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. find out more...

Originally released in 1988, the wait is over for the UK release of this anime classic, superb animated feature from the Studio Ghibli studio (Miyazaki's animation stable). What sets this film apart from the fantastical films made in the tradition of his peers, it its historical and emotional realism. The focus in Takahata's film is on the story of its two young protagonists, brother and sister Seita and Setsuko, as they flee the destruction of their home and family after the American firebombin find out more...

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. find out more...

1941; a Jewish girl witnesses the murder of her family by a Nazi officer and a Jewish American guerrilla team roam Occupied France operating with a Geneva Accord breaking ferocity. find out more...

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. find out more...

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. find out more...

Salomon "Sally" Sorowitsch is the king of counterfeiters and lives a sweet life of cards, booze and women. Eventually Salomon's luck runs out when he's arrested and thrown into a Nazi concentration camp, but it's not long before his exceptional skills are spotted and he is coerced into a counterfeit operation on a gargantuan scale; a plan to help finance the war effort and flood the British and American economies with fake currency. For the first time in his life Salomon finds himself in a mo find out more...

It's the end of WW2 and highly strung Grace and her two photosensitive children are awaiting the return of her husband. Grace lives an isolated and twilght existence but after the arrival of three uninvited servants she becomes convinced that the house is haunted by malevolent spirits. The Others is a stylish, spooky, highly intelligent ghost story that builds up the tension without having to resort to blood and guts.

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"Josephine Decker has created a new style of thriller that employs allegory, incorporates touches of David Lynch as well as Magritte -esque imagery. Decker's setting of a remote farm feels like a metaphor for what turns out to be hell. The raw and emotional (and yes, sometimes funny) dialog tells a story that can seem familiar at points but really is meant to keep you guessing and off balance. I really enjoyed how the undertones of this film came to life through her very deft contrast of the find out more...