Kim Newman

One of the problems is that King usually writes about cliche subjects so well that you don’t notice the hackneyed aspects of his books, and so when all the character detail, precise backgrounding and elaborate plot setting-up mechanisms are pruned away, all you get is a dumb TV movie with characters doing insanely stupid things to prolong the agony.

This remains a compelling Hitchcock thriller but it's Tippi Hedron's remarkable central performance which steals the show.

Strays slightly from the formula and therefore loses some of its mindless fun credentials.

This pleasant 1940 comedy-drama hit on the successful double-act teaming of crooner Bing Crosby and patter comic Bob Hope, throwing in sarong-clad Dorothy Lamour for glamour and working through a trivial plot about fleeing responsibility for a South Seas idyll.

Bruno Ganz is excellent as the victim deceived into committing murder.

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.

Ferrera successfully breathes life into an old franchise, with only a slight small change in the narrative but making the aliens significantly more frightening. Anwar is equally intuitive and sassy enough to make her a likeable and believable heroine and although the effects aren't up to much, there are still plenty of scary moments.

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

Bottom-rung dreck.

Even one-scene characters are unforgettable, but Sayles really gets under the skin of his struggling-to-be-heroic leads, Sam and Pilar. Long after this summer's crop of action flicks is gone, you'll watch this for the third or fourth time and see fresh material. Outstanding.

If you set aside Frankenstein as more of a horror film and King Kong as a fantasy, The Invisible Man is the first truly great American science fiction film.

It stands as a hugely enjoyable, occasionally chilling, musical.

This really is the musical for people who don’t like musicals.

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.

All style and no anything else, especially plot coherence.

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

Splendid landscapes and interesting faces - the usual virtues of the Western - keep the film burbling along, even as the actual plot is falling apart.

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

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

Depressing and trivial.

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.

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.

Alternating gritty realism and red‑hued fantasy, this is one of those '70s films that wears well, universal in its heart while picking out specifics which are exactly of their time.

Beautiful photography, a heartbreaking story, and iconic moments from beginning to end. Absolutely unmissable.

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.

Keeping the dialogue minimal and the action high on the agenda, life in Paris' underworld proves to be surprisingly yet suitably violent and threatening.

Though Clay is unbearably watchable, the mis-cast director means this comedy would be better as an action flick - it isn't funny but the violence is well executed.

Torture junkies should remember it’s only four months to Saw IV -- so you can afford to avoid Captivity.

Improv comedy at its best: subtle, hilarious, excruciating and affecting in equal measure.

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.

Valhalla Rising gets into your mind and stays there. You can argue what, if anything, it's trying to say, but it is impressive cinema.

Bogart as Marlowe is compelling in this classic thriller that is complex but triumph of atmospheric cool.

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.

Alvin does high school rom-com and very poorly at that.

This is a must-see film for its unashamed romanticism, its breathtaking visual delirium, the excellent performance of Cusack as the only rational person in the county and the sheer spirit with which the fundamental daftness of the plot is served up.

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

Flawless, essential viewing that would earn more than its five stars if only Empire would allow it.

As good an all-out, non-camp horror movie as we’ve had lately.

Fans can console themselves with some disorientating creepiness as half-glimpsed monsters swarm and the fine melodramatic performances. But as the film descends into a babbling wreck you start to wonder whatever became of the directing talent that gave us Dark Star, Assault On Precinct 13, Halloween and The Thing.

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.

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.

Not as dark as its source material, Wanted works exceptionally on its own terms. McAvoy crashes the A-list, Jolie finally gets to be as big a star on screen as she has been in print, and Bekmambetov proves the most exciting action-oriented emigré since John Woo.

A little slow and vastly outdated now, but nonetheless very watchable.

Terrible, but not worth getting worked up about.

Top-flight muscleman entertainment that is not afraid to have a brain or two in its head.

Brilliantly terrible or terribly terrible depending on your viewpoint.

A surprisingly yet successfully restrained lesson in how to haunt a house.

