Kim Newman

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.