Ian Nathan

Great performances and an innovative approach to a tired old story make this one to watch out for.

Huston revels in he opportunity for old-fashioned splendour, granting the film the sunset glow of Lawrence Of Arabia and the swashbuckling cadence worthy of the Errol Flynn days. It’s the artful mix of Kipling’s own writing, flights of fantasy with a political core.

An insanely effective no-brainer of a film, sparkling with a simple charm and energy rarely witnessed this side of illegal substances.

The definitive wacky screwball comedy that spawned a genre.

Old-fashioned comedy with superb performances and insightful glimpses into the world of newspaper journalism.

The genuinely witty and endearing Disney animation that everyone forgets.

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.

As a light family sports feel-good this works but don't look for anything more.

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

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

Wise (and Crichton) concoct the most absorbing, riveting take on science fiction tempered with science fact.

This magnificent, often anarchic pastiche of Russian literature’s portentous habits with a side order in Bergmanesque death wallowing actually finds Allen at his silliest. Which also means it is extraordinarily clever silliness, with designs deliberately stolen from Chaplin, Keaton and the Marx Brothers. It is film that explores comedy’s infinite variety via the medium of the existential philosophy of those big Russian sagas slumped in history like sulking teenagers.

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

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

The Marx brothers on top form with their quickfire comedy and banter.

Joan Allen, Tom Noonan and Dennis Farina contribute to the class in a truly underrated chiller.

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.

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

More story-led than the original with a high enough body count to make it a satisfying action movie.

The most literally exciting film you will see this year. Forget the off-putting banner of another Iraq movie -- go, watch, marvel, endure and book in the palliative of a stiff drink afterwards.

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.

Trying too hard and generally too trying. Seek out Howard Hawke's Bringing up Baby instead and be done with it.

While it's all grand opera, and driven by sweeping gestures and pompous, overwritten dialogue, it is prone to plain silliness - especially in granting us the big showdown at the close. But the sheer dynamism of the action, coupled with Hans Zimmer's lavish score and the forcefield of Crowe, still makes this a fiercesome competitor in the summer movie stakes.

Lewis Gilbert, and two career best performances from his leading actors, give this film such energy it leaves the pleasant aroma of life and possibility.

Sedate and contemplative character piece but low on thrills.

Largely devoid of any charm or intelligence that made other Apes films entertaining, this one should be buried in the Forbidden Zone.

Those with the patience to sit through a slow first half will be rewarded with another gutsy ending.

Clint doing roughneck humour with an orang-utan, what's not to like?

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

Christopher Walken sleepwalks his way through playing smarmy Nazi geneticist Zorin, where you would think he would have a ball hamming it up as a Bond villain. Indeed, it is a rare moment when Grace Jones makes the biggest impression as an Amazonian (naturally) henchman called May Day.

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

Roald Dahl's immortal, sugar-coated morality play finds Gene Wilder as disturbing and fault-ridden but compelling as the book described. Okay, so its pacing may be slightly off (taking nearly 40 minutes to arrive at the factory gates), but this is still a Golden Ticket if ever there was one.

For those who delight in the Coens' divinely abstract take on reality, this is pure nirvana (cross Blood Simple with Raising Arizona if you must), yet beyond the hysterical black comedy, scattered violence and groovy dialogue, there sounds the same song to human goodness which enriched Fargo.

What saves the movie is its relaxed sense of self-awareness. Reynolds all but winks at the audience with his collection of Dick Dastardly sneaks and dodges, but holds onto that winning, hangdog warmth that got him to the top of the pile in the seventies.

While you cannot dismiss its place in history, its power is in what it represented rather than what it did.

Definitely a Disney classic but misses out much of the darker side of J.M.Barrie's fantasy tale.

It's not a great film, but Lee's superhuman skills make it an occasionally jaw-dropping experience.

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

Exceptionally well-rendered and emotive war drama.

Willow is not without its charms - the effects are more than special, the set-pieces suitably epic but it just doesn't fulfill the promise of certain other fantasy films.

It was the complete nightmare that invented the "summer blockbuster", launched the genius on a global scale and delivered an astonishingly effective thriller built on a very primal level: fear.

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

This is a criminally neglected piece of good gothic fairy tale fun.

The luxurious feel of the film is a perfect counterpoint to the painful truths drawn on each brother's face, whilst Pfieffer is much more than eye candy.

