'Julie and Julia' tells the story of 2 women; Julia Childs, who wrote 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking' and 'My Life in France', the latter of which is adapted for one half of this film, and Julie Powell, a present day New Yorker who, to escape the tedium of her own life, decided to cook her way through Julia's 524 recipes and writes a blog about doing so. The parallels and the differences between their two lives are highlighted. In the more interesting of the 2 stories Meryl Streep contin find out more...

The film tells the story of the identical twin gangsters Reggie and Ronnie Kray, two of the most notorious criminals in British history, and their organised crime empire in the East End of London during the 1960s.

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Winner of an Oscar for "Best Documentary", this film (beautifully shot in black and white) recaptures the life and music of the late, great jazz trumpeter Chet Baker. The founder of the Californian school of "Cool Jazz" this film is in itself remarkably cool and stylish. find out more...

A mesmerising dramatisation of one of the kings, Ray Charles. Unsurprisingly the soundtrack is pure bliss, but it is Jamie Foxx in the title role that pulls everything together, an hypnotic performance of a music legend, through all his highs and lows, and one of those increasingly rare examples of a leading actor Oscar that actually makes sense. find out more...

The film is based on the life of John Reed, the Communist, journalist, and writer who chronicled the Russian Revolution in his book Ten Days that Shook the World. The film works both as a history of the American left and as an epic romance, between Reed and Louise Bryant, an important feminist and radical journalist in her own right. After involvement with labour and political disputes in the US, they go to Russia in time for the 1917 October Revolution and, inspired, return to the US, hoping to find out more...

Howard Hughes was an insatiable man, a billionaire whose success within Hollywood and obsession with aviation made him more famous than many of the movie stars his studio employed. This lush dramatisation of Hughes concentrates on the man, as a rebel within the ordered system of big business, charming, glamorous, decadent and ruthlessly focused. We witness the beginning of his fall from grace and decent into reclusive paranoia, but this is more an epic of Hughes glory years and, though lacking t find out more...

It's all sweetness and light in this moving music biopic classic of Glen Miller's impressive rise to fame with June Allyson playing his childhood sweetheart and James Stewart outstanding as the man himself. It's got all the great arrangements from 'Pensylvania 6-500' to 'Moonlight Serenade', all scored by Henry Mancini in homage to Miller's style, plus Louis Armstrong makes an appearance playing 'Basin Street Blues' and Frances Langford does 'Chattanooga Choo-Choo'. find out more...

A true-life drama, centering on British explorer Col. Percival Fawcett, who disappeared while searching for a mysterious city in the Amazon in the 1920s. 

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A journalist in search of a story meets a mentally ill musician, Nathaniel Ayers, on the streets of LA and, through a succession of stories, attempts to better his and all the homeless community's lot. This isn't just a sincere movie about community politics and the need to help the less fortunate, it's a vibrant telling of the basic insanity of city life adapted from the memoirs of LA Times columnist Steve Lopez. find out more...

Before Iraq, before the Bush Administration, before the Dixie Chicks, Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam and before Sir Bob and Bono.... there was John Lennon, the celebrated musical artist who used his fame and fortune to protest against the Vietnam War and advocate for world peace. Filmmakers David Leaf and John Scheinfield trace Lennon's metamorphosis from loveable mop-top to anti-war activist to inspirational icon as they reveal the true story of how and why the US tried to silence him. There are find out more...