An all time classic 60s movie glamourising the real life story of the Barrow gang who terrorised the American South in the early 30s. 'Reclaiming the American gangster movie, after it had been stolen by the Nouvelle Vague, Penn's film was so successful (and so imitated) that it inevitably met with some grudging devaluation. But it's still great, half comic fairytale, half brutal fact, it reflects the essential ambiguity of its heroes by treading a no man's land suspended between reality and fant find out more...

The story of an Arkansas farm girl who, as a young girl, witnessed the death of her father in a horrific crash and then gained revenge on his boss. On the run she hits the road in a life of crime and meets up with an assortment of characters, including a trade unionist, a black friend of his and a small-time Yankee conman. 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...

This TV adaptation of a section of the classic book about the treatment of Native Americans by the all conquering Europeans centres on the struggles of the Lakota Sioux. The narrative follows Dr Charles Eastman, a young, western-educated 'civilised' Amerindian, Sitting Bull, the proud emasculated chief who refuses to submit to US government policies designed to strip his people of their land, a 'liberal' white teacher and Senator Henry Dawes, one of the men responsible for government policy on I find out more...

Set in the 1930s and based around real events, we follow a diverse group of characters and events in depression hit New York. The young Orson Welles, with a group of equally idealistic and determined actors, sets about trying to stage a performance of the infamous left leaning musical 'Cradle Will Rock'. This has an awesome cast and is strikingly visualised, but Robbins has perhaps bitten off more history than it is possible to chew on in one two hour movie. Nevertheless a powerful and absorbi find out more...

The object of this massive tribute died as he had always lived, without wealth, without property, without official title or office. Mahatma Gandhi was not the commander of armies, nor the ruler of vast lands, he could not boast any scientific achievement or artistic gift, yet men, governments, dignitaries from all over the world, have joined hands today to pay homage to the little brown man in the loin cloth who led his country to freedom. This quote is from his funeral, one of the greatest s find out more...

The somewhat sensationalist title belies what is at heart an earnest attempt to realistically portray the descent of Hitler into madness, paranoia and megalomania. While the recently made ‘Max' focused on the young Hitler from a ‘What Could've Been' angle, ‘Hitler: The Rise of Evil' tries admirably to stick to the facts as it traces his career in politics (as a rising star, darling of both the poor and the powered gentry), to his self-destructive end. While the film portrays a truncated view of find out more...

'Julie and Julia' tells the story of 2 women; Julia Childs, who wrote 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking' and 'My Life in France', the latter of which is adapted for one half of this film, and Julie Powell, a present day New Yorker who, to escape the tedium of her own life, decided to cook her way through Julia's 524 recipes and writes a blog about doing so. The parallels and the differences between their two lives are highlighted. In the more interesting of the 2 stories Meryl Streep contin find out more...

The man who broke the back of Catholicism, or certainly compacted a few vertebrae, Martin Luther, the German Augustinian who questioned the doctrine of the established church and created a Christian revolution. Set at the beginning of the 16th Century when Luther was still young, this is a lush dramatisation of the man behind the birth of the Protestant faith. find out more...

The last months of the infamous bushwacker Jesse James, before being shot by the socially inadequate, unstable, envious, admiring young wannabe Robert Ford. Beautifully shot, and masterfully directed, this is a rambling sepia-toned epic. Produced, but not directed by Ridley Scott, "The Assassination of Jesse James" is still very reminiscent of his style of film making and though there are flaws, the studied novelistic narrative grated, this is a contemplative western about a human psyche, or two find out more...