Part of its strength is that it’s not a glossy, predictable Hollywood horror and so it has a grainy, semi-amateur, black and white look which gives it a dread sense of conviction.

Paul Newman gives one of his best performances in this prison film, where he inspires life in to his fellow inmates. Has something important to say with several memorable moments and a superb supporting cast.

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

This needs its 'based on a true story' caption because otherwise you'd never believe it.

Another soulless, pointless rip-off, this doodles around the plot parameters of John Carpenter's Halloween movies with only Pleasence, who died during production, and Carpenter's theme tune as links to the series' beginnings.

The film has outstanding sound effects, art direction and editing, and a clutch of effective, if necessarily, one-note performances.

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.

The characters might physically appear rounded, but are otherwise paper-thin.

Despite an above average cast and interesting use of the Catholic angle, this film just isn't quite scary enough for hardcore horror fans.

Al Pacino delivers a powerful performance in this compelling biopic...of a cop and a city's police force.

With its driving jazz score, hilarious dialogue and overdrive melodramatics, this is the ultimate expression of the American cinema's greatest fetishes: big breasts, fast cars, tight jeans, and sudden death. This is, in its own way, one of the great films of the 60's.

Unpretentiously and likeable Peter Hyams is one of the few hacks still working at this budget level, and he relishes the chance to make an audience jump, not only with some neat monster effects and a pile of mutilated corpses but also with some subtleties of editing and lighting, plus one of the loudest jump-out-of-your-seat soundtracks in a recent memory.

Shades of Pinter and Beckett are affectionately retouched with dark humour, dynamic wordplay and a tension all Kubrick's.

A true evocation of the spirit of the Strand Magazine, this is the best Holmes movie ever made and sorely underrated in the Wilder canon.

While not to everyone's tastes, this is without doubt one of the most exhilarating films of 1994.

Though the clumsy geometric tentacle that does most of the machine’s evil will cries out for morphing, this is remarkably prescient in its tackling of issues the cinema is only now catching up with, and Christie adds depth to the lady-in-peril heroine. Well worth reassessment.

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.

A needless threequel. Note to director: avoid 'rise of the' titles.

Although the film has a ridiculous premise that's no reason for it not to work, sadly the direction it is taken in, it's poor acting, character development and shoddy action sequences are though. Allen stands out as a spunky heroine but she's the best thing in it.

Safe when it's ripping genre jokes word for word, this pallid pastiche never goes for the jugular, the heart, or any other part of the audience, for that matter. It breezes by like the tamest of ghosts, almost unnoticeable.

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

Chucky's smartest, sharpest outing yet.

None of the humans — not even scream queen Wray — can compete with Kong. But the film remains a perfect star vehicle. It prepares for its hero's entrance with hints of mystery, violence, eroticism and fantasy, then cuts loose with all the action, adventure.

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.

No mere creature feature, this 1940s classic offers more subtle chills.

A well observed and deeply tender tale.

Superbly Vincent Price!

A wonderful picture set in a world of silly heirs and sharp-eyed dolls as remote from reality and yet wholly credible as that of P. G. Wodehouse.

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

Hitch's remake of his own film results in an equally compelling action thriller with sterling performances from Stewart and Day.

It's a tragedy that someone else' happy ending is tacked onto his tale, but the film retains enough brilliance to make us glad it's been re-released.

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.

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.

More entertaining than "The Da Vinci Code," but still tosh.

Thoroughly charming, and thoroughly deserving of its cult status.

Gong Li is welcome as Hannibal's Japanese aunt-in-law/mentor, Gaspard Ulliel isn't a bad young Lecter and Webber's direction is intermittently classy -- but this is a footnote rather than a film.

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

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.

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

All-in-all a fairly unpleasant experience for most audiences.

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

It must be hard for actresses as unconventional and gutsy as Weaver and Hunter to find scripts worth making. Although this offers them both meaty parts with plentiful neuroses and snappy lines, it is otherwise a completely mechanical load of old cods.

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.

Writer-director Jack Hill (Spider Baby) evidently didn't try very hard on this one.