6.5

Shanghai

2009, USA

• Actors: John Cusack, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Ken Watanabe, David Morse, Franka Potente, Yun-Fat Chow, Li Gong, Rinko Kikuchi, Hugh Bonneville, Nicholas Rowe, Gemma Chan, Daniel Lapaine, Ronan Vibert, Michael Culkin, Wolf Kahler, Catherine Balavage, Dean Alexandrou, Don Tai, Selina Lo, Christopher Buchholz, Tohoru Masamune, Hon Ping Tang, Cameron Pearson, David Firestar, Nick Sakai, Yohanna Farrell-Knight, Joe Cummings, Philip Harvey, Yennis Cheung-Yan, Creighton Mark Johnson
• Genre: Drama, Mystery, Romance, Thriller
• Director(s): Mikael Håfström
• Available languages:
  • Chinese Chinese.

An American man returns to a corrupt, Japanese-occupied Shanghai four months before Pearl Harbor and discovers his friend has been killed. While he unravels the mysteries of the death, he falls in love and discovers a much larger secret that his own government is hiding.

  8.0

Moon

2008, UK

• Actors: Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey, Dominique McElligott, Rosie Shaw, Adrienne Shaw, Kaya Scodelario, Benedict Wong, Matt Berry, Malcolm Stewart, Robin Chalk
• Genre: Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller
• Director(s): Duncan Jones
• Available languages:
  • English English.

Sam Bell has a three year contract to work for Lunar Industries. For the contract's entire duration, he is the sole employee based at their lunar station. His primary job responsibility is to harvest and periodically rocket back to Earth supplies of helium-3, the current clean and abundant fuel used on Earth. There is no direct communication link available between the lunar station and Earth, so his only direct real-time interaction is with GERTY, the intelligent computer whose function is to attend to his day to day needs. With such little human contact and all of it indirect, he feels that three years is far too long to be so isolated; he knows he is beginning to hallucinate as the end of his three years approaches. All he wants is to return to Earth to be with his wife Tess and their infant daughter Eve, who was born just prior to his leaving for this job. With two weeks to go, he gets into an accident at one of the mechanical harvesters and is rendered unconscious. Injured, he awakens back at the station in the infirmary, he assumes assisted by GERTY. GERTY tells him that a rescue team named Eliza will come to the station to clean up the aftermath of the accident. After his recuperation, he takes an unauthorized trip back to the broken harvester, where he makes an unexpected discovery. Because of his find, he begins to doubt his sanity, then his true identity, then the company and GERTY's willingness to do what is best for him. Because of his resulting beliefs, his sole mission becomes how to get back to Earth on his own.

  6.4

Largo Winch

2008, France, Belgium

• Actors: Tomer Sisley, Kristin Scott Thomas, Miki Manojlovic, Mélanie Thierry, Gilbert Melki, Karel Roden, Steven Waddington, Anne Consigny, Radivoje Bukvic, Nicolas Vaude, Benedict Wong, Gérard Watkins, Wolfgang Pissors, Theodore Thomas, David Gasman, Elizabeth Bennett, Eddy Ko, Bojana Panic, Ivan Marevich, André Oumansky, Digger Mesch, Emmanuel Avena, Micaelle Mee-Sook, Benjamin Siksou, Kerian Mayan, Jake Vella, Aidan Aquilina, Andre Agius, Léo-Paul Salmain, Julian De Gorgio
• Genre: Adventure, Thriller
• Director(s): Jérôme Salle
• Available languages:
  • English English.

Billionaire Nerio Winch is found dead, drowned. An obviously suspicious death as Nerio is the founder and majority shareholder of the powerful and sprawling W Group. Who will inherit this financial empire? Officially, Nerio had no family. But he had a secret he kept well-hidden: a son, Largo, adopted nearly thirty years before from a Bosnian orphanage. The only problem is this young heir has just been thrown in prison deep in the Amazon. Accused of drug trafficking, he claims he's innocent. Nerio murdered. Largo in prison. What if these two events were part of a plot to take control of the Winch empire?

  7.3

Sunshine

2006, UK, USA

• Actors: Cliff Curtis, Chipo Chung, Cillian Murphy, Michelle Yeoh, Hiroyuki Sanada, Rose Byrne, Benedict Wong, Chris Evans, Troy Garity, Mark Strong, Paloma Baeza, Archie Macdonald, Sylvie Macdonald
• Genre: Adventure, Sci-Fi, Thriller
• Director(s): Danny Boyle
• Available languages:
  • English English.

50 years into the future, the Sun begins to die, and Earth is dying as a result. A team of astronauts are sent to revive the Sun - but the mission fails. Seven years later, a new team are sent to finish the mission as they are Earth's last hope.

  6.8

A Cock and Bull Story

2005, UK

• Actors: Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Keeley Hawes, Shirley Henderson, Raymond Waring, Conal Murphy, Joe Williams, Paul Kynman, Mark Tandy, Mary Healey, Dylan Moran, Jack Shepherd, David Walliams, Jeremy Northam, Benedict Wong, Naomie Harris, Claire Keelan, Kelly Macdonald, Mark Hadfield, Elizabeth Berrington, Mark Williams, Jenny Ogilvie, Tony Wilson, Justine Mitchell, Kieran O'Brien, Roger Allam, Ashley Jensen, James Fleet, Ian Hart, Ronni Ancona
• Genre: Comedy
• Director(s): Michael Winterbottom
• Available languages:
  • English English.

