Infamous (2006)

Beneath the surface of this gracious and aesthetic tale of reportage and repellent murder lies a melancholic love story. A love smothered between harsh truths and elegant lies.

Truman glides ostentatiously between the parallel worlds of the elite and the commonalty, initially with curiosity and hauteur but ultimately with artistic integrity and grace.

This fascination of the human frailties behind the destructive force of the criminal mind draws us into the complexities of a troubled soul, but whose?

With similar backgrounds of grief, Perry and Truman bond. Each man is unable to escape from the constraints of his own making.

Return to Oz (1985)

From the many adaptations of Frank Baum’s fairyland fables, Return to Oz is one celluloid trip that has roots firmly planted within the dark realms of fantasy borne from the original books.

An evil princess who collects heads; a slave race with wheels for appendages; a desert that reduces anyone who touches it into sand…

Baum was a voracious advocate for female rights and votes for women. His passion seeped through his work where the strongest protagonists were wise, thoughtful and powerful girls.

Oz may not be Utopia, but it’s home to a road of imagination and an altruistic future.

The Haunting (1963)

Robert Wise’s chilling film is leaden with eerie tension and fraught performances. Dr Markway imprudently invites guests to act as guinea pigs in his ill-advised studies.

• Eleanor, a woman whose own subconscious spirit plays as much a part in “the haunting” as the malevolent phantoms encased within the stone walls of the venerable yet malignant edifice.

• Theo hides her vulnerability behind a façade that shatters under the relentless erosion of Hill House’s enduring denizens.

• Luke vaunts like a braggadocio but soon laments his bravado.

You may never look at wallpaper the same way again…

In the night… In the dark…