ATZMovies: Hollywood and Bollywood from A to Z, 167 films from All About Eve, Barfi! and Chak De! India to Wonder, Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani and Zero

How ATZMovies works

The page is white, in the manner of a magazine, with blue and orange-red as its two colours. The header carries the logo, a blue A and a red Z, with a search box and the red My A to Z button. Under it runs a pale menu bar reading Home, A to Z, Hollywood, Bollywood, Top rated, Comedy and Romance, and under that a blue bar with the whole alphabet, each letter a link.

The home page opens with the name of the guide, a Breaking news strip that names six featured films, and a block of six Recent posts, the newest releases in the guide, each shown as a card with a wide picture, a label saying Hollywood or Bollywood, the opening of its summary and a Read more link. Then come twenty-five blocks, one for every letter that has films, each with its posters in alphabetical order. A poster carries the same blue or red label, and under it are the title, the year, the running time and the score.

A film page gives the title, the original title where it differs, tags for the year, the running time and the genres, the summary, the Watch now button and the list button. A panel beside them has a selector with fifteen countries, India and Pakistan first; choose one, press the button, and JustWatch lists the subscription, rental, purchase and free services that carry the film there. A table of facts with the original language, the cast and the director complete the page. Finding a film covers the search box and the lists.

How the alphabet is filed

Three rules govern the shelf. First, the articles The, A and An at the start of a title are set aside, as in any library, so The Gold Rush stands under G and A Dog's Purpose under D. Hindi titles are filed as they are written in Roman letters: Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani under Y, Qarib Qarib Singlle under Q.

Second, each letter takes up to seven films: the two most widely rated Hindi films that begin with it, and the five most widely rated English ones. Where a letter has fewer Hindi films, English ones fill the places. That is why M and S, the most crowded letters in any film library, are held to the same seven as everyone else, and why the shelf feels even from end to end.

Third, a letter appears when it has films to show. Q and V have four each and Z has five. X is still waiting for its first film that passes the screening, and it is printed faintly in the blue bar until one arrives. How the alphabet is filed states the rules in brief.

A to E

A opens with the oldest of its seven and one of the best films in the guide, All About Eve, the 1950 backstage drama with Bette Davis, which holds a score of 8.1. Beside it stand About a Boy, with Hugh Grant as an idle Londoner befriended by a twelve-year-old, Air, the story of how a shoe company signed a young basketball player in 1984, Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland and the dance comedy Another Cinderella Story. The two Hindi films are romances with Ranbir Kapoor: Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, about friendship and unreturned love in London and Vienna, and Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani, a slapstick courtship that ends in Goa.

B may be the strongest letter of all. Barfi! is the tender comedy of a deaf young man in Darjeeling, and Bareilly Ki Barfi a small-town tangle over the authorship of a novel. The English five are A Beautiful Mind, Before Sunrise and its sequel Before Sunset, Big and The Breakfast Club. Four of the seven score 7.7 or more.

C has Chak De! India, in which a disgraced hockey player coaches the national women's team, and Chennai Express, a broad comedy that sends a Mumbai sweet-seller south by train. Hollywood supplies Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Chef, A Cinderella Story, Crazy Rich Asians and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

D pairs two films about finding one's way in one's twenties, made fifteen years apart: Dil Chahta Hai, which follows three friends from Mumbai, and Dear Zindagi, in which a young cinematographer in Goa learns to talk about her past. Around them are A Dog's Purpose, Dumbo, Daddy's Home and two versions of the doctor who talks to animals, Doctor Dolittle and Dolittle.

E belongs to English Vinglish, with Sridevi as a mother who enrols in a language class in New York, and to Elf. Elvis, Eat Pray Love, Everything, Everything, Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga and Encino Man, in which two schoolboys thaw out a caveman, complete the letter. The A to E page lists the highlights.

F to J

F holds the newest big release in the guide, F1, a motor-racing drama of 2025, and one of the gentlest, Flipped, which tells a first love from both sides of the street and scores 8.0. Ferris Bueller's Day Off, The Fall Guy and The Founder are the other English titles. The Hindi pair are Fitoor, which moves Dickens's Great Expectations to Kashmir, and Fanney Khan, about a factory worker who wants his daughter to be a singer.

