20th Century Flicks, Bristol

A mesmerizing deconstruction of the man, his life, his loves, his humanity and their influence on a painter who stands not only as a genius but as the greatest artist of the twentieth century. Covering Picasso's early childhood in Spain towards the end of the nineteenth century up to his death in the South of France in the 1970's this is the definitive film biography of the great man. find out more...

PIERREPOINT (2005)

Certification15 Our Rating

The tale of Albert Pierrepoint, Britain's last official executioner, a man who personally dispatched 608 men and women, including various Nazi war criminals, Timothy Evans and Ruth Ellis. Timothy Spall superbly pulls off how this rather ordinary, but distinctly odd, bloke coped emotionally and professionally with his job. An awesome period piece and a superb look into a very strange occupation. A must for anyone who liked Vera Drake. find out more...

RED ANGEL (1966)

Certification15 Our Rating

Set in the Sino-Japanese war, Yasuzo Masumura's black-and-white anti-war film tells of an army nurse who sexually services an amputee and falls in love with a drug-addicted surgeon. This can't be recommended to the squeamish, but neither can its nuanced eroticism nor its passionate, unpredictable moral focus, be easily shaken off. Comparable with Altman's MASH, it suggests a less comic treatment of the same theme, how to preserve one's humanity in impossible circumstances, but its ethics are con find out more...

SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE (1972)

Certification18 Our Rating

The film version of Kurt Vonnegut Jr's famous anti-war sci-fi novel. Slipping back and forth along his own life line a suburban optometrist experiences the fire bombing of Dresden and captivity on the planet Trafalmardore. A powerful and seemingly unfilmable book that turned out to be a great movie. find out more...

SOLDAAT VAN ORANJE (1977)

Certification15 Our Rating

Set during WW2 and loosely based on war hero Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema's memoir, we follow the varying fortunes of a group of friends under Nazi occupation and the ultimately disastrous mission by the two of them who join the Dutch resistance. Soldier of Orange is an early Paul Verhoeven film, and ranks as one of his best, tense, gripping but also intimate and intelligent. find out more...

SONG FOR A RAGGY BOY (2004)

Certification15 Our Rating

William Franklin is appointed as a teacher at St Jude's Reformatory School in 1939 and it soon becomes apparent how differently he approaches his work in comparison to the Catholic brothers who make up the rest of the staff, a group of embittered and institutionalised men who do little more than abuse and torment their young pupils. Franklin is increasingly horrified by what he witnesses and becomes determined that he will make a positive difference to the forgotten children in his charge. Song find out more...

SUNSHINE (HUNGARIAN EPIC) (2000)

Certification15 Our Rating

An epic family drama spanning three generations of a Jewish family, who moved from a rural village to the city, became wealthy, respected, bourgeois and/or radicalised and Hungarianised, set against a backdrop of the final days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, World War 1, the rise of fascism, the Holocaust and the Communist era. A tour-de-force performance by Ralph Fiennes in various reincarnations, especially as the character who won a fencing gold medal for Hungary in the 1936 Olympics, in th find out more...

TEA WITH MUSSOLINI (1999)

CertificationPG Our Rating

Nostalgic WW2 drama from Franco Zeffirelli, detailing the pretensions, rivalries and snobberies of a group of clueless ex-pats in Tuscany. Seen through the eyes of illegitimate Luca, fostered by the so-called Florentine "scorpione", the cast of luvvies ham it up magnificently as the colony of politically inert Brits, taking ritualistic tea in the afternoons, and mostly oblivious to the rise of fascism. A gently entertaining, old-fashioned piece of whimsy. find out more...

TESTIMONY (1988)

CertificationE Our Rating

An award-winning and arty biopic, adapted from his memoirs, of the great composer Dmitri Shostakovich, focusing on the period between the 30s and 60s and his deeply ambivalent relationship with Stalin. Worthy and with a resonant cinematic understanding of Shostakovich's opuses. find out more...

THE AVIATOR (2004)

Certification12 Our Rating

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...