Adam Lowes

Ultimately, Anna and the Apocalypse ends up lacking the requisite bite to really make it fly as that quirky leftfield offering it so badly wants to be.

At times the whole film threatens to turn into a visual stream of consciousness exercise which is a real shame, as Greenfield’s aims are entirely admirable and with merit.

Despite the best efforts of the filmmakers, In the Heart of the Sea is a few knots away from being the transformative cinema experience intended.

Run All Night's saving grace is, unsurprisingly, its lead actor who remains as watchable as ever despite the material he has to work with.

Despite a liberal dose of full frontal nudity, The Canyons fails to fully revel in its sleaze, struggling to even work as a deadpan satire on the kind of vacuous and deadened Hollywood types Easton Ellis brought to life in the pages of his debut novel, Less Than Zero.

At 100 minutes, the film runs dangerously close to outstaying its welcome, but like its subject matter, Diaz's Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey is both amiable and appealing.

Impressive for the most part without being awe-inspiring, the film's two timelines converge in a much more satisfying and thrilling ways towards the end, where the emotional stakes are considerably upped.

Pit Stop certainly couldn’t be accused of being high art, but it’s a helluva lot of fun, offering an entertaining snapshot of that schlocky, drive-in era, complete with an unexpectedly dark ending which flies in the face of the usual heroic cinematic conventions.

The film‘s sparse narrative exists to simply connect one action set-piece to the next, with sporadic breathing space in between. It’s the kind of undemanding entertainment which was enthusiastically lapped up by viewers during the early video rental era.

There’s an ironic detachment that permeates the dark fairy-tale atmosphere, and the performances are pitched to that heightened David Lynch-like caricature.

With a ludicrous plot that wouldn’t look out of place in a 80s American Saturday morning kids cartoon, this is the very epitome of B-movie zaniness.

Budgetary restrictions offer a narrow visual scope which isn’t helped by the plodding, stagy pace (maddeningly slow at times).

This third entry is undoubtedly the crowning glory in a series of films that could hardly be described as classics of the genre, yet are never anything less than gloriously entertaining.

Hard Times may not have grown in stature to the extent where it will be mentioned by fans in the same breath as the director’s more revered titles, but it’s certainly worth a punt and is an absolute must for Hill completists.

Like many of the films from that era, Coffy hasn’t aged particularly well, but it’s still an entertaining snapshot of the shifting sociological changes of that time wrapped up in crowd- pleasing B-movie.

Richard Marquand opts largely for more intimate surrounding and manages to squeeze out some memorable moments of Hitchcockian suspense and tension.

In an age where many horror franchises attempt to adhere as close to the original film’s formula as possible, Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is a fun reminder of a time when makers were able to rewrite their own rules and go for broke. This was never going to top what had gone before, and by acknowledging that, the filmmakers have crafted a wonderfully demented alternative in its place.

That’s not to say that it’s a complete wash-out. The film comes to vivid life during Remo’s ridiculous yet hugely entertaining training sequences, and there are flashes of inventiveness and personality elsewhere. It’s just a shame that more often than not, the film feels like a stunt performance showreel – complete with distracting pre-CG concealing wire work – with not enough investment in character or pacing.

A grandiose title which suggests some kind of a smutty coming-of-age epic, but in reality only manages to deliver the grubby goods sporadically.