6.5

Bright Young Things

2003, UK

• Actors: Simon McBurney, Michael Sheen, Emily Mortimer, James McAvoy, Stephen Campbell Moore, Stockard Channing, Adrian Scarborough, Jim Carter, Fenella Woolgar, Dan Aykroyd, Julia McKenzie, Bruno Lastra, David Tennant, Jim Broadbent, John Franklyn-Robbins, Simon Callow, Guy Henry, Alex Barclay, Lisa Dillon, Lisa Jackson, Neville Phillips, Imelda Staunton, Bill Paterson, Nigel Planer, Peter O'Toole, Stephen Fry, James Jackson Ritchie, Arturo Venegas, Harriet Walter, Angela Thorne
• Genre: Comedy, Drama, War
• Director(s): Stephen Fry
• Available languages:
  • English English.

A fool and his money. In the 1930s, Adam Fenwick-Symes is part of the English idle class, wanting to marry the flighty Nina Blount. He's a novelist with a hundred-pound advance for a manuscript confiscated by English customs. He spends the next several years trying to get money and to set a wedding date: he trades in gossip, wins money on wagers then gives it to a drunken major who's suggested he bet on a horse in an upcoming race. Adam tries to get the money back, but can't find the major. Meanwhile, Nina needs security, friends drink too much, and general unhappiness spoils the party. Then war breaks out. Is Adam's bright youth dimming with the fall of an empire?

  7.7

Hamlet

1995, UK, USA

• Actors: Riz Abbasi, Richard Attenborough, David Blair, Brian Blessed, Kenneth Branagh, Richard Briers, Michael Bryant, Peter Bygott, Julie Christie, Billy Crystal, Charles Daish, Judi Dench, Gérard Depardieu, Reece Dinsdale, Ken Dodd, Angela Douglas, Rob Edwards, Nicholas Farrell, Ray Fearon, Yvonne Gidden, John Gielgud, Rosemary Harris, Charlton Heston, Ravil Isyanov, Derek Jacobi, Rowena King, Jeffery Kissoon, Sarah Lam, Jack Lemmon, Ian McElhinney
• Genre: Crime, Drama, Romance, Thriller
• Director(s): Kenneth Branagh
• Available languages:
  • English English.

Hamlet, son of the king of Denmark, is summoned home for his father's funeral and his mother's wedding to his uncle. In a supernatural episode, he discovers that his uncle, whom he hates anyway, murdered his father. In an incredibly convoluted plot--the most complicated and most interesting in all literature--he manages to (impossible to put this in exact order) feign (or perhaps not to feign) madness, murder the "prime minister," love and then unlove an innocent whom he drives to madness, plot and then unplot against the uncle, direct a play within a play, successfully conspire against the lives of two well-meaning friends, and finally take his revenge on the uncle, but only at the cost of almost every life on stage, including his own and his mother's.

  8.1

Gandhi

1982, UK, India

• Actors: Ben Kingsley, Candice Bergen, Edward Fox, John Gielgud, Trevor Howard, John Mills, Martin Sheen, Ian Charleson, Athol Fugard, Günther Maria Halmer, Saeed Jaffrey, Geraldine James, Alyque Padamsee, Amrish Puri, Roshan Seth, Rohini Hattangadi, Ian Bannen, Michael Bryant, John Clements, Richard Griffiths, Nigel Hawthorne, Bernard Hepton, Michael Hordern, Shreeram Lagoo, Om Puri, Virendra Razdan, Richard Vernon, Harsh Nayyar, Prabhakar Patankar, Vijay Kashyap
• Genre: Biography, Drama, History
• Director(s): Richard Attenborough
• Available languages:
  • English English.

