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

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Linda Fiorentino stars as Bridget Gregory, the most memorably evil and sexy of all cinema femmes fatales; the woman who "makes Stanwyck in Double Indemnity look like Snow White!" (Leonard Maltin) Beautiful, intelligent and ambitious, Bridget Gregory persuades her doctor husband Clay (Bill Pullman)

to enter a $700,000 cocaine deal so they can pay off a loan shark. She then takes off with the money and hides out in a small town where she becomes involved with young , dumb Swale (Peter Berg). Clay hires Harlan (Bill Nunn), a tenacious private investigator, to track down his wife and the money. As the pair close in, Bridget embroils Swale in an elaborate and deadly scheme to be rid of them once and for all.

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Hollywood's hottest director Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs) assembles an all-star cast for a skillfully woven tale of small-time gangster life in a most ambitious and provocative film, 'Pulp Fiction'.

Bruce Willis (Die Hard) and Oscar Nominees John Travolta (Best Actor) and Samuel L Jackson (Best Supporting Actor) deliver career performances as petty thugs in LA's criminal underworld - where gritty confrontations, fast talk and perverse humour are all part of the daily grind. Nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award 1995, this boldly inventive and expertly orchestrated crime sage is hailed by critics as a landmark achievement in modern filmmaking!

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Wrongly accused city banker Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) arrives at Shawshank Prison in 1947 after receiving a double life sentence for the brutal murders of his wife and her lover. He discovers that when they send you to Shawshank for life...that's exactly what they take.

His quiet strength slowly earns him the respect and friendship of the prison fixer Red (Morgan Freeman). He also becomes popular with the warden and prison guards, as he is able to use his banking experience to help the corrupt officials amass fortunes. But Andy's seemingly stoic acceptance of his unjust imprisonment hides a fierce determination for freedom and provides a unique chance to change his fate.

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Sex in southwest France in 1962, Andre Techine's award-winning film Wild Reed's is a poignant coming-of-age story about four young teenagers awakening to love in a nation torn apart by war.

This bittersweet tale delves in to the life of Francois, a sensitive young man uncertain of his sexuality as he finds himself more attracted to his classmate Serge, than his platonic girlfriend Maite. An older boy, Henri, finds himself drawn into the circle, further complicating relationships. Through their passage into adulthood, the four experience a series of sexual and political conflicts as they explore the mysteries of the human heart.

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'Chungking Express', cult filmmaker Wong Kar-Wai's hugely influential international breakthrough, is a supremely stylish combination of love story and thriller, set in and around Hong Kong's infamous Chungking Mansions, a vast complex of shabby hostels, bars and clubs.

The film tells the stories of two lovelorn cops and the women with whom they become involved: a mysterious drug dealer dressed in a blonde wig and sunglasses, and an impulsive young dreamer.

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This legendary cartoonist-artist drew Keep on truckin' and Fritz the Cat amongst others, and played a major pioneering role in the genesis of underground comics - including the illustration of Harvey Pekar's American Splendor.

Through interviews with his mother, two brothers, wife and ex-girlfriends, as well as selections from his vast quantity of graphic art, we are treated to a darkly comic ride through one man's subconscious mind. As his acid-trip induced images flicker across our own retinas, Zwigoff's hilarious, disturbing film offers a unique insight into this complex and highly creative individual.

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Internationally acclaimed filmmaker Bela Tarr's epic rendering of Laszlo Krasznahorkai's novel, about the decline of Communism in Eastern Europe, is a unique and visionary masterpiece that defies classification and transcends genre.

Set in a struggling Hungarian agricultural collective, a group of lost souls reeling from the collapse of their Communist utopia face an uncertain future, until the arrival of a charismatic stranger in whom they believe lies their salvation. The collective's individual experiences and fates are gradually revealed in Tarr's immaculately composed, brilliantly photographed and bleakly comic tour-de-force, which confirmed his place as one of contemporary cinema's few genuine auteurs.

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Abbas Kiarostami takes metanarrative gamesmanship to masterful new heights in the final instalment of The Koker Trilogy.

