Adam Smith

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Style over content, sure, but what style.

Suspiria is the perfect antipasto.

While The Godfather delivers certainty and a comforting dramatic resolution, Once Upon A Time In America delivers a profound kind of mystery. While Coppola's film delivers answers, Leone's asks questions. It lingers and plays on the mind; its meanings shift and change like a faded memory or a half-remembered dream.

Sure there are niggles, the most obvious being the length, which could have been reduced by trimming the prison sequences, but in the end this may be his finest moment so far which, by default, puts it in as having a strong claim on the title "best action movie ever made". Really.

This story is emblematic of the passion, obsession and solitary poetry of surfing.

Thoughtful, moving tale which places its spectacular effects within a humane, elegiac story.

The distinguishing feature of what many people consider to be the funniest movie ever made is the sheer number of gags.

An exhilarating riff on the cop-thriller drama by a director at the top of his game -- Herzog is also at his most accessible here -- powered by an incendiary performance from Nicolas Cage. A very bad lieutenant, then. And a bloody good film.

At its heart, Candyman terrifies because of its ideas. It sinks its horrific foundations very much in the real world of poverty and racial alienation.

The comparisons are inevitable, so let's get them out of the way. Hero is a better film than "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."