Atonement/The Age of Innocence/Pride & Prejudice/Sense & Sensibility

Atonement: On the hottest day of the summer of 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her older sister Cecilia (Kiera Knightley) strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house. Watching Cecilia is their housekeeper's son Robbie Turner (James McAvoy), a childhood friend who, along with Briony's sister, has recently graduated from Cambridge.

By the end of that day the lives of all three will have been changed forever. Robbie and Cecilia will have crossed a boundary they had never before dared to approach and will have become victims of the younger girl's scheming imagination, and Briony will have committed a dreadful crime, the guilt for which will colour her entire life.

The Age of Innocence: Martin Scorsese, one of the great directors of our time, directs Oscar-winner Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer and Winona Ryder in a brilliant adaptation of Edith Wharton's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. A ravishing romance about three wealthy New Yorkers caught in a tragic love triangle, The Age Of Innocence chronicles the grandeur and hypocrisy of high society in the 1880's.

Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) is an upstanding lawyer who secretly longs for a more passionate life. Engaged to the lovely but ordinary socialite May Welland (Winona Ryder), Newland resigns himself to a life of quiet complacency. But when May's unconventional cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer) returns to New York amid social and sexual scandal, Newland becomes captivated by her mysterious authority and outstanding beauty. Now he must choose between May and the world he knows, and Ellen and the world he dreams of having.

Pride & Prejudice: The five Bennet sisters - Elizabeth, or Lizzie (Keira Knightley), Jane (Rosamund Pike), Lydia (Jena Malone), Mary (Talulah Riley) and Kitty (Carey Mulligan) - have been raised well aware of their mother's (Brenda Blethyn) fixation on finding them husbands and securing set futures. The spirited and intelligent Elizabeth, however, strives to live her life with a broader perspective, as encouraged by her doting father (Donald Sutherland).

When wealthy bachelor Mr. Bingley takes up residence in a nearby mansion, the Bennets are abuzz. Amongst the man's sophisticated circle of London friends and the influx of young military officers, surely there will be no shortage of suitors for the Bennet sisters. Eldest daughter Jane, serene and beautiful, seems poised to win Mr. Bingley's heart. For her part, Lizzie meets with the handsome and, it would seem, snobbish Mr. Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen), and the battle of the sexes is joined.

Sense & Sensibility: Sense and Sensibility is the story of two sisters; pragmatic Elinor (Emma Thompson) and passionate, wilful Marianne (Kate Winslet). When their father, Henry Dashwood, dies, by law his estate must pass to the eldest son from his first marriage. Suddenly homeless and impoverished, his current wife and daughters find themselves living in a simple country cottage.

The two sisters are soon accepted into their new society. Marianne becomes swept up in a passionate love affair with the dashing Willoughby (Greg Wise), while Elinor struggles to keep a tight rein on the family purse strings and to keep her feelings for Edward Ferrars (Hugh Grant), whom she left behind, hidden from her family. Despite their different personalities, they both experience great sorrow in their affairs, but they learn to mix sense with sensibility in a society that is obsessed with both financial and social status.