As the drama circles their inaction, this trio of excellent performances fills the screen with a form of spiritual exhaustion, and the film slumps into noir’s typically happy-clappy comeuppance of failure, betrayal and ruin. But the mood has caught on, and the film, stamped with a stunning visual emptiness, haunts the memory for long after its sour close.

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

It's mindless entertainment, but its critical and commercial failure doomed the pirate genre to a watery grave.

A resonant film which has a speudo-cult status as everyone has seen it late one night on TV and it's never left them.

Imagine if Stanley Kubrick had made Ghost and you're some way to this classily restrained oddity, but its morbid preoccupations and ambiguity might prove too cuckoo for most.

A placid, poignant, well-kept secret of a movie.

Shadowy political trickery is one thing, fabricating an entire NASA mission is near impossible to credit. Get over that and it’s a whole lot of fun watching Hal Halbrook’s — who played supergrass Deep Throat in All The President’s Men — wicked scheming unravel thanks to the gutsy work of Elliot Gould’s tatty hack.

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

A fascinating film that is by turns fascinating and mysterious.

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.

One of the dreariest outer space swashbucklers of all time.

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

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

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 thumpingly good ode to friendship, hope, wit, wiles and wisdom, brimming with crackling characters and topped with the most twisteroo of twists since "The Crying Game."

The world Jordan envisions is desperate, but Hoskins’s human heart offers a lovely thread of hope.

The first of the silly VW Beetle with a cute personality comedies, is as childish dated and occasionally sweet as the others.

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

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

Intelligent and moving depiction of the futility of war with a superb script and mesmerising performances from all.

The film seems to be pitched at shrieking level, as if that’s the only timbre children can register.

Very hit and miss and not a patch on the first spoof but when a joke strikes home it'll have you going for a while.

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.

Okay, so it does cloy in places, but there is truth in its fractures and its seals, a soft-shimmering landscape of real people.

Okay, a couple of sniggers sneak out, but on the whole the effect is stone cold.

Although, beyond the calling of its plot, this set of likable characters do come intelligently alive and there is real directorial skill in the growing tension of the finale — this is not just a mater of blindly going through the motions. Violently out of fashion, perhaps, but inspirational in its own tidy way.

Rarely has a film bared itself to simple majesty...it feels epic yet runs barely over and hour and a half. [22 Oct. 1997]

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

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

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

For a kids film this is pleasingly dark with Gilliam delivering as much classical fairy tale as knockabout comedy.

Possibly Lean's most complicated movie, Kwai is a towering work.

Ridiculous premise and hilarious acting which is mostly famous for the Lolita-type Brooke Shields cavorting in tropical settings.

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

Violent, poetic, gripping, thrilling and blackly funny: that’ll be the Coens doing what they do best then. Now with added humanity.

Unwieldy and flawed, but Stone remains a tornado in an era of airless formula and -- to paraphrase our Ptolemy -- its failings are greater than most films’ successes.

Unoriginal, unfunny superhero spoof with a bewildered cast and an obvious plot.

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

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.

One of the least famous of Clint's Western this is an enigma of the genre with ambiguity and psychological depth all over the place.

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.

A splendidly detailed and rousing caper movie.

Perhaps the best Hitchcock film Hitchcock never made.

Sequel manages to retain some pathos and credibility.

The sustained furore of humour, visual panache and headlong momentum makes for dazzling cinema.

That it is a cartoon that takes kids right out of the equation is the best recommendation of all.

Overlong, it'll most likely try the patience of audiences now accustomed to a bit more bang for their buck, but it's a great deal of fun for those with a penchant for old-style action.

Never revealing too much, Becker keeps us intrigued to the end, whilst Pacino and Barkin unexpectedly sizzle.

This was sweet and charming at the time but now it just lacks either the comedy or sophistication of kids' fantasy film that we've all become accustomed to.

The only movie to truly deliver the visceral power of a dental drill, John Schlesinger’s taut, well written if far-fetched and baffling thriller, is the film that gives you a tooth ache in a good way.

Cruel comedy with a delicious light touch.

Here is a film fully xenophobic, abhorrent film, touting guileless version of military honour, but with Jack Cardiff’s furtive camerawork and some excellent editing, it sucks you in to its disturbing heroic sweep.

Michael J. Fox is a revelation as the mouse that roared, whilst the score, the direction, and the rest of the cast turn a risky film into a solid addition to the Nam canon.

A war film without the war but with some interesting observations nonetheless.