Kim Newman

For the guys it's Rodriguez's best film by far and a treat for fans of good-looking girls in black-and-white, of classic film noir and of imaginative ultra-violence.

If you can take the assault on your senses it’s worth sticking with for a core of genuine, affecting drama and dollops of sly, quotable humour.

Brad Dourif shows he was always great in one of John Huston's better later films.

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.

An exciting, intellectually stimulating science-fiction thriller which also connects emotionally. Everyone involved earns a promotion to the premiership.

By turns funny, vaguely creepy and too cool for school, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night is certainly unusual — but also seductive and strange enough to stick in the memory like a fever dream.

This psycho-thriller showcases an awards-worthy performance from James McAvoy. Shyamalan papers over plot-holes with dry black humour and well-judged suspense, and — as always — holds back some surprises.

Despite being not officially a Bond film this is good solid, entertaining action.

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

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

The road-crime movie is such a formula in Hollywood that almost every debuting director turns one out, but writer-director Matthew Bright rings the changes by modeling this white trash nightmare on Red Riding Hood.

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.

A spirited gothic tale, played with welcome black humour.

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.

A 1949 for-kids version of the King Kong story still boasting a lot of charm.

If you thought the sweetness of The Straight Story was unprecedented in Lynch’s work, look again at this earlier true-life tale of odd, everyday heroism.

Heavy-handed but still poignant patriotism in this Hitchcock thriller.

Unfairly neglected, perfectly creepy and disturbing suburban bizarro drama.

Carnivorous lunar activities rarely come any more entertaining than this.

If there are post-Harry Potter children who don’t know or care about The Wizard of Oz, they might be at sea with this story about a not-very-nice grownup in a magic land, but long-term Oz watchers will be enchanted and enthralled. There’s even a musical number, albeit an abbreviated one. Mila Kunis gets a gold star for excellence in bewitchery and Sam Raimi can settle securely behind the curtain as a mature master of illusion.

Still gripping after all this time.

A trim, evenly-paced 80 minutes, XX is one of the more consistent contemporary horror anthologies.

Origin of Evil doesn’t stretch the conventions of teen-appeal spookiness too far, but is solidly put together, mounted with a pleasant conviction and runs to several fine performances and some decent scares.

It’s an intense, imaginative piece of work – which treads over familiar ground but modestly ventures a bit further in the climax.

Winning and confusing in equal measure, this Japanese animated feature is likely to attract devout admirers but also baffle a significant number of viewers.

Once past a first reel which deliberately sticks to torture porn conventions, Pet is redeemed by a series of developments that take the film into surprising story and character areas.

Funny and scary, this is vintage Polanski.

King of the Monsters delivers what its genre requires. Truly awesome monster scenes fill the screen, often imbued with emotional resonance by music cues.

It is, however, creepy, suspenseful and nerve-wracking - and marks Gillespie and Kostanski as genre auteurs in the making.

It may be a touch overlong – perhaps because everyone has to stop running to sing songs at regular intervals – and the emotional beats familiar, with moments of poignance, tragedy, gruesome comedy (a decapitated zombie in a snowman suit) and absurdity.

By no means a conventional horror film, yet several degrees more twisted and gruesome than the average indie relationships drama, this is likely to appeal to more adventurous cult film fans.

Overall this is an effective reminder of a minor literary masterpiece, but most folk would be better off reading the novel or checking out the 1939 movie version.

Well-acted, it lacks the standout performances or star presences which propelled the tonally-similar Ex Machina to more than cult success. While it will play to fans of cerebral science fiction, it may be less grabby for general audiences.

The Human Centipede gets longer (how long before it becomes The Human Millipede?) but the shocks will be familiar to anyone who enjoyed the first film. The 180 seconds or so of cuts needed to get it past the BBFC open up some plot holes but won't sweeten the pill for everyone else.

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.