Marc Lee

Any movie that lasts three hours should have a damn good reason for lingering so long. At 182 minutes, Michael Cimino's Vietnam War epic is timed to perfection.

Few film directors can resist the urge to "open out" a story, to broaden the view and bring in as wide a variety of sets and locations as the narrative - and budget - will allow. The genius of Sidney Lumet's astonishingly powerful 12 Angry Men is that he does exactly the opposite: he takes an already small, claustrophobic space - a jury room - and makes it even more confined.

Sunset Boulevard, one of the greatest movies about the movies, may be a fiction, but rarely is fiction shot through so glitteringly with real life.

As Mulligan so deftly demonstrates, the story is in the characters, their failings and fragility, their heroism and nobility of spirit. It's in the depiction of heart-breaking cruelty and heart-warming humanity. It's in the innocence of a child's world overshadowed by the evil that adults do.

It's hard to imagine now just how astonishing it was to interrupt the action with a sun-lit frolic on a new-fangled bicycle as the whimsical Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head burbles away in the background.

It is mystical, daring, poetic, thrilling, appalling and never less than utterly mesmerising.

Mercifully, The Philadelphia Story then transmogrifies into one of the smartest, sassiest - and sexiest - movies ever.

Film noir is the most intoxicating of Hollywood cocktails, and none is more potent than Double Indemnity...It breaks the rules of filmmaking with breathtaking confidence and is all the more satisfying for

The inspirational, thoroughly festive ending is guaranteed to bring tears to the eyes.

Hunt, who served as editor on the first three Connery films, gives Lazenby’s fist fights a whipcrack intensity and the ski-jumping, stock car-racing, bobsled-sliding finale is one of the series’ best.

Cool Runnings is a charming tale of determined underdogs, with plenty of laughs, moments of real tension, and five engaging performances.

With its deft blend of hilarity and humanity, Planes, Trains and Automobiles is Hughes' most satisfying work.

The terrific close-up showing Harold's look of appalled realisation – and resignation – is unforgettable.

Charming seasonal fare. [15 Dec 2012, p.36]

Pumping Iron offers a revealing record of his [Schwarzenegger] earliest dalliances in the spotlight.

Klaartje Quirijn’s engaging film portrait of Dutch rock-photographer-turned-filmmaker Anton Corbijn goes a long way towards explaining the emptiness and isolation that characterise his work