Two actors, as their make up is applied, talk about the size of their parts. Then into the film: Laurence Sterne's unfilmable novel, Tristram Shandy, a fictive autobiography wherein the narrator, interrupted constantly, takes the entire story to be born. The film tracks between "Shandy" and behind the scenes. Size matters: parts, egos, shoes, noses. The lead's girlfriend, with their infant son, is up from London for the night, wanting sex; interruptions are constant. Scenes are shot, re-shot, and discarded. The purpose of the project is elusive. Fathers and sons; men and women; cocks and bulls. Life is amorphous, too full and too rich to be captured in one narrative.

  6.3

Code 46

2003, UK

• Actors: Tim Robbins, Togo Igawa, Nabil Elouahabi, Samantha Morton, Sarah Backhouse, Jonathan Ibbotson, Natalie Jackson Mendoza, Om Puri, Emil Marwa, Nina Fog, Bruno Lastra, Christopher Simpson, Lien Nguyin, David Fahm, Jeanne Balibar, Mick Jones, Taro Sherabayani, Nina Sosanya, Shelley King, Tuyet Le, Benedict Wong, Nina Wadia, Essie Davis, Teo-Wa Vuong, Jennifer Lim, Archie Panjabi, Paul Barnes, Louis Lin, Nabil Massad, Kerry Shale
• Genre: Drama, Romance, Sci-Fi, Thriller
• Director(s): Michael Winterbottom
• Available languages:
  • English English.

Code 46 is a love story set in a Brave New World-type near-future where cities are heavily controlled and only accessible through checkpoints. People cannot travel unless they have "papeles" (papers in Spanish; words and sentences in many languages, especially Spanish, French and Chinese are mixed with English in this new world), a special travel permit issued by the totalitarian government, the "Sphinx". Outside these cities, the desert has taken over and shanty towns are jammed with non-citizens - people without IDs forced to live primitive lives. William is a family man who works as a government investigator. When he is sent to Shanghai to solve a case of fake IDs, he meets a woman named Maria. Although he realizes she is behind the forgeries, he cannot help but fall completely in love with her. He hides her crime and they have a wild, passionate affair that can only last as long as his visa: 24 hours. Back home, William is obsessed with the memory of Maria. When the original investigation is inevitably re-opened a week later and William is sent back to finish the work he started, he tracks her down, only to discover she has been accused of a Code 46 violation and any further relationship is impossible.

  7.5

Dirty Pretty Things

2002, UK

• Actors: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Kriss Dosanjh, Israel Aduramo, Yemi Ajibade, Nizwar Karanj, Deobia Oparei, Jeffery Kissoon, Zlatko Buric, Audrey Tautou, Sophie Okonedo, Sergi López, Benedict Wong, Kenan Hudaverdi, Damon Younger, Paul Bhattacharjee, Darrell D'Silva, Sotigui Kouyaté, Abi Gouhad, Jeillo Edwards, Rita Hamill, Ron Stenner, Jemanesh Solomon, Naomi Simpson, Barber Ali, Jean-Philippe Écoffey, Josef Altin, Fisun Burgess, Sabina Michael, Michael Mellinger, Noma Dumezweni
• Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
• Director(s): Stephen Frears
• Available languages:
  • English English.

Okwe, a kind-hearted Nigerian doctor, and Senay, a Turkish chambermaid, work at the same West London hotel. The hotel is run by Senor Sneaky and is the sort of place where dirty business like drug dealing and prostitution takes place. However, when Okwe finds a human heart in one of the toilets, he uncovers something far more sinister than just a common crime.

  6.9

Spy Game

2000, Germany, USA, Japan, France

• Actors: Robert Redford, Brad Pitt, Catherine McCormack, Stephen Dillane, Larry Bryggman, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Matthew Marsh, Todd Boyce, Michael Paul Chan, Garrick Hagon, Andrew Grainger, Bill Buell, Colin Stinton, Ted Maynard, Tom Hodgkins, Rufus Wright, Demetri Goritsas, Quinn Collins, Sam Scudder, Yann Johnson, Pat McGrath, Shane Rimmer, David Hemmings, James Aubrey, In-Sook Chappell, Benedict Wong, Ken Leung, Adrian Pang, Ho Yi, David Cheung
• Genre: Action, Crime, Thriller
• Director(s): Tony Scott
• Available languages:
  • English English.

CIA operative Nathan Muir (Redford) is on the brink of retirement when he finds out that his protege Tom Bishop (Pitt) has been arrested in China for espionage. No stranger to the machinations of the CIA's top echelon, Muir hones all his skills and irreverent manner in order to find a way to free Bishop. As he embarks on his mission to free Bishop, Muir recalls how he recruited and trained the young rookie, at that time a sergeant in Vietnam, their turbulent times together as operatives and the woman who threatened their friendship.