Director Giuliano Montaldo’s splendidly acted, provocative, sterling 1971 biopic of 1920s Italian-born US immigrant anarchists Nicola Sacco (Riccardo Cucciolla) and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (Gian Maria Volonté), who are tired on trumped-up charges of robbery and murder and sentenced to death in the electric chair.

They are convicted of murdering a guard and a paymaster during the armed robbery of the Slater and Morrill Shoe Company on April 15 1920 in South Braintree, Massachusetts. In reality, they are condemned for their political convictions as members of an anarchist movement that advocated relentless warfare against the government.

Made in the neo-realist noir style, Sacco & Vanzetti is one of the most eloquent and notable Italian films of its time.

Cucciolla (1924-99) won the Best A...

Director Silvio Narizzano films Joe Orton’s wickedly funny, now classic 1965 stage black comedy Loot in 1970 – the same year as the movie of Entertaining Mr Sloane.

To succeed, Orton’s outrageous, wonderfully bad-taste comedy needs to be performed at the speed of lightning and with the blast of a gale-force wind, and of course preferably in a theatre. So it probably works here as much as it ever could on screen, thanks to Alan Galton and Ray Simpson’s useful screenplay and the hardworking, if perhaps not quite inspired, performances of a surprising, but well-chosen cast.

Richard Attenborough is on fine, exuberant comic form, relishing his role as the wholly inappropriate Inspector Truscott, the police detective who swears he’s from the water board while on the case of inseparabl...

The 1968 sci-fi film Barbarella stars Jane Fonda as the title space traveller sent to find Durand Durand (Milo O’Shea), who has created a weapon that could destroy humanity. ‘I want to make something beautiful out of eroticism,’ said director Roger Vadim. 

Director Roger Vadim’s 1968 science-fiction erotic fantasy comedy adventure film Barbarella stars Jane Fonda as the title space-traveller and representative of the United Earth government sent to find scientist Durand Durand (Milo O’Shea), who has created a weapon that could destroy humanity.

‘I want to make something beautiful out of eroticism,’ said director Roger Vadim, casting his then wife Jane Fonda in 1968 as 41st-century sex kitten Barbarella in this teasing and amusing French-Italian science fiction erotic film fantasy b...

Director Douglas Hickox’s engagingly outrageous 1973 British horror farce movie Theatre of Blood provides an ideal showcase for Vincent Price, whose talent for succulent over-acting is lavishly displayed when he plays crazed thespian Edward Lionheart, who concocts  a series of gruesome, grisly and appropriately Shakespearean deaths for his carping critics. Yes, it’s curtains for his critics.

Assuming various different actory disguises, Lionheart bumps off the critics one by one, each one taking fresh inspiration from whichever play he appeared in and they had slated him for in their evil reviews...

Director Gerald Thomas’s 1963 comedy Carry On Cabby was planned as a non-Carry On film called Call Me a Cab, which in fact is neatly the film’s last line spoken by Sidney James as Charlie Hawkins, but, at some advanced stage of production, it became the seventh Carry On movie.

Happily, it turned out to be one of the most definitive series entries, with all of the basic ingredients and most of the regulars (including Sid James, Hattie Jacques, Kenneth Connor and Charles Hawtrey) except for Kenneth Williams, Joan Sims and Barbara Windsor, though of course they are much missed.

These were the Sixties when the time they were a’changin’, even for the Carry On folk. So there’s an early feminist plot, rather surprisingly...

Writer-director Woody Allen’s witty, bitter-sweet 1985 romantic fantasy comedy is a enchanting treat. It won the Bafta award for Best Film and the César Award for Best Foreign Film, as well as  the FIPRESCI Prize at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival.

It stars his then partner Mia Farrow as a 1930s New Jersey film fan called Cecilia, a clumsy waitress who goes to the movies to escape her bleak life and abusive marriage to Monk (Danny Aiello). She’s tried and failed to leave him several times. It’s the Great Depression and, boy, Cecilia is depressed.

But Cecilia’s life suddenly changes when her dashing movie star hero Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels) literally steps out of the screen...

This story of innocence undone comes from the director of Michael Collins, Mona Lisa (1984), The Crying Game (1992) and Interview with the Vampire (1994). Writer-director Neil Jordan’s 1998 film The Butcher Boy is one of this fine film-maker’s best movies.

It’s an extraordinary, ultra-disturbing portrait of a disturbed wee Irish lad called Francie Brady (Eamonn Owens), who turns to tragic violence. There’s a marvellous performance by the lad and spot-on handling by the director, who co-wrote the thoughtful, intelligent screenplay with the author of the original novel, Pat McCabe.

When his mother commits suicide and his friend Joe (Alan Boyle) goes off to boarding school, Francie is troubled by his violent, alcoholic father (Stephen Rea) and a nasty neighbour called Mrs Nugent...