Los Angeles, 1928; Saturday morning in a working-class suburb, Christine Collins says goodbye to her son Walter and leaves for work. When she comes home she discovers he has vanished. A fruitless search ensues, and months later, a boy claiming to be her nine-year-old lad is returned. Dazed by the swirl of police, reporters and her conflicting emotions, Christine allows him to stay overnight, but in her heart she knows he is not Walter. As Christine pushes the authorities to keep looking, she swi find out more...

Set during the Great Depression and based on the true story of James J Braddock, Cinderella Man is the story of an ex-prize-fighter (Russell Crowe) who makes a last-chance bid to return to the ring in order to help his impoverished family. With no one thinking he has a chance, and with nothing to lose, Braddock begins an amazing comeback. A heartwarming, well acted film with enough blood and guts to give balance to the slightly sentimentalised script. Highly enjoyable. find out more...

A landmark in the history of the cinema; it was ranked Number 1 in the American Film Institute's 100 greatest films of all time in two polls (1998 and 2007) of more than 1,500 film industry movers and shakers and again by UK directors in a BFI poll. "Citizen Kane" narrates the rise and fall of a newspaper tycoon driven by a childhood obssession and is loosely based round the life of William Randolph Hurst, who tried to have it banned, but incorporates elements from the lives of other fat cats il 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...

 Frank Capra's classic bittersweet drama about George Bailey (James Stewart), a small town businessman who has long considered himself a failure. Things come to a head one Christmas Eve in 1946, when facing financial ruin and arrest he contemplates suicide. Standing on a bridge and ready to jump George's fate now rests in the hands of an Angel eager to earn his wings. It's a Wonderful Life is widely considered to be one of the finest films ever made, it is certainly one of the greatest f find out more...

The definitive gangster-epic; violent? Yes, but never mindless. The Jewish Mafia's coming of age on the Lower East Side in 1923, their rise to wealth during Prohibition, and their fall in 1933, provide the background to a story of friendship and betrayal, love and death. Leone's masterful cinematography evokes both the harshness of the vice-ridden decades before and after Prohibition, but also the philosophy behind it. Splendid performances by De Niro and Woods and a stupendous score by Ennio Mo find out more...

Born in New Orleans, abandoned and adopted on the day of the end of WWI, Benjamin Button is a medical mystery. Entering life as a physically old man, over the course of his remarkable existence he rejuvenates to infancy. He has a unique, poignant, but also joyous, perspective on the world around him. Very loosely adapted from F Scott Fitzgerald's excellent short story of the same title, 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' is a beautifully visualised and whimsical tale that drifts through the e 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...

Much vaunted tale of mens' greed; sacrificing family, friends and principles to gain profit in the early years of the 20th Century. Danny Day Lewis is superb, as always, as the sinister Daniel Plainview. find out more...