Awards; Michael Curtiz's expansive period drama sets the tumultuous on-again, off-again affair between Queen Elizabeth I and the second Earl of Essex against Essex's powerful ambition to assume power in England. Having won several important battles, Essex's popularity among the masses is soaring, but despite his own substantial cunning he is ultimately no match for his Queen, a woman Essex greatly admires but has sworn to usurp. An epic, rip-roaring reinterpretation of find out more...

The heart-pounding tone of Michael Curtiz's classic swashbuckling adventure is established moments after the opening credits, when 16th Century British pirate captain Geoffrey Thorpe leads a raid on the galleon of a Spanish ambassador. After the chaotic clash is over, Thorpe's men have captured the ambassador and learning that the Spanish are planning to wage war against England, our hero rushes home to warn Queen Elizabeth. It's back in England that Thorpe discovers the royal court is easily as find out more...

A veteran samurai, who has fallen on hard times, answers a village's request for protection from bandits. He gathers 6 other samurai to help him and they teach the townspeople how to defend themselves in return for three small meals a day. The film culminates in a giant battle when 40 bandits attack the village. Considered by many to be one of the greatest films ever made and the inspiration for "The Magnificent Seven", to be enjoyed both by film buffs and action fans. find out more...

One of the world's greatest filmmakers, Kurosawa, adapts Shakespeare's Macbeth to 16th Century Japan - the loss in language being more than compensated for by the misty and forbidding locations and the clever incursions of Japanese culture. 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...