Kim Newman

A demented slice of widescreen right-on action-funk from the blaxsploitation era.

The fuzzy thinking allows for gorgeous outdoor photography and a few too many dead spots, but Seagal the director shows real muscle by staging one of the screen's best-ever exploding helicopters and allowing Seagal the star to spit out tough talk, as when he refuses to shoot Caine because, "I don't want to dirty my bullets."

It's a puzzle as much as a plot, but when it's in focus (which it isn't for long stretches) it's remarkable brain-food.

Though it could do with being weirder and wilder, this high-concept mash-up — what if crooks robbed a haunted bank? — features fine work from a brace of rising stars.

Effective jump-shocks and a strong turn from Eddie Marsan mask an over-complicated last act.

At two hours, something as thin and unexceptional as this, is just too long. The result is that all the running gags run out of steam and there are far too many fudgy bits between the comic highlights. Nevertheless, lightly likable.

Aesthetically beautiful and superbly acted, a sure sign of things to come from the leads.

Superb supporting performances from Polley and Baulk go some way to making up for our hero's lesser qualities.

Delivers an effective double-sting ending.

Arguably the most imaginative of the horror franchise, with a fair number of truly resonant scenes.

An okay paranormal mystery, with solid work from the regulars – but please Mr Carter, next time, could we have liver-eating mutants or post-modern comedy like the really good episodes of The X Files?

Well-crafted and well-acted, but ever-so-slightly worthy and strangely unaffecting. Given the track record of the CIA, it probably ought to be angrier.

Half-an-hour too long, but still a fun ride.

Refreshingly free of the gangs, guns and drugs clichés associated with the milieu, this is a satisfying, spicy little picture.

A solid haunting-possession movie with good character work and unusual local colour, this works in a few surprises, sufficient scares and a nicely barbed punchline.

Though stuck with stretches of guff and looking all too convincingly like video-era rubbish TV, Mindhorn delivers regular proper laughs and eventually wrings just enough drops of pathos to scrape by.

The execution doesn't quite enliven the premise, but there's still enough enjoyably offbeat moments here to make this one worth digging up.

Brimming with ideas and laudable ambition, it's well worth a look.

Lovers of no-taste splatter movies will be in hog heaven.

More style than substance here but what style it is and what little gems of cinematic moments collect together in this enjoyable ensemble.

Though overstretched and a trifle ponderous, this is a solidly acceptable star vehicle with more than enough righteous vengeance for an evening of classy thrills.

Enjoyable, but this croc-fest is no Lake Placid.

Cold and cerebral, with simmering suspense rather than outright excitement, this is a feel-the-quality-of-the-acting movie. It can’t answer all sorts of questions, but does take a scary mug shot of a subtle monster.

An ordinary, if effective horror picture, is predictable fare with two big ticks to its benefit: a penchant for creep-out scares involving its looming spectre; and a committed, sympathetic performance from Macdonald.

This is one of those failures that has so many near-great things that it almost gets by on guts.

Suspenseful and thought-provoking, The Cured is a serious, engaged horror movie. More upsetting than scary, it ratchets up the tension unsettlingly. There’s life in zombies yet.

A tense, two-piece horror with serious kick.

A good performance from Barrymore, the admirable Gilbert (who talks as her character on Roseanne would if she was covered by an 18 certificate) and director Katt Shea Ruben, a Roger Gorman associate hitherto best known for sleaze thrillers set in strip clubs.

Like all sieges, this offers moments of choppy terror and excitement followed by dull sit-it-out-and-starve spots. Straddled between uproarious schoolboy tosh and serious historical movie, this still offers enough dismemberments, royal tantrums and portcullis-rammings to make for a lively Saturday night out.

Great performances lifts this movie above its stilted script and production.

The real nun in the movie is the heroine, played by a spirited Taissa Farmiga, and the dramatic weight falls on her able shoulders.

A pleasingly intricate double (or is it triple?) revenge plot anchored by excellent acting, with a terrific burst of action at the climax.

Well-acted and suspenseful, with a great deal of editorial content, this feels a little awkward and earnest, and perhaps not angry enough.

The later stretches, which are forced to become oblique and symbolic in the absence of any hard evidence about what really happened to the sailor, showcase some of Firth’s best screen work.

A curiously resistable drama, despite several strong elements - the most notable being newcomer Idina Menzel.

Catfish pair Joost and Ariel Schulman keep the franchise firmly on track with a satisfyingly scary fourth instalment.

With Cage as a harried cop, Cusack as a serial killer and 50 Cent as a pimp, we're assuming the casting department kicked off early on this one. Still, there's plenty in this taut thriller for you to stick around for, not least the reuniting of the Con Air duo.

