Drama

Catherine Breillat’s exploration of feminine tales continues with this subversive take on the story of Bluebeard.

Claire Denis revisits Africa, the setting for her celebrated first feature Chocolat, in this starkly haunting film that explores post-colonial Africa.

This year’s Best Foreign Film Oscar winner is a skillful blend of love story, police procedural crime thriller and legal drama.

A jawdroppingly subversive and efficient piece of work, as former documentarian Alberto Cavalcanti establishes the ultimate bucolic English village into which he drops a platoon of German paratroops who hope to lay the groundwork for the forthcoming invasion.

Cinema Paradiso director Giuseppe Tornatore returns with an epic valentine to his Sicilian heritage.

For her feature film debut as writer/director, actor Rachel Ward has created a dark, gothic drama about family conflict and taboo relationships.

Mother is the wholly refreshing corrective to the much abused film term – Hitchcockian. At once nail-bitingly tense and brimming with humanity, this terrific film comes fresh from sweeping the Asian Film Awards.

Jack Nicholson stars in Bob Rafelson’s seminal portrait of a disaffected and cynical America.

Stray Dog is arguably Kurosawa’s best 1940s film. Set in post-war Tokyo, the story of a cop obsessively hunting the criminal who stole his gun…

Hot on the heels of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo comes this sequel, which sees Lisbeth Salander and crusading journalist Mikael Blomkvist once again caught up in a brutal murder investigation.

Summer movies just don’t come any better than this classic slice of Tati.

When her grandson is kidnapped during the Tour de France, Madame Souza and her beloved pooch Bruno team up with the Bellville Sisters…

Visconti’s masterpiece The Leopard gets a breathtaking new digital restoration courtesy of Martin Scorcese and the Gucci foundation.

Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami’s film is a startlingly enigmatic work that begins with Juliette Binoche’s gallery owner in Tuscany attending a talk given by an English author about authenticity, fakes and copies in art.

Sorrentino’s life of notorious Italian PM Guido Andreotti is just as telling a picture of the modern state of Italy as The Leopard’s depiction of the lost world from which it emerged.

The Leopard’s Prince of Salina is the ultimate exponent of familial duty.

Arguably the greatest of all Eric Rohmer’s films, Ma nuit chez Maud, is set over a Christmas in Clermont-Ferrand, where his brilliant script is the basis for a profoundly insightful study of desire, doubt and self-delusion.

Director Stephen Frears brings to life Posy Simmonds’ comic strip, serialised in The Guardian from 2005-2007, starring Gemma Arterton as glamorous newspaper columnist Tamara Drewe.

2026 and the city of the future, where the rich enjoy a metropolitan life of luxury in contrast to the poor who work in hard labour beneath ground to keep the city moving. This is the setting for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, rightly regarded as one of the most influential films of all time.

Balthazar Blake is a master sorcerer in modern day Manhattan in need of an apprentice to help save the city from the forces of darkness.

Winner of multiple audience awards including the 2010 Sundance World Cinema Audience Award, Undertow continues Latin-America’s exploration of magical realism in modern cinema.

This beguiling biopic tells the true outsider story of primitive artistic genius Seraphine de Senlis and her heavenly inspired canvases.

The story of schizophrenic homeless musician Nathaniel Ayers, as told by the LA Times, illuminates both the man and the city.

Mental Health as a cinematic plot device is both used and explored in Scorcese’s homage to the 1950s pot boiler.

Deemed impossible to put onscreen because of its strong sexual content and language, James Jones’ novel emerged as a lavish, star-studded multi-oscar winning spectacle.

This year’s Julie & Julia sees Roberts taking on the true life role of writer Liz Gilbert in the screen adaptation of her bestselling memoir.

Based on the powerful novel by Daniel Woodrell, this is a stunningly well made film with one of the most powerfully written and acted heroines seen for a long time.

Produced by David Lynch, this could be seen to be a corrective to all those who thought mistakenly that Herzog had gone mainstream with Bad Lieutenant.

Tasked with pursuing a schoolboy suspected of supplying marijuana, a young policeman becomes troubled by the clash between duty and instinct.