Brazilian film-maker Fernando Meirelles, director of the international success City of God, brings a raw immediacy to this thrilling adaptation of John Le Carre's novel. Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes) is a low-level British diplomat who has been given a new assignment in Kenya. Justin's wife, Tessa (an Oscar-winning performance from Rachel Weisz), is an activist with a keen interest in issues of poverty and social justice. One day, Tessa disappears, and is soon found dead leaving Justin to uncover the conspiracy behind her death.
Romain Duris plays Tom, a Parisian hoodlum who works the shady side of real estate following in the footsteps of his sleazy father. But clearly Tom loathes both everything he does and himself. One night he accidentally runs into the man who managed Tom's pianist mother; the manager suggests Tom himself auditions, as Tom once showed promise. Inspired, Tom hires a tutor and neglects his "duties," irritating his lowlife colleagues but making himself happy. The movie becomes a remarkable parable about the danger of betraying yourself. It's all the more powerful because Tom's life doesn't only get better - it grows dangerously more complicated.
In 1959, during the research for his book In Cold Blood, an account of the murder of a Kansas family, Truman Capote develops a relationship with Perry Smith, one of the young killers. Philip Seymour Hoffman won the Best Actor award in the 2006 Oscars for his performance as the effete and mannered Capote whilst Catherine Keener was a deserved Oscar nominee for her portrayal of his close friend Harper Lee herself becoming a major literary figure with the success of To Kill a Mockingbird.
A fascinating documentary about the inspiring non-profit foundation Kids With Cameras, which teaches photography skills to children in marginalized communities. In 1998, New York-based photographer Zana Briski started photographing prostitutes in the red-light district of Calcutta. She eventually developed a relationship with their children, who were fascinated by her equipment. Eventually, the kids created their own photographs with point-and-shoot 35 mm cameras, their images capturing the intimacy and colour of everyday life in the overpopulated sections of Calcutta.
This is the movie famous for its touching story of love between two macho men. It's an adaptation of an E. Annie Proulx story and stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger as young cowboys whose platonic relationship explodes into a physical one, Although the two follow different life paths - one becoming a father of two and the other marrying into a successful business - they enjoy a reunion once every year. The film won three Oscars including Ang Lee as Best Director.
Marc, Béatrix and their teenage children are spending summer by the sea, but the atmosphere becomes erotically charged as young love blossoms, old flames flare up and complications escalate. Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi storms through the film as Béatrix, sexy as only the French know how, whose desires are aroused by something in the Mediterranean breeze. She's not the only one - daughter Laura is pining for her biker boyfriend, and son Charly has won the heart of his best friend Martin, leading Béatrix to assume that he is gay. Meanwhile husband Marc struggles disapprovingly to maintain some gravitas, which soon wilts when an old flame turns up. Behind the farcical set-pieces, the hilarious running gags and the impeccable comic timing, this has something considered to say about families, passion, and the need for honesty. One of the sunniest French comedies we have had for a long time.
Adapted from a novel by Athol Fugard, Tsotsi is a dangerous young hoodlum who develops an unexpected paternal side in this powerful drama from South Africa. One evening, Tsotsi shoots a woman while stealing her car, and only later makes a life-changing discovery on the back seat. Gavin Hood's film was a deserving winner of the Oscar for the Best Foreign Language film combining, as it does a heightened realism with the hope of redemption. Uncertain of what to do with the baby, Tsotsi takes the boy home and tries to care
A deceptively simple road movie following the adventures of the 'rolling family' as grandmother Emilia leads her whole tribe from her home in Buenos Aires to her remote hometown on the border of Brazil for a niece's wedding. It is inevitable that there will be many mechanical and familial breakdowns along the way, some comic and some tragic before they reach journey's end. 'Trapero's cast has a freewheeling energy and these's enough colourful roadside detail across the Argentinean countryside to keep things lively'.
A hidden watcher points a camera at a Parisian house. Inside it, a supremely middle class couple, superbly played by Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche, realise they are under surveillance and feel increasingly uneasy. Tapes of camera footage of the house and childish but sinister drawings of a small boy vomiting blood and of a decapitated chicken bleeding from its severed neck are delivered to their home. From these sinister beginnings, Austrian director Michael Haneke goes on to mine a rich vein of French guilt and to produce one of the most unsettling and hotly-discussed films of recent years.
American road movie with a difference: 37-year old female Bree (Felicity Huffman) crosses the US continent accompanied by a 17-year-old rent boy Toby (Kevin Zegers), who is unaware that Bree is really his father, Stanley. The 'gender dysphoric' Stanley/Bree is living in Los Angeles preparing for surgery when she receives a call from a son she never knew she had who's seeking bail in New York, Bree's therapist insists that before the gender reassignment operation can take place, she must put things right with her son. This leads to their journey together, which turns out to be funny and touching, but never mawkish or sentimental, with a dominating performance from Felicity Huffman.