One of the big Elizabethan-era films of 1998, Shekhar Kapur's Elizabeth serves up a brimming goblet of religious tension, political conspiracy, sex, violence and war. England in 1554 is in financial and religious turmoil as the ailing Queen "Bloody" Mary attempts to restore Catholicism as the national faith. She has no heir, and her greatest fear-that her Protestant half-sister Elizabeth will assume the throne after her death-is realised. Still, the late Queen Mary has her loyalists. The newly crowned Elizabeth finds herself knee-deep in dethroning schemes while also dodging assassination attempts. Her advisers (including Sir William Cecil, superbly played by Richard Attenborough) beg her to marry any one of her would-be suitors to stabilise England's empire. No matter that she already has a lover. The passionate Robert Dudley (Joseph Fiennes) is married, however, and shows he cannot stand up to the growing strength of the Queen. With the help of her aide Walsingham (Geoffrey Rush), Elizabeth strikes against her enemies before they get to her first. But her rise ultimately entails rejecting love and marriage to redefine herself as the indisputable Virgin Queen. [+]

Another light hearted romp from the 30's. Who doesn't like Cary Grant? This is an early glimpse into the comedic side of the Cary Grant we loved in so many films he made afterward. Miss Moore lights up the screen with her singing. Grace Moore was an opera star from the Met that found her way into film. She was nominated for Best Actress for her 1934 film "One Night of Love". Here an Australian opera singer needs to get to America but cannot get over the border and agrees to a plan.

A highly unusual war movie with as many detractors as fans, this English-language feature directed by Nagisa Oshima (In the Realm of the Senses) stars David Bowie as a silent, ethereal POW in a Japanese camp. Protesting-via his own enigmatic rebellion-the camp's brutal conditions and treatment of prisoners, Bowie's character earns the respect of the camp commandant (Ryuichi Sakamoto). While the two seem locked in an unspoken, spiritual understanding, another prisoner (Tom Conti) engages in a more conventional resistance against a monstrous sergeant (Takeshi). The film has a way of evoking as many questions as certainties and it is not always easy to understand the internal logic of the characters' actions. But that's generally true of Oshima's movies, in which the power of certain relationships is almost hallucinatory in self-referential intensity. The cast is outstanding, and Bowie is particularly fascinating in his alien way. -Tom Keogh.

If David Mamet had been born in Buenos Aires instead of Chicago, Nine Queens is most likely the kind of movie he'd be making. An intricate, playful scam caper, where not only the characters but we the audience are constantly trying to suss out who's screwing whom-and how, and why-it's a movie very much in the Mametian mould. But at the same time the Argentinian setting gives Fabian Bielinsky's debut feature a specifically Latin pungency and the urgent sense of a society teetering over a financial abyss. Which is all the more remarkable since, even though a key plot-point turns on a bank going bust, the movie was made a few months before the Argentinean economy went belly-up. The intrigue grips from the very outset as Juan, a young con artist, overreaches himself in a grocery store. He's rescued from disaster by Marcos, an older and more experienced grifter, who then takes him on in a master-pupil relationship. When the chance of a major coup involving some rare stamps (the Queens of the title) turns up, the partnership starts coming under strain; can either one really trust the other? And is either who he pretends to be? The plot suffers from a few implausibilities and loose ends, but sustains its momentum beguilingly. Ricardo Darín, as the saturnine Marcos, and Gastón Pauls as the fresh-faced, seemingly ingenuous Juan play off each other beautifully-but the dominant character is the seething, hustling city of Buenos Aires itself, where social mores are fluid and uncertain, and everybody has his eye out for the main chance. This is a society Bielinsky (who also scripted) clearly knows intimately, and like a true con-artist he makes shrewd use of his expertise to keep us guessing right up to the final twist. -Philip Kemp.

