William Thomas

Appealing, emotional and with a strong enough performance by Rice-Edwards as the boy in his own little war-free world.

If you are immune to the charms of Carrie and co., this will do little to convert you. Still, it has more than enough sass, style and sentiment to keep the faithful satisfied. Add a star if you're a fan.

Not one of Nicholson's best, but an enjoyable comedy nonetheless.

Delightful, but bum-numbingly slow.

The plotting - Kelly's struggling painter falls for Leslie Caron's French waif, engaged to nice but dull Georges Guétary - lacks the pace, exuberance and wit of, say, Singin' In The Rain, but compensates with fantastic Technicolor visuals..., George Gershwin's sublime music (pick of the tunes: I've Got Rhythm, S'Wonderful and Our Love Is Here To Stay), sublime art direction from the great Cedric Gibbons and astounding choreography and footwork from Kelly.

Although some say Wayne's Oscar was given out of sympathy instead of his performance, he still acts well as the sheriff who's past his peak. Proving he wasn't always a serious as he was made out to be, he plays the role with aplomb, even pastiching himself in other films.

It's solid Miyazaki, although he has reached greater heights both before and since.

Possibly not the worst animated feature the House Of Mouse has produced, but certainly stumbling around the darker recesses of the Disney vault.

Sheen thrives in the guise of the idiosyncratic Clough in a brilliantly candid, if bitty, football parable.

It soon becomes apparent, though, that the best songs were used by the first two films, leaving the third with a set of slightly underwhelming tunes.

A sci-fi horror dimmer than the dark side of the moon.

An unbelievably long film for so little pay-off. More cowboys, please.

Kusturica is sturdier on style than substance.

While not quite on a par with Andrew Haigh's "Weekend," this is still an undeniably powerful piece of filmmaking.

Both leads are likeable and have the cutting neuroses that Brooks delivers so well. They can’t really carry the film until the dramatic plot twist but from then on its all good fun.

Despite the luminous Lombard and the venomous March, this is perhaps better for its idea than its execution.

Even the excellent Gong has a tough time trying to twist her character into a tragic heroine, while the utter despair to which sympathetic characters are condemned suggests a significant point in Zhang's career, but does nothing to relieve the viewer's ennui.

A Jamaican classic with an awesome OST.

It’s hard to remember that this extremely unexceptional film was a major hit back in the 70s.

Cronenberg's sleaziest, funniest film, jammed with juicy gore and infectious shocks.

Despite a top-notch cast performing well, and bravely in the case of Knightley, this is an austere, somewhat repressed movie. It never really gets under the skin in the way Cronenberg does at his best.

Humerous, but doesn't gel as well as Levinson's previous efforts.

The film falls into the gap between the manifestly unique qualities of the musician in performance and the near complete mystery of an intensely withdrawn private life.

Well at least we get to see him in more leather in this one. Though one could quite possibly live without it.

Like Driving Miss Daisy this deals with a white employer and a black servant in the times of revolution, not only that but in both films it's a jaded view with the servant being loyal and not a 'friend'. Besides that small problem, it's a moving film with a steady performance from Spacek, but by the end it has definitely become Goldberg's film.

Even while laughing at lines like, “Black people don’t do bungee-jumping, it’s too much like lynching,” you’re still left thinking that the funniest man in the building was not actually in front of the camera.

Road movies should be pleasurable and free-spirited, but Candy Mountain drags too much weight around.

A divisive film - too overwrought for some, perfectly emotionally pitched for others - how much it will appeal will depend on how romantically inclined the viewer is feeling.

In flashback, we see the pair's friendship develop through their childhood, but despite the film's heavily symbolic tone, little is revealed about either of the characters or indeed the Vietnam War.

Apart from a sprinkling of Wilde's legendary bons mots and a few fleeting visits to theatres where audiences cheer Lady Windemere's Fan, there is disappointingly little here to suggest the complexity of his mind, the range of his writing or, crucially, the importance of being Oscar.

Sex and swearing from David Mamet: the family guy. Fun for grown-ups only.

