Kim Newman

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.