More Damon Runyan than Irvine Welsh, but as entertaining as it is important.

Surprisingly, even after waiting 20 years, they managed to turn out a smart, darkly-comic thriller with some imaginative twists.

Remember the film you hoped "Snakes On A Plane" would be – this is it! By any sane cinematic standards, meretricious trash … but thrown at you with such good-humoured glee that it's hard to resist. It's a bumper-sticker of a movie: honk if you love tits and gore! Honk honk honk.

It works as a suspense-building scare machine, given heart and depth by Olsen's performance - though it's still an effective exercise in misdirection rather than a strikingly original vision, and now it's a remake of an effective exercise in misdirection.

Tolerably exciting spycraft, but stuck with a see-through plot. Washington and Reynolds are watchable, but not exactly stretched by these roles.

Immaculate has the look of something as lightly spooky as the Nun films, but is prepared to go a lot further — abetted by a committed lead performance — than your average haunted convent picture.

A decent, mid-list spy thriller, suspended somewhere between le Carré and Bond but with a budgetary austerity in keeping with UK government spending cuts that keeps it out of the real high-stakes game.

Howard the Duck manages to be two or three types of fun: as a crazy comedy, it has some good risque/sick jokes to go along with its messy slapstick and bland rock music; as a monster movie, it has an outstanding performance from Jeffrey Jones as a scientist-cum-monster and an astonishingly repulsive Dark Overlord of the Universe shows up for the exciting climax.

It’s a mix of impressive on-location cycle spills (the roaring-down-the-empty-road opening is still a grabber) and embarrassingly hokey rumbles on obvious poverty row sound-stages. Lee Marvin is superbly grungy as a supporting troublemaker, and his character doesn’t sell out by reforming for the love of a weedy but decent woman.

This isn’t an atrocity on the level of, say, Rob Zombie’s Halloween — but it is a horror designed to test your patience rather than your nerves.

The comedy is hit-and-miss but this is a vibrant, watchable movie.

It seesaws between disturbing psychosis and freewheeling nouvelle vague romance, then turns awkwardly editorial in the last reel.

The only film you’ll see this year with a limbless torso playing drums with animated entrails, this wickedly witty take on the seamy side of creative ambition is well worth a spin.

A little bit of going through the motions with this horror spoof but fans will enjoy.

A solidly okay Saturday night effort, but unambitious considering the talent involved. Maybe Rodriguez should direct Predator Resurrection, but get a science fiction writer to script it.

Like Paranormal Activity at a wedding - Paranuptial Activity? - this low-budget horror has its moment. Much, much better than Legion, although not as scary as the actual Book of Revelation.

It's no first-rank CGI cartoon, but shows how Pixar's quality over crass is inspiring the mid-list. Fun, with teary bits, for kids; fresh and smart for adults.

New Orleans looks as photogenic as ever but ultimately Johnny Handsome never quite leapfrogs over its fundamental cracks.

Technically ambitious, dramatically basic. Still, it's a major step up from an AvP sequel and delivers all the Saturday night whizz-bang and Sunday morning brain-ripping you could want.

It’s the sort of picture you'll either queue all night in the rain to see twelve times or avoid like a Wayans Brothers Retrospective for the rest of life.

Grotesque rather than scary and severely underplotted – but certainly strong meat.

Like good whisky, Loach is mellowing and becoming subtler with age — though a swift chug still has a bit of a kick.

Dynamite action. This is a good bet for a night with the lads. And weedy girlies can at least wake up every ten minutes when Denz takes his top off.

No award winner, but at least it delivers the rubbishy goods.

The remake/parody sequences - trailers for which are on the official site - are outstanding, but Black’s all-over-the-place mania and Mos Def’s slightly too bland orphan hero don’t quite tie the rest of the picture together. Still, it has heart. And you’d rather see this version of "Rush Hour 2" than the original.

Delivers a decent puzzle and enough jumps to keep you enjoyably jittery.

Managing to go further over-the-top and pushing more offence buttons than you think possible, this is recommended only for the strong of stomach and hard of heart. 

Genuinely original interpretation of the Brit gangster and Lewis Carroll's surreal tale.

It falters a little in its confusing climactic battle, but is breathlessly paced, wittily scripted, amusingly played, action-packed and relentlessly spooky.

Though it might charitably be described as "a load of old cods", there is a certain entertainment value to Murder At 1600.

A little too exactly like the original but with (fewer) memorable performances.

While still a lurid sequel to a ropey slasher movie, Orphan: First Kill is refreshingly clever, unpredictable and gruesome. Isabelle Fuhrman’s Esther deserves three more sequels and a ‘Versus’ movie with the Stepfather or Chucky.

