Ian Nathan

Hitchcock for dummies: brisk, jolly, well-played but oversimplified.

Perhaps the best Hitchcock film Hitchcock never made.

All gothicky, christmassy, romantic and Burtonesque. Worth a look.

Family dysfunction to make Jeremy Kyle blush, but thanks to McConaughey's oily power and Friedkin's unflinching purpose it's a compelling beast.

Del Toro is giving scope to a boyhood lust for mayhem, the multi-million-dollar equivalent of kicking over sandcastles and torturing insects. There is something infectiously juvenile in that.

One of Heston's best work, this shows our lead at his most macho and heroic, inspiring a whole army while also managing to woo the stunning Loren in this romantic war epic.

This is supposed to be serious hard-hitting but with most prehistoric depictions, only manages either school reconstruction or parody.

Should be judged in context but even then it's a bit high on the melodrama and low on subtlety.

Perhaps, it was the choice of material, a much more internalised story despite its glossy Raj setting, or the absence of Robert Bolt as screenwriter (it was he who put the fire in Lean’s belly), but the film, for all Lean’s innate elegance, is strangely remote and unmoving.

One of the greatest behind-bars movies ever, the result finds director Franklin J. Schaffner making the most of both his sun-drenched locations and his leading man, who squintily acts even co-star Dustin Hoffman well off the screen.

Who could ever buy Atticus Finch as the demonic Ahab driven by hellfire to hunt down that dreaded white whale?

On one level a fascinating refraction of the Amanda Knox trial into an examination of perception, on another an increasingly trying hall of mirrors.

There's no question it's stunningly mounted, and Wasikowska makes a much stronger Jane than Alice, but the romance is overripe and the climax underdone.

With so many films adapted from novels, it's nice to see cinema paying homage to unheralded greats of literature like Sebald. While this one often struggles to do justice to his sense of grandeur and poetry, it'll be manna for fans of the German's work.

It’s "Ferris Bueller" with an existential crisis. Very funny and very weird.

Even if you're not a 'fan' of the musicals, Oliver is so witty, so bright and so endearing that even the iciest viewer should start melting in it's corona.

Despite moody flashbacks to the Nazi takeover, Hirschbiegel draws a blank. Elser remains an enigma, a great what-if whose German torturers cannot comprehend acted alone.

Sedate and contemplative character piece but low on thrills.

For all its chilled intelligence and topical ambition this is a bloodless adaptation, but worth seeing for Hoffman’s deft and ghostly presence.

The effects may have dated, as have the Cold War themes, but the almost real time adventure still has some tension to offer.

Excessive and self-indulgent it's true but still the Pythons at their worst are still worth a look.

One of the most legendary tear-jerkers of the 20th century.

Terribly dated, but worth watching for Caine's performance.

Enough large-scale spectacle scenes to outweigh the inevitable religiose sludge that creeps in between them.

Just as the film captures a world (Imperialism, hunting, colonialism) that has faded away, so this film feels like one of the last of it's kind.

It is a complex and at times infuriating structure — it often helps to conceive of the film as the book of short stories it stems from — but simultaneously vivid and disturbing.

In the grand pantheon of Sinbad movies, those pleasurable Arabesques of silly beasts, big swords and scantily clad maidens, this lower league Ray Harryhausen stop-motion thriller squeezes between the better Eye Of The Tiger and the worse Seventh Voyage.

An uneven debut from John Slattery that nonetheless shows flashes of flair and a jet-black sense of humour.

With Eastern Promises and Dirty Pretty Things, screenwriter Steven Knight has proved his ear for London's darker rhythms. Here, though, there's little to raise the pulse.

A solidly made, sternly acted, and faithful realisation of the distopian novel.

Charming in that neurotically adorable way Charles Schulz established over many years, this is a fond continuation of the Snoopyverse.

Bond meets Star Wars in one of the series' sillier outings.

