The story of the discovery of the AIDS virus, from the early days in 1978, when San Francisco gays began dying from unknown causes, to the identification of the HIV virus. Bigots spoke of a gay plague, scientists fought for the kudos of being first to identify the cause, and disagreements beset San Francisco's gays over the closure of the bathhouses. The film, quite rightly, deals with these issues. find out more...

Set during the cultural revolution in China we follow two urbane young men after they are dismissed to a remote, but beautiful, mountainous corner of the country to re-learn the basic tenets of Chairman Mao's communist ideology. At first depressed by their predicament, the two lads soon perk up when they come across a hidden selection of western literature, a find they eagerly share with the curious and beguiling local seamstress. They also survive by telling stories, making music and pulling te find out more...

Two soldiers return from Vietnam, one mentally scarred, the other physically. We flashback to their childhood and the fascination the slightly crazy one has with flying. So maybe after the horror of war it's a more logical decision to be a bird! A brilliant film about disillusionment, growing up and existential madness. find out more...

Ron Kovic was a green young patriot scarred, both mentally and physically, by the war in 'Nam. On his return he finds himself and his fellow paraplegics an unwanted embarrassment and after wasting himself in Mexico he emerges as a voice for the disaffected. Another powerful film from Oliver Stone. find out more...

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Bobby Sands was the IRA member who led the 1981 Long Kesh hunger strike as part of a campaign to achieve the status of political prisoners and not that of criminals. The first section of film deals with daily prison life, the 'dirty' protest and the violence, the second is a long discussion on the meaning of life with a sympathetic priest and the third depicts the last weeks and death of a man voluntarily dying of starvation. find out more...

Streep and MacLaine give riveting portrayals as the celebrity mother and daughter, who, more alike than they think, battle against both each other and the alcohol and drug induced haze of Hollywood. Supposedly based on the true-life traumas of actress Carrie Fisher and her mum Debbie Reynolds and adapted from Fisher's semi-autobiographical novel. 9 out of 9. find out more...

A wonderful portrait of Ian Dury - he the polio crippled lyricist and front man for punk icons The Blockheads and a self-pitying, class conscious, angry, supremely talented loud mouth - struggling to relate to his pre-teen son and familial duties.
'Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll' is a top notch drama about a real life person, warts, foul language and all, and you neither need to love his music, punk generally nor, indeed, any form of music to appreciate this gem of a film. find out more...

A film dominated by one performance, Forest Whitaker's turn as the infamous dictator Idi Amin. When young Scotsman Nicholas Garrigan becomes his personal physician few of us doubt that it will inevitably end in tears, but Amin, as is so often the way with monsters, has considerable charm to go with his paranoid genocidal tendencies and the naïve Garrigan is seduced. However Garrigan's role is ambiguous; is he just dumb or is he willingly looking the other way? The film also reverses the typical find out more...