An all time classic 60s movie glamourising the real life story of the Barrow gang who terrorised the American South in the early 30s. 'Reclaiming the American gangster movie, after it had been stolen by the Nouvelle Vague, Penn's film was so successful (and so imitated) that it inevitably met with some grudging devaluation. But it's still great, half comic fairytale, half brutal fact, it reflects the essential ambiguity of its heroes by treading a no man's land suspended between reality and fant find out more...

The first and best of the Italian "Mexi-Westerns", on a par with Leone's and with a haunting soundtrack. An American mercenary teams up with a bandit on the fringes of the revolutionaries in order to assinate their leader. A violent political film from the same pen as The Battle Of Algiers. find out more...

Somewhat derisively known as 'Lust In The Dust' this film is shot in beautiful scenery and tells the story of two brothers, Cain and Abel, fighting over a steamy half-breed sexpot while their father broods over his crumbling empire. The climatic shoot-out has an absurdist magnificance that defies criticism. find out more...

The 1960s and tradition is teetering on the edge, a group of minor public school boys can't hack it any more and rebellion brews. Discovering a cache of automatic weapons, they revolt bloodily against the establishment around them, from the rooftop they engage in a firefight with the teachers and other students, who are armed with the Army Cadet training rifles. A classic of the English cinema... rise up all teens. find out more...

We follow the everyday travails of a group of WW2 French resistance fighters in Marseille, including their engineer leader and a middle-aged woman who sets up anti-German attacks without telling her husband or daughter, as they do battle against the occupying Nazis, collaborators and traitors in their own camp. This tense and atmospheric classic, based partly on Joseph Kessel's novel and partly on Melville's own experiences as a resistance fighter who later escaped France to join the Free French find out more...

Ford's revered Western, with the superbly haunted Fonda as Wyatt Earp, forced to put on his sheriff's badge one last time. Doc Halliday and the Clanton boys want to take over Tombstone, and only Earp can prevent them. An authentically constructed movie with a melancholy atmosphere, and the famous OK Corral shootout as its climax. find out more...

Running from the law after a bank heist in Mexico, Dad Longworth finds an opportunity to nick the stolen gold and leave his partner Rio to be caught. Years later, Rio escapes from prison and hunts down Dad, now a respectable sheriff in California and living in fear of Rio's return. find out more...

An archetypal classic Western, since remade countless times, with Alan Ladd superb as the world-weary gunslinger who rides into town and finds himself as the 'good guy' protecting the innocent from powerful malevolent forces. In this case the innocent are squatters determined to fight for their rights against a rancher and his gunmen; in one way this is the evolution of the west from lawlessness to settlement, in another the battle between big and small business. For Shane the options are clear, find out more...

Murakami is a young detective who loses his gun to a pickpocket, but, before he can get it back, the weapon is sold to a gangster and, before long, a woman has been robbed and shot. In desperation Murakami turns to his wily older partner, Sato, and, together, the two set out across the humid and seamy streets of Tokyo to track down the gun before more people die. Stray Dogs is one of Kurosawa's earlier works and is a highly stylish film, a gritty slice of noir from somewhere other than the North find out more...

Sinatra yet again shows that he was no mere crooner as he plays the psychopathic gunman who, with colleagues, seizes a suburban house, taking the inmates hostage, as he prepares to assassinate the president of the USA. find out more...