In 1893, Gandhi is thrown off a South African train for being an Indian and traveling in a first class compartment. Gandhi realizes that the laws are biased against Indians and decides to start a non-violent protest campaign for the rights of all Indians in South Africa. After numerous arrests and the unwanted attention of the world, the government finally relents by recognizing rights for Indians, though not for the native blacks of South Africa. After this victory, Gandhi is invited back to India, where he is now considered something of a national hero. He is urged to take up the fight for India's independence from the British Empire. Gandhi agrees, and mounts a non-violent non-cooperation campaign of unprecedented scale, coordinating millions of Indians nationwide. There are some setbacks, such as violence against the protesters and Gandhi's occasional imprisonment. Nevertheless, the campaign generates great attention, and Britain faces intense public pressure. Too weak from World War II to continue enforcing its will in India, Britain finally grants India's independence. Indians celebrate this victory, but their troubles are far from over. Religious tensions between Hindus and Muslims erupt into nation-wide violence. Gandhi declares a hunger strike, saying he will not eat until the fighting stops. The fighting does stop eventually, but the country is divided. It is decided that the northwest area of India, and eastern part of India (current day Bangladesh), both places where Muslims are in the majority, will become a new country called Pakistan (West and East Pakistan respectively). It is hoped that by encouraging the Muslims to live in a separate country, violence will abate. Gandhi is opposed to the idea, and is even willing to allow Muhammad Ali Jinnah to become the first prime minister of India, but the Partition of India is carried out nevertheless. Gandhi spends his last days trying to bring about peace between both nations. He thereby angers many dissidents on both sides, one of whom finally gets close enough to assassinate him.

  5.5

Dr. Strange

1978, USA

• Actors: Peter Hooten, Clyde Kusatsu, Jessica Walter, Anne-Marie Martin, Philip Sterling, John Mills, June Barrett, Sarah Rush, Diana Webster, Bob Delegall, Larry Anderson, Blake Marion, Lady Rowlands, Ines Pedroza, Michael Clark, Frank Catalano, Michael Ansara, Ted Cassidy, David Hooks
• Genre: Fantasy
• Director(s): Philip DeGuere
• Available languages:
  • English English.

A psychiatrist becomes the new Sorcerer Supreme of the Earth in order to battle an evil Sorceress from the past.

  6.6

Operation Crossbow

1965, UK

• Actors: Sophia Loren, George Peppard, Trevor Howard, John Mills, Richard Johnson, Tom Courtenay, Jeremy Kemp, Anthony Quayle, Lilli Palmer, Paul Henreid, Helmut Dantine, Barbara Rütting, Richard Todd, Sylvia Syms, John Fraser, Maurice Denham, Patrick Wymark, Wolf Frees, Moray Watson, Richard Wattis, Allan Cuthbertson, Karel Stepanek, William Mervyn, Milo Sperber, George Mikell, Ferdy Mayne, Robert Brown, Gordon Jackson, John Le Mesurier, John Abineri
• Genre: Action, Drama, War
• Director(s): Michael Anderson
• Available languages:
  • English English.

This is the story of the methods used to defeat Hitler's V1 (doodlebug) and V2 (rocket) "revenge weapons" towards the end of the second world war. Even though the Nazis were in retreat these weapons could have turned their defeat into victory. The film includes references to Hannah Reich, who in real life was a test pilot and really did fly some of the first 'flying bombs'.

  7.0

Swiss Family Robinson

1959, USA

• Actors: John Mills, Dorothy McGuire, James MacArthur, Janet Munro, Sessue Hayakawa, Tommy Kirk, Kevin Corcoran, Cecil Parker, Andy Ho, Milton Reid, Larry Taylor
• Genre: Adventure, Family
• Director(s): Ken Annakin
• Available languages:
  • English English.

A family in route to New Guinea is shipwrecked on a deserted tropical island. They are forced to remain on the island because of the damage to the ship and the pirates that are roaming the islands. They create a home on the island (centering around a huge tree house) and explore the island and its wildlife. Plenty of adventure ensues as the family deals with issues of survival and pirates, and the brothers must learn how to live on the island with an uncertain future.

  6.8

Around the World in Eighty Days

1956, USA

• Actors: Cantinflas, Finlay Currie, Robert Morley, Ronald Squire, Basil Sydney, Noel Coward, John Gielgud, Trevor Howard, Harcourt Williams, David Niven, Martine Carol, Fernandel, Charles Boyer, Evelyn Keyes, José Greco, Luis Miguel Dominguín, Gilbert Roland, Cesar Romero, Alan Mowbray, Robert Newton, Cedric Hardwicke, Melville Cooper, Reginald Denny, Ronald Colman, Robert Cabal, Shirley MacLaine, Charles Coburn, Peter Lorre, George Raft, Red Skelton
• Genre: Adventure, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Romance
• Director(s): Michael Anderson
• Available languages:
  • English English.

