James Marsh

A four-part documentary series about enigmatic, legendary music producer Phil Spector and what happened on the fateful night of February 3, 2003 when actress Lana Clarkson was shot dead in his mansion.

7.6/10
10%

Using raw, firsthand footage, this documentary examines the disappearance of Shanann Watts and her children, and the terrible events that followed.

7.4/10

In 1968, Donald Crowhurst, an amateur sailor, endangers the fate of his family and business, and his own life, blinded by his ambition to compete in the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, attempting to become the first person in history to single-handedly circumnavigate the world without making any stopover.

6/10

London, England, April 2015. Brian Reader, a retired thief, gathers an unlikely gang of burglars to perpetrate the biggest and boldest heist in British history. The thieves assault the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Company and escape with millions in goods and money. But soon the cracks between the gang members begin to appear when they discuss how to share the loot.

5.5/10
3.4%

The Theory of Everything is the extraordinary story of one of the world’s greatest living minds, the renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, who falls deeply in love with fellow Cambridge student Jane Wilde.

7.7/10
7.9%

A short visual meditation, OF THE UNKNOWN is set in Hong Kong where millionaires and the ‘working poor’ live side by side in one of Asia’s wealthiest and most densely populated cities. The film explores how our notions of freedom and happiness are shaped by the place we occupy, both literally and metaphorically, in our society. What is the importance of freedom when one faces a daily struggle for survival? Is it even possible to have dreams, or to dream, if one was never given any opportunities in life? https://vimeo.com/113548756

5.8/10

Jack to a King is a passionate portrait of the rise of Swansea City Football Club from near oblivion to the world stage of the Premier League. It is the story of a city and the people who made the club what it is today. An independent feature from film makers, Mal Pope and Edward Thomas, YJB Films’, Jack to a King is about more than just a football club, it is about a city that survives against all odds – through the Blitz, industrial decline and recession. It tells a universal story of how football plays into the lives of ordinary people. It touches on the Welsh attitude to defeat and victory and the relationship between sport and money. The story is told through the characters involved, capturing the rhythm of their lives and presenting a portrait of where they live. Through it all, there is one dream, one ambition which unites everyone – The Premier League.

7.5/10

Set in 1990s Belfast, a woman is forced to betray all she believes in for the sake of her son.

6.2/10
8.3%

From the team behind Man on Wire comes the story of Nim, the chimpanzee who in the 1970s became the focus of a landmark experiment which aimed to show that an ape could learn to communicate with language if raised and nurtured like a human child. Following Nim's extraordinary journey through human society, and the enduring impact he makes on the people he meets along the way, the film is an unflinching and unsentimental biography of an animal we tried to make human. What we learn about his true nature - and indeed our own - is comic, revealing and profoundly unsettling.

7.4/10
9.7%

After 6 years of brutal murders the West Yorkshire Police fear that they may have already interviewed The Ripper and let him back into the world to continue his reign of terror upon the citizens of Yorkshire, but things become more difficult for the Police when they discover they not only have The Ripper to catch, but a copycat killer is also at large. Assistant Chief Constable of the Manchester Police, Peter Hunter, is called in to oversee the West Yorkshire Police's Ripper investigation, with the help of John Nolan and Helen Marshall, both detectives from the Manchester Police, they decide to go back and look at the crime reports from the Rippers victims to see what they could have missed.

7.2/10
9.2%

On August 7th 1974, French tightrope walker Philippe Petit stepped out on a high wire, illegally rigged between New York's World Trade Center twin towers, then the world's tallest buildings. After nearly an hour of performing on the wire, 1,350 feet above the sidewalks of Manhattan, he was arrested. This fun and spellbinding documentary chronicles Philippe Petit's "highest" achievement.

7.7/10
10%

A motiveless malignancy? Elvis leaves the Navy and heads for Texas where he contacts his father, whom he's never met, the pastor at a Christian community church. Pastor Dave tells Elvis to stay away and, without telling his family that Elvis is his son from a pre-conversion liaison, tells them to have nothing to do with him. But Elvis has already connected with Malerie, the pastor's 16-year old daughter. Elvis embarks on the seduction of Malerie, while Dave examines his conscience and comes to a new conclusion. Can anyone get right with the Lord? Does the Lord hear?

6.7/10
5.6%

A cinema verite documentary about the homeless soccer team from New York City who travel and compete at the 1st Annual Homeless Soccer World Cup in Graz, Austria in July 2003.

5.9/10

Wisconsin Death Trip is an intimate, shocking and sometimes hilarious account of the disasters that befell one small town in Wisconsin during the final decade of the 19th century. The film is inspired by Michael Lesy's book of the same name which was first published in 1973. Lesy discovered a striking archive of black and white photographs in the town of Black River Falls dating from the 1890s and married a selection of these images to extracts from the town's newspaper from the same decade. The effect was surprising and disturbing. The town of Black River Falls seems gripped by some peculiar malaise and the weekly news is dominated by bizarre tales of madness, eccentricity and violence amongst the local population.

6.7/10
7.5%

Before he won the Academy Award for Documentary for Man on Wire, director James Marsh made this lighthearted film about the artery-clogging cravings of Elvis Presley. Marsh’s portrait of Elvis is constructed from the recollections of friends, relatives and Elvis’s favourite cook, Mary Jenkins, who, with help from Elvis’s father, perfected those infamous fried peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches. The resulting film traces Elvis’s taste from his humble Mississippi start to his Vegas finale with stops along the way in the school cafeteria and army mess hall. Known for his gustatory excess, Elvis was a picky eater whose success manifested itself in quantity not quality. Marsh’s talent is in full effect in this stylish blend of form and content. Lit like an all-night diner, with a colour palette reminiscent of a sparkly Formica countertop, it’s a perfect backdrop for the King and his southern fried fare.

7/10

This half-hour BBC documentary offers a revealing look at Svankmajer at work on "Death of Stalinism in Bohemia," and uses excerpts from his earlier films to trace the development of his unique sensibility.

6.5/10

A man's girlfriend mysteriously returns after having been missing for a decade.

Romance and espionage set the stage for this thriller when two former lovers meet for one meal that one of them may not survive.