Convincingly sozzled performances but, like Bukowski's poetry, there is little meaningful here to take away.

The two stars are very good, doubtless enjoying their high fashion outfits, and the script has one clever plot reversal in the third act, but it really could have done with a few more thrills (the motives for the killings lead to necessarily slow plot development), either in the murder or the sexual perversity departments.

Initially, the film works well as a tense, teasing suspense vehicle. But one of Dead Calm’s major problems is that it brings to mind ideas and plot similarities from so many other films that you are constantly being reminded of its own rather humble status.

A comic take on Rear Window, Badham's latest has the acting talent to carry it over the sizeable gulfs in plot to an end product that brings laughs aplenty.

While Dudley's booze-sodden antics tire after a while, there's relief in the form of John Gielgud as the old-fashioned English butler with a nice line in four-letter words, and a return to the screen from Liza Minelli, who plays the waitress Arthur falls in love with.

For Freeman's first feature as director, the end result is enjoyable but given his strong roles over the years, somehow more was expected. The equally powerful Glover gives a memorable performance in an interesting film that will inspire and educate.

The only romantic comedy out there which spans two lifetimes, Chances Are you'll wind up wishing it didn't.

A worthy diversion for the very young, but against their more venerable stablemates - notably DuckTales - The Rescuers's identification/memorableness factor remains second division.

Connery was perhaps wise to call it quits the first time round.

Engaging performances by Penn and Walken can’t quite turn this brutal curio into something more substantial.

Not as closely controlled as My Beautiful Laundrette, but still a purposeful cross-cultural comedy that raises a few questions alongside the few laughs.

As a fish-out-of-water comedy-drama, it works well.

Entertaining family movie for rainy nights and Christmas holidays.

Weird, but kind of cool.

The script self-destructs, but the performances — including Daniel Stern as an expendable sidekick — are fun, and John Badham stages some super stunts with the insectile title machine.

Knowingly kitsch, Liquid Sky uses the most basic effects and featuring music and fashion that were cutting edge at the time, it now looks fashionably retro. With lots of sex and violence, it sounds a lot more promising than it is, let down by its poor acting, script and a cast we feel little sympathy for.

While the backgrounds and animation are wonderful, the film suffers from an intensely depressing middle section, full of heart-stopping chases, damaged friendships and forgettable songs more likely to invoke fidgets than sniffles among the younger contingent in the audience.

While never as trailblazing as its subject, The Express is a worthy addition to the lengthy canon of sports biopics

Enjoyable enough nonsense, even if it barely cracks a smile.

A dedicatory, sometimes sombre recreation of the career of 50s teen-throb Richie Valens, which feels like a personal project by director Luis Valdez.

Beyoncé proves her Dreamgirls turn was no fluke in this so-so Blues melodrama.

The trouble with spoofing soap opera is that its dramatically deranged conventions - dead characters resurrected, hitherto unknown progeny claiming birthrights and bedrooms, characters metamorphosed into new actors - are already so absurd they are hard to send up any further.

Stagey filming aside, this is a sharp and controlled study of celebrity obsession.

Worth a look, if only for the surreal groupings of the gangs (The Wongs, the Del Bombers and the Fordham Baldies...that's right, they're bald).

Never brave enough to feel far-reaching (or, ironically, far-fetched, when time-travel and space flight are so popular at the movies), Navigator still fulfills its mission, distracting the family for bang-on an hour and a half.

As Lowe systematically dismantles Spader's antiseptic existence, Hanson and writer David Koepp handle the thriller plot well, with Lowe effective as the plastically beautiful but deeply dangerous bad influence of the title.

The script might have benefited from being directed by someone more daring, instead George Roy Hill settles for more mainstream territory.

A screwball comedy, with two well-cast leads, with a pre-Sex and the City Parker and a amusing Cage. The plot is ridiculous but enjoyably so, with enough jokes to carry it for an hour and a half and a relatively fast pace prevents you from seeing the holes in the story.

There's no escaping the teen angst or, for that matter, Araki's thumping message with the angry director