Based on the acclaimed novel by Pat Barker, Regeneration portrays the lives of various victims of shell-shock being treated at a psychiatric hospital in Edinburgh during the First World War. Among those inmates are the anti-war poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. The film is moving, not just because of the subtly conveyed horrors of war, but because of its story of a poet discovering his voice in a hitherto unimaginable world.

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Italy, 1943 - captured and taken to a POW camp, Colonel Ryan (Frank Sinatra) is dubbed 'Von Ryan' after he scuppers a 'suicidal' British escape attempt. Ryan spots a better opportunity for freedom when the inmates are relocated to Germany: he hijacks the train and heads for Switzerland, hotly pursued by the Nazis. A ripping yarn culminating in a wild train dash through Germany, with director Mark Robson cranking up the tension and releasing it with some excellent action set-pieces.

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A 2nd World War drama from Brit director Caton-Jones. The crew of the Memphis Belle, a B-17 bomber, have to make one final bombing raid over Europe before they complete their 25th mission and are able to return home. Their task is to bomb a Nazi supply factory in Bremen, which if missed could lead to many civilians losing their lives.

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Roberto Rossellini's first film of the post-Mussolini era is a real rough diamond, neo-realism par excellence, shot with hand-held cameras on the streets of Rome. It's based on the true story of a priest killed by the Nazis in wartime Italy, and Aldo Fabrizi brings an embattled matter-of-factness to the role of the doomed resistance worker Don Pietro, but the real power comes from the non-professional actors in the smaller roles - the children and the women on the street.

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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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