Kim Newman

Fascinating history, very good movie -- but demanding, and its lack of easy answers will frustrate some. Lessons about 21st century terrorism are implicit, but not overly stressed.

Delivers an effective double-sting ending.

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.

It has few fireworks, but still sticks in the mind, and is a definite upgrade from Digimon: The Movie for director Mamoru Hosoda.

Utterly compelling - Sean Penn is a powerhouse in support - and with a railway station set - piece in which De Palma actually betters what was his previously Untouchable effort.

A mixture of tough and wistful and reflective and brutal, this is the ideal vampire movie for Twi-hards who’ve had their hearts broken for the first time and want to move on to a less cosy vision of eternal romance with a side order of addiction.

Terrific performances, especially from the menacing, lazily charismatic Henshall, and debut director Kurzel's expressionist storytelling make for an Aussie film well worth hunting down. A tough but seriously rewarding watch.

The film never sentimentalises the old swine as it explores the nature of his genius. Terrific ballplayer, miserable human being. Unworthy subject, great movie.

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

A clunky, lumbering sequel that, like its masked protagonist, has no redeeming features.

The script hasn't aged well and their's an overdose of the ominous, but when Ford forgets about religion and concentrates on squealer-on-the-run thrills, the film still has a real charge.

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.

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

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 almost as structurally daring as "Memento," demanding that the audience fills in the gaps.

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.

A tense, two-piece horror with serious kick.

A small but perfectly formed crime drama. And, without making a fuss, a proper nail-biter, too.

More "Moonlight" than "Twilight," The Transfiguration is a defining vampire film of the mid-2010s. An acutely observed study of social/emotional deprivation, but also a gripping, disturbing horror movie. And, yes, it’s ‘realistic’.

An ambitious physics and time-bending, relationship drama with solid performances from the two main characters.

Trying to break expectations isn't always a wise idea and here Disney show how not to do it. With this supposed-family movie, they disappoint on nearly every level. The plot is weak, the action poor and it's got Bette Midler, simply dreadful.

Featuring excellent work from grandstanding Cox and just-lying-there Kelly, The Autopsy Of Jane Doe creates a successful feeling of mounting dread punctuated by crashing thunder and surgical viscera.

In its best scenes, it adds dynamism and British grit to a genre that had previously tried to get by on atmospherics and mood alone. It manages to be shocking without being especially frightening, and its virtues of performance and style remain striking.

One of the liveliest, wittiest, cleverest cheapies ever made.

Capping an unusual trilogy, MaXXXine is an intense woman-fights-back thriller. Mia Goth’s Maxine is what you’d get if the Robert De Niro and Jodie Foster of Taxi Driver were fused in the telepod from The Fly.

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.

Genre thrills with a big dose of originality.

Connery [is] cruising by this point and the movie doesn't quite match the swagger of Goldfinger, but still effortlessly plies the glory Bond years, concluding with a stunning underwater battle.

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

Even if you think you've seen this story too often, Big Bad Wolves will surprise and enthrall. A thriller which bites deep, it has a light touch which finds humanity even in the worst horrors.

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.

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

It makes for a patchy comedy that's stronger as a genre-mocker than a political satire.

Lovingly designed in black and white, and played with a nice sense of irony, this offers the not unappealing spectacle of gorgeous, funny, clever women making fools of hard-boiled Mafia guys.

An elegant, entertaining, informative picture with a gallery of vivid supporting turns, this provisionally crowns the winning Blunt as a Brit-pic star - but it skimps a bit on the bodice-ripping, blood and thunder.

Millar's warmth for literary influences continues to buoy his filmmaking, whilst a sturdy British cast and faultless period settings do Dahl proud.

A science-fiction, action-heist, superhero comedy soap opera, this straddles as many genres as the Avengers films have characters but manages to do most of them pretty well. Extremely likable, with a few moments of proper wonder.

A clever, funny, suspenseful, interestingly cynical science-fiction horror movie with a great collection of monsters — courtesy of make-up geniuses Dave and Lou Elsey — and a cast whose enthusiasm is, appropriately, infectious.

Spectacular and well-acted, this suffers from much the same problem as the situation it depicts — too many people on the mountain and too many threads to follow so that affecting individual stories get lost in the snow.

Day is on top form as the boastful sharpshooter, but she's ably matched by her supporting cast and the music.

A provocative, engrossing, often hilarious, frequently tough picture. Not for all sensibilities but it’s among von Trier’s more playful, purely entertaining films, with insight and humour in even the horrors.

Episodic western with a great performance from Hoffman.

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.

Enjoyable from start to finish, this throw-away action flick does what it says on the tin.

Effective melodrama with some satisfying emotional confrontations, particularly from Lana Turner.

