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Celebrating the relaunch of Film4 as a free-to-air TV channel, Channel4 counts down their list of the fop 50 films to see before you die, as compiled by film critics and personalities.

This British documentary is more than an analysis of John Lennon's song "Imagine" and its ramifications for the world we live in, it's a tentative documentary on John (and Yoko)'s art and songs' influence on a lot of people in all parts of the world and from all walks of life. As such, it should be better known and considered part of the Beatles "canon". The footage shows everything from a John Lennon Museum in Japan to a John Lennon elementary school in Liverpool to his influence on the thinking of a former Communist from Georgia (of the former USSR). It is provocative and very well made with a serious contribution from Yoko.

Jim Wormold is an expatriate Englishman living in pre-revolutionary Havana with his teenage daughter Milly. He owns a vacuum cleaner shop but isn’t very successful so he accepts an offer from Hawthorne of the British Secret Service to recruit a network of agents in Cuba.

The building of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

A detective and a medical examiner join forces to solve a series of horrific murders in Victorian London - but one of them harbors a deadly secret.

Inspired by the movement of “Fathers for Justice”. A man loses custody of his children after his wife's affair and the breakdown of his marriage. Having arrived at the lowest point and faced with the possibility of losing his children, he has to look deep inside himself whilst considering a moral dilemma as to how he can take back control of his life.

A romantic comedy set in space, or - to be more specific - planet Earth which follows world-weary banker Zac on his search for his eccentric sister, Alice, who goes missing while on a narrowboat trip with her new boyfriend.

Mary Stuart, who was named Queen of Scotland when she was only six days old, is the last Roman Catholic ruler of Scotland. She is imprisoned at the age of 23 by her cousin Elizabeth Tudor, the English Queen and her arch adversary. Nineteen years later the life of Mary is to be ended on the scaffold and with her execution the last threat to Elizabeth's throne has been removed. The two Queens with their contrasting personalities make a dramatic counterpoint to history.

An original musical comedy that follows a delightfully subversive gang of fairies as they shake up their magical world.

The sinister Dr. Watt has an evil scheme going—he's kidnapping beautiful young women and turning them into mannequins to sell to local stores. Fortunately for him, Detective Sergeant Bung is on the case, and he doesn't have a clue!

Duncan Craig signs on a whaling ship, partly because his own business deal has fallen through, partly to help Judie Nordhall find her father. Rumor has it that her father may have been murdered by Erik Bland, son of her father's partner and her one-time lover. Duncan and Erik find themselves on rival whaleboats and, ultimately, on an ice floe.

Moshood Abiola wins Nigeria's freest election, only for the military to jail him. When U.S. diplomats arrive to negotiate his release, he is served tea, and dies.

A psychiatrist makes a home visit to a patient.

Story of the relationship between the poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath.

Whilst vacationing in the Carpathian Mountain, two couples stumble across the remains of Count Dracula's castle. The Count's trusted servant kills one of the men, suspending the body over the Count's ashes so that the blood drips from the corpse and saturates the blackened remains. The ritual is completed, the Count revived and his attentions focus on the dead man's wife who is to become his partner; devoted to an existence of depravity and evil.

An extraordinary look at the lives of a middle-aged couple in the midst of the wife's breast cancer diagnosis.

A man dreams he is the 'demon barber' who cuts sailors' throats for jewels and uses the corpses for pies.

On his way to be executed, the vehicle containing notorious serial killer Jack Frost collides with a hazardous chemical truck, turning him into a snow covered mutant and unleashing him on the unsuspecting town of Snomonton.

A scholarly king and his three companions swear off the society of women for three years, only to have a diplomatic visit from a French princess and her three ladies-in-waiting thwart their intentions.

A 15-minute short about squatting in London, the film sees Lebon’s signature melding of cut-and-paste graphics and animation meet disarmingly intimate camera work. Told from the perspective of both the squatter and the squatted, it explores unconventional choices and the moral grey areas found in ownership, public and private living, family and community.

14 years after his first visit, Louis Theroux meets some of the growing community of religious-nationalist Israelis who have settled in the occupied West Bank.

A man who suspects his wife is cheating on him begins having nightmarish visions of an evil presence that he believes inhabits his house.

