A successful actress employs a woman in exchange for her flattery, only to find her employee is scheming her way to the top at her own expense. An intelligent, bitchy script complements the fine acting, making this one of Time Out's top 100 films of all time. Won Best Picture at 1950 Academy Awards.

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Nothing more can be said about this classic melodrama from the peak of the Hollywood studio-film era. Hardened cynic Bogart softens when he meets old flame Bergman who is now a refugee in neutral wartime Casablanca. Together they outwit the Germans... and of course there's that famous song. Watch this classic or some day you'll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow... find out more...

Phyllis Dietrichson is trapped in a loveless marriage to a man who inspires in her nothing but contempt, but rather than leave him Phyllis decides to kill him and collect on the insurance policy she's had set up with the help of her lover, and naive partner in crime, insurance salesman Walter Neff. The only flaws in their plan are the company's reluctance to pay out so much, the diligence of Neff's increasingly suspicious colleague, (and his 'little man'), and the exemplary ruthlessness of Ph find out more...

A psychotic American commander worried about the subversive effects of water fluoridisation on his "vital bodily fluids" starts off an attack on the Soviet Union. No-one can stop the fighters and no-one, as yet, knows about the failsafe Doomsday Machine. Brilliant black comedy. find out more...

 Frank Capra's classic bittersweet drama about George Bailey (James Stewart), a small town businessman who has long considered himself a failure. Things come to a head one Christmas Eve in 1946, when facing financial ruin and arrest he contemplates suicide. Standing on a bridge and ready to jump George's fate now rests in the hands of an Angel eager to earn his wings. It's a Wonderful Life is widely considered to be one of the finest films ever made, it is certainly one of the greatest f find out more...

Hitchcock's masterpiece. A news photographer is confined to his apartment by an injury and spends his days watching the neighbours. He comes to believe that he is witnessing the preparations for a murder. Based on the novel by Cornell Woolrich. Suspense, ambiguity and voyuerism; total brilliance! 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...

Just simply the best musical ever made. Witty, inventive, brilliant, wonderful and slightly surreal; it manages to parody Hollywood without ever quite descending into self-parody, always retaining its dignity (always dignity...) A must-watch every few years or so.

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All time classic wonderfully filmed by Wilder, featuring great performances from Holden, as a bankrupt screenwriter seeking refuge, and Swanson, a faded star in a crumbling mansion, who pins her hopeless hopes of a comeback on the writer. Deliriously dark and nightmarish masterpiece. find out more...

Lemmon is an ambitious young corporate executive who finds promotion comes his way most easily by lending out his flat for his superiors to pursue their extra-marital affaires. It all gets too much when a jilted Maclaine attempts suicide in his flat and he has to take the blame. A comedy classic. Won Best Picture at 1960 Academy Awards.

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