A quality production, with awards-bid performances from Bale and Affleck to prove it... but, as signalled by the curiously unmemorable title, it flounders while trying to come up with a story to embody the things it wants to say about the sorry state of modern America. Worth seeing, but a near-miss.

The plot is one the original writers would have been proud of and with Garner, himself, appearing it gives the film a seal of approval. A rare performance from Foster who is surprisingly funny and Molina giving a good supporting performance, it's an enjoyable family film.

The method is well-worn and the subject-matter familiar, but this is a smart, scary little picture.

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.

Genuinely disturbing horror but with Cronenberg producing a slightly deeper edge in his portrait of a troubled family.

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

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. 

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.

A soft-spoken yet chilling domestic horror film that tells its slightly overfamiliar tale effectively, with strong performances, quietly disturbing atmosphere, one or two friendly clichés, and good, old- fashioned scares.

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

Still gripping after all this time.

Strong performances anchor a series of unforgettable scenes. Breathtaking and unfathomable.

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.

Significantly worse than the rest of the series, this film is one of the worst flops in recent cinema.

Burke — perhaps best-known as the grown-up version of the scary baby in the last films in the Twilight saga — is outstanding as the fragile, yet determined heroine who is terrorised beyond the bounds of sanity but has to remember that she might be doing all this to herself.

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.

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

Mildly titillating, but not very good.

An unlikely but effective found-footage horror from Goldthwait.

It would like to be "Traffic" with guns, but comes out more like "Blow" with bullets.

A near-irresistible Friday-night-out monster picture in the tradition of Lake Placid or Tremors, with a boozy Irish charm that makes it a distinctive addition to the catalogue of alien invasions.

An old-fashioned literary biopic with all cliches intact and some pseudo-steamy grapplings to keep interest, if you must, up.

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

Okay video-dungeon-style horror, a bit marooned on the big-screen but nevertheless murky fun.

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

The unfamiliar young cast all show a lot of potential in a well-thought-through, sting- in-the-tail plot. It’s a well-assembled genre movie rather than a great statement, but none the worse for it.

Fun spoof but it's been surpassed in the TV-series film spoof since then.

Tossing a malicious vampire kid among squabbling, not-exactly-un-dangerous humans is a recipe for a wickedly enjoyable thrill ride. One of the messiest vampire movies ever made, and winningly so.

Weirdly, the film’s problem is that it revs up the tension so much that, like one character’s submersible sinking into the high pressure of the titular Abyss, it finally bursts. The climax – as Bud descends to defuse the nuke and meet the aliens – just doesn’t work.

Both leads excel at showing a true feeling (be it love or lust) but both covered in the guilty angst that one will betray the other. Edge of your seat stuff.

You might need to take a Norwegian guide along to explain various local references and identify the specific trolls, but Troll Hunter's proud cultural identity - tremble, a US remake is in the works - is its strongest suit. It's wry, spectacular fun.

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.

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.

As a one-off this could have inoffensively scraped by on thin charm alone. But don't forget kids, it gave rise to such monstrosities as Last Action Hero, Junior and Jingle all the Way…

Despite delicate performances, the lead characters never escape stereotype, and the relationship between them, which should be the emotional heart of the movie, never becomes remotely convincing even on an I Love Lucy level.

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.

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.

Given that this is the first whacky comedy to come out of the Gulf War it’s a shame the whole enterprise isn’t a lot more tasteless, but the half-funny goings-on give that the script has been tailored not to offend a military machine on the point of massive war, perhaps at the expense of unpatriotic laughs. That said, it’s a pleasant enough time-waster, and doesn’t drag on too long.

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 rich movie, seductive when abandoning people for falling snow or bleak nature and funny, painful and unflinching when it gets physical.

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

The lamest of the three versions but the performances are bearable.

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.

So many films address the premise because it’s always thought-provoking and affecting. This also has a bleached, depopulated, effectively catastrophe-struck feel and an intriguing adult-and-child road movie storyline.

Not a write-off, but more like a respectful homage than a 2020s update in the manner of Candyman (2021). Perhaps a little disrespect would have been truer to the Clive Barker/Pinhead spirit, which is curiously muted in this outing.

Not perfect, but a much more satisfying Earth-in-ruins film than Oblivion or After Earth. It is a little more conventional than District 9 (what isn’t?), but confirms Blomkamp as one of the potential science-fiction greats of this decade.

Sharper than a stake in it's genre references, The Monster Squad appeals to cinephile as well as teen sensibilities.

A good-looking and entertaining British horror film.

Not a sequel to the bland film of Jacqueline Susann’s trashy best-seller, this is more like a demented remake, alternating modish psychedelia with deliberately square moralising.

A pick-up after the second film, if not as assured as the first. Rapace sets a high watermark for Rooney Mara in David Fincher's remakes.

Even if this is less satisfying overall than Skyfall, there are sequences that rank with Bond’s best.

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

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.