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...

Stunningly filmed in black and white, this classic slice of surrealist cinema is both touching and terrifying. A doctor, tortured beyond sanity after disfiguring his only daughter, sets out to give her back what he has taken away, at the expense of a succession of suitable young donors. A darkly disturbing marvellous movie. find out more...

The classic version of Frankenstein, often imitated but its stunning style has rarely been bettered. For the unfamiliar, Frankenstein tells the story of a maverick doctor's attempts to create life from the body parts of the deceased. His creation (Frankenstein's Monster...) is the tragic embodiment of goodness. More human than those around him, the monster finds himself needing friendship more and more, before embarking on a doomed relationship with a small girl who takes pity on him. Needless t find out more...

Critically acclaimed and visually ravishing story of the unlikely tryst between a runaway art student, distressed by impending blindness and a previous romance, and an avant-garde crusty, who meet while sleeping rough on Pont-Neuf. Director Carax takes us on an enchanted journey through a Paris of streets, rivers, bridges, escalators, the Metro and art museums as the movie progresses from the gritty reality of poverty and homelessness to a flamboyant firework lit fantasy land. find out more...

Not to be confused with the TV series, good though that was this is the original item that started it all off. Blacker harder-hitting and funnier than the TV version, although featuring the same characters and some of the same actors. An all-time classic anti-war movie. Just brilliant, see it! find out more...

The world as a lunatic asylum. Jack Nicholson plays the anarchist determined to challenge the smug system of authority and obedience that rule the roost. The first film by Czech dissident Forman after migrating from Czechoslovakia to the United States, and a superb comment on society! Won Best Picture plus others at 1975 Academy Awards. find out more...

In 1930s North China, a young girl is given to a 50-year-old leper in exchange for a mule, but as she's carried to him through the wilderness she is saved from bandits by a handsome young peasant. Later the leper mysteriously dies and the peasant returns and the pair settle down to make the traditional red sorghum wine. The film shifts from fable to realism when Japanese troops invade the area, destroying the fields with forced labour from the vineyard until the workers revolt against them. find out more...

A woman living in the modern world gets struck by a C20th disease, an allergy to all things environmentally unfriendly, and is forced to seek sanctuary in the Texas desert with the evangelical and the afflicted. A tale of our possible future? Psychological suspense, horrifying and occasionally comic. find out more...

Sweeping romantic drama of epic proportions. Fiennes's WWII pilot lays badly burned and in the care of an army nurse. As the unnamed, stiff-upper-lipped "English Patient" begins to recover, memories emerge of a past life as an archaeologist/cartographer in the Sahara, and a passionate affair with a married woman, Katharine. Though Anthony Minghella's adaptation of Michael Ondaatje's novel simplifies, jettisons and changes certain elements of the original story, it remains a rich, complex, entran find out more...

Based on the true story of a former tobacco employee who turns whistle-blower. The Insider is a gripping thriller, with a couple of scorching performances from Russell Crowe as the man in question and Al Pacino as a television producer determined to bring to the publics notice the corrupt and duplicitous machinations of a corporate giant. A powerful and absorbing movie. find out more...