Adam Smith

Some plot developments are more convincing than others, but it’s still a compelling drama with an impressive turn from Garfield as well as Shannon and Dern as Garfield’s concerned mother.

A highly enjoyable glance at Gotham's veteran haute couturists.

Likeable leads and the odd good joke makes this romance an amiable time-passer.

This would have been a striking calling card, and it’s still an impressively solid piece of genre filmmaking with great cinematography and score. But there’s not much here of the ambition of Animal Kingdom, leaving Michôd in ‘difficult third movie’ territory. Let’s hope he gets a move on this time.

Disappointingly dull account of a tale desperately in need of a sharper screenplay and some directorial vim. Might as well wait for the Blu-ray, Jules.

A quartet of pitch-perfect performances from a cast uniformly at its career best, together with a director on shockingly mischievous top form, this is a shot of pure, exhilarating cinematic malice. And if nothing else, it contains the most surprising puking sequence since Monsieur Creosote.

Whether you're after a comedy-drama about cancer or a Rogen laugh-fest with added heart, this does a remarkable job of balancing the odds. And the laughter/tears split? Call it 70/30.

Genuinely funny. A life lesson in never prejudging a man just because he's skinning a squirrel.

Oh alright, it ain't "Shane." But it is about as much shamelessly disreputable, stylish, ultra-violent fun you're going to have at the movies this year.

A typically quixotic documentary in which great unknown artists from 35,000 years ago collaborate with one in 2011. Profound, mysterious and utterly absorbing.

With a frustrating format and poor animation, it's still worth it for Franco and the chance to engage with a key work of poetry.

Surely cinema's first Mexican social-realist cannibal horror drama, it's grimly funny and at times horribly effective stuff. Ickily excellent.

An exhilarating fight-flick that, like its scrappy central character, is impossible not to root for.

Gothika never delivers anything more than the occasional, cynically engineered jolt and often drifts close to provoking giggles.

Even for non-Allen fans this has all the appeal of a good story well told and capped with a deliciously vicious little twist.

Among the plethora of innocent charms on offer, there's the near perfect script by Zemekis and Bob Gale which not only negotiates its time travel paradoxes with deft, exuberant wit but invests the light-hearted plot machinations with a seasoning note of honest drama.

There's the fact that First Blood is a first-rate, taught action thriller.

Halloween remains about as distilled, raw an experience in terror as is ever likely to be committed to celluloid.

In essence, Dark Star has what all great comedy has: a sense of desperation and pathos allied to an abiding humanity which elevates it high above the realm of mere spoof.

A decent enough little B-movie which delivers some pleasingly weird violence and endless plot reversals. But there’s still a mild sense of pointlessness to the whole thing and the feeling that in different hands it could have been much better.

Jarecki's film brilliantly illustrates the fallibility of memory, the slippery nature of 'facts' and even people's invention of events that may never have taken place.

The Wicker Man is, more than anything else, a film about what people can do in the name of religion or, more generally, belief. Its power comes not from appeals to the supernatural but from a deep understanding of our own undeniable nature. Horror doesn't get much closer to home than that.

Bold, gruesome and melancholic, this Gothic horrorfest offers us much to sink our teeth into: Cruise - who effectively disappears from the screen for half the film's duration - is terrific, Dunst eerily compelling, Banderas hypnotic.

Stone's film could have allowed political voices that are rarely present to get a fair, and critical hearing. Instead he near smooches them to death.

Hill, shooting by night and on location together with his OOP Andrew Laszlo, gives the film dazzling style. New York's oil-slicked streets become a labyrinth lit by pools of reflecting light, both scary and strangely beautiful - grimy realism it isn't. It also manages to humanize the gang-bangers to a surprising extent, illustrating the material and emotional poverty that forces them onto the streets in the first place.

Decent belly laughs occur, but they are spread thinly over a prolonged period.

Stands next to Young Frankenstein as Brooks' best movie, and, of course, boasts the god of all fart gags.

In seamlessly interweaving top-notch CGI and incredible stuntwork, Cohen has delivered some of the finest auto-action ever put on screen.