frankie's - 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die List

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Cher is devastatingly funny, sinuous and beautiful as Loretta, an unlucky-in-love Italian widow who finds romance through the intervention of the Manhattan moon.

With her wedding to a close friend just weeks away, she meets - and falls hopelessly in love with - his younger brother (Nicolas Cage)! Her dilemma - and her equally passionate and hilariously eccentric family - make for an unforgettable film you'll find beguiling, enchanting and irresistible.

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Brian De Palma's 'The Untouchables' is a must-see masterpiece - a glorious, fierce, larger-than-life depiction of the mob warlord who ruled Prohibition-era Chicago...and the law enforcer who vowed to bring him down.

This classic confrontation between good and evil stars Kevin Costner as federal agent Eliot Ness, Robert De Niro as gangland kingpin Al Capone and Sean Connery as Malone, the cop who teaches Ness how to beat the mob: shoot fast and shoot first.

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As outlined by an unseen, anonymous narrator, "Sorghum" tells of the life between "Grandmother" and "Grandfather". The woman is a bride-to-be en-route to an arranged wedding with an aging leprous winemaker, when she is saved from a bandit attack by one of the bearers of her sedan.

After the untimely death of the winemaker, she is re-united with the bearer and they endure continuous travails with banditry, pestilence and war with Japanese.

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It is the Feast of Epiphany (6th January) 1904 in Dublin and time for one of the highlights of the season - the grand party thrown by Misses Kate (Helena Carroll) and Julia (Cathleen Delany) Morkan and their niece, Mary Jane (Ingrid Craigie).

Their favourite nephew, Gabriel Conroy (Donal McCann) arrives with his beautiful wife, Gretta (Anjelica Huston), and acts as host. Although a splendid evening is had by all, Gretta is profoundly affected when she hears the words of a sentimental old song - The Lass of Aughrim. She weeps as she tells of a brief and innocent romance from her youth, cut short by the young man's death at the age of seventeen. In all their years of marriage, Gabriel has never heard her speak of this boy, locked away in her heart. His jealousy gives way to sadness as he realises he has never felt such passion, and his thoughts turn to death, for without passion there is only death. Gabriel's agony of self-doubt, the sudden awareness of his own frailty, becomes a vision of a bleak, wintry landscape, a revelation of universal truth uniting the living and the dead.

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Michael Douglas plays Dan Gallagher, a New York attorney who has a tryst with seductive Alex Forest (Glenn Close) while his wife (Anne Archer) is away. Dan later shrugs off the affair as a mistake and considers it over. But Alex won't be ignored. Not now, not tomorrow, not ever...

even if it means destroying Dan's family to keep him.

A visually stunning mix of horror, romance, martial arts and eastern mysticism, 'A Chinese Ghost Story' tells the immortal story of a reluctant hero who embarks on a quest to redeem the soul of an alluring fox-spirit imprisoned for all eternity by her vampiric mistress.

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When Ivan (Fernando Guillen) jilts long-time lover, actress Pepa (Carmen Maura), she plans her suicide; lacing her gazpacho soup with barbiturates. She is, however saved by her best friend Candela (Maria Barranco), a fugitive from the law.

Further adding to the chaos, Ivan's son (Antonio Banderas) and his fiance Marisa (Rossy de Palma) turn up at the apartment. Bored with the situation, Marisa inadvertently ingests the gazpacho and as she blissfully snoozes, her fiance inaugurates an affair with Carmen's fugitive friend.

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Whilst touring in France, a young couple (Rex and Saskia) stop for a break at a roadside service station. Saskia (Johanna ter Steege) leaves Rex (Gene Bervoets) to browse around the shops and vanishes leaving no clues as to her whereabouts.

Three years later Rex begins to receive taunting postcards from Saskia's supposed abductor and is drawn into a terrifying battle of cat and mouse in his desperate quest to discover the fate of his missing lover.

