1560, Peru. In a beautiful poetic opening scene the conquistadors cross an Andes pass, situated between the peaks and the valleys, between conquered land and unexplored forests, between 'heaven' and 'earth', shrouded in mists, they make their way down a narrow path. Aguirre's meglomania grows as around him his comrades mutiny and die in his search for the lost city of El Dorado. Herzog's best film, an unforgetable tour de force. Made before the director himself gave in to meglomania on a later t find out more...

The greatest movie ever made? A soldier is sent into the Heart of Darkness to retrieve a commander gone AWOL in an insane reality of tin-pot power, paranoia and inglorious killing. The horror of war is stripped naked in a surreal twilight world. The crew nearly went mad making it, Martin Sheen suffered a heart attack and Coppola flew so far beyond budget that the word 'bankrupt' was nearly redefined. See "Heart of Darkness"... find out more...

The definitive 'Apocalypse Now' (as if the original wasn't pretty definitive) this has nearly an hour of extra footage fleshing out the surreal journey of our central protagonists and, though it brings the film to a whisker short of three and a half hours, much of it explains what happens to the eclectic characters we meet. The cut version of 'Apocalypse Now' stands as one of the most awesome films of modern cinema, anyone who has seen it will inevitably see it again, it's just that now you have find out more...

One of the best suspense thrillers ever made - often imitated and rarely bettered. It's of the intrepid city adventurers up against in-bred redneck natives mould and the rednecks have the natural advantage, being both horribly cruel and at home in the woods. For anyone who enjoyed "Southern Comfort". find out more...

Herzog's epic movie about a man's obsessive attempt to bring opera to the Indians living deep in the Peruvian jungle. To do this he must take a steamship/tub way up the Amazon river system, a monumental task, at one point involving transporting it over a not unconsiderable hill, with the help of a system of pulleys and massed Indian labour. A surreal comment on madness, power and vision. There is also a documentary, Burden of Dreams, about the notoriously fraught making of the film. find out more...