Frantic is Polanski's most satisfying film since Chinatown, and one of the best traditional thrillers to come down the pike in quite some time.

More than an average thriller, but far from Lumet's finest hour.

A bit silly really but it has a bizarre mix of a cast and some tension in places.

Certainly not Raimi at his best, but some knowing genre nods and an array of great effects make up much of the deficit.

The sugar level is positively diabetic, but the whole aura of warmth and cuddliness is hard to resist.

Buffeted by a lack of suspense, threadbare characters, and a very poor script, the stunning visuals, gloopy madness, and sterling Fassbenderiness can't prevent Prometheus feeling like Alien's poor relation.

A persuasive, warts-and-bolts depiction of warfare from the guts of a tank yoked to an overwrought, sub-Private Ryan account of innocence under fire — so a hit and a miss.

The tale from the past is very nostalgic, heartwarming and mouth-watering and all, as Idgie and Ruth cook up a storm, are kindly to their black domestics and stand up to piggy men while events fitfully progress to a courtroom climax. And Masterson is a peach. But the best bits belong to Bates as her dreary Evelyn raises her consciousness, lowers her weight and starts speaking her mind. It's a nice, pleasant celebration of friendship, but without much meat to chew on.

This sprawling epic rewards patience with an emotional pay-off and non-triumphant ending that reminds us all too starkly of the sacrifices made during war.

Classic War caper with a few too many plot contrivances but high on adventure.

One for the die hards. The saving grace here is a knowing sense of humour so lacking in its predecessor, For Your Eyes Only.

So so adaptation of the Kipling story. The human performances are riotous but their animal counterparts are blank canvases yet to be coloured.

The acting is all first base, the script a laughable stream of gung ho-isms, the action merely solid and the effects indifferent. Yet, you still stroll out with a grin a mile wide.

Unpretentious, warm, at times hilarious, it's hard to find a bad word to say about Crocodile Dundee.

Already a hit in America, 42 is a well-told but square biopic doing justice to Jackie Robinson rather than exploring him.

It picks up in the last hour, though this is a very minor compensation in an otherwise long and listless film.

Deliberately provocative, infuriatingly melodramatic, this is a film that begs not to be taken seriously, and requires a ready suspension of moral discernment for maximum enjoyment.

Film is elegant but never beautiful, a pretence at Lean’s magnificence contradicted by a lavish but anachronistic score by Vangelis. It is the words and performances which excite; their director is out of his depth.

What begins as a thrilling pastiche of comic-book formula gets bogged down in its own scientific prattle — not that you ever stop adoring Johansson’s magnificent heroine.

For exploitation-enthusiasts and Scorsese completists only.

Smart and satirical but very dated, obviously.

Sequel manages to retain some pathos and credibility.

Michael Caine as a Nazi and Donald Pleasance as Himmler...what more could you want?

Slow and foreboding with a memorably creepy Christopher Walken. If you're looking for fun, this ain't it.

As earnestly as they have tried to continue the formerly excellent spy series, everything Gilroy and crew concoct only serves to mock the excellence and passion with which Greengrass delivered his films.

A general disappointment, but then with David Bowie and Patsy Kensit what did you expect.

Running at just over four hours, it is as spectacular, lush and extravagant as the studio would have liked its audience to believe. But it also has moments of mind-numbing boredom as the plot,– slowed by extraneous dialogue, drags from Egypt to Rome.

This has some very, very funny bits...interspersed with a very slight film.

What a peculiar but effective children’s adventure movie this is.

Like Lansbury, the film has aged well and retains almost all of it's magic.

Lavish and sporadically powerful, Jolie's POW biopic may have just enough gravity to entice the Academy, but struggles to bring truth to an unbelievable truth.

Derivative sci-fi hokum but some imaginative touches here and there.

Ustinov may not be the Poirot that we all think of now, after the David Suchet series, but this is pure Agatha Christie, steeped in nostalgia and atmosphere.

The definitive wacky screwball comedy that spawned a genre.

