Eastern Promises takes the subsurface concerns of A History of Violence and brings them out into the light, bolting them to an even more hysterically entertaining narrative of gangs, guns, prostitution and murder.
Review by Tom Huddleston

Given the subject matter and the art-house photography (apparently Corbijn told the actors how to pose at the end of every scene) you could be forgiven for assuming that the film might be less than a barrel of laughs but it rivals 24-Hour Party People for hilarity.
Review by Sean Price

Austrian director Stefan Ruzowitzky’s compelling film explores the terrible dilemma that confronted the Jewish prisoners recruited for the operation. He has crafted a unique approach to the Holocaust genre, forsaking sentimentality for moral ambiguity, probing the motives of both the prisoners and their Nazi captors, in and out of the camps.
Review by Sarah Cronin

In the spring of 1947, Mr and Mrs Anglemyer travelled from LA to Pittsburgh to attend an uncle’s funeral, leaving their 17-year-old son home alone for 72 hours. The young man put the time to good use: he turned the family home into a movie studio and shot a 14-minute B&W film on his parents’ 16mm Kodak camera. The result was Fireworks, a landmark in experimental and gay cinema. And the budding filmmaker was Kenneth Anger, one of American cinema’s most influential artists.
Review by Ben Cobb

Sergei Eisenstein may be famous for his ground-breaking montage technique and his ruthless efficiency as a Bolshevik propagandist but it is the strange, nightmarish moments that go beyond the political message that make his work enduringly fascinating.
Review by Stephen Thomson

Shunya Ito’s third film in the acclaimed Female Convict series is a heady mix of fierce attitude, visual potency, and unflinching violence.
Review by Lindsay Tudor

‘Between man and woman, it’s a fight to the death’, declares one of her many lovers to Otsuya, Irezumi’s geisha heroine. This piece of fierce wisdom informs many of Yasuzo Masumura’s films, from Blind Beast, which climaxes in a frenzied S&M coupling, to Manji, in which a married couple’s rivalry for the love of a young woman leads them to self-destruct, but nowhere is it as clear as in Irezumi, the story of a woman turned predatory prostitute.
Review by Virginie Sélavy

Finally available to watch on British DVD almost a decade after production began, Jin-Roh is a moving and beguiling animé that is a worthy addition to the oeuvre of celebrated Japanese director Mamoru Oshii.
Review by Alex Fitch

Disillusioned with Hollywood, by 1957 Nicholas Ray was ready to head to Europe where he would go on to make the brilliant Bitter Victory. But before he could leave America behind, he had to make one more film for 20th Century Fox. The studio suggested a remake of Henry King’s Jesse James (1939).
Review by Paul Huckerby