Polanski has a go at the film noir detective thriller, very bleak, very twisted and very menacing it is to. Nicholson plays a private-eye in pre-war LA who is hired to pursue an adultery case, but finds himself embroiled in a complicated murder investigation. find out more...

The object of this massive tribute died as he had always lived, without wealth, without property, without official title or office. Mahatma Gandhi was not the commander of armies, nor the ruler of vast lands, he could not boast any scientific achievement or artistic gift, yet men, governments, dignitaries from all over the world, have joined hands today to pay homage to the little brown man in the loin cloth who led his country to freedom. This quote is from his funeral, one of the greatest s find out more...

'High Noon' works on many levels; the second-to-none screenplay, the subtle direction, the clock, Gary Cooper's Oscar-winning performance... It's about a small town sheriff who must basically stand alone to defend the people from a wild gang of outlaws, who have just been let out of jail and will arrive on the noon train. Although he does not have to, and the town does not deserve saving, Cooper decides that he will do the job that he was hired to do. A classic amongst Westerns, it strips the ge find out more...

Ulysses, Delmar and Pete have just escaped a chain gang and are high tailing it across the country to recover a fortune in hidden treasure. There is only one flaw in this otherwise faultless plan......they're clueless. 'O Brother Where Art Thou' is loosely based on Homer's Odyssey (when I say loose I mean like the jumper that you don't know whether to wear, or peg out as a tent) and is a rip-roaring comedy adventure, with all the quirky charm that you expect from the Coen brothers. The sound tra find out more...

Ran, Kurosawa's last great epic, is a Jidaigeki (Japanese period drama) depicting the fall of Hidetora Ichimonj, an ageing Sengoku-era warlord who abdicates as ruler in favor of his three sons. His kingdom slowly disintegrates as the sons struggle for power, murdering rivals and laying waste to the land, and Hidetora goes insane after watching his retainers slaughtered in an epic massacre, the centrepiece of the film. As the kingdom crumbles and rival warlords move in for the kill, the Ichimonji find out more...

Made almost contemporaneously with the 1930s setting, this authentically portrays the poverty and repression of the migrant 'Okies', evicted from their dustbowl farms and treated like slaves in California. Adapted from Steinbeck's book, often called 'THE Great American Novel' and with outstanding performances coming from Henry Fonda (Tom Joad) and John Carradine (John Casey) a preacher with a fondess for vice, but a true heart... fantastic. find out more...

One of the finest of the genre, this classic western follows two men whose initial contempt for each other's methods, one a hard man rancher, the other a naively honest lawyer, develops into respect when faced with the the town's local hoodlum. Tense, absorbing and not without wit. Superb. find out more...

Laughton's only stab at directing, with Mitchum giving a stunning performance as the psychopathic preacher who, whilst in jail for a minor offence, hatches a devious plan to get his hands on the loot stashed by his condemned cell-mate. Set in '30s rural America, the film polarises into a struggle between good and evil for the souls of innocent children. Laughton's deliberately old-fashioned direction throws up a startling array of images: an amalgam of Mark Twain-like exteriors (idyllic riversid find out more...

'Gold does funny things to a man's soul'. That's the issue tackled by this seminal movie about the pursuit of money and its effect on the brotherhood of man. Bogart plays the down-and-out Dobbs who hooks up with a fellow economic refugee. They both get to work on a building site, working for a pay packet that never materialises, but it's not until they meet up with an old prospector (Walter Huston) that they start down a tortuous path of greed and paranoia that will change their lives forever. ' find out more...