THE MUST-SEE ANIME SERIES OF 2009. Light Yagami is an ace student with great prospects, who's bored out of his mind. One day he finds the Death Note: a notebook from the realm of the Death Gods, with the power to kill people in any way he desires. With the Death Note in hand, Light decides to create his perfect world, without crime or criminals. However, when criminals start dropping dead one by one, the authorites send the legendary detective L to track down the killer, and a battle of wits, find out more...

Wenders's sporting metaphor works superbly in this adaptation of Peter Handke's novel. Joseph Bloch is the eponymous goalie, a man who once let a penalty through, and now exists in a state of frustration, alienation and suffering. Wim's disjointed style and unarguable cinematic panache shine.

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The best film in the history of comic British cinema. A black tale of sex, adultery, murder and social class told with low key irony. Alec Guinness plays all the leading roles, and the delightfully witty and sardonic script is ideal for him. A landmark of British film. find out more...

Bulcsu is one of a team of oddball ticket inspectors on Budapest's labyrinth underground system and he literally sleeps, drinks and eats in this world, only when he meets a girl in a mouse's uniform is he offered some form of escape from this alienated existence. Much of the dark charm of 'Kontroll' is the craziness not only of the inspectors but their encounters with the heterogenous group of weirdos whose tickets they inspect. In the background a serial killer is pushing people onto the track find out more...

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Lang's first sound film, and perhaps his most imaginative. The plot concerns the police search for a Berlin child-molester. The underworld is forced to look amongst its own for the perpetrator. Lang draws fascinating parallels between police and criminals in this radical masterpiece. find out more...

Witty, sickening, fast and above all, controversial. Benoit is a killer, but he does it with style and a smile. Filmed as a documentary, with the crew following Ben on his spree this is at times some of the cleverest spoof material ever filmed. Remarkable and original, but not to everyone's taste. find out more...

Once again the Koreans show us how to make a top-notch thriller. In the mid-eighties and early nineties a series of brutal sex murders took place in Korea's Gyeonggi Province. Two local cops and a special detective from Seoul are charged with hunting down the killer, but with few clues and even fewer witnesses all they have to show for their hard work is mounting frustration and rancour. Set against the political backdrop of a government more concerned with suppression than investigation, Memori find out more...

Do you really need to be told about this film? The Bates' Motel, the shower sequence and, of course, Mother! THE Hitchcock movie! find out more...

A masterful adaptation of David Peace's Ellroy-esque noir trilogy. In '1974', the first chapter, a rookie journalist looks to solve the increasingly vexing case of a serial killer on the loose. A bleak vision of corruption in an emphatically isolated 'North', which raises the game for levels of darkness in TV drama. Andrew Garfield gives a captivating performance as the idealistic journalist in way over his head. Highly recommended. find out more...