Kim Newman

Dark, twisted and beautiful, this entwines fairy-tale fantasy with war-movie horror to startling effect.

Managing to be cynical and heartwarming at the same time, this is an almost perfect satire on the American Institution of beauty pageants.

It's an intelligent, well-written, excellently played movie, with top flight gore/horror effects, perverse humour and a provocatively bleak vision. Also, it has the world's first true zombie hero in Bub, who listens to Beethoven and eats people.

Gripping throughout, with an impressive central performance, this is like a Dogme 95 redo of a Chuck Norris film - by heroic effort, the good guys find and kill a bad guy. How you feel about that is something Bigelow leaves you to decide.

For a change, we're in a privileged position, always knowing more than the characters we're following, understanding their wrong-headed thought processes, appreciating the ironies they miss, seeing where a slightly different bit of behaviour would have saved lives or led to happier endings.

Even if you’ve skipped the Dardennes’ work until now, this is a talking-point movie — and an outstanding lead performance — you need to see. It’s a rare film of unforced simplicity that will stick with you for a long time. And it’s honest right to its perfectly judged ending.

This is a great director's greatest love story.

Even one-scene characters are unforgettable, but Sayles really gets under the skin of his struggling-to-be-heroic leads, Sam and Pilar. Long after this summer's crop of action flicks is gone, you'll watch this for the third or fourth time and see fresh material. Outstanding.

If you set aside Frankenstein as more of a horror film and King Kong as a fantasy, The Invisible Man is the first truly great American science fiction film.

This really is the musical for people who don’t like musicals.

Even if you think you've seen this story too often, Big Bad Wolves will surprise and enthrall. A thriller which bites deep, it has a light touch which finds humanity even in the worst horrors.

The funniest, most deliciously venomous Jane Austen movie ever made, and conclusive proof that, a) Kate Beckinsale has been seriously undervalued by the movies and, b) Whit Stillman is a major, distinctive talent.

Eichhorn, who should have had a much bigger career, is luminous as the sad-eyed heroine, while Heard pulls off the showy role - especially in a climax that finds him rampaging through a posh party at the Cord estate in search of justice.

Beautiful photography, a heartbreaking story, and iconic moments from beginning to end. Absolutely unmissable.

Keeping the dialogue minimal and the action high on the agenda, life in Paris' underworld proves to be surprisingly yet suitably violent and threatening.

Bogart as Marlowe is compelling in this classic thriller that is complex but triumph of atmospheric cool.

Flawless, essential viewing that would earn more than its five stars if only Empire would allow it.

Of course, this is a film you have to meet half-way. If you’re willing to enter its world, it’s an immensely rewarding, amusing, wise, melancholy and involving experience.

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.

The film has outstanding sound effects, art direction and editing, and a clutch of effective, if necessarily, one-note performances.

Al Pacino delivers a powerful performance in this compelling biopic...of a cop and a city's police force.

Shades of Pinter and Beckett are affectionately retouched with dark humour, dynamic wordplay and a tension all Kubrick's.

None of the humans — not even scream queen Wray — can compete with Kong. But the film remains a perfect star vehicle. It prepares for its hero's entrance with hints of mystery, violence, eroticism and fantasy, then cuts loose with all the action, adventure.

No mere creature feature, this 1940s classic offers more subtle chills.

A well observed and deeply tender tale.

Superbly Vincent Price!

A wonderful picture set in a world of silly heirs and sharp-eyed dolls as remote from reality and yet wholly credible as that of P. G. Wodehouse.