There’s quite a bit to admire in Motherless Brooklyn, but mostly in detail work — the hats, the cars, the join-the-dots conspiracy theory — but it doesn’t really catch fire as either a private-eye mystery or a study in Tourette syndrome savantry.

Still creepy, ooky, mysterious and spooky, but trying to follow the storylines is like sorting spaghetti.

Originating the genre of 'dedicated teacher reaches troubled kids in a ghetto school', this is still affecting although heavy-handed.

Not as affecting as Ozu's classic Tokyo Story, Late Spring still charms with it's similar theme of development of the parental bond as the children mature and become more independent. Although well acted, the visual are equally arresting but when the themes are so similar a new approach is required to keep it interesting.

Fanning brings her A-game and there’s enough mystery about the monsters in the woods to string audiences along until the satisfyingly weird finish. As mid-list horror goes, perfectly fine.

Hardly groundbreaking but this high-school actioner ghosts by on its charm and sense of fun.

Director Steve Miner, on board because Carpenter passed, made two of the early Friday The 13th sequels and manages the business of the sudden knee-jerk shocks with ease, realising (as the previous sequels didn't) that Halloween movies are supposed to be scary not violent.

Uncomfortable viewing which isn't afraid to engage with race-related violence.

Even thought it's the third such effort to employ handheld camera in a zombie flick, this has more than enough shocks to hold its own.

This will not appeal to everyone, whether it will appeal to anyone is another question. With dark humour from time to time, underneath an extremely repulsive concept, this is a relatively conventional horror movie.

Episodic western with a great performance from Hoffman.

A noisy but enjoyable destruction derby of a film, sadly with none of the subtlety, invention or skill of Spielberg's Duel.

It's not exactly good, and it has some very bad scenes indeed, but the performances sometimes sparkle and the unusual happy ending -- scored with David Bowie's 'Putting Out the Fire With Gasoline' -- is surprisingly moving.

A smart, subversive but rather cold debut from Brandon Cronenberg that's short of the dark wit that lit up his father's early work. Then again, comparisons are hardly fair, especially when Cronenberg Jr. clearly has plenty of ideas of his own.

There's plenty here to show why director Daniel Espinosa caught Hollywood's eye, even if this pre-Safe House crime drama holds few surprises.

The Blackening is shuddery entertainment with more laughs than the entire Scary Movie franchise.

Son Of A Gun has the gritty, rough feel of 1970s heist/hit picture

Fonda and Danner — who looked then exactly like her daughter, Gwyneth Paltrow, does now — are likable leads in ’70s futurist leisurewear (why didn’t those tailored jumpsuits catch on?), and some creepy corporate robot action helps (Danner’s gunfight with her robot duplicate), but it’s a lot less exciting than the original and replaces satire with TV-style plotting.

After several successful films where he plays the tough-as-nails cowboy, Wayne wasn't about to break the pattern now. Playing the only character he knows, he gives several inspiring speeches to an unlikely group of kids who turn from boys to men.

Blair Witch with moon rock. Paranormal Activity in space. Contrived, but if you can take one more variant on the formula, it's got its moments.

The filmmakers try to solve the problem of turning an experience which merely consists of a series of fights into a story by... ignoring it, presenting a film which merely consists of a series of fights.

The film has a real sense of a situation slipping out of control, with marvellous displays of hysteria matched by movie trickery that spreads the edginess to the audience.

Quality acting and writing and appropriately understated direction, but a touch too polite for its own good.

If you don’t like Saw, this isn’t going to change your mind – but it’s skilful, satisfying schlock and respectful of its fanbase. And the final death is a show-stopping coup de grace.

At times a subversive, sub-Marvel thrill, it might be best to come back to this after the glut of goody-goody heroes due to bombard our screens have passed.

A family comedy lacking the double level of humour that make the modern ones so successful. The jokes are obvious but never very far away. Russell puts in a worthy performance as the irrepressible Ron and Martin Short is typically neurotic as the father.

As horribly funny as it is depressing, it gets pretty hard to take after a while, especially for anyone who is a committed cat-lover. A melancholy edge of deliberate poetry mutes the ugly realism but also serves to make bearable what might otherwise be an hour-and-a-half of hell.

The look, created by Hooper’s cinematographer Daniel Pearl, and expert art direction is persuasively nasty… but somehow that buzzing saw doesn’t sound as scary as it used to.

A certain percentage of the audience will instantly sieze on this as their favorite movie of all time, and a small, but not insignificant demographic will have nightmares. Verbinski and Depp probably like it that way.