A superb portrait of Liverpudlian working class life in the 1940s and 50s. The family gather to recall their domineering father through a brilliantly realised almost episodic series of reminiscences cleverly undercut with period music. Ambitious, elegant and profoundly moving, highly rated by critics and won FIPRESCI, the International Federation of Film Critics Prize, Cannes 1988. find out more...

The story of a French actress and a Japanese man's brief affair in Hiroshima, stirring up painful memories for them both, for her wartime 'collaboration' and, for him, the bomb which quite literally destroyed everything he had known. Resnais's film is now seen as revolutionary for its time an a must for film study courses. Sadly haunting. find out more...

This is a striking stylised dramatisation of the young Beat Generation icon Allen Ginsberg, focusing particularly on the infamous 1957 obscenity trial of his seminal work ‘Howl’ during the tail end of McCarthyism. While the performances from all involved are excellent and the story an intriguing one it is the visual cool of this film that lingers longest. find out more...

Forget that this is a Scorsese movie, 'cos there's not a gangster or a grifter in sight. Stunningly shot, this is the visually breathtaking account of the early life of the 14th Dalai Lama, starting with his discovery by Buddhist monks in the northern Tibet of 1935. Meticulously detailed but well-paced, it's a rich, riveting movie with a powerfully haunting soundtrack from Philip Glass. find out more...

From Julian Schnabel,director of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Before Night Falls and Basquiat, comes 'Miral': the story of four women whose lives intertwine in their search for justice, hope and reconciliation. The story begins in war-torn Jerusalem in 1948 when Hind opens an orphanage for refugee children. One of the children is seventeen year old Miral, who gets assigned to teach at a refugee camp where she falls for a political activist. Better received by audiences than critics, Miral find out more...

Christy Brown was an Irish cerebal palsy victim who overcame his severe handicap to become a talented painter and author with just the use of his left foot. Daniel Day Lewis is totally and utterly convincing as Brown - using method acting he became Brown and his thoroughness makes the film a great one. find out more...

Internationally feted on release, this is the remarkable true story of a young Sardinian boy, so dominated by his father that he grew up not only an illiterate shepherd, ignorant of the outside world, but, in his long sojourn alone guarding the sheep, lost the power of speech. He returned from national service a wiser man able to liberate himself from his father's tyranny. Brilliant.

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David Hare's brilliant screenplay is both a comment on the desperate results of a casual sexual encounter, the passion of a moment snatched in war-time France - the intensity of which can never be matched again, and a commentary on the post war decline of Britian. A brilliant movie! find out more...

The film version of Kurt Vonnegut Jr's famous anti-war sci-fi novel. Slipping back and forth along his own life line a suburban optometrist experiences the fire bombing of Dresden and captivity on the planet Trafalmardore. A powerful and seemingly unfilmable book that turned out to be a great movie. find out more...

Gyorgy Palfi's grotesque tale of three generations of men, including an obese speed eater, an embalmer of gigantic cats, and a man who shoots fire out of his penis. find out more...