Ian Nathan

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

A well-rigged whodunit based on the bestseller by Scott Turrow, that pretends to investigate the various political manipulations that haunt your average district attorney’s office but is in truth about the wages of sin.

It's nowhere close to "E. T." - what is? - but amongst the hullabaloo of summer, Super 8 is something to cherish: a beautifully made homage to better times, and better movies.

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.

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.

The songs and set pieces are still fresh and infectious and most of the child cast are mesmerisingly good. I defy anyone not to be caught up in the charm and nostalgia.

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.

Disjointed but it still rocks.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

No less lovely than former films, in many ways lovelier, but Brave is boutique Pixar: less ambitious, more succinct, excellence at a lower ebb.

Brutal story-line which is about as close to an explicit allegory as the western has ever come.

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.

For sheer old-fashioned, childhood rekindling adventure you really can't go past it - just don't take the rose-tinted glasses off.

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

Stories about love in a world gone mad don't come any more gorgeous, or any more sweepingly epic, than this.

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.

By smuggling canvasses out of Nazi Paris, she was “midwife” to Pollock and Rothko. “Art,” the doc claims, “was a mirror of her own strangeness.”

Action-packed, gorgeous, and faithfully whimsical: Hergé thought Spielberg the only director capable of filming Tintin. He was onto something.

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

A splendidly detailed and rousing caper movie.