Ridley Scott directed epic that gives the definitive version of the Columbus story. The lush scenery, superb casting and top-notch direction don't quite make up for it being overlong, but on the whole Scott (and Depardieu) have painted a wonderful and absorbing picture. Well worth a watch! find out more...

A group of abducted Africans break free from their shackles aboard a Spanish slave ship, the Amistad, so setting the scene for a lengthy courtroom drama played out against a backdrop of 19th Century slavery. Matthew McConaughy is the noble young lawyer fighting for the slaves' freedom, while Anthony Hopkins is mesmerising as decrepit former President John Quincy Adams. Superb sets and an authentic atmosphere, and it's pretty gruesome at times too. Typically Spielberg-esque epic. find out more...

The Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl crossed the Pacific Ocean in a balsawood raft in 1947, together with five men, to prove that South Americans back in pre-Columbian times could have crossed the ocean and settled on Polynesian islands. After financing the trips with loans and donations, they set off on an epic 101-day-long trip across 8000 kilometers, a fascinating dramatisation of events.

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The lack of accuracy in the calculation of longitude had caused the death of countless sailors. In 1714 Parliament, worried by the loss of British ships and mindful to the military advantage of knowing where one was at sea, offered a £20,000 prize to anyone who could accurately measure longitude. This is the story of John Harrison, a brilliant carpenter, whose timepieces solved the problem that had long defeated the scientists, it was a hard fought victory and Harrison was forced to endure pover find out more...

The first half of an exhaustive and lush dramatisation of Napoleon Bonaparte, from ambitious Corsican soldier at the end of the 18th Century, to his imprisonment on the Island of St Helena by the British, less than twenty years later. If anything "Napoleon" is almost overly dramatic, but it's still an enthralling look at the great man, both publicly and privately, his military achievements, and the turning of a divided France into the most powerful nation in the Western world. find out more...

The second half of an exhaustive and lush dramatisation of Napoleon Bonaparte, from ambitious Corsican soldier at the end of the 18th Century, to his imprisonment on the Island of St Helena by the British, less than twenty years later. If anything "Napoleon" is almost overly dramatic, but it's still an enthralling look at the great man, both publicly and privately, his military achievements, and the turning of a divided France into the most powerful nation in the Western world. find out more...

A little known passage of British history - the fate of the black men who volunteered for the King's Men in the American War of Independence. At least the Empire didn't abandon them to the slaver George Washington and his thugs, instead dumping them on the desolate Novia Scotia coastline. But where there's life there's hope and enter the radical Thomas Clarkson's brother, a young naval officer named John, who, energised by their living conditions, collected the remnants and shipped them to Freet find out more...

Set at the beginning of the end for the native peoples of North America, we follow the first white settlers to the land of the new Eden, and in particular the relationship between Pocahontas, the beautiful headstrong daughter of an Indian chief and Captain John Smith, a new arrival to her rich homeland. This being a Terence Malick film the sheer visual beauty is almost overwhelming, the story itself never clear cut or finite, focusing as it does on the machinations of individuals and their causa find out more...