Most of us know what it’s like to scrape to get by from paycheck to paycheck, all along knowing that whatever we have inside us that is beautiful or that we may have to offer the world has been stifled if not killed.

The story is familiar. A poor little boy named Charlie Bucket (played by Freddie Highmore) dreams of little else other than what it is like inside Willy Wonka’s fabulous but extremely secret chocolate factory.

Marvel Comics’ first superheroes are very much second best compared with the two film adaptations of their most popular character Spiderman. ..Anyway, it’s all a matter of merchandising - the kids demand that their parents fork out for four action figures instead of one.

“When our country was on it’s knees, he brought America to his feet.” So is the tagline for Ron Howard’s Depression Era boxing film Cinderella Man starring Russell Crowe. Cinderella Man, the story of 1930’s heavyweight champion James J. Braddock, has been compared to the 2003 film Seabiscuit...In reality, the 1930s was an era of not only poverty but also mass resistance, as strikes swept the south and shut down the cities...

THE late leader of the Black Panthers Hewy P Newton would no doubt be rolling round his grave laughing at the antics of the black brothers going to the aid of the master in the White House.

HBO Films has triumphed again with Warm Springs, a biopic of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his struggle to overcome partial paralysis caused by polio.

A United Nations interpreter, Silvia Bloome (Nicole Kidman) accidentally overhears part of a plot to assasinate the leader of Matobo, a fictitious African country, when he will be giving a speech to the General Assembly of the UN in a few days.

Three men, unknown to each other and in three self-contained mini-plots, are on a hunt to find a serial murderer, a serial child rapist and killer, and a violent thug who brutally assaults women.

Robots is an animated children’s movie that may be the most revolutionary film to appear on the big screen in years – and I’m not just talking about the technology used to make it.

In 1994, after the assassination of the country's leader Juvenal Habyarimana, the long-simmering hostility of the Hutus for their fellow Rwandans, the Tutsi, boiled over into a bloody genocide.

In the past, Europeans set out on various quests of exploration and conquest, claiming a providentially appointed mission to civilize the world.

The story seems familiar. The son of a king, always feeling as though he hasn’t lived up to his father’s standards, drives his army across the world to Babylon (modern day Iraq) to conquer an empire. This empire (Persia) is commanded by a tyrant whose rule, or so goes the Macedonian propaganda machine, is based only on brutality and slavery.

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Wild and incredible legends of secret societies – Templars and Masons – hidden passages in ancient churches, coded rhymes and encrypted historical documents have been popularized by such writers as Dan Brown in his best-selling controversial novels, Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code.

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The idea of government using advanced technology to control people has probably teased people’s collective imagination since before technology was even a word. Denzel Washington’s character thinks so in the new film, The Manchurian Candidate, about right-wingers at the highest levels of government posing as liberals to seize power, and using thought control to do it.

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If the original film insisted on portraying the People’s Republic of China, and communism generally, as the real enemy of America, our modern version offers another reality. This time the Manchurian candidate is the pawn, not of the Chinese, but of Manchurian Global, a powerful multinational corporation, which, as one character states, has in one way or another controlled much of the policy decisions of every president since Nixon.

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Micheal Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 is a documentary everyone should see. Pundits on the far right and in the corporate media who insist this film is "liberal propaganda" are absolutely correct; if propaganda is the connective tissue which makes relevant facts accessible to the average person, then yes, this is certainly propaganda.

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Resentment, anger and loss are emotions that fuel performances in many of the Oscar-nominated films of 2003.