Part 1 of Wajda's trilogy of wartime films, the hopeful one, is set in Wola, a working-class area of Warsaw in 1942, and deals with the graduation of a bunch of semi-delinquent street kids, through individual acts of defiance and courage, into a youth resistance group. The heroism is not simple, neither loyalties nor self-sacrifice are assured, but united they will be. 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...

Fritz Lang, one of the masters of the German expressionist cinema, turns his sinister imagination and shadowy techniques to a web like take of wartime espionage. Set in Czechoslovakia during the Nazi occupation, the film depicts an Eastern Europe populated by spies, traitors and revolutionaries, a deadly funhouse of political intrigue in which every personal encounter brings with it the threat of betrayal. Much of the nightmarish quality of Hangmen Also Die is attributable to playwright Bertolt find out more...

It's the off-season at the lonely Beauregard Hotel in Bournemoth, and only the long-term tenants are still in residence. Life is stirred up, however, when the beautiful Ann Shankland arrives to see her alcoholic ex-husband, John Malcolm, who is secretly engaged to Pat Cooper, the woman who runs the hotel. Meanwhile, snobbish Mrs Railton-Bell discovers that the kindly if rather doddering Major Pollock, played by David Niven, who won an Oscar for his performance, a retired officer who likes to find out more...

Supposedly a biography of Michelangelo, it is much more that of Pope Julius II, who, when not on the battlefield uniting Italy, nags Michelangelo, in an engaging and witty script, to speed up his painful work painting the Sistine Chapel, and wonders when he will finsh. The transformation of the chapel ceiling, which was originally dotted with stars, to an opulent statement of high renaissance is engrossing. find out more...

Guinness restores the morale of British PoWs by building a bridge which is of military value to the Japanese, and then attempts to thwart the RAF's destruction of it! A classic film which swept 7 Oscars including "Best Picture". find out more...

Colditz was the P-O-W camp where the Germans put the bad boys, the prisoners, Brits of course, who repeatedly tried to escape. This is their story; a first class tale with British stiff-upper-lips to the fore, nationalistic but heroic. find out more...

Lots of stiff upper lip and Brit grit in this heroic true story of how Lancaster bombers, carrying Dr Barnes Wallis's Bouncing Bomb, destroyed the dams on the Rhur, damaging German industrial production and the Nazi war effort. find out more...

A thoughtful and sympathetic portrait of legendary German tactician Field Marshal Rommel's final years, as his disillusionment with the Third Reich led to conspiracy and ultimately his undoing. A sensitive and impassioned performance from James Mason in the title role. find out more...

After the 11th September 2001 the War Against Terror is preparing to move on to Iraq. The UN have sent in the weapons inspectors to find if Saddam has indeed Weapons of Mass Destruction and the political machines in both the UK and US are working to present the strongest possible case for war in the face of (in the UK) very vocal opposition from the public. With the dossiers released and the threat established the "need for war" is set and, on the 19th March 2003, th find out more...