20th Century Flicks, Bristol

Gena Rowlands, winning an Oscar nomination, is typically superb as the tough talking New York moll - half-whore, half-mother - reluctantly lumbered with a child the Mafia want dead. Tired of running, Gloria decides to confront the gangsters head on... A superb noirish thriller. find out more...

HAPPY-GO-LUCKY (2008)

Certification12 Our Rating

How annoying can the permanently happy, loud, vivacious, forever joking, single 30-year-old London primary school teacher Poppy be? Surely there must be something wrong with somebody so sunnily optimistic? She likes her dope, she likes to party, she's learning to drive and to dance flamenco, she happily shares a flat with her best friend, Zoe, and she's always pulling the rug from under the feet of more serious and more pompous people. We learn about her through her relationships with people, sh find out more...

I'VE LOVED YOU SO LONG (2008)

Certification12 Our Rating

Juliette has spent the last fifteen years in prison for a shocking crime. Her way of coping with her imprisonment, and the chain of events leading to it, is to bottle up her emotions and distance herself from her fellow human beings. Upon her release, an emotionally damaged Juliette is taken in by her younger sister Lea, whose relentless and undemanding goodness slowly thaws Juliette's introverted stolidity, providing the older sister with some hope of release as she gradually begins to bare her find out more...

MONSTER (2003)

Certification18 Our Rating

Aileen 'Lee' Wournos had had enough of hooking and enough of life when she met Selby Wall in a Florida bar in 1989. She took Selby to be her saviour, her new reason to fight and to live. But in the hours before their second date Lee is forced to literally fight to live. As writer/director Patty Jenkins takes us on Lee's journey from kill to kill we find her motives to be bound up in a complicated web of love, fear, revenge, desperation, defence and loathing. Christina Ricci conveys the naively find out more...

MY LIFE WITHOUT ME (2003)

Certification15 Our Rating

Ann is 23 with two young children, married to her high school love and, though life is poor and her job soulless, she is comfortable in the knowledge that there is still plenty of time to fulfil her dreams. A medical check-up, however, causes Ann's presumptions to collapse around her, but rather than wallow in self pity she decides to set about doing all the things she'd wanted, whilst putting in place a world for those she loves that will last long after the little time that is left to her. My find out more...

POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE (1991)

Certification15 Our Rating

Streep and MacLaine give riveting portrayals as the celebrity mother and daughter, who, more alike than they think, battle against both each other and the alcohol and drug induced haze of Hollywood. Supposedly based on the true-life traumas of actress Carrie Fisher and her mum Debbie Reynolds and adapted from Fisher's semi-autobiographical novel. 9 out of 9. find out more...

SOPHIE'S CHOICE (1982)

Certification15 Our Rating

Sophie, a beautiful woman fought over by two obsessive men, is haunted by her horrific past as a survivor of Nazi concentration camps. Through vivid flashbacks we hear her story of survival, and the brutal choice she was forced to make. Brilliant. find out more...

THE CHILDREN'S HOUR (1961)

CertificationPG Our Rating

A spiteful child's lie has life-shattering consequences in this daring adaptation of Lillian Hellman's celebrated play. Karen (Hepburn) and Martha (MacLaine) are the headmistresses of an exclusive school for girls. When they discipline a malicious little girl, the vindictive child twists an overheard comment into slander and accuses her teachers of having a lesbian relationship. Soon the scandalous gossip engulfs the school's community, with repercussions that are heart-wrenchingly tragic. find out more...

THE HOURS (2002)

Certification12 Our Rating

Three women, separated across the 20th century, held together by the trials of time, love and loss. The first, Virginia Woolf, is in the throes of her first defining novel, Mrs Dalloway, while the second is a 1950s housewife now reading Woolf's book, and drawn towards a momentous re-evaluation of her life. The most contemporary of the trio is Clarissa, a woman who to all intents and purposes is Mrs Dalloway, and it is the gradual intertwining of their stories that comprises much of the film's ch find out more...

THE MAGDALENE SISTERS (2001)

Certification18 Our Rating

The Magdalene Laundries are a peculiarly twisted Irish Catholic institution; run by nuns they provide a form of incarceration for fallen young women, whose heinous crimes range from being raped to flirting with boys. Margaret, Bernadette and Rose are three new inmates about to experience first hand woman's inhumanity to woman as they are humiliated, degraded, abused and worked to the bone, but despite the grimness of their world the three girls find solace and even humour in the company of each find out more...