The young Jane Austin is a feisty, forthright young lady on the cusp of a good marriage with rich, nice Mr Wisley when the dashing, reckless, irresponsible Tom Lefroy enters her myopic world. At first repelled by his arrogance the two soon become smitten but what chance does their love have in the face of overwhelming social disdain? 'Becoming Jane' is a lush and pleasantly performed imagining of the young writer's life. Though the idea that her novels were little more than dramatized biogs of h find out more...

London, 1818; the young Romantic poet John Keats begins an unlikely three year romance with chic urbanite neighbour Fanny, an affair cut short by his premature illness and death. A superbly made interpretation of love and its rendition through poetry. find out more...

It has been customary to portray Byron as the archetypal Romantic hero with a big floaty cloak, eyeliner and an evil chuckleAn intelligent and perceptive film that concentrates on the highly comples witty, intelligent and charismatic writer rather than some . Jonny Lee Miller carries off Byron's personality with aplomb, making him smug and petulant while unavoidably charismatic and likable. Of course it's still all conjecture, but as far as Byron films go, there's nothing out there to touch this find out more...

"I am dying in time to the splash of their oars - if arms as steady as these had embraced me in life...". This film is Jarman's vision of the life of the Italian painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1573 - 1610). Caravaggio revisits periods of his tempestuous life in a series of deathbed flashbacks and prose-poem voice-overs, focusing particularly on the intense relationship between himself and a couple who model for him in Rome, Lena and Ranuccio. This sexual and violent love triangle eve find out more...

Saved from a group of drifters by Kim Byung-moon uncouth and self-taught painter Jang Seung-up offers a drawing as a means of thanks. Examining the picture, Kim realises Jang's extraordinary potential and becomes his mentor, encouraging him to pursue the life of an artist. find out more...

One of the very finest epics produced, equally impressive in terms of script and spectacle. Heston is aptly heroic as the 11th Century patriot destined to die in the fight to evict the Moors from Spain, Mann's direction is stately and thrilling and Miklos Rosza's superb score perfectly complements the crisp and simple widescreen images. Sobriety and restraint, in fact, are perhaps the keynotes of the film's success, with the result that a potentially risible finale, in which Cid's corpse is born find out more...

The life of comedienne Fannie Brice, from her early days in the Jewish slums of the Lower East Side, when only her mother believed Fanny could make it in show business, to her hilarious debut as a rollerskating chorus-girl and on to the height of her career as a star with the Ziegfeld Follies. Unfortunately she fell in love, and married, the wrong man; handsome, urbane but inept gambler Nick. Streisand won the best actress Oscar in this classic musical. find out more...

From the moment Henry Tudor casts aside his faithful wife Katherine of Aragon for the bewitching and determined Anne Boleyn (Helena Bonham Carter) he sets himself on course for a series of disastrous marriages. Violent conflict, both within the population and the church, left England reeling while its complex and charismatic King turned from handsome playboy to a bitter invalid desperate for a son and heir to the throne. find out more...

Superb drama with a stunning performance from Judi Dench as Queen Victoria. Consumed with grief, after the death of Prince Albert, the arrival of John Brown, Albert's fiery former servant, shakes the Queen from her melancholy and gives her a new lease of life, but feathers are ruffled within the palace as a touching friendship develops tentatively between the two. As public feeling turns against the monarch, the pressure falls squarely on Brown's shoulders, turning the proud, strong Scotsman int find out more...

Centred on the intrigues leading up to and following the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre of 1572, this historical drama begins with the arranged, loveless wedding of the Roman Catholic Marguerite de Valois, sister to the eccentric King Charles IX and daughter of the scheming Catherine de Medici, and the Huguenot Henri de Navarre. Despite Catherine's hope that the marriage may unite France, the mutual hatred felt by Catholics and Protestants soon degenerates into carnage and Margot, who has learned find out more...