Kim Newman

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.