Ian Nathan

Passionate performances from De Niro and Jeremy Irons in this stark but thematically complex historical drama.

Petersen pulls off the thrills at a stomach lurching pace, and with its requisite Hollywood ham - husband and wife reuniting over piles of haemorrhaging bodies - loud performances, crashing stunts and a fearsome, hypochondria-inducing conceit, there's barely room to catch your breath, let alone cry foul.

Deliciously cruel to children, Roeg remains true to Dahl's underlying sense of real horror.

It’s a fairy-tale, a glittering New York fable told in a silvery black and white, laden with nostalgia for times and oddities long gone from the hallowed halls of Broadway. Another Allen gem.

Superb performances, exquisite direction and that Ennio Morricone score create an authentic 1920s Chicago feel and a hugely entertaining crime drama.

An often overlooked fine entry in the Kurasawa canon, this shows a good many western 'epics' how it's done.

No matter how good the performer you can’t escape Christie’s leisurely approach to characterisation — simple concoctions of quirk, guilt and red herring. But Lumet is having loads of credible fun with the formula, keeping up a genuine sense of claustrophobia in this isolated railway car surrounded by crisp white snow.

Lavish pirate adventure that launched Errol Flynn onto 1930's screens and ensured that buckles would be swashed for a good few years to follow.

Whilst paranoid in a very 1950's way and a little downbeat at times this is very enjoyable.

An outstanding thriller based on a stageplay (by Frederick Knott) that fits so much better on the screen because, as well as the expansive, cinema is really good at claustrophobia.

Kubrick's superb version of William Thackery's first novel is meticulous and philosophically stimulating but it can leave some audiences unmoved on an emotional level.

Less vibrant than the original, but equally thoughtful and funny.

A truly great Western from Clint that is bleakly atmospheric and charming in turns.

A perfect ensemble of cast, photography and screenplay are all subtly handled through Huston's direction, bringing out Bogart and Hepburn's performances beautifully.

It doesn't have the dark edge of Joe Dante's other works, but brilliant performances by Martin Short and Meg Ryan make it a joy from start to finish.

Never managing to look more hi-tech or further on from 1987 than, well, Hi-tech trainers, this Arnie vehicle still runs it's bloody course without dropping many gears. A brainless, breathless thrill.

So godlike is Spielberg’s status that we often take his talents for granted. The strange, riveting mix of Bridge Of Spies is another sterling reminder that we shouldn’t.

Delightful, athletic stuff with some unusual - but wonderful - location shooting. New York never looked better.

Disjointed but it still rocks.

Hardly a barrel of laughs then, but this slowburn tale sears its way onto the synapses and then flat refuses to budge.

Oscar heralds will no doubt dub it "The Hurt Locker" for snipers, but the fitting combo of Clint Eastwood and Bradley Cooper have created a thrilling Iraq war story that manages to both honour the necessities of heroism and ruminate on what heroism might cost a man.

Don’t let its commercial nosedive in the US tell the whole story. Cloud Atlas is a tough sell, but a rewarding journey all the same. It’s an adventure into the very concept of storytelling: magical, enthralling and thrilling as much as bewildering, pompous and potty. In other words, up in the clouds.

Unshowy to a fault, Hytner delivers a fine, moving comedy of English manners between a writer and his eccentric tenant, which slowly deepens into an exploration of human bonds.

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.

For much of its slowburn build there is a classy, intelligent thriller at work, something closer in tone to The Odessa File. Still, you must remain guarded to how over the top and quasi-horror events will finally turn.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Highly-evolved it ain't, but this Stone Age slacker is a lot of fun.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

It’s ragged round the edges, but then Fritz Kiersch is working with a budget Roger Corman would laugh at, and he does a good job.

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

Smart and satirical but very dated, obviously.

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

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.

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

Vallée’s post-traumatic stress comedy is more scientific than genuinely moving. Nevertheless, Gyllenhaal continues his post-Nightcrawler upgrade with another vivid performance in the key of strange.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Sedate and contemplative character piece but low on thrills.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Perhaps the best Hitchcock film Hitchcock never made.

Sequel manages to retain some pathos and credibility.

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.

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

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

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

A most fascinating disaster of genre making.

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.

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