Connery has a ball with great stunts, snappy dialogue and a bevy of typically Bondish beauties.

Not one to let slow-building tension and mystery get in the way of wild flourishes of extremism and shock, Ken Russell hit upon a story that more or less handled his structural excesses and tendency toward blasphemy.

Everything from the style to the casting feels grubby and worn.

This no-brainer is fine if all you're after a bit of escapism, but don't look for anything deeper than that.

A classic, of sorts.

An uneven mix of impressively executed, violent clichés about good ol' boys defending the American right to flout the law.

Clearly not a |Disney classic as almost no-one has heard of it, this is vaguely enjoyable 70s hokum.

This has grit coming out of its ears but not the greatest Eastwood feature by a long shot.

Peckinpah is never quite as comfortable with the high-rise terrain (including sloppy kung fu) as he is with the dusty rawhide of the West, but it still shows up the slick trigger-edits of new action cinema for the gutless vacuum it has become.

A tormented movie about torment; loopy, over-reaching and occasionally suspicious. Simultaneously, it is a daring artistic endeavour.

It's not the plot that disappoints, it's the poor dialogue between action sequences. Sadly another film to file under not as good as the book.

Forgettable, innocent, old fashioned fairy tale with not nearly as much sexual chemistry as is required.

More style than substance... but such sexy, sexy style...

No matter how well dressed, the movie can’t escape the gravitational pull of formula. Without a convincing subtext, Black Rain is pretty dull fare indeed.

As with all great spoofers, you can feel the love the director has for Hitchcock, the thoroughness of his jokes vouches for that and the entire plot is loosely based on Spellbound. Perhaps, he was too devoted, the film lacks daring, it’s soft, Hitch would have sneered at such weakness.

Justice hasn't been done. The heavens haven't fallen. But skilfully prodding and probing at the edges of America’s greatest crime scene, Oliver Stone reinforces the argument that this was far from an open-and-shut case.

Fairly routine western makes a disappointing swansong for Hawks. Still good fun though, if you like this kind of thing.

Despite DiCaprio’s prize performance, purists will fume, but even as lit-crashing razzle-dazzle entertainment Luhrmann’s adaptation is a candelabrum too far.

Weightless, but not without its enchantments, this is Woody Allen coasting. But where better to coast than the loveliest coast of all?

Moore just looks confused. He obviously wants to do his thing then hit the bar for cocktails, but John Glen is nagging him to add a roughness to the slick exterior. Equally, it just doesn’t fit. The news is clear, there’s only so far you can push a Bond before it breaks.

You end up with this perky but pointless rehash of the cute alien format that became embedded in the late ‘80s.

Not a masterpiece, by any stretch of the imagination, but it's pleasing to see a sequel strive so hard to reach the same heights. That it fails is through no fault of its own - the original simply raised the bar too high.

Arnie still swings that sword with aplomb, but with a story this ludicrous, he's on slippery ground.

For all it boasts in ingenious style, this genial American yarn lacks the delicious bile of Jenuet’s early days.

A sci-fi which balances big themes and claustrophobic action with apparent ease.

A flawed work held together by Alwyn’s tender presence.

Only distinguishable from the original movie by its obvious cheapness.

A pretty craven attempt by Disney to cash-in on Star Wars blockbusting success, this lightweight but well-written sci-fi adventure movie is well pitched at the very young. More discerning fans of the genre would do well to smother their indignation at the levels of general plagiarism floating around the deck of the supership Cygnus.

It does slow down a bit too much for endless walking hither and thither scenes in the woods, as we ebb toward the grand reveal, but the mystery proves strong enough to hold you.

The Net entertains but is unlikely to hang around on the cerebral hard disk for too long.

This is a valiant but overcomplicated Western that aims to redraw the lines on Western mythology: with heroes as mere humans, and heroics as distortions of the truth.

About the dumbest movie Clint Eastwood ever put his name to.