As a somewhat tortured Roman Catholic, Alfred Hitchcock jumped at the chance to direct this loose adaptation of Paul Anthelme's 1902 play Nos Deux Consciences, which brings together his twin obsessions of spiritual guilt and murder. The ingenious premise concerns a priest, Father Michael Logan (Montgomery Clift), who hears a killer's confession, but can't break his vow of silence and report the crime, even when suspicion falls upon himself. The film was partly shot in Quebec City (where the story is set), and the camera lingers lovingly over the sumptuous architecture. Yet it may be that Hitchcock was happier working within the confines of a studio, for he takes a low-key approach that never quite delivers on the anticipated thrills. In his defence, the production appears to have been extremely troubled. The script (credited to George Tabori and William Archibald) went through numerous rewrites, largely because the Catholic Church objected to a sub-plot involving Father Logan's ambiguous relationship with Ruth Grandfort (Ann Baxter), a woman who loved him in his pre-cassock days. This romantic angle was doubtless a concession to the box office, but it merely bogs down the suspense while remaining undeveloped in itself. And according to the gossip, Hitchcock couldn't make head or tail of his star, Clift's improvised Method acting being utterly foreign to a control freak who planned each camera movement in advance with elaborate storyboards (it didn't help that the angst-ridden Monty drank heavily during the entire shoot). For whatever reason, the priest's dilemma comes across as a clever gimmick rather than a genuine moral crisis. Perhaps on some hidden level, the director felt more in sympathy with the murderer (whose wife is named Alma, the same as Hitchcock's own wife). [+]

This gorgeous adaptation of Lucy Maud Montgomery's classic children's story is well worth watching with the whole family. Produced for Canadian television, it's one of those rare productions that actually sticks to the book and even enhances it through first-rate performances and an excellent script. Set on bucolic Prince Edward Island in the late 19th century, Anne of Green Gables is the story of Anne Shirley, an imaginative and headstrong orphan. When brother and sister Marilla and Mathew Cuthbert decide to adopt an orphan boy to help Matthew work the farm, they are astonished when Anne arrives at the train station by mistake. "What use is she to us?" grumbles the gruff Marilla. "We might be of some use to her", answers Matthew, who has taken an instant liking to the talkative Anne. As Anne grows up, her adventures are both hilarious and moving. It's a delight to watch as she forms a friendship with the beautiful Diana and her admirer-the dashing Gilbert Blythe-then dyes her hair green, cracks a slate over Gilbert's head when he calls her "Carrots", and finds a sympathetic teacher who encourages her to attend college. Richard Farnsworth is perfect as the shy and gentle bachelor Matthew, who confides to Anne that he never went courting because "I would have had to say something". Colleen Dewhurst delivers a nuanced and powerful performance as Marilla, a seemingly cold-hearted spinster whose no-nonsense exterior conceals a warm heart. [+]

Legend has it that Henri-Georges Clouzot beat out Alfred Hitchcock to secure the rights to this novel, which proved to be a veritable blueprint for an icy masterpiece of murder, mystery and suspense. Véra Clouzot plays the sickly wife of a callous headmaster of a provincial boarding school going to seed, and the commanding Simone Signoret is the headmaster's mistreated mistress. Together they plot and carry out his murder, a brutal drowning that director Clouzot documents in chilly detail, but the corpse disappears and a nosy detective starts sniffing around the grounds as threatening notes taunt the women. Clouzot's thriller is as precise and accomplished a work as anything in Hitchcock's canon, a film of gruelling suspense and startling shocks in an overcast, grey world of decay, but his icy manipulations lack the human dimension and emotional resonance of the master of suspense. Many critics have accused the film of being misanthropic, and Clouzot's attitude toward his characters is bitter at best, contemptuous at worst. The viewer is left on the outside looking in, but the razor precision and terrifying twists deliver a sleek, bleak spectacle worthy of attention. -Sean Axmaker, Amazon. com.

Liam Neeson's battered gloomy features make him a natural for film noir, and the 1991 Under Suspicion makes exemplary use of him as Tony Aaron, a private eye headed for the death cell. Part of the film's strength is its 1959 setting-this is a past where people are hanged, where homosexuality is a crime and where people fake adulteries to get divorces. One such faked adultery leads to the death of Aaron's wife and their client. His own chequered past-he was thrown off the force for getting a colleague killed-means that most of the local police want him to be guilty. Only his best friend (Kenneth Cranham) even begins to be prepared to believe in his innocence and the possible guilt of the client's mistress, Angeline (Laura San Giacomo). Where Under Suspicion is content to recreate the seedy Brighton of the 1950s, and lives trapped by an unthinking puritanism, it is excellent. Unfortunately, much of this emotional power is dissipated by an over-elaborate plot in which artists' signatures, interlocking scams and extortions play a large part. -Roz Kaveney.

