With a budget bigger than a small country's GDP, a beautiful cast, a fine score and a cracking story this is a superb technicolor epic. Heston's heroic impassivity is perfect for the role of the semi-legendary 11th-century warrior hero who drove the Moors from Spain. At the climax, worthy of the Spanish epics and ballads on the same subject, he ends up as a rigid corpse strapped to a horse leading his men to victory. Anthony Mann's epic towers over all others of the same type.

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Spielberg's adaptation of JG Ballard's semi-autobiographical novel about his experience as a child in a Japanese PoW camp stars a young Christian Bale as Jim, an obnoxious British colonial child being brought up in luxury in China. When the Second World War breaks out he's captured by the Japanese and interned in a camp, where he has to do his utmost to survive. An unusual war movie, in that it's told from a child's point of view, Empire Of The Sun is a haunting film.

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Jude Law, Joseph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz star as three slightly improbable young Soviet soldiers in Jean-Jacques Annaud's spectacular drama-romance set during the Nazi siege of Stalingrad in 1942-3. The film's focus is a love triangle between Soviet political officer Danilov (Fiennes), sharp shooting farmboy Vassili (Law) and educated soldier Tania (Weisz). Through his propaganda activities, Danilov makes Vassilli a morale-boosting mythic hero. This draws Nazi attention, and expert marksman major Konig (Harris) is sent in. A duel amid the city's rubble ensues.

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Oscars for Best Picture, director Anthony Minghella and actress Juliett Binoche were among the many laurels showered on this adaptation of Michael Ondaatje's 1992 book. Romance blossoms between star-crossed lovers Count Laszlo de Almasy (Ralph Fiennes) and Katherine Clifton (Kristin Scott Thomas) in desert outposts during the Second World War, the couple's affair related in flashback by amnesiac, charred and dying Almasy to sympathetic nurse Hana (Binoche). A really sense of doom hangs over the couple and The English Patient boasts one of cinema's most moving endings.

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Ace code-cracker Tom Jericho (Dougray Scott) must race against time if he is to uncover a spy, locate his missing girlfriend and save 10,000 lives in this quality Second World War thriller. Produced by Rolling Stone Mick Jagger, directed by Michael Apted and featuring a sumptuous score by John Barry, Enigma is an old-fashioned espionage thriller in the grand tradition of The Thirty-Nine Steps and The Lady Vanishes. Based on the bestselling novel by Robert Harris, it also pays tribute to the code-breakers of Bletchley Park whose tireless efforts foiled the Nazi U-boats wreaking havoc in the Atlantic.

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