Kim Newman

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

Exotica reaches for the mysterious, subtle and provocative with sparing but tangible success, and is flashy in the same way earlier Egoyan films were buttoned down.

Prestigious, well turned out piece of British historical drama with enough genuine intrigue and wit to persuade some audiences they aren't watching a history lesson.

Savagely witty on backstage life and audaciously edited, Jazz stands alongside Cabaret as the best “musical” of the last 20 years.

It has a nice line in wry chatter and a pleasantly old-fashioned ‘lost posse’ plot with engaging, odd characters striving against the wilderness while swapping cynical frontier wisdom.

It deliberately makes no sense, but it has more bizarro gimmicks to the minute than any other horror picture of 1979.

Hogg’s films are never conventional stories, but this is a rewarding and affecting watch.

Shot in grainy, high contrast black-and-white with a lot of simple but effective optical and aural tricks to suggest the workings of his unusual mind, this is one of the most intimate movies in recent memory.

Ingenious and wonderfully detailed, though better in its imaginative horror than its slightly too-broad comic knockabout. It's not quite on the level of Coraline, but it's proper summer fun with some dark delights.

Hellboy might not have the name-recognition factor of the Spider- or Batmen, but Guillermo del Toro brings the audience swiftly up to speed on artist-writer Mike Mignola's comic book anti-hero.

William Eubank continues to work his particular mind-stretching mix of acute character interplay and cosmic conceptual breakthrough.

Earlier Clancy films alternated between the dull and the ridiculous. First-rate writers like Steven Zaillian and the great John Milius have managed to make this considerably meatier.

Still the definitive werewolf movie.

Even by their high standards, the performances of Weaver and Kingsley here are impressive, and Polanski ratchetts up the tension nicely. A chilling and thought-provoking piece.

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.

Inventive suspense, spiky characters, outrageous horror and wicked satire. Welcome back, George - you've been away too long.

Downright depressing.

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.

Red Dawn is at once a mainstream shoot ‘em up action picture and an ideologically demented exercise in American paranoia.

A crunching, visceral transplant for this cannibal tale from its urban Mexican setting to an American milieu.

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

A disturbing and poignant anthology of Roman Polanski's favourite, oppressive themes.

An intense, streamlined exercise in gruesome thrills, with a tiny glimmer of social context (it’s all about the economy) which doesn’t take away from the exciting struggle to get out of this house of horrors.

A good-looking and entertaining British horror film.

If you're a bah-humbug type looking for an alternative to Santa Claus: The Movie or Miracle On 34th Street, this could be a holiday perennial. May be too strange for normal people, but weird kids will love it.

Like all the best exploitation flicks, Piranha is driven by a ruthless desire to entertain and, in this non-pretentious ambition, it succeeds magnificently.

Instantly gripping, with a powerhouse star performance, it'll make you want to speed through the weeks to get to part two.

The hardest power to depict onscreen is the wisdom of Solomon, but Shazam! makes clever decisions, mixing middle school snark with disarming sweetness. And — yes — it delivers the requisite lightning-strike punch-’em-ups with considerable force.

This doesn't have the high style that made Taxi Driver or American Gigolo instant cultural icons - although Schrader shows more than a few traces of Scorsese as his camera creeps- perhaps because it's concerned with a chilly 90s that looks back with a sort of nostalgia on the cocaine-fuelled craziness of earlier years. But it does develop powerfully the themes of Schrader's earlier work and will not disappoint his fans.

Significantly grittier than previous Bat-beginnings, this finds new things to do with, and say about, a character who's been around since 1938.

More startling than an unexpected punch in the noggin, Na Hong-Jin's unusual thriller could have the highest knife count this side of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. A violent thrill-ride to a dark new corner of Asian cinema.

Though it rings ever so slightly hollow as cool shades into callousness, this exercise in sexy suspense and brain-scrambling mystery is a dazzling, absorbing entertainment which shows off Danny Boyle’s mastery of complex storytelling and black, black humour.

Eichhorn, who should have had a much bigger career, is luminous as the sad-eyed heroine, while Heard pulls off the showy role - especially in a climax that finds him rampaging through a posh party at the Cord estate in search of justice.

A wholly captivating date movie for eternal romantics who also enjoy slime-and-tentacle transformations.

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 guy story is so strong that conventional romantic interludes with the woman torn between two men could easily have been dropped.

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

It has some of that episodic ‘compressed miniseries’ feel which a lot of King pictures get stuck with (the book was later redone as a TV serial with Anthony Michael Hall) but still manages a lot of powerful material.

Once you get past the ridiculous story this is a fine example of De Palma's lush overkill style and certainly has a redeeming thread of silly sick humour.

Macy hasn’t had a role this good since Fargo, and demonstrates again his mastery of the droopy-eyed, apologetically desperate, borderline bitter shrug.

It shouldn't work, but it does.