Regardless of your opinion on the topic, If These Walls Could Talk is a bold and provocative examination of how the laws and attitudes about abortion in the United States have both changed drastically and remained so much the same. Three women, three time periods, one house: each finds herself in trouble and must face the overwhelming decision about what to do with the unwanted pregnancy. The first segment is the most powerful, featuring Demi Moore as a young, recently widowed nurse in 1952. With no-one to turn to and with limited financial means, her options are few. Catherine Keener costars as her harshly judgmental sister-in-law. The next piece occurs in 1974 as Sissy Spacek, a mother of four trying to earn a college degree, discovers she's pregnant with her fifth child. Her utterly modern feminist daughter encourages Spacek to get a newly legal abortion, but it's a complex decision. In the final segment, college student Anne Heche becomes pregnant by her married professor. Her best friend, played by Jada Pinkett, is resolutely against abortion and the two wrangle over right and wrong. As the young woman tries to learn about her options, she finds herself enmeshed in the pro-life demonstrations outside the abortion clinic. [+]

One of the most endearing and intelligent romantic comedies of the 1990s, the Oscar-winning Shakespeare in Love is filled with such good will, sunny romance, snappy one-liners and devilish cleverness that it's absolutely irresistible. With tongue placed firmly in cheek, at its outset the film tracks young Will Shakespeare's overwrought battle with writer's block and the efforts of theatre owner Philip Henslowe (Geoffrey Rush, in rare form) to stage Will's latest comedy, Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter. Jokey comedy, though, soon takes a backseat to ravishing romance when the beautiful Viola De Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow) disguises herself as a young man to wangle herself an audition in the all-male cast and wins both the part of Romeo and, after much misunderstanding, the playwright's heart. Soon enough, Will's pirate comedy becomes the beautiful, tragic Romeo and Juliet, reflecting the agony and ecstasy of Will and Viola's romance-he's married and she's set to marry the slimy Lord Wessex (Colin Firth). The way that Oscar-winning screenwriters Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard enfold their story within the parameters of Romeo and Juliet (and even Twelfth Night) is nothing short of brilliant-it would take a Shakespearean scholar to dissect the innumerable parallels, oft-quoted lines, plot developments, and thematic borrowings. And most amazingly, Norman and Stoppard haven't forgotten to entertain their audience in addition to riding a Shakespearean roller coaster, with director John Madden (Mrs. Brown) reigning in his huge ensemble with rollicking energy. Along the way there are small gems to be found, including Judi Dench's eight-minute, Oscar-winning turn as a truly regal Queen Elizabeth, but the key element of Shakespeare in Love's success rests on the milky-white shoulders of its two stars. Fiennes, inexplicably overlooked at Oscar time, is a dashing, heartfelt Will and as for Best Actress winner Paltrow, well, nothing she'd done before could have prepared viewers for how amazing she is here. Breathtakingly beautiful, fiercely intelligent, strong-willed and lovestruck-it's a performance worthy of Shakespeare in more ways than one. [+]

Breathtaking and practically non-discursive, Sally Potter's audacious Orlando overcomes some dodgy performances and a narrative structure that could most generously be described as "loose" to emerge as a haunting, discussion-provoking, trans-historical and transsexual drama. Commanded never to age by Queen Elizabeth (played with surprisingly little campness by legendary cross-dresser Quentin Crisp), the title character becomes immortal; we then follow Orlando through 400 years of dream-like British history. Midway through the film, Orlando changes genders-to Potter's immense credit, the transformation is handled with little fanfare and no explanation. Tilda Swinton, in the lead role, is far more convincing as a woman than as a man and, even during the film's latter half, her impassivity and lack of expression can be annoying. Potter encourages Swinton to play to the camera and the resulting asides and glances askance can be amusing but often seem purposeless, or even arch. Nevertheless, the wilful idiosyncrasy and understatement of the film never quite capsize the project and, once you give yourself over to the filmmaker's logic, the panoramic sweep of the cinematography (remarkable sets include an aristocratic skating party on the frozen Thames during the Great London Frost of 1603, a stunning tent-caravan in Central Asia, and countless fastidious boudoirs and interiors) will surely keep you enraptured. Orlando is no Merchant-Ivory production, no prissy, forgettable period piece; this film has teeth and it may bite ferociously when you least expect it to. Although based on the Virginia Woolf modernist classic of the same name, it scarcely resembles the original. -Miles Bethany.