FF Classics – serie

'After all what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished?'In the summer of 1956, Stevens, the ageing butler of Darlington Hall, embarks on a leisurely holiday that will take him deep into the English countryside and into his past...A contemporary classic, The Remains of the Day is Kazuo Ishiguro's beautiful and haunting evocation of life between the wars in a Great English House, of lost causes and lost love.The Remains of the Day is now available as a Faber Modern Classics edition.

Omar is a restless young Asian man, caring for his alcoholic father in the hustling London of the mid-1980s. His uncle, a keen Thatcherite, offers Omar an entrepreneurial opportunity to revamp a dingy laundrette, and ambitious Omar rolls up his sleeves, enlisting the assistance of his old school-friend Johnny, who has since fallen in with a gang of neo-fascists. Omar and Johnny soon form an unlikely alliance that leads to business success, as well as other, more intimate surprises.

New York comedian Alvy Singer reflects ruefully upon a failed relationship. When he first met Annie Hall on a tennis date, she was an insecure wallflower in trousers, vest and tie. But they shared a self-deprecating sense of humour, plus certain deep-seated neuroses, and love soon blossomed. Alvy supported Annie's hopes for a singing career and encouraged her to broaden her talents. But ironically, her increasing self-assurance, coupled with Alvy's obsession with death and his seeming inability to enjoy himself ('Life is divided between the horrible and the miserable'), spelt trouble for their affair.Annie Hall is a bittersweet comedic masterpiece, rich in irony, invention, romantic insights and classic Woody Allen one-liners. It won Academy Awards for Best Director, Best Actress, Best Original Screenplay and Best Picture of 1977.

Georgetown, Washington D.C., 1973. Actress and divorced mother Chris MacNeil starts to experience 'difficulties' with her usually sweet-natured eleven-year-old daughter Regan. The child becomes afflicted by spasms, convulsions and unsettling amnesiac episodes; these abruptly worsen into violent fits of appalling foul-mouthed curses, accompanied by physical mutation. Medical science is baffled by Regan's plight and, in her increasing despair, Chris turns to troubled priest and psychiatrist Damien Karras, who immediately recognises something profoundly malevolent in Regan's distorted fetures and speech. On Karras's recommendation, the Church summons Father Merrin, a specialist in the exorcism of demons . . .William Peter Blatty scripted this version of his own best-selling novel for director William Friedkin, and was rewarded with an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay of 1973. This publication also includes the texts of the film's legendary 'lost scenes' and excised dialogue which shed additional light on The Exorcist's profound darkness.

When Reservoir Dogs burst upon the screen in 1992, it announced the arrival of one of the most charismatic and audacious voices in cinema today.Reservoir Dogs is the story of a heist gone wrong, and how the group of outlaws concerned are subsequently undone in the course of their search for the enemy within.Quentin Tarantino uses words like bullets and writes with a propulsive energy that is compellingly readable. As always with Tarantino, the style of the storytelling is restlessly inventive, showcasing not only his fine ear for frank and foul-mouthed dialogue but also his grasp of formal structure, comparable to that of the smartest crime novelists.

The phenomenal success of George Lucas's first Star Wars trilogy quite simply revolutionized the cinema; but what sets Lucas's films apart from their legion of imitators is the quality of their screenplays. Lucas originally intended this trilogy to be a single film, but the epic scope of the story (combining hi-tech, sci-fi cinephilia with elements of Arthurian myth and mysticism) demanded that it be split into three.The first panel of the triptych is A New Hope. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, young Luke Skywalker leads a dull, isolated existence on his uncle's homestead. One day, two androids, C3PO and R2D2, show up bearing a message from Princess Leia, the leader of the rebel forces engaged in a struggle against the vicious tryranny of the Empire - as personified by the rasping presence of Darth Vader. The message leads Luke to realize his heritage as a Jedi Knight. He sets out on a wild adventure across the galaxy and, together with Leia and rogue pilot Han Solo, attempts to thwart the Empire by destroying its menacing base of operations: the Death Star.

Widely considered the darkest and most intriguing of the central Star Wars trilogy, The Empire Strikes Back deepens the exploration of mythic themes first essayed in A New Hope.From its opening amid a besieged Rebel stronghold on the ice planet Hoth to its finale on Bespin, the floating city run by gambler Lando Calrissian, Empire charts Luke Skywalker's travails on the arduous path to becoming a Jedi Knight - a journey that culminates in a punishing face-off with Imperial warlord Darth Vader, and Luke's realisation of the dreadful truth about the fate which befell his father Anakin.Derived from George Lucas's original story, the screenplay was composed by Leigh Brackett (veteran writer for Howard Hawks and Robert Altman) and Lawrence Kasdan (who soon afterwards established himself as a director with Body Heat and The Big Chill). Together, they produced a psychologically complex piece of epic storytelling, treasurably enhanced by the verbal jousting - and the affecting romance - between Han Solo and Princess Leia.

The most popular series of movies in the history of cinema, the Star Wars trilogy altered forever our notion of what the movies could do.Return of the Jedi is the trilogy's concluding section. With its myriad peculiar creatures, it seems, at first, to be a lighter film than the others. However, as its subtle narrative unfolds, it becomes apparent that the centre of the trilogy is not Luke Skywalker but Darth Vader, and it is his redemption that forms the culmination of this epic story. The power of this conclusion excites curiosity about how someone who began so idealistically could have turned to the dark side of the Force - the story of which will be revealed in the next three instalments to the Star Wars saga . . .

Mark Renton is an unrepentant drug abuser, doing his level best to elude the claims and responsibilities Life throws up to him. His pals - Spud, Sick Boy, Tommy and Begbie - are devoted to much the same heroically seedy existence. Both harrowing and hilarious, Trainspotting charts the disintegration of this unlikely gang, as their appetites for intoxication and mayhem lead them unerringly into the worst kinds of trouble.Adapted by Shallow Grave screenwriter John Hodge from the novel by Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting was an international hit in 1996, directed by Danny Boyle and starring Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner and Robert Carlyle.

There is a delicious irony and humour in this Jamesian story about Eustace and Hilda, an Edwardian brother and sister, with its famous opening scene as nine-year-old Eustace watches an anemone devour a shrimp in a tidepool among the rocks on a Norfolk beach during the summer holidays. A shadow begins to be cast over the children's innocent conversations and gaucherie, revealing their anxieties about themselves, and the constraints of their cosseted lives, as the outside world - of other children, dancing lessons, adults, illness, funerals, money, excursions in landaus, future schools - impinges in Eustace and Hilda's intimacies and fantasies.