G spans the whole history of the cinema. The Gold Rush, Charlie Chaplin's comedy of 1925, is the oldest film in the guide and holds a score of 8.0. Gol Maal, from 1979, is the classic Hindi comedy of a young man who invents a twin brother to keep his job. Groundhog Day, The Golden Compass, The Game Plan, Goal! and the wedding comedy Ginny Weds Sunny fill the letter.

H has two Hindi films about schooling: Hindi Medium, a satire on the scramble for places at English-language schools, and Hichki, with Rani Mukerji as a teacher who has Tourette syndrome. The English five are High School Musical and High School Musical 2, The Holiday, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, the one great fantasy epic on the shelf.

I begins with I Am Sam and ends with It Happened One Night, Frank Capra's comedy of 1934 about a runaway heiress and a reporter. Between them are IF, about a girl who can see imaginary friends, Inkheart, Innerspace, and two Hindi titles, the romantic comedy I Hate Luv Storys and Ishq, a 1997 hit about two rich fathers and their children's unsuitable loves.

J is a letter of journeys and jungles. Jab We Met begins on a night train out of Mumbai, and Jab Harry Met Sejal follows a tour guide and a traveller across Europe in search of a ring. Jumanji and Jumanji: The Next Level, The Jungle Book, Jungle Cruise and Jurassic Park make up the rest, five adventures in a row. The F to J page lists the highlights.

K to O

K is led by two of the best-loved Hindi films of the early 2000s. Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham is a family saga on the grandest scale, three and a half hours long, with six of the biggest stars of its day. Kal Ho Naa Ho is a New York romance whose hero has a reason to hurry. The English titles are King Richard, about the father of Venus and Serena Williams, The Kings of Summer, The Kid, in which a brisk image consultant meets himself at the age of eight, Kicking & Screaming and The Knight Before Christmas.

L has the two films that brought Aamir Khan his widest audience abroad. Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India stakes a village's taxes on a cricket match in 1893 and, at 233 minutes, is the longest film in the guide. Like Stars on Earth is about a dyslexic boy and the art teacher who understands him. With them stand Little Miss Sunshine, Liar Liar, The Longest Ride, Life As We Know It and Love Hard.

M is musical. Mamma Mia! and Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again share the letter with Mary Poppins, from 1964, and with Mohabbatein, a Hindi campus romance whose songs run through its three and a half hours. M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story follows the cricket captain from a railway platform to a World Cup, and Moneyball and Marley & Me complete the seven.

N pairs Newton, a dry comedy about a clerk determined to run an honest polling station in a forest, with Namastey London, a romance between a Punjabi farmer's son and a British-born bride. Notting Hill, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, The Nanny Diaries, Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb and The Nutcracker and the Four Realms are the English titles.

O has a single Hindi film, October, a quiet story of a hotel trainee who keeps watch beside a colleague in hospital. The English six are On Golden Pond, Overboard, One Fine Day, The Odd Life of Timothy Green, The One and Only Ivan, about a gorilla who paints, and the Christmas comedy Our Little Secret. The K to O page lists the highlights.

P to T

P brings Paddington and Piku together, a bear in London and a father and daughter on the road from Delhi to Kolkata, both comedies of manners with a great deal of heart. Pardes is a 1997 romance about a bride sent to America. Pitch Perfect 2 and Pitch Perfect 3, The Perfect Date and The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement fill the letter.

Q is small and choice. Queen sends a Delhi bride on her honeymoon alone, and Qarib Qarib Singlle sends two strangers of middle age across India to look up his old girlfriends. Queen of Katwe is the true story of a girl from a poor district of Kampala who became a chess champion, and A Quiet Passion is a portrait of the poet Emily Dickinson.

R is rich on both sides. Rangeela is the 1995 comedy about a film extra who becomes a star, with a score by A. R. Rahman, and Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year is about honesty in a computer sales office. From Hollywood come Rain Man, Roman Holiday, Ray, Runaway Bride and Rat Race.

S holds Swades, in which a scientist returns from America to an Indian village, and Sultan, about a wrestler from Haryana. Around them are Sing Street, The Social Network, Serendipity, Star Trek Beyond and Stuart Little 2.

T has one of the four highest scores on the shelf in Togo, the story of a sled dog in the Alaska of 1925, at 8.1. Tamasha and Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar are the Hindi pair, both with Ranbir Kapoor. tick, tick... BOOM!, To All the Boys I've Loved Before, its sequel To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You and Tooth Fairy complete the letter. The P to T page lists the highlights.