A boy dressed in red and a girl dressed in white live separate but equally empty lives, both finding fulfilment only in their masochistic tendencies.

Doctor Faustus is Christopher Marlowe's most renowned and controversial work. Famous for being the first dramatised version of the Faustus tale, the play depicts the sinister aftermath of Faustus's decision to sell his soul to the Devil's henchman in exchange for power and knowledge. In the first-ever staging of this menacing drama at the Globe Theatre, Matthew Dunster's production features Paul Hilton as the arrogant, power-hungry Faustus and Arthur Darvill as the sardonic Mephistopheles, and includes several impressive magical stunts along the way.

Clarkson and May, in a seriously modified Toyota, take on Hammond and his dog sled in a 450 mil race to the North pole as they drive over thin ice to face in-tent hostilities, polar bear fear and desperate food fantasies.

When a struggling publisher discovers his only successful author is blocked, he knows he has to unblock her or he's finished. With her newfound success, she's become too happy and she can't write when she's happy. The only trouble is, the worse he makes her feel, the more he realizes he's in love with her.

Film producer Reggie Wilson is worried he may have a dual personality. Fleeing Hollywood, he finds himself in England and married to the studio boss's daughter after which he quickly rises through the studio ranks. Then the letters begin to appear from a lovesick American actress who wants to know why he has thrown her over.

The journey of Midlands teenager Johanna Morrigan, who reinvents herself as Dolly Wilde: fast-talking, lady sex-adventurer, moves to London, and gets a job as music critic in the hope of saving her poverty stricken family in Wolverhampton. Based on Caitlin Moran's bestselling semi-autobiographical novel.

Phallacy is the story of twelve year old, Bo Williams, who inexplicably wakes up one morning to discover his penis has disappeared. Terrified, Bo confides in his estranged father, Travis (Stephen Graham). A plumber and handy-man by both trade and nature; the epitome of the industrial man, in all his repressed emotional glory. Determined to help his son, Travis promises Bo that he’ll fix it. But in the meantime Bo must keep it a secret. Nobody else can find out. Which is when Travis learns of an incident at Bo’s school. Another student has captured an incriminating video of his son, and unless they pay a bribe, the kid is threatening to release the video online. Outraged, Travis pays a visit to Bo’s school, in a reckless attempt to threaten this kid into silence. But it backfires horribly, forcing Bo to doubt whether he should have ever confided in his Father in the first place.

The incredible story of the greatest cycling race in history, the 1989 Tour de France, and how American Greg LeMond faced down betrayal, childhood sexual abuse and death completing one of the most inspiring comebacks in history.

Dr. Laura Bowman is a young widow who's unwittingly drawn into political turmoil while vacationing in Burma in the late 1980s. Bowman initially left San Francisco with her sister in an attempt to escape painful memories of her husband and son's violent deaths. But her fight to escape to Thailand could prove just as harrowing.

A widower refuses to let his three daughters marry in order to avoid paying settlements, so they'll just have to outsmart him.

New York trapper Tom Dobb becomes an unwilling participant in the American Revolution after his son Ned is drafted into the Army by the villainous Sergeant Major Peasy. Tom attempts to find his son, and eventually becomes convinced that he must take a stand and fight for the freedom of the Colonies, alongside the aristocratic rebel Daisy McConnahay. As Tom undergoes his change of heart, the events of the war unfold in large-scale grandeur.

A dog leads its master to his kidnapped baby.

Nightmare aims to explore the tormenting nature of dreams with an ambiguous supernatural element, with an experimental approach. My biggest aim that I wanted to achieve with this film is to create an unusual, unsettling atmosphere. The narrative follows the brief of non-linear narrative and follows the confusing dreams of a girl and how they become increasingly intense which leads to paranoia and obsession

The film centres around two aspiring young footballers who have bribed their way into a premier league football stadium to play illicit underground football only to discover that they are trapped in a game of survival.

After three students see something they shouldn't have, a merciless tech CEO hires a hitman to take them out, one by one.

A young woman travels to Europe with her family following a traumatic incident. There, she begins to bond with her mysterious neighbor, while also pushed to her breaking point by family squabbles and problematic wildfires.

An old gangster is advised that Freddie Mays would leave jail after thirty years in prison. His mood changes and he recalls when he was a young punk and who joined Freddie's gang—a man he both envied and ultimately betrayed.

After the death of her father, Little Voice or LV becomes a virtual recluse, never going out and hardly ever saying a word. She just sits in her bedroom listening to her father's collection of old records of Shirley Bassey, Marilyn Monroe and various other famous female singers. But at night time, LV sings, imitating these great singers with surprising accuracy. One night she is overheard by one of her mother's boyfriends, who happens to be a talent agent. He manages to convince her that her talent is special and arranges for her to perform at the local night club, but several problems arise.

Mr. Punch is left in charge of the baby. When Judy returns, the baby is dead. This is only the first murder. Others follow as this live action version of the children's favourite Punch & Judy unfolds.

Luke’s world is rocked when a stranger shows up claiming to be his partner. Luke descents into madness as he struggles to get the bottom of who the imposter is while also experiencing his own terrifying metamorphosis.

Superficial people are revealed and drastically changed by circumstance or luck in this a tale of death, seduction, blackmail and theft among British and Americans in Florence in the turbulent days just before World War II.

When an experienced thief accidentally makes off with a Van Gogh, his partner is kidnapped by gangsters in pursuit of the painting, forcing the criminal to hatch a rescue plan.

In An Ideal Husband, an ambitious government minister, Sir Robert Chiltern, is on an assured smooth ascent to the top. Until Mrs Cheveley appears in London with damning proof of his previous financial chicanery, that is.

When Joan’s husband dies, she is shocked to discover he had invented an elixir which makes the drinker look young again. Sharing it with her two friends, the three women paint the town red but soon discover that they are no longer equipped to be young in the modern world.

Holidaying in Amity, Harry unwittingly stumbles across a washed-up Jaws. Taking the shark under his wing, Harry begins to arrange a comeback tour for the down-and-out star...

Feature-length drama about the mystery of Sandringham Company, which disappeared in action at Gallipoli in 1915. Commanded by Captain Frank Beck, their estate manager, the men advanced into battle, were enveloped in a strange mist and never seen again.

Images of female sexuality and the insecurities and attitudes that surround women and ageing. Plus the rather unusual affects certain indigestion tablets can have on one's tongue

When married British women Rose Arbuthnot and Lottie Wilkins decide to take a break from their respective spouses, they stay at a castle in Italy for a quiet holiday. Joining the ladies is Caroline Dester, a young socialite, and Mrs. Fisher, an older aristocrat. Liberated from their daily routines, the four women ease into life in rural Italy, and each finds herself transformed by the experience.

Winner of four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor, Sir Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet continues to be the most compelling version of Shakespeare’s beloved tragedy. Olivier is at his most inspired—both as director and as the melancholy Dane himself—as he breathes new life into the words of one of the world’s greatest dramatists.

In an attempt to win better conditions for the workers in 1920s Turin, Gramsci leads a takeover of the factories by the workers. He is offered assistance by Kabak (who has just arrived from Moscow) but Gramsci soon realizes Kabak is not motivated by ideology, as he has other motives.

With ruthless US and Japanese investment banks circling Tuftons, a struggling two-hundred-year-old, family-run British bank, can its bumbling, incompetent chairman, Sir Charles Bunbury, fend off the onslaught and save the bank?

When a nobleman is threatened by a family curse on his newly inherited estate, detective Sherlock Holmes is hired to investigate.

The tragic death of a beautiful young girl starts a tense and atmospheric game of cat and mouse between hunter John Moon and the hardened backwater criminals out for his blood.

This BBC historical drama stars James Purefoy as Beau Brummell, the original sharp-dressed dandy of 18th-century London. A socialite responsible for inventing the modern suit, Brummell befriends and restyles Prince Regent of Wales.

A mockumentary exploring the "mythical" geography river next to a highschool.

Esoterica collector Dr Maitland buys an unusual skull from his ordinary source; the artifact is what remains of the Marquis De Sade. Much too soon, Maitland discovers that the skull is turning him into a frenzied killer.

Untamed Romania provides insight into the stunning natural wonders of Romania, with the Carpathian Mountains, the Danube Delta, and Transylvania as its major areas of interest.