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...

Imagine a climax to the cold war after all the buttons were pressed. Only Australia and the American submarine Sawfish seem to have escaped the subsequent apocalypse, but as the wave of fallout drifts ever closer all know that their fate is sealed. On The Beach is an intriguing hypotheses based on a "what would you do with the time left to you" premise. Rather melodramatic, and, perhaps, naive by the standards of today's cinema, but a brave and thoughtful film for its time. find out more...

Two astronauts land on a planet populated by apes, but these chimps are no chumps and the men find themselves imprisoned and at the mercy of their furry captors. The enigma of the planet's history, juggled through Heston's humiliating experience of being studied as an interesting laboratory specimen by his ape captors, right down to his final startling rediscovery of civilisation, is quite beautifully sustained. One interesting fact is that the aristocratic orangutan Dr. Zaius was originally to find out more...

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs might be Japanese filmmaker Mikio Naruse's finest hour, a delicate, devastating study of a woman, Keiko, played heartbreakingly by Hideko Takamine, who works as a bar hostess in Tokyo's very modern post-war Ginza district. Sly, resourceful, but trapped, Keiko comes to embody the conflicts and struggles of a woman trying to establish her independence in a male-dominated society. A profoundly moving masterpiece. find out more...