Kim Newman

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.