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.