Kim Newman

Chris Cooper's superb performance and numerous authentic details makes this a little gem.

Its intelligence makes it near-essential viewing.

Entertaining in places, if only for the fact that unlike most 50s si-fi films, the aliens are treated with some sympathy.

Very physical, with intense performances and half-serious period talk, it’s an impressive, haunting picture — though the sort of thing you have to meet at least halfway to enjoy.

Overall this is an effective reminder of a minor literary masterpiece, but most folk would be better off reading the novel or checking out the 1939 movie version.

Deliberately uncomfortable viewing, this is nevertheless a compelling exercise in gritty psycho-noir with outstanding performances and real dramatic weight. Director Ben Young is a name to watch.

This remains a compelling Hitchcock thriller but it's Tippi Hedron's remarkable central performance which steals the show.

A distinctively crass, hugely enjoyable sick satire from director Paul Bartel, working for uber-producer Roger Corman – allegedly, Bartel kept thinking up more and wilder jokes, while Corman insisted more and more people got run over.

A really satisfying backstage drama, this is an exhilarating tour around a man whose talent was almost as big as his ego.

It may not be much more than six of the most imaginatively staged and filmed fight scenes in the cinema, but that’s almost certainly enough to recommend it.

Very 'talky', but the three lead females are excellent, as are the costumes and sets.

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.

Aesthetically beautiful and superbly acted, a sure sign of things to come from the leads.

A character-driven thriller with more twists than an off-the-map dirt road, awards-quality performances from the three leads, a rare sensitivity to the after-effects of horror and a sure directorial hand. Mickle and Damici officially segue from ‘promising’ to ‘delivering’.

The City Of Lost Children is as great a film as you thought "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" was when you were five years old.

The final act has an inevitable wavering patch when the film is obliged to tut-tut about the shallowness of the stripping, drinking, bantering, carousing and whooping it has previously enjoyed, but this is terrific entertainment with a sideline in wry melancholia and testosterone-fuelled philosophy. Have 20 dollars.

An instant gangster classic.

Lacking a single honest laugh, this is shoddy by comparison with the other Scary Movie sequels… which throws it in a pit with Transylmania, Breaking Wind and Stan Helsing.

Compelling 1970s take on the monster horror genre which remains fresh and hugely watchable.

A slick thriller which takes place in a moral vacuum. It's fascinating rather than exciting, but makes for chilly thrills with two strong, charismatic lead performances, a great deal of style and amusingly repulsive, ruthless twists.

Refreshingly free of the gangs, guns and drugs clichés associated with the milieu, this is a satisfying, spicy little picture.

Exotica reaches for the mysterious, subtle and provocative with sparing but tangible success, and is flashy in the same way earlier Egoyan films were buttoned down.

Prestigious, well turned out piece of British historical drama with enough genuine intrigue and wit to persuade some audiences they aren't watching a history lesson.

Savagely witty on backstage life and audaciously edited, Jazz stands alongside Cabaret as the best “musical” of the last 20 years.

It has a nice line in wry chatter and a pleasantly old-fashioned ‘lost posse’ plot with engaging, odd characters striving against the wilderness while swapping cynical frontier wisdom.

It deliberately makes no sense, but it has more bizarro gimmicks to the minute than any other horror picture of 1979.

Hogg’s films are never conventional stories, but this is a rewarding and affecting watch.

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.