Phileas Fogg accepts a challenge from his fellow members at the Reform Club and sets of prove that you can travel around the world in a mind-boggling 80 days. He sets off by train to Paris with his new valet Passepartout but then is forced to continue the trip by balloon arriving next in Spain where Passepartout has an interesting encounter in the bullfighting ring. They finally make their way across the Mediterranean and through the Suez canal, arriving in Bombay two days ahead of schedule. They board the train for Calcutta where they find there is a 50 mile gap midway. The break in their journey proved eventful as they rescue an Indian princess, Aouda, who is about to be forced to commit suttee - throwing herself on her dead husband's funeral pyre. They make to Calcutta and on to Siam and the Honk Kong. Throughout the voyage, they are followed by a detective, Mr. Fix, who is convinced that Fogg is the thief responsible for the recent £55,000 theft at the bank of England. In Honk Kong, Passepartout is Shanghaied leaving Fogg and Aouda to find their own way to Yokohama where they are to catch a ship to San Francisco. The group is reunited, travels across the American West - Passepartout has an exciting encounter with the Sioux - and make it back to London. They're one day late however for Fogg to win the bet - or so he thinks.

  7.0

The Colditz Story

1955, UK

• Actors: John Mills, Christopher Rhodes, Lionel Jeffries, Bryan Forbes, Guido Lorraine, Witold Sikorski, A. Blichewicz, B. Dolinski, Anton Diffring, Richard Wattis, Ian Carmichael, Eric Portman, Frederick Valk, Leo Bieber, Denis Shaw, Rudolph Offenbach, Theodore Bikel, Keith Pyott, Eugene Deckers, Arthur Butcher, David Yates, Douglas Argent, Terence Brook, Frank Coburn, Eric Corrie, John Corrie, Anthony Faramus, Eric Lander, Kenneth Midwood, Peter Myers
• Genre: Drama, History, War
• Director(s): Guy Hamilton
• Available languages:
  • English English.

Colditz castle was used by the Nazis to hold the "bad boys", (those who regularly tried to escape from other camps). At all times the guards outnumbered the prisoners and, because some political prisoners were also held there they were *very* strictly monitored. But if you put all those people in one place and they're all trying to escape, well ...

  8.1

Great Expectations

1945, UK

• Actors: John Mills, Tony Wager, Valerie Hobson, Jean Simmons, Bernard Miles, Francis L. Sullivan, Finlay Currie, Martita Hunt, Alec Guinness, Ivor Barnard, Freda Jackson, Eileen Erskine, George Hayes, Hay Petrie, John Forrest, Torin Thatcher, O.B. Clarence, John Burch, Richard George, Grace Denbigh Russell, Everley Gregg, Anne Holland, Frank Atkinson, Gordon Begg, Edie Martin, Walford Hyden, Roy Arthur, Howard Lang, Ernie Pratt
• Genre: Drama
• Director(s): David Lean
• Available languages:
  • English English.

Pip, a good-natured, gullible young orphan, lives with kind blacksmith Joe Gargery and his bossy, abusive wife 'Mrs. Joe'. When the boy finds two hidden escaped galley convicts, he obeys under -probably unnecessary- threat of a horrible death to bring the criminals food he must steal at peril of more caning from the battle-ax. Just when Pip fears to get it really good while they have guests, a soldier comes for Joe who takes Pip along as assistant to work on the chains of escaped galley-convicts, who are soon caught. The better-natured one takes the blame for the stolen food. Later Pip is invited to became the playmate of Estelle, the equally arrogant adoptive daughter of gloomy, filthy rich Miss Havisham at her estate, who actually has 'permission' to break the kind kid's heart; being the only pretty girl he ever saw, she wins his heart forever, even after a mysterious benefactor pays trough a lawyer for his education and a rich allowance, so he can become a snob in London, by now 'ashamed' of simple Joe. Only after years in idle wealth, Pip learns Havisham is not his benefactor as he assumed, and both her story and those of his real sponsor and Estelle...