Unfolding "behind the scenes" of 'And Life Goes On', this film traces the complications that arise when the romantic misfortune of one of the actors - a young man who pines for the woman cast as his wife, even though, in real life, she will have nothing to do with him - creates turmoil on set and leaves the hapless director caught in the middle. An ineffably lovely, gentle human comedy steeped in the folkways of Iranian village life, 'Through the Olive Trees' peels away layer after layer of artifice as it investigates the elusive, alchemical relationship between cinema and reality.

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Pauline is a student in New Zealand who has no affection for her family or her classmates, but when the beautiful and wealthy Juliet enrols at her school the pair become best friends. Through their shared tastes in art, literature, and music they begin to build an elegant fantasy world.

However, when Juliet's parents threaten to separate the girls, they make a ruthless pact to preserve their fairytale forever, whatever the cost...

Presented in the three chapters, Moretti uses the experience from travelling on his vespa, cruising with his friend around a set of remote islands and consulting series of medical experts to cure his annoying rash in order to find peace so he can finish film.

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You're invited to one of the most celebrated and audaciously funny hit comedies of the year - Muriel's Wedding! Follow frumpy, misguided Muriel Heslop on her lifelong quest for a glitzy fairy-tale wedding.

With visions of nuptials dancing in her head, this ABBA-obsessed misfit ditches her pathetic life and plastic friends in a small Australian suburb for big-city dreams in Sydney. But the road to the altar takes surprising twists and turns - and Muriel is about to learn the lesson of a lifetime. Wry, witty and hailed by critics everywhere, Muriel's Wedding is one affair you don't want to miss.

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It Is a time of arrivals at The Kingdom. The infamous Swedish surgeon Stig Helmer (Ernst-Hugo Järegård) has taken up his new post, much to the distress of his Danish colleagues.

The position promises to be an eventful one - while Helmer is inducted into the sinister brotherhood of surgeons and performs surgery on a patient who cannot be anaesthetised, his involvement with a brain-damaged patient leaves him open to legal proceedings and a blackmail plot by the idealistic Dr. Krogshoj (Søren Pilmark). And there are other, less wholesome presences beginning to make themselves known in the labyrinthine hospital. When the imagined illnesses of Mrs Sigrid Drusse (Kirsten Rolffes) lead her to be admitted as a patient, she discovers The Kingdom's resident ghost weeping in the lift shafts and embarks on a supernatural search for the wayward spirit. Dr. Judith (Birgitte Raaberg) is pregnant with a highly unusual baby, ghostly ambulances arrive with neither patients or drivers, Dr. Bondo (Baard Owe) finds himself unable to resist the lure of a dying man's tumour and just what is the lovesick Dr. Mogge (Peter Mygind) doing in the morgue with a hacksaw?

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Babe is the timeless tale of a young orphaned piglet. Through his own sheer will and remarkable way with words he overcomes the odds to become a 'pig of destiny'. Babe's enchanting adventure begins in Farmer Hoggett's barnyard.

Under the care of Fly, the sheep dog, Babe figures he's a sheep dog too - and acts like it! But on a farm where outlandish antics and outrageous characters abound, you come to believe it yourself -and root for the polite little pig as he competes in the National Sheepdog Championships.

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James Benning took the founding of the New York Times in 1851 as a departure point for his latest film, 'Deseret'.

In the best Benning tradition, 'Deseret' unfolds magnificent landscapes captured with a stationary camera during a dozen-odd trips throughout the calendar year - deserts, plains of snow, lonely trails, trees in bloom, cemeteries, ruins, unfriendly rocks, empty settlers' houses, roads that seem to be leading nowhere, a few isolated human figures. Deseret's starkly composed images suggest a space haunted by the official history written back East in the Times. Benning collected 93 stories about Utah, boiled them down to a few lines and used a different shot to 'illustrate' each sentence. As we reach 1900, his black and white footage spectacularly turns to color. The stories told recount the loss of American innocence: from the woes and persecution of the Mormons, the fights with the Indians, the struggle to become a state, to the turning of Utah into a testing ground for nuclear...

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Mel Gibson stars in and directs this sweeping saga about Scotland's brutal battle for independence in the 13th century. When William Wallace's (Mel Gibson) wife is ravaged and murdered by English troops, his quest for revenge quickly turns into an impassioned fight for his country's freedom.

Tales of Wallace's bravery inspire every commoner to take arms against the English and escalate their crusade into a full scale war.