Drama > BAFTA Drama > by Director (by last name)

Advantages: Sticks to the facts
Disadvantages: Only tells half the story

This is the true life love story of Johnny Cash and June Carter which follows Johnny from his humble beginnings as a poor farmers son to his huge world wide success as a country singer. The movie explains how Johnny went from strength to strength as a performer, how he spiralled out of control due to drink and drug addiction and how he met and fell in love with the love of his life June Carter. The movie doesn't follow Johnny through his whole career ... Read review

Advantages: Great script, beautiful cinematography.
Disadvantages: 2 hours is never enough to do this great book justice.

Of all the Austen adaptations, and I'm a huge fan, this is my favourite. It's dramatically strong, funny without being silly, really respects the female protagionists and is so beautifully filmed that it is perfect from beginning to end. Emma Thompson has written a great script. She does not use Austen's words verbatim, but has created a witty and thoughtful story so in character with Austen that one doesn't miss the 'essential' lines from the book, ...
...Moggach's adaptation of 'Pride and Prejudice', where every line, every scene brought a groan of disappointment. The one glaring mistake for me was that Thompson left out one of the most heart-wrenching moments of the book, when Willoughby returns to Marianne and Eleanor refuses to let him see her. Whether this was due to time constraints or to it putting Eleanor (played by Thompson) either in a detremental light or knocking her character out of the ... Read review

Advantages: Cheap to buy
Disadvantages: Unusual film, disturbing in scenes

The story begins in 1963 and centres around the two main characters of the film Ennis Del Mar (played by Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) who pick up a summer job herding sheep in the mountains and ensuring that they don't get sen to the heavens by the Wolves. Left alone in the mountains Jack and Ennis soon find that they have emotional feelings for one another. These are two hard men who live out their lives as Cowboys and ...
...rodeo's. Such feelings are both unusual and frightening that are associated with a filthy love affair. The film was surrounded by some of the finest mountain scenery captured on film. To shows how beautiful and sensitive this film really is. It is a film to watch if you want to let your emotions loose! ... Read review

Advantages: Interesting story, good acting
Disadvantages: Too darn long

...documentary about this film and the life of Howard Hughes just before Christmas and thought it looked like an interesting film, although Leonardo di Caprio seemed like an odd choice for the main character. The length of the film also put me off. Then one evening with absolutely nothing to watch on TV, I got it out. It would be hard to make a bad film about a man with a life like Howard Hughes', but even so, I was more impressed that I had expected ...
...with his own aeroplanes as the stars of the show. His sense of perfection led him to plough millions of dollars into the film and it was many years before the film was finally seen by the public. It was a huge success and solidified Hughes' career as a playboy film maker. He had a series of affairs, two of which with well-known actresses, Katherine Hepburn and Ava Gardner. At the same time, Hughes was battling with mental illness - obsessive compulsive ... Read review

Advantages: Funny, touching, dramatic, quirky - just plain brilliant
Disadvantages: Quite a bit of swearing and violence; you might not "get it"

Fargo is the sixth movie by film-making brothers Joel and Ethan Coen, who between them wrote, directed and produced this, just like most of their films. I’m not that familiar with them, having only seen O Brother Where Art Thou (which I really liked) and The Big Lebowski (which was ok), but Fargo is considered by many as their finest film, and a modern American classic. Released in 1996, Fargo is a kind of dark comedy/drama, with gentle humour and ...
...you’ve seen it). Yet Fargo manages to be effortlessly entertaining, clever and thoughtful. The film races by so quickly that when the end came I wasn’t ready for it - it’s a complete cliché to say that you don’t want the film to end, but in this case it’s true. It seemingly came out of nowhere, even though the film had been playing for an hour and a half and the story had been wrapped up. I was just so engrossed in the film that I was taken aback ... Read review