Daniel Day-Lewis

The prestigious film-making trio of producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala had made other critically acclaimed films before A Room with a View was released in 1985, but it was this popular film that made them art-house superstars. Splendidly adapted from the novel by E.M. Forster, it's a comedy of the heart, a passionate romance and a study of repression within the class system of manners and mores. It's that system of rigid behaviour that prevents young Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter) from accepting the loving advances of a free-spirited suitor (Julian Sands), who fears that she will follow through with her engagement to a priggish intellectual (Daniel Day-Lewis) whose capacity for passion is virtually non-existent. During and after a trip to Italy with her protective companion (Maggie Smith), Lucy gradually gets in touch with her true emotions. The fun of watching A Room with a View comes from seeing how Lucy's thoughts and feelings finally arrive at the same romantic conclusion. Through an abundance of humour both subtle and overt, the film rose to an unexpected level of popular appeal. The Merchant-Ivory tea...

Roger Donaldson's film benefits from a literate screenplay by Robert Bolt, who here as in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), brings real insight into the English institutional mind in conflict. Hopkins is at his complex best and Gibson offers more depth than his usual two-dimensional hero persona; here Bligh and Christian emerge as complex men gripped by circumstances beyond their control. The haunting score by Vangelis contributes immensely to a very underrated film which deserves to be considered a modern classic.

On the DVD: There is an exce...

On the DVD: Where the real-life events behind the film might have offered huge scope for additional material, the DVD provides little beyond production and cast notes. The film's re-creation of both 1970s...

That said, we've come to expect nothing less from writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson, the man who previously brought us Boogie Nights, Magnolia and Punch Drunk Love. However, he's really topped himself in terms of ambition with There Will Be Blood, an adaptation of Upton Sinclair's book, Oil! It follows Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) who, when we first meet him in the film's silent opening is attempting to mine silver, before he discovers oil and slowly builds up an empire off the back of it. There Will Be Blood then follows his rise to power, given the vast riches that his oil brings him, concurrently exploring his relationship with his son. It proves to be a long, complex, stunning piece of work.

There's little room in There Will Be Blood for much more than the sheer power of Day-Lewis' performance, bu...