Kim Newman

The strength of the piece is that it realises which aspects of its genre have been seen too many times, always coming back to Nelson's blank but expressive stare as he watches terrible things the director doesn't need to shove in our faces.

Nothing is taken seriously, and there’s a nice mix of old groaner jokes delivered with a visible wince and genuine, sneakily erudite wit.

Downright depressing.

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 worthy — if chilly and difficult — addition to the sadly extensive filmography of American mass murder. The soundtrack from Canadian singer-songwriter Maica Armata adds some much-needed heart.

A decent historical drama, with one of the best extended battle scenes (a full half of the movie is the face-off in the 'village of death') in recent memory.

Although downbeat, this celebration of the US military is done so expertly you forget that at the time it is set Coppola's idea of a great film was You're A Big Boy Now.

A well-put together team performance, with enough in-jokes and self-effacement to steer clear of any detours into bad taste.

Despite the pleasant feel and fun performance from Zane there's something missing from this superhero adventure.

Though it tries to be different, with hair's-breadth escapes that don't depend on implausible stunts or Bondian-scale explosions, Conspiracy Theory is an uneasy mix of laughs and thrills; suspense and soap.

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.

It may not be as good as the material it's sourcing, but it's still fun to see so many faces from the genre in one place.

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.

It's a good job this works so well as a machine-made movie, because its grasp of political realities is nebulous.

Average example of MadMaxploitation.

A safe, effectively jumpy transfer of Alien to the depths that restores the fear of Jaws into an environment momentarily softened by The Abyss.

A no-holds-barred assault on hollywood cop sensibilities that could have benefited from more comic diversions.

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

Slightly weird, occasionally funny thriller.

Odd, but intriguing.

Abattoir gets past its clunky storytelling with a great look - dark, shadowed, with a 1940s hardboiled feel - along with some well-staged shocks and scares.

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.

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

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.

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

Perhaps a folly and – Kikuchi aside - too deadpan to be a romp, this is still a decent, colourful samurai spectacle with a classical look (lots of symmetrical compositions) and a story which stands up under multiple retellings.

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

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

It may be contrived and nothing new plot-wise, but In Fear has atmosphere and enough proper scares to deliver on the promise of its title.

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.

An offbeat comedy/drama elevated by another terrific Varmiga turn.

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.

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.

Very of its time but enjoyable for all that.

It’s funny, wonderfully performed by all, visually inventive.

A competent, atmospheric remake, but, considering the quality of Murnau's masterwork, is it necessary?

Pretty solid gory horror.

Sentimental, cliched and at times overdone but a true weepy if ever there was one.

An unashamed exploitation movie with teeth, this has all the dinosaur devilry and gung-ho soldiering you could want. There’s even a sweet Tyrannosaur love story in the mix.

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.

It's nothing wildly original, but it is pacey and entertaining when it gets going.

As an unashamed B-movie, The Crush does what it says on the tin and entertains for an hour and a half. Except you feel kind of cheated by the supposed climax, with the build up proving more disturbing. Silverstone is convincingly equal parts Lolita and Norman Bates.

After the fizzle of the later Roger Moore Bonds, The Living Daylights brings in a new 007 in Timothy Dalton, who manages the Connery trick of seeming suave and tough at the same time, and tried to get away from the weak comedy in favour of proper international intrigue.

A gripping, affecting, strange movie -- but oddly, it's just like too many other gripping, affecting, strange movies we've seen recently.

Lurie's remake doesn't bring a lot of fresh ideas to the table. The thick fug of moral ambiguity, so disconcerting in Peckinpah's film, is missing, replaced by certainties rife in modern horror. The result is a bit of yawn enlivened only by James Woods' delirious bad guy.

Unsurprisingly this is the worst in the RoboCop trilogy, with the plot proving ridiculous, excelling itself particularly in the climax. For what was a promising debut, it's reputation was quickly tarnished with the drivvel such as this that followed.

Sloppy crime epic.

Hill remains a master of action pieces and is even director enough to get strong performances from his bunch of dressed-up pop stars. But this supposed sure-fire thriller, from a script that was called The Looters until the L.A. riots got in the way, fizzles like a Molotov cocktail with a soggy fuse.

What fun there is to be had is undermined by drab 3D, hacked-out dialogue and rehashed plots.

Interesting material let down by the occasionally pedestrian direction.

With such a sprawling and over the top plot, it's hard to remain focused on what's important. Bertolucci is so concerned with the epic quality of the film that he forgets to give it any real substance. Reeves doesn't do himself any favours in his turn as the unconvincing Buddha either.

Overdone and not particularly tasteful musical stuff and nonsense.

Murphy occasionally does uninterrupted seconds of shtick, but the film is stuffed with cheap sentiment (a kid with cancer), extraneous characters and embarrassing simplistic politics.

Resembling a kids’-birthday-party remake of 1973's The Legend Of Hell House, this suffers from being not that funny or spooky. Its saving grace is a cast you’re happy to spend time with.

You know Freddy may or may not be finally dead, but he's looking pretty damn tired.

The first film to be adapted from rather than into a Nintendo cartridge, Super Mario Bros, is a shrill, hectic and tiresome fantasy with little story, less excitement and no imaginable audience.

Adapted from the Stephen King killer car novel, this John Carpenter film is more like an assembly line vehicle than a customised job, but is nevertheless a slick, entertaining piece of work.

Entrapment ambles lazily through its set-up and features only one (admittedly impressive) stretch of white-knuckle daredevilry as our heroes dangle off the tallest building in the world (which is in Kuala Lumpur, incidentally).

Pretty much cardboard, down to the heroic patriotic speeches, and less distinctive even than last year's scarcely stellar "Skyline," which trashed the same city. Things blow up good and Eckhart is a classier actor than his role warrants, but we've all been here before.

You’ll be jolted a couple of times, but these aren’t scares that will stay with you. How about retiring “based on a true story” in favour of “based on a good story”?

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

Armour-clanging, cloak-swishing tosh with okay battles, terrible dialogue and sadly little horror or heroism. Nowhere near as bad as I, Frankenstein – but what is?

All style and no anything else, especially plot coherence.

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

Deeply icky on many different levels, with Ross Noble's feature debut illuminated by stomach-churning effects.

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.

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.

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

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.

An ordinary, forgettable horror film. Even the Devil deserves more than this.