This energetically charmless 'family' fantasy lies there dead on screen, occasionally twitching at a funny line.

It's a film you might argue with, but its sparing use of on-screen violence, some extraordinarily protracted scenes and sensitive handling of thorny subject matter make it also a film you ought to see.

A funny, affecting, twisted tale, which demands you pay close attention to every throwaway detail.

For fans of Cassavetes, Opening night is a must see. As per usual it features a superb cast.

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

A lurid gothic gangster psychodrama from Roger Corman, this is Shelley Winters’ finest hour-and-a-half, cast as Arizona Clark ‘Ma’ Barker, a role it would be impossible to overplay.

This unconventional film will offend anyone looking for a plot, but Linklater's smart observations speak volumes.

The kind of film that starts off with a climax and builds to a plateau of surrealist delirium that, one way or another, will have you shrieking.

In the filmography of liberal-skewing, Bush-era true stories, this is a measured, persuasive item.

After Ned Kelly, Jagger needed a hit and Performance was it. Although playing a rock star probably wasn't the greatest challenge, he more than holds his own against Fox in a psychedelic classic.

A uniquely British blend of excruciating comedy of embarrassment and outright grue, not quite as disorientating in its mood shifts as Kill List but just as impressive a film.

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

It'll never be remembered as a Hitchcock classic by any stretch, but that is far from saying it's the mess that some regard it as. It's entertaining, and the visuals speak volumes more than the over-cooked dialogue. Worth a look.

As befits a distillation of 1,318 pages of the story so far, Akira the film is teeming with incident and detail.

A classic horror that warms the heart and wets the pants.

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

As vehicles for fat comedians who were big in the States but never exported well go, this self-proclaimed slob comedy is nearly a masterpiece and certainly much better than the comparable Revenge of the Nerds films.

This is lots of fun and the actors definitely look like they're having a good time.

It plays a lot like a Porky's holiday comedy for the first half, and then the seagoing killer fish learn to fly and big rubber toothy things terrorise the survivors.

A worthy, exciting, emotional addition to the venerable monkey movie marathon. Apes will rise. Sequels are likely.

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.

Jokes so stupid as to seem almost surreal, an amazing range of cultural referents and a smattering of genuinely witty conceits.

Barrymore, among the most consistently admirable women in showbiz, can proudly add a Guides badge for Meritorious Directing to her many other achievements. Excellent emo chick coming-of-age drama plus broads in fetish gear battering each other on roller skates -- frankly, a film that offers something for everyone.

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.

Guaranteed to offend a lot of folks across the political and belief spectrum, but consistently funny and horribly to the point. A sit-com spin-off is probably not on the cards, though.

DiCaprio delivers a startling prettyboy-to-tough nut makeover – but he has to play it close to his chest here for the storyline to play out. Once you get past the trickery, Shutter Island offers sumptuous, enthralling, shivery gothic filmmaking with a hardboiled heart and a sly line in asylum humour. If a pot is being boiled, at least it’s an intricately-decorated pot on a spectacular fire.

In an era not exactly short of quirky bungled heist movies, Anderson and Wilson take an interesting tack – coming in late on lifelong relationships, and showing us the pay-offs to friendships and resentments that have been simmering for years.

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.

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

Like 2001, Star Wars and Jurassic Park, it ups the special effects stakes and gets closer to putting on screen the images you've had in your mind while reading epic sci-fi.

Strange, stylish and intelligent, this is a rare anime film that delivers on its Eastern promise.

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

Ritchie's colour-desaturated style, use of unusual background music, scattershot slang (some subtitled) and mostly tasteful black comedy give the whole film the feel of an altered state of perception.

Some interesting creative choices make this more a curio than a great film.

The business of this story in both versions is suspense, and Watkins is very good at ratcheting screws . . . but also springs satisfying reversals and pay-offs.

With Redford giving one of his best comedic performances, helped by a Oscar winning script, The Candidate is witty and charming, while looking good and proving quite memorable, like Redford's lawyer.

Good central performances but short on plot.

A raw, vivid despatch from the frontline, this melds content with frights in classic Romero style. An outstanding exercise in showing the kids how to do it.

Less confrontational than most Solondz movies, in that it refrains from violence or kink, but still unsettling and affecting.

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

Enormously entertaining, endlessly quotable, perfectly cast and packed full of the richest acting you'll see from an ensemble cast all year, but the result is ever so slightly hollow.

Like "The Cover" and "Man On Wire," this documentary comes clad in the garb of a thriller. And a heck of a good one at that.

It sets out to be less pompous than similar films, which inevitably means it feels less substantial. While amusing rather than hilarious, it ought to establish Matt Damon as a star character actor.

A notable, unusual existential thriller that is psychologically acute without the need for Oscar-clip self-pitying speeches, it’s also terrifically suspenseful with a provocative punchline.