U to Z

U is better stocked than might be expected. Udaan is among the finest Hindi films of its decade, the story of a boy sent home from boarding school to a hard father in a steel town. U Me Aur Hum is a marriage story. Up in the Air, The Upside, Uncle Drew, Upgraded, a comedy of mistaken status in the London art world, and Unaccompanied Minors, about children snowed in at an airport on Christmas Eve, make seven.

V has four films, all in English: Valentine's Day, View from the Top, A Very Brady Sequel and the newest title in the guide, Voicemails for Isabelle, which also has the highest score at 8.3.

W opens with Wake Up Sid, about a spoilt Mumbai graduate learning to stand on his own feet, and Welcome To Sajjanpur, a satire on village life. The English five are Wonder, which holds 8.1, Water for Elephants, The Way Way Back, We Bought a Zoo and While You Were Sleeping.

X is the empty peg on the shelf for the present. Y has Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, the best-loved Hindi romance of its year, and Yes Boss, with You've Got Mail, You Again, The Young Victoria, Young Woman and the Sea and Your Place or Mine.

Z closes the alphabet with five films. Zero and The Zoya Factor are the Hindi pair, and Zapped, Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century, set on a space station in 2049, and Zoey 102 are comedies for younger viewers. The U to Z page lists the highlights.

The Hollywood side

Taken out of the alphabet and put together, the 121 English films make a compact history of American popular cinema. Four come from the studio era and before: The Gold Rush of 1925, It Happened One Night of 1934, All About Eve of 1950 and Roman Holiday of 1953. Mary Poppins represents the 1960s. The 1980s supply The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Big, Rain Man, Overboard, Innerspace and On Golden Pond.

The 1990s are the decade of the star comedy and the star romance: Groundhog Day, Liar Liar, Jumanji, Notting Hill, You've Got Mail, While You Were Sleeping, One Fine Day and Runaway Bride, with Jurassic Park towering over them all as the most widely rated film in the guide. The 2000s and 2010s bring the family adventures, the true stories and the films first shown on streaming services, down to F1 and Voicemails for Isabelle.

The most widely rated after Jurassic Park are Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Alice in Wonderland, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, The Social Network and Jumanji. The highest in score are Voicemails for Isabelle, All About Eve, Togo and Wonder. The Hollywood guide sorts the list.

The Bollywood side

The forty-six Hindi films are concentrated in a shorter span, most of them from 1995 to 2023, with Gol Maal of 1979 as the one classic. They fall into three clear groups. The first is the grand romance of the Shah Rukh Khan years: Pardes, Yes Boss, Mohabbatein, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham and Kal Ho Naa Ho, long, musical and unashamedly emotional.

The second is the new cinema that began with Dil Chahta Hai and Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India in 2001 and ran through Swades, Jab We Met, Chak De! India, Like Stars on Earth, Wake Up Sid and Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year: films with modern settings, natural dialogue and something on their minds.

The third is the smaller, sharper film of the 2010s, often set outside the big cities and often led by women: Udaan, Barfi!, English Vinglish, Queen, Piku, Newton, Hindi Medium, Bareilly Ki Barfi, Hichki and October. Six Hindi films stand in the Top rated list, and Like Stars on Earth, at 8.0, is level with the best of Hollywood. The Bollywood guide sorts the forty-six.

Neighbours on the shelf

The chief pleasure of an alphabet that mixes two industries is the company it makes. Some neighbours turn out to be cousins. Queen and Queen of Katwe stand side by side under Q, and both are about a young woman who discovers what she is capable of far from home, one in Paris and one at a chessboard in Uganda. Udaan and Up in the Air are both about leaving, though one hero is seventeen and the other has spent his life in aeroplanes.

Under H, Hichki and Hindi Medium share a letter with two High School Musicals, which makes four films about school in a row, from four very different schools. Under C, Chak De! India and Chef are both about a professional in disgrace who rebuilds his name with a team of unlikely helpers. Under P, Piku and Paddington are both comedies about an awkward house guest and the family that learns to love him.

Under J, Jab We Met sits among four jungle adventures and holds its own, since it too is a film about being carried a long way from where one meant to go. And under L, Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India and Little Miss Sunshine are an unexpected pair: a village cricket eleven and a family in a yellow van, each a band of misfits entering a contest that everyone expects them to lose.