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Baseball season gets off to a rocky start when the Durham Bulls' new catcher, "Crash" Davis (Kevin Costner), punches out the cocky young pitcher, "Nuke" LaLoosh (Tim Robbins), he's just been hired to train.

Then sexy Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon) informs both men that each season she chooses one player to share her bed - and Nuke and Crash are this year's draft picks. After Crash passes on the offer, Nuke eagerly enlists as Annie's summer fling...until Crash's jealousy takes over and he convinces Nuke that sex with Annie jinx the Bulls' new-found winning streak!

Feature follows the exploits of the laconic Taisto, a newly-unemployed Lapland miner who sets off in a Cadillac convertible for a fresh start in Helsinki. Joined in his odyssey by meter maid Irmeli and her young son, Taitso's plans take a series of unexpected turns...

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Evolving from an earlier project in which Morris interviewed death row inmates for a portrait of Dallas psychiatrist Dr James Grigson, The Thin Blue Line is the fascinating and controversial true story of Randall Dale Adams.

A drifter arrested and convicted for the 1976 murder of Dallas policeman Robert Wood, Dale Adams was sentenced to death for the crime. Billed as "the first movie mystery to actually solve a murder", Morris’ film pieced together fresh evidence to eventually overturn the conviction. With its use of expressionistic re-enactments, riveting interview material and moody music by Philip Glass, The Thin Blue Line – whose title recalls the prosecuting judge’s comment regarding the thin blue line that maintains the social fabric – pioneered a new kind of non-fiction filmmaking whose style has been copied in countless reality-based television programs and feature films. One of the most important movies of its decade, this utterly thrilling and captivating film’s influence continues to reverberate.

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It's 2019, the world is on the brink of absolute destruction. Tokyo shimmers with tech-noir fetishism, gangs of cyber-punk bikers cruise the sprawl of the post-atomic city and rioting crowds surge under the neon-topped buildings looming a thousand storeys into the sky.

Now, old gods return to do battle with Akira and something more than comic book ultra-violence is unleashed...

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Giuseppe Tomatore's loving homage to the cinema tells the story of Salvatore (Marco Leonardi, Salvatore Cascio, Jacques Perrin), a successful film director, returning home for the funeral of Alfredo (Philippe Noiret), his old friend who was the projectionist at the local cinema throughout his

childhood. Soon memories of his first love affair with the beautiful Elena (Agnes Nano) and all the highs and lows that shaped his life come flooding back, as Salvatore reconnects with the community he left 30 years earlier.

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Klaus Barbie, also known as the 'butcher of Lyon' was implicated in 4,000 deaths and the deportation of 7,000 Jews from occupied France, before he inexplicably vanished.

This Oscar winning documentary, from visionary director Marcel Ophuls, traces the 40-year hunt for Barbie, initiated by the same governments that would later hide him and protect his family.
Employed by the American government as an informant, Barbie was smuggled out of Europe via an underground railway with Vatican ties — known as 'the rat line'. He found refuge in South America where his particular talents' were employed by governments in Bolivia and Peru. Until his trial in 1987, authorities harboured Barbie at the same time as denouncing his crimes.
This spellbinding documentary features interviews with both supporters and opponents of Barbie's trial, from his defence attorney to journalists, to old friends and former US Counter Intelligence agents. The film spans 70 years, three continents and 120 hours of interview footage.
Hotel Terminus exposes a complex web of deceit, collaboration and political deviance nearly as unforgettable as the crimes themselves. 'It's a fine, serious work by a film maker unlike any other' - New York Times

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Jewel thieves, Yorkshire terriers, proper British barristers and a fish called Wanda come together to create a comedy of non-stop wit and wonderfully funny misunderstandings.

Barrister Archie falls for irresistible lady thief Wanda as she charms not only him but a stuttering animal rights activist and a dim wined Nietzsche-quoting psychopath in her attempt to get hold of the loot from the heist of a lifetime.