Set during the cultural revolution in China we follow two urbane young men after they are dismissed to a remote, but beautiful, mountainous corner of the country to re-learn the basic tenets of Chairman Mao's communist ideology. At first depressed by their predicament, the two lads soon perk up when they come across a hidden selection of western literature, a find they eagerly share with the curious and beguiling local seamstress. They also survive by telling stories, making music and pulling te find out more...

Chronicles the life and times of Nucky Thompson, the undisputed ruler of Atlantic City, who was equal parts politician and gangster.
High production values and a fine ensemble cast: HBO knows how to do TV.

find out more...

Carandiru was Brazil's largest prison, a grim enclosure that worked as a brutal self-regulating microcosm of the world outside it. The film is seen thru' the eyes of a doctor who gets to know the prisoners, drug dealers, rapists, murderers, remandees et al, and we get to know some of them thru' flashbacks to their pre-prison life. This is the story of how these men's time shuddered to a halt when riot police entered the compound in October 1992 and shot dead 111 unarmed prisoners. From the direc find out more...

Bobby Sands was the IRA member who led the 1981 Long Kesh hunger strike as part of a campaign to achieve the status of political prisoners and not that of criminals. The first section of film deals with daily prison life, the 'dirty' protest and the violence, the second is a long discussion on the meaning of life with a sympathetic priest and the third depicts the last weeks and death of a man voluntarily dying of starvation. find out more...

Streep and MacLaine give riveting portrayals as the celebrity mother and daughter, who, more alike than they think, battle against both each other and the alcohol and drug induced haze of Hollywood. Supposedly based on the true-life traumas of actress Carrie Fisher and her mum Debbie Reynolds and adapted from Fisher's semi-autobiographical novel. 9 out of 9. find out more...

On December 7 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby was the French editor-in-chief of fashion magazine Elle. Three weeks later, after a massive stroke, Bauby awakes from a coma, an active mind trapped inside a dead body, his only contact and communication with the world the ability to blink his left eyelid. Adapted from Bauby's memoirs, "The Diving Bell And The Butterfly" is an extraordinary flight of the imagination rooted firmly in the realities of the narrator's new world. Beautifully filmed you are ove find out more...

After the 11th September 2001 the War Against Terror is preparing to move on to Iraq. The UN have sent in the weapons inspectors to find if Saddam has indeed Weapons of Mass Destruction and the political machines in both the UK and US are working to present the strongest possible case for war in the face of (in the UK) very vocal opposition from the public. With the dossiers released and the threat established the "need for war" is set and, on the 19th March 2003, th find out more...

A highly intelligent and thoughtful dramatisation of Francois Mitterrand's last years, not merely as a politician but as an old man bedeviled by illness and haunted by promises broken or unfulfilled. An idealistic young journalist hired as his diarist attempts to coax truths from the great leader, but finds that as the inevitability of death approaches his subject is less concerned with his own achievements and more with his own mortality. Witty, touching, understated and utterly compelling, 'Th find out more...

It's the early 50s in Argentina and two middle class medical students decide to make a journey across their largely unknown continent. While on this eight month travel one of the men begins his own journey from privileged ignorance to iconic revolutionary, the birth of Che Guevara has begun. The Motorcycle Diaries is a breathtakingly beautiful film, beginning as a whimsical, idiosyncratic and often humorous adventure and gradually expanding into a powerful and deeply moving drama. find out more...

Vera Drake, is one of the kindest, most selfless individuals any right thinking person could hope to meet, the mother of two grown up children, the wife of a loving husband, she works as a cleaner and is the epitome of a warm hearted decency. Vera is not just devoted to her family however, in the little spare time available to her she helps young girls terminate unwanted pregnancies and, though she takes no payment, this is 1950s Britain and the consequences for her actions, should she be discov find out more...