Top rated

The Top rated list gathers the thirty-five films with an audience score of 7.5 or more. The scores are TMDB averages of ratings by registered viewers, and each film page shows how many ratings stand behind its figure. Twenty-nine of the thirty-five are English and six are Hindi: Like Stars on Earth, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, Barfi!, Hichki, Gol Maal and Kal Ho Naa Ho.

Voicemails for Isabelle stands first at 8.3, a new release whose figure rests on early ratings. Three films share 8.1: All About Eve, Togo and Wonder. Five share 8.0: Before Sunrise, Flipped, The Gold Rush, Jurassic Park and Like Stars on Earth. At 7.9 come A Beautiful Mind, Roman Holiday and Sing Street, and at 7.8 Before Sunset, F1, It Happened One Night and Young Woman and the Sea.

By letter, B has the most films on the list, five of its seven. F, G, K, L, R and T have three each. Eight letters, C, E, N, O, P, Q, U and Z, are still looking for their first, which says less about their films than about how thinly excellence is spread: a letter with Chak De! India, Chef and Crazy Rich Asians in it is hardly a poor one. The top rated page explains the rule.

Comedy

Comedy is the largest genre list with 110 films, eighty from Hollywood and thirty from Bollywood. The two traditions differ in ways that make them good company. American comedy in this guide tends to start from an idea: a day that repeats in Groundhog Day, a lawyer who must tell the truth in Liar Liar, a boy in a man's body in Big, an adult raised by elves in Elf. The idea is set in motion and followed wherever it leads.

Hindi comedy more often starts from a household. Gol Maal depends on an employer's prejudices and a young man's need for a job. Bareilly Ki Barfi and Ginny Weds Sunny are about parents, daughters and suitable matches; Chennai Express is about a family that must be won over; Piku is about a father who will talk about his digestion to anyone. The jokes come from recognising the people.

The teenage comedy is an American speciality, represented by The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, The Kings of Summer, The Way Way Back and the To All the Boys films. The Christmas comedy is another: Elf, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, The Knight Before Christmas, Love Hard, Our Little Secret and Unaccompanied Minors. The comedy guide sorts the list.

Romance

The romance list has seventy-seven films, thirty of them Hindi, a far higher share than Bollywood has in the guide as a whole. Hindi cinema has always put the love story at the centre, and the best of them here cover thirty years of changing manners, from the parental opposition of Ishq and Pardes to the hesitant modern couples of Tamasha, Ae Dil Hai Mushkil and Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar.

The Hollywood romances are led by the classics, It Happened One Night and Roman Holiday, and by a cluster from the 1990s: While You Were Sleeping, in which a ticket seller is mistaken for the fiancée of a man in a coma, One Fine Day, You've Got Mail, Notting Hill and Runaway Bride. Before Sunrise and Before Sunset stand apart, two long conversations nine years apart.

A viewer who enjoys one tradition will usually enjoy the other, and the letters make the introduction easy. Someone who loves Notting Hill should try Jab We Met; someone who loves Kal Ho Naa Ho should try The Longest Ride. The romance guide sorts the seventy-seven.

Family and adventure

Forty films are marked for family viewing and forty-two as adventure or fantasy, and here Hollywood supplies nearly all. The films from children's books are Paddington, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Mary Poppins, Alice in Wonderland, The Jungle Book, Inkheart, The Golden Compass and the Narnia voyage. The animal films are A Dog's Purpose, Marley & Me, Togo, Dumbo, The One and Only Ivan and the two Dolittles.

Among the Hindi films, Like Stars on Earth is the one made most directly for children and parents together, and Chak De! India, Hichki, English Vinglish and Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India are easily shared with anyone old enough to read subtitles or follow the Hindi. The family guide sorts the list.

Stars across the alphabet

The search box cuts across the letters, and the most rewarding searches are by name. Shah Rukh Khan appears in eleven films under nine different letters, more than any other actor: C twice, with Chak De! India and Chennai Express, then D, J, K twice, M, P, S, Y and Z. Reading them in order of date instead, from Yes Boss in 1997 to Zero in 2018, shows the most popular star in the world over twenty-one years.

Ranbir Kapoor is in eight films, including both Hindi titles under A and both under T, with Barfi!, Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year, Wake Up Sid and Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani. Aamir Khan has five, among them Dil Chahta Hai, Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India, Like Stars on Earth and Rangeela. Deepika Padukone leads Chennai Express, Piku, Tamasha and Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, and Anushka Sharma and Rajkummar Rao have four films each.

