Cinema Essentials

When Jack (Stephen Moyer) goes missing just before his wedding to Kirsty (Colette Brown), his best friend, police detective Michael Colefield (Jack Davenport), sets out to track him down and find out why he has disappeared. When he finally finds him, Jack tells him that he is in hiding because he is being hunted by an undercover government “death squad” who are out to kill him. But what kind of government organisation would be trying to murder him, and why?

Colefield gradually learns the truth, that Jack has been turned into a vampire, and he is drawn into a secret world of modern day vampires and the shadowy government organisation trying to defeat them. Eventually he is slightly reluctantly recruited into the team of vampire hunters, led by a priest, Pearse Harman (Philip Quast), and assisted by a haematologist Dr Angela March (Susannah Harker) and an ex-soldier, Vaughan Rice (Idris Elba). The team investigate a series of incidents that may or may not be related to vampires. In the…

Madeleine is based on a true story, a notorious murder trial from 19th Century Scotland. Madeleine Smith (Ann Todd) is a young woman living with her well-to-do family, including her stern father (Leslie Banks), in Victorian Glasgow in the 1850s. Her family has hopes for her to marry soon and one suitor, William Minnoch (Norman Wooland), seems ideal. There's only one problem; unbeknown to her family, Madeleine is already carrying out an illicit affair with a down-at-heel Frenchman, Emile (Ivan Desny).

The Last of the Mohicans is an epic adventure story set in the North American Colonies during the Seven Years War. Two Englishwomen, Cora Munro (Madeleine Stowe) and her sister Alice (Jodhi May), are being escorted by British soldiers to Fort William Henry, a British fort commanded by their father, Colonel Munro (Maurice Roëves). But their native guide is the treacherous Magua (Wes Studi), who is secretly loyal to the Huron tribe and their French allies.

Wing Commander Roy Grant (Cliff Robertson) is the commander of 633 Squadron of the Royal Air Force, flying de Havilland Mosquitoes on raids against the German forces in occupied Europe during WWII.

In the run up to D-Day in 1944, 633 Squadron is given a highly dangerous mission to bomb a German rocket fuel factory in Norway. Just to complicate things, their target is not the factory itself but a rock face overhanging it that will collapse onto the factory and destroy it. To do that they need to fly at extremely low level along the length of a Norwegian fjord and under the guns of the German defenders.

To increase their chances slightly, the Norwegian resistance, led by Lieutenant Erik Bergman (George Chakiris), will attack the German anti-aircraft guns along the fjord just before the attack takes place.

Grant isn't that enthusiastic about the plan, but while the squadron trains for the mission, he at least has the distractions of Bergman's attractive sister Hilde (Maria Persc…

This sequel to 1973's The Three Musketeers picks up the story after a brief recap of the events of the first film. The story starts with the Musketeers joining the fighting at La Rochelle, as the King's army battles Protestant rebels. The Musketeers are sent to rescue their old foe Rochefort (Christopher Lee), who is working as a spy for the King's forces and has been captured by the rebels.

After his release, Rochefort rewards the Musketeers' efforts by kidnapping Constance (Raquel Welch), with the assistance of Milady de Winter (Faye Dunaway). Constance's lover, d'Artagnan (Michael York), initially finds compensations in the attentions of Milady and her obliging maid Kitty (Nicole Calfan). But he soon discovers that Milady is an agent of Cardinal Richelieu (Charlton Heston) and that his seduction and the kidnapping of Constance are part of Milady's revenge plot against him.

The other Musketeers, Athos (Oliver Reed), Porthos (Frank Finlay) and Aramis (Ric…

In the early 1930s, an assorted group of wealthy passengers are travelling west from Istanbul to Paris on the luxury train the Orient Express. A late addition to the passengers is the world-renowned detective Hercule Poirot (Albert Finney). Poirot is accompanied by his friend Bianchi (Martin Balsam), a director of Wagon Lits, the company that runs the Orient Express train. As the train travels through Yugoslavia it runs into heavy snow, and is eventually halted completely by a snow drift. More dramatically, at the same time a shocking murder takes place, of a mysterious American “businessman”, Mr Ratchett (Richard Widmark), who previously told Poirot that he had made enemies and was in fear of his life.
With the train halted by the snow, Bianchi asks Poirot to investigate the murder before the local police arrive. Poirot is furnished with a range of suspects, including Ratchett's nervy secretary (Anthony Perkins), an imperious Russian princess (Wendy Hiller), a simple Swedish nan…