20th Century Flicks, Bristol

Fanis, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics, recalls his childhood growing up as a Greek boy in Istanbul and the time spent with his shopkeeper grandfather learning about life and, in particular, the art of cooking. And it was here, in his grandfather's store, that he first fell in love, with Saime. After political tensions over Cyprus in 1963 Fanis's family were deported, but his grandfather stayed in Istanbul, and it is decades later that they meet again as Fanis returns 'home', after yea find out more...

ALPHA DOG (2005)

Certification15 Our Rating

With the swimming pools, drugs, girls and parties come a bunch of spoilt young brats who seem to take their cues from 'American History X' and black inner city gangster movies. They tattoo themselves, build their bodies, call their girls bitches, sell drugs, fight and use guns. Violence, drugs, language, this movie has them in bucketloads, even sex raises its head. Plotwise; headcase Jake owes lots of drug money to drug lord's son John and John kidnaps Jake's younger brother as a hostage. Kid br find out more...

BORN INTO BROTHELS (2004)

Certification15 Our Rating

A community worker sets the world to rights teaching prostitutes' children the art of photography in a red light area of Calcutta. As she befriends them she takes it on herself to 'rescue' them from their fate, their friends and their families by getting them enrolled in private education schools to help them change their destiny. Zana is such a powerful person that, as the follow up DVD extra 'Reconnecting with Born into Brothels' demonstrates, she succeeds. This is a superb film animated by th find out more...

FIFTY DEAD MEN WALKING (2009)

Certification15 Our Rating

Martin McGartland was an unemployed Republican fence, a petty crime that led to the IRA kneecapping of his partner. Picked up by the police he soon found himself operating as both an informer for his Special Branch handler, Fergus, with whom he developed a close relationship, and at tremendous risk, infiltrating and moving up within the ranks of the Provos while routinely betraying their activities; the title coming from the 50 murders that it is believed Martin directly prevented. 'Fifty Dead M find out more...

GANGSTER'S PARADISE (2008)

Certification15 Our Rating

Lucky grows up in a South African township in the post-apartheid era and is caught between the desire to go university and the lure of easy money from violent crime.
A decade on an we see him as a struggling taxi-driver before his transformation into a businessman who uses violence to reclaim inner-city Joburg tenement blocks from the drug-dealers and hookers who inhabit them and from the rich white slum landlords who own them. Thus the ambitious gangster realises an aim of the revolution find out more...

HOTEL RWANDA (2004)

Certification15 Our Rating

In 1994 in the East African state of Rwanda long simmering resentment between the 2 largest ethnic groups erupted into one of history's worst ever bloodbaths. In the midst of this emerged a hero, the manager of Rwanda's only four-star hotel, who, armed with little more than his wit and tremendous courage, succeeds in keeping the fascist killing hordes from slaughtering him, his family, and the over 1,000 refugees sheltering in his hotel. An awesome indictment of racism, mass murder and the poli find out more...

IL DIVO (2008)

Certification15 Our Rating

Far more a portrait than a biopic this stunning film dissects the later years of Giulio Andreotti, a key player in Italian politics from the 70s through till today (he still sits in the Italian Senate (2009)), implicating him as the central instigator behind 'The Strategy of Tension', a policy that involved the murders of hundreds of innocent people, and blaming 'the left/Red Brigades' so as to allow the growth of an authoritarian state. Sorrentino fingers Andreotti for many political assassinat find out more...

IN MY COUNTRY (2004)

Certification15 Our Rating

Essentially an interacial love story betwixt two journalists set against the backdrop of The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in post-apartheid South Africa. There's enough dirt about police murders and torture in the apartheid state to keep whites squirming uncomfortably and enough healing and forgiveness to leave you feeling that race problems dissipate with a bit of a hug. Nevertheless Boorman is a skilled film maker and he manages the finer aspects of this well scripted movie without teet find out more...

INTO THE WILD (2007)

Certification12 Our Rating

Christopher McCandless is a bright, likable, precociously perceptive, young middle-class college graduate, who, tortured by his dysfunctional childhood, is determined to find a simpler, purer and more harmonious life. He gives away all that he has and sets out across North America, his ultimate goal the perfect isolation of the Alaskan wilderness. Based on real events 'Into The Wild' is beautifully judged, paced and performed; an epic, gloriously visualised road trip and also a moving and though find out more...

OUT OF THE BLUE (2006)

Certification15 Our Rating

On November 13th 1990 the small New Zealand town of Aramoana was taken hostage by one of its own residents, the angry and embittered David Gray, a socially and emotionally crippled man who felt ostracized and jeered at by those he lived amongst. On that fateful day Gray murdered 13 men, women and children, and was prevented from further slaughter only by the dogged, but ill-prepared, local police. "Out Of The Blue" is a harrowing and powerful observation of events, stunningly filmed with a gritt find out more...