On the Hollywood side, Julia Roberts, Will Ferrell and Dwayne Johnson each appear in four films. Tom Hanks is in Big and You've Got Mail, Bill Murray leads Groundhog Day and lends his voice to Baloo in The Jungle Book, and Robin Williams is in Jumanji and Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb. Audrey Hepburn, Bette Davis, Claudette Colbert and Charlie Chaplin each have a single film, and it is in each case the one to see first.

Running times, east and west

The line under each poster gives the running time, and the two industries part company here. The English films average an hour and fifty minutes. The Hindi films average two hours and thirty-two minutes, and the longest are longer still: Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India at 233 minutes, Mohabbatein at 216 and Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham at 209.

The difference is one of form. A Hindi film is built in two halves around an interval, with five or six songs that carry the story forward, and an evening at one is meant to be an occasion. At home the interval is easy to keep: pause where the film pauses, make tea, and return. The shortest films on the shelf are Stuart Little 2 at seventy-eight minutes, Before Sunset at eighty and Doctor Dolittle at eighty-five.

Ways to use an alphabet

An alphabet invites games, and a few of them make good viewing plans. The simplest is a letter a week. Begin at A and watch one film from each letter in order; with twenty-five letters the journey takes about six months, and it will pass through every decade from the 1920s to the 2020s and both industries many times over.

A second plan is to alternate. Take the Hindi film from one letter and the English film from the next: Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, Before Sunrise, Chak De! India, A Dog's Purpose, English Vinglish, Flipped, Gol Maal, The Holiday, and so on to Z. The contrast from week to week keeps both traditions fresh.

A third is the initials game, a favourite with children: each member of the household chooses from the letter that begins their own name. A fourth is to let the shelf decide. Open a letter that has had little attention, U or V or Q, and take whatever stands first. Udaan, Voicemails for Isabelle and Queen are the reward for the curious.

Whichever plan is chosen, the blue bar keeps the whole alphabet in view from every page, with the letter in use picked out in red, so it is always clear how far along the shelf the household has travelled.

Recent posts and breaking news

Two features on the home page come from the magazine design. The Breaking news strip names six featured films, one click from the header: at present Wonder, Queen, Jurassic Park, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, Roman Holiday and Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India, three from each side of the guide's range of dates and languages.

The Recent posts block shows the six newest releases as cards with a wide still, a Hollywood or Bollywood label, the opening words of the summary and a Read more link that leads to the film page. It is the one part of the guide arranged by date, and the place to look first for something made in the last year or two. Everything below it is the alphabet.

Two languages on one shelf

Every page of the guide is written in English, including the pages of the Hindi films, and each film's table of facts states its original language. Hindi titles are given in the Roman spelling used on their posters, with the title in Devanagari shown beneath as the original title, and the search box answers to both.

The blue and red labels on the posters mark the industry, and they also say something practical: a film with a red label was made in Hindi, with Hindi songs, and is best watched in that language with subtitles if needed. The streaming services that carry these films nearly always offer English subtitles, and many offer subtitles in other languages too. Several of the Hollywood adventures, in their turn, are available with a Hindi soundtrack. The services listed by JustWatch show which versions each one carries.

Viewers new to Hindi cinema might start with a film whose story travels easily. Like Stars on Earth, Queen, English Vinglish and Barfi! have all found large audiences far from India, and any of them makes a good first step from the blue labels to the red.

My A to Z

My A to Z is the list each visitor keeps. The list button beside Watch now on a film page adds the film, and the red My A to Z button in the header opens the list from any page. The list is stored in the browser on the device in use, so it is ready from the first visit and works free of any sign-up form. The list page can save it as a file, which is the way to move it to another device.

A list of one's own need follow the alphabet only as far as one likes. Some visitors keep a film for every letter and tick them off; others keep five favourites and add to them when a friend makes a suggestion. The My A to Z page gives the steps.

Where the films play

ATZMovies is a guide, and the films themselves are held by the streaming services and digital stores. The Watch now button passes the title and the chosen country to JustWatch, which records each day what every service offers. India and Pakistan stand first in the selector, followed by the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and seven more countries.

The Hollywood films are carried almost everywhere, on subscription and for rental. The Hindi films are widely held by the large international services and by Indian ones, and the older titles also appear on free services supported by advertising and on the official channels of their producers. Availability differs from country to country and changes with time, so the answer shown is always the one for today.

What the letters reveal about titles

Filing films by letter draws attention to how they are named, and the two industries have different habits. English titles lean heavily on the definite article: twenty-four of the 121 begin with The and five more with A, which is why the rule of setting articles aside matters so much. Were they counted, T would be four times the size of any other letter.

Hindi titles have favourite words of their own. Dil, the heart, opens Dil Chahta Hai and sits inside Ae Dil Hai Mushkil. Jab, meaning when, opens both films under J, Jab We Met and Jab Harry Met Sejal. Many titles are whole phrases from songs or proverbs, such as Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, sometimes joy and sometimes sorrow, and Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, this youth is wild. Others mix the two languages freely, as English Vinglish, Wake Up Sid and I Hate Luv Storys do, which is how a great many people in Indian cities actually speak.

A few titles begin with a figure and so fall outside the twenty-five letters altogether; they wait for a numbers shelf of their own and can be found meanwhile through the search box. One-word titles, by contrast, are easy to file and easy to remember, and both industries like them: Queen, Udaan, Swades, Sultan, Piku, Zero, Big, Elf, Chef, Togo and Wonder.

The decades on the shelf

Although the alphabet ignores dates, the films span a full century, and the spread is worth knowing. Six films were made before 1980: The Gold Rush, It Happened One Night, All About Eve, Roman Holiday, Mary Poppins and Gol Maal. Eight come from the 1980s and nineteen from the 1990s.

The bulk of the shelf is recent. Forty-five films date from the 2000s, sixty-eight from the 2010s and twenty-one from the present decade. The reason is the rule of filing by popularity within each letter: the films most widely rated today are mostly those of the last twenty-five years, and the older titles that hold a place against them are the ones every generation rediscovers.

A reader who wants the older films together will find them quickly through the Top rated list, where all five of the pre-1970 titles appear, and through the search box, which accepts a year as readily as a name.

The short letters

The letters at the thin end of the alphabet deserve a word, since they are where a browser is most likely to meet something unfamiliar. Q owes its place almost entirely to Bollywood and to a chessboard: Queen and Qarib Qarib Singlle are two of the best Hindi films of their decade about people travelling to find out who they are, and Queen of Katwe, made by the Indian-born director Mira Nair in Uganda, belongs in their company.

V is the only letter filled wholly by Hollywood, and Z the only one where the two Hindi titles are joined by three films made for younger viewers. U, a letter most libraries can barely fill, has seven here, two of them Hindi. And Y is the home of a small coincidence, three English titles in a row that begin with the same word: You Again, You've Got Mail and, by a slight stretch, Your Place or Mine, with The Young Victoria and Young Woman and the Sea close behind them.

Double bills, one from each side

Because most letters hold films from both industries, the shelf is a natural source of double bills for a weekend: one Hollywood film and one Bollywood film on a shared subject. Here are seven that work well.

Teachers: Hichki and Wonder, two classrooms changed by one person who looks or sounds different. Sport: Chak De! India and King Richard, a coach with a plan and a family with one. Journeys of self-discovery: Queen and Eat Pray Love, two women travelling alone after a wedding that went wrong and a marriage that ended.

Fathers and children: Piku and On Golden Pond, two grown daughters and two difficult old men. First jobs: Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year and The Founder, an honest salesman and a ruthless one. Friends in their twenties: Dil Chahta Hai and The Kings of Summer, though the second trio is younger and builds a house in the woods. And the classics: Gol Maal and It Happened One Night, two comedies made forty-five years apart on opposite sides of the world, both built on a lie told for a good reason and both as fresh as the day they opened.

Each pair comes to four or five hours, an afternoon and an evening. Watched together, they show how much the two cinemas have in common beneath their different surfaces: the same affection for families, the same suspicion of pomp, and the same faith that an ordinary person with nerve can upset the odds. The labels on the posters, blue and red, are there to tell the industries apart; an alphabet that mixes them is there to bring them together.

The genre lists make such pairings easy to assemble. Open Comedy, Romance or Family and both colours of label appear in a single list, ready to be sorted into an evening; the year and the running time under each poster show at a glance which film should come first. A long Hindi film makes the better second feature, with supper in its interval, and a short Hollywood comedy the better opener. Households that try a double bill once tend to make a habit of it, and the alphabet has enough letters to supply one for most weekends of the year.

Questions and answers

Questions