Robert Bolt's successful play, A Man for All Seasons, was not considered a hot commercial property by Columbia Pictures-a period piece about a moral issue without a star, without even a love story. Perhaps that's why Columbia left director Fred Zinnemann alone to make the film as long as he stuck to a relatively small budget. The results took everyone by surprise, as the talky morality play became a box-office hit and collected the top Oscars for 1966. At the play's heart is the standoff between King Henry VIII (Robert Shaw, in young lion form) and Sir Thomas More (Paul Scofield, in an Oscar-winning performance). Henry wants More's official approval of divorce, but More's strict ethical and religious code will not let him waffle. More's rectitude is a source of exasperation to Cardinal Wolsey (Orson Welles in a cameo), who chides, "If you could just see facts flat on without that horrible moral squint". Zinnemann's approach is all simplicity, and indeed the somewhat prosaic staging doesn't create a great deal of cinematic excitement. But the language is worth savouring, and the ethical politics are debated with all the calm and majesty of an absorbing chess game. -Robert Horton, Amazon. com.

Painted in mile-wide strokes of black satirical comedy, The Last Supper turns intolerance into a parlour trick, then repeats it ad nauseam in case we missed the joke. Still, redundancy can be fun when applied to the pre-meditated murder of right-wing extremists by self-righteous left-wing zealots. Director Stacy Title is an equal-opportunity offender, never taking sides. The grisly high jinks commence when a truck-driving, child-molesting, Hitler-loving ex-Marine (Bill Paxton, acing the role) is accidentally killed while dining with a clutch of snobby liberal grad students, played with uniform excellence by Cameron Diaz (showing early promise), Ron Eldard, Courtney B. Vance, Annabeth Gish, and co-producer Jonathan Penner. Having acquired a taste for blood, the wine-poisoning liberals stage "last suppers" with hand-picked targets (Charles Durning, Mark Harmon, Jason Alexander, and ultimately Ron Perlman), eventually attracting a suspicious sheriff (fine work by SNL alumnus Nora Dunn). It's got all the subtlety of a pile-driver, but The Last Supper craftily defends free speech by exposing its most vicious violations. -Jeff Shannon.

When it comes to on-screen sex and violence it takes a lot to unnerve the French authorities, but Baise-Moi managed it. Three days after the film opened it was pulled from over 60 cinemas across the country, causing a major rumpus, and only allowed back after it had been reclassified X, a category normally reserved for hard-core porn. The title translates literally as "Fuck me", which pretty well sums up the brash, in-your-face style of the film. The classification was not inappropriate, given that the film features plenty of genuine, unsimulated sex. Anyone hoping for arousal, though, might do better to look elsewhere. Baise-Moi is written and directed by Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi, working from Despentes' novel, and stars Karen Bach and Rafaella Anderson. Despentes is an ex-prostitute, while Trinh Thi, Bach and Anderson have all acted in porno movies, and what they give us here is sex as female vengeance, a screwing-and-killing rampage that turns the tables on a violent male world. The movie's been compared to Thelma and Louise, but a closer comparison might be with Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer. As in most porno movies, the plot is the merest pretext. Nadine (Bach) is a part-time prostitute, Manu (Anderson) is a rape victim. [+]

"The book was better" has been the complaint of many a reader since the invention of films. The Green Mile is Frank Darabont's second adaptation of a Stephen King prison drama The Shawshank Redemption was the first) and is a very faithful adaptation of King's serial novel. In the middle of the Depression, Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks) runs death row at Cold Mountain Penitentiary. Into this dreary world walks a mammoth prisoner, John Coffey (Michael Duncan) who, very slowly, reveals a special gift that will change the men working and dying (in the electric chair, masterfully and grippingly staged) on the mile. As with King's book, Darabont takes plenty of time to show us Edgecomb's world before delving into John Coffey's mystery. With Darabont's superior storytelling abilities, his touch for perfect casting, and a leisurely 188-minute running time, his film brings to life nearly every character and scene from the novel. Darabont even improves the novel's two endings, creating a more emotionally satisfying experience. The running time may try patience, but those who want a story, as opposed to quick-fix entertainment, will be rewarded by this finely tailored tale. -Doug Thomas.

Scott McPherson's off-Broadway hit made a strong transition to the screen in Marvin's Room, a 1996 film by director Jerry Zaks. Diane Keaton stars as a woman who, while taking care of her vegetating father in Florida, discovers that she has leukaemia. Only her long-estranged sister (Meryl Streep) or the sister's children can provide a possible match for a bone-marrow transplant. But the reunion is a rocky one, marked both by Streep's guilt at having abandoned her sister to take care of their father, and by the explosive dynamic between Streep and her rebellious, pyromaniac oldest son (Leonardo DiCaprio). As grim as this all sounds, there is a strong vein of black humour running through it that has the viewer laughing at unlikely moments (particularly Keaton's visits to her distracted doctor, a surprisingly funny Robert De Niro). But rest assured: tears will flow, even as the film makes you reassess all of your own family relationships. -Marshall Fine.

A truly epic saga of dynastic conflict at the heart of Imperial Rome, I Claudius was the landmark BBC drama series of the 1970s. Originally transmitted as 13 50-minute episodes, it is now available as two double video packs. After chronicling the foundations of the British Empire in Elizabeth R (1971), the BBC chose to dramatise the human face of ancient Rome as interpreted by Robert Graves in his two enormously complex novels, I Claudius and Claudius The God. Derek Jacobi gives one of the greatest television performances ever as Claudius, the appalled chronicler of the decadence, corruption, intrigue and carnage which comes with absolute power of his ruling family. Augustus (Brian Blessed) is Emperor and Sian Phillips, Livia, his scheming, ambitious wife, Claudius' aunt. By virtue of his stammer and uncontrollable twitches, Claudius passes for a fool, thus escaping the poisonous machinations of Livia, all the while recording the comings and goings of the Imperial household. Inevitably lacking the visual scale of cinematic features Ben-Hur (1959) and Spartacus (1960), and today looking more studio-bound than ever, I Claudius remains a television masterpiece of intelligently written and rivetingly intense character drama. The saga ends with I Claudius - Part 2. -Gary S. Dalkin A truly epic saga of dynastic conflict at the heart of Imperial Rome, I Claudius was the landmark BBC drama series of the 1970s. [+]

Mike Figgis' Internal Affairs makes great play with some fairly obvious ironies-"Trust me, I'm a cop", Richard Gere says to a couple for whom he is arranging the death of their parents-but its real strength lies in a cluster of central performances. Gere has rarely been better than he is as the charismatic, self-righteous entirely corrupt and corrupting Dennis Peck, but Andy Garcia is at least as impressive as the "selfish yuppy bastard", the ambitious Internal Affairs cop Avila whose determination to bring Peck down is as much to do with massaging his own ego as with fighting the good fight, particularly after Peck starts making moves on Avila's gallery curator wife. This is a film about men destructively manipulating each other's self-love-the two men have more in common than they like to admit, a point sardonically made by Amy, the world-weary lesbian cop who is Avila's partner (an impressive performance by Figgis regular Laurie Metcalfe). Internal Affairs was the best thriller of 1990 and one of the decade's best. -Roz Kaveney.

Granada Television's adaptation of The Forsyte Saga achieved the seemingly impossible in Spring 2002, matching the BBC's 35-year-old black-and-white classic version with a richly cast and superbly directed take on John Galsworthy's first two novels. The success of these six 90-minute episodes proved that despite the current emphasis on mini-series and dramas developed around the "hot" actor of the moment, our appetite-and attention span-still craves ensemble pieces which are given the space and time to develop in today's focus-group-led scheduling. It also demonstrates that nothing generates television gold like a compelling family drama crammed with lust, rape, class conflict and the insuperable power of money. The Forsyte Saga is nothing if not superior soap opera. It could all have gone horribly wrong, haunted by the spectre of its BBC predecessor-a television legend for anyone over 40. Instead, it succeeds entirely on its own merits with scarcely a weak link; from Stephen Mallatratt's taut and fluid script to David Moore's carefully measured, seamess direction. Risks were taken to banish the old ghosts, particularly in the casting. In the event, Damian Lewis' repressed Soames and Gina McKee as his ill-matched bride, the enigmatic Irene, are inspired choices delivering complex portraits of unhappy, damaged human beings who deserve our sympathy. In a sea of marvellous cameos and splendid acting, the top honours go to Corin Redgrave and Rupert Graves for their hauntingly sensitive interpretations of Old and Young Jolyon, as well as to Amanda Root's increasingly exasperated Winifred; and Gillian Kearney's sharply intelligent and worldly June. All rounded characters without a weakly written cipher in sight. [+]