Set during the 1920s in West Virginia, Matewan is a small mining town whose workers have responded with a strike to the coal company's announcement of a wage cut. The bosses reply to this act of defiance but bringing black and Italian workers to take over their jobs. A lone stranger (a Union organiser) arrives in town to unite the locals against the tooled-up heavies and, as the tension escalates, a violent end to the standoff seems inevitable. Sayles' powerful gripping movie never compromises i find out more...

It's 1929 on America's East coast. In an unnamed city, Leo and his right hand man Tom run the show unchallenged, but their friendship is threatened when they fall for the same girl and a bloody struggle for power erupts among their fellow gangsters. Classy, witty, violent and utterly brilliant. 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...

In 1930s North China, a young girl is given to a 50-year-old leper in exchange for a mule, but as she's carried to him through the wilderness she is saved from bandits by a handsome young peasant. Later the leper mysteriously dies and the peasant returns and the pair settle down to make the traditional red sorghum wine. The film shifts from fable to realism when Japanese troops invade the area, destroying the fields with forced labour from the vineyard until the workers revolt against them. find out more...

Admirably sumptuous film version of Gunter Grass's epic surreal novel. Depicting German history through the eyes of three year old Oskar who decides, through sheer will-power, never to grow up. Bizarre, amusing and frequently grotesque this is deservedly acclaimed as a milestone in modern cinema. 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...

Al Capone and the Chicago gangsters versus Elliot Ness and the incorruptable men of his special task force, all set against a brilliantly re-created period background. Very much a traditional gangster movie, good guys are very good and the bad guys, especialy De Niro as Capone, are very bad. find out more...

Marcel Proust (1871-1922) is on his deathbed; looking at photographs brings memories of his childhood, his youth, his lovers and the way the Great War put an end to a stratum of society. His memories are in no particular order, they move back and forth in time. Marcel at various ages interacts with Odette, with the beautiful Gilberte and her doomed husband, with the pleasure seeking Baron de Charlus, with Marcel's lover Albertine, and with others; present also in memory are Marcel's beloved moth find out more...

Ken Russell, an over-the-top director, takes a bash at DH Lawrence, an over-the-top author. The two perfectely compliment each other in this fine screen version. find out more...