Ian Nathan

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.