Set in the heady days of Vaudeville London, this film (from the director of Went The Day Well? and the underrated horror Dead of Night) follows the career of George Leybourne (alias Champagne Charlie). The atmosphere of gaslit streets and off-stage politics has a brooding realism, while vaudeville veteran Stanley Holloway provides excellent support as The Great Vance. Very theatrical and more luvvies than you can shake a chimney sweeps brush at. find out more...

The BFI continues its successful strand of Archive Television releases with Ken Russell's classic documentary Elgar, which was first shown in 1962 as the 100th programme in the BBC's Monitor series. This partly dramatised account of the life of composer Sir Edward Elgar includes footage of Elgar at the Three Choirs Festival and a recording of the opening of Abbey Road Studios when 'Land Of Hope And Glory' was played. find out more...

By the time the first public performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 (Eroica) took place in Vienna in 1805, a privileged few had already heard the work at a private play-through at the Lobkowitz Palace. Nick Dear's award-winning period drama, starring Ian Hart as Beethoven, brings to intense life the momentous event that prompted Haydn to remark 'everything is different from today'. find out more...

The title refers to the legatee of Ludwig Van's worldly goods, and the film is a kind of musical detective story that explores the life and loves of Beethoven, who may have been the 'immortal beloved'. Exhilarating musical set-pieces from the Violin Concerto and the Eroica, amongst others, score persuasive points for classical music. find out more...

A biopic expressed by a series of tableaux interpreting Mahler's music with Powell suitably impressive as the composer and Georgina Hale excellent as his wife - on its most serious level the film is about her stifled creativity. Despite the low budget Russell has produced his best work in a long time. find out more...

A largely fictional biopic depicting the solitary and star-crossed life of Toulouse Lautrec. We must all suffer for our art! The first half-hour is full of energy and verve as we trawl through the colourful Montmartre of Paris in the 1890's. find out more...

Jane Campion's outstanding and acclaimed dramatic masterpiece. Hunter turns in an incredible performance as the mute Ada, sold into a marriage with Neill. Her piano is her voice and she must earn it back from Baines, key by key, in a moving emotional bargain. Stunning - the best film of the year. find out more...

Based on a series of documented accounts that took place in the small Wisconsin town of Black River Falls in the late 1890's this is a surreal and dark dramatisation involving murder, the supernatural and, unsurprisingly, insanity and paranoia. Wisconsin Death Trip stunningly evokes a community gone mad, consumed by fear and teetering on the edge of utter implosion; filmed in monochrome this is a hauntingly beautiful rendition of hell on earth. find out more...