To celebrate the release of LAWLESS, we asked our customers to name their favourite gangster films. The results make up this fantastic season of hoodlums on screen.

THE GODFATHER (15)

Monday 21 August, 8.30

By almost any criterion, this is the most important American film of the 1970s, transforming a doorstop of pulp fiction into an epic account of the ineradicable penetration of American life and institutions by organised crime. A subversive saga of family values, THE GODFATHER is grounded in a sure sense of period, and dramatises a particular historical moment: when a younger Mafia generation followed political, economic and cultural trends and transferred their focus of operations to the West Coast. Superbly crafted, with Marlon Brando in the role that marked one of the greatest of comebacks, the film also features a star-making performance from Al Pacino.

THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY (18)

Monday 28 August, 8.30

One of the best British crime films gets a very welcome rerelease. Bob Hoskins stars as the East End gangland boss with big plans to develop London’s Docklands with the help of organised crime. Set in a convincing underworld populated by gangland leaders, the Mafia and the IRA, THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY is best remembered for its brutally violent ending, when conflicts of interest take their toll.

GOODFELLAS (18)

Monday 3 September, 8.15

Heralding a revival of Hollywood interest in gangsters and gangsterdom, Martin Scorsese’s acclaimed GOODFELLAS chronicles three decades of a life of crime. The film follows real-life mobster Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) from his adolescence in 1950s Brooklyn to his recruitment into the Mafia. Hill prospers by the violent codes of an enclosed underworld society, bound by ties of obligation to his mentors (Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci). Finally the trio make an unauthorised move against rival gangsters, and it all starts to unravel as Hill seeks to profit from drugs on his own account.

CITY OF GOD (18)

Monday 10 September, 8.15

A stunningly realised exploration of organised crime in Rio de Janeiro’s sprawling shantytowns, CITY OF GOD charts the drug dealing, racketeering, gang warfare and ineffectual policing that turn the slums into constant violent battlegrounds. Extremely stylish, with a decade-spanning powerhouse narrative, the film also boasts remarkable performances from neighbourhood residents, many of whom were acting for the very first time. Full of social and political insights, CITY OF GOD is passionate and profoundly affecting.

THE UNTOUCHABLES (15)

Monday 17 September, 8.45

Brian De Palma’s exciting, violent and wildly inaccurate updating of the 1920s gangster movie sees Kevin Costner as federal agent Eliot Ness, taking on the might of Al Capone in Prohibition-era Chicago and learning to fight dirty in the process. Scripted by David Mamet, the film features stupendous and genuinely frightening villainy from Robert De Niro, and an Oscar-winning performance from Sean Connery as the heroic, world-weary Irish cop Jim Malone.