The Bristas Essential Viewing 2015-2016

An aeronautical engineer predicts that a new model of airplane will fail catastrophically and in a novel manner after a specific number of flying hours due to metal fatigue.

An ordinary man suddenly finds that anything he says comes true. Or at least, almost anything.

Cooper and Raft save lives during a sea tragedy in this story about slave trade on the high seas in 1842.

Ferdinand de Lesseps, disappointed in love, is sent as a junior diplomat to the Isthmus of Suez, and realizes it's just the place for a canal.

While on vacation in the Caribbean with his wife, a middle-aged man unexpectedly finds, and falls in love with, a mermaid.

Biography of Frederic Chopin.

A noblewoman discovers her husband is The Scarlet Pimpernel, a vigilante who rescues aristocrats from the blade of the guillotine.

In 18th century Russia, the naive and idealistic lieutenant Chernov meets Empress Catherine the Great who becomes infatuated with him and appoints him Chief of the Imperial Guard.

In old New Orleans, a beautiful adventuress juggles the attentions of a rich banker and a dashing sea captain.

A society lady engineers a marriage between her lover and a cabaret dancer who is essentially a prostitute.

An English lady falls madly in love with a French pirate.

Bachelor Harry Quincey, head designer in a small-town cloth factory, lives with his selfish sisters, glamorous hypochondriac Lettie and querulous widow Hester. His developing relationship with new colleague Deborah Brown promises happiness at last...thwarted by passive, then increasingly active opposition from one sister. Will Harry resort to desperate measures?

In 1880, in Paris, chance brought together two former comrades-in-arms - Charles Forestier, who had become a journalist for "La Vie française" - and Georges Duroy, idle since leaving the sixth regiment of hussars.

During the reign of Henry VIII, Mary Tudor seeks to flee a forced marriage with the French king by escaping to America with her true love, but her plans are not so easily executed.

The wartime adventures of Scotish highland leader Rob Roy MacGregor during the reign of King George I in the 18th century.

A haunted Scottish castle is dismantled and transported to Florida, bringing the family ghost along with it.

A portrayal of the triumphs and tragedies of two English families, the upper-crust Marryots and the working-class Bridgeses, from 1899 to 1933.

A group of travellers, all with something to hide in their past, take shelter from a storm in an old inn. The inn-keeper seems a little mysterious...

A convent girl is abducted and seduced by a prince before being sent off to a brothel in East Africa.

An alluring peasant woman lures a cynical aristocrat away from his milquetoast fiancée, with tragic consequences.

After a brutish, hedonistic Marquis marries a pretty young Clarissa to act as a 'brood sow,' he begins an affair with her friend who plots to take her place.

A traveling magician and his assistants are persecuted by authorities in Sweden of the 19th century. Their capture, however, didn't bring victory to those in power.

A twist on the Snow White fairy tale that is set in 1920s Seville and centered on a female bullfighter.

A man falls in love with a beautiful young woman and begins to suspect that he may have also loved her in a previous life.

An Edwardian belle meets a rich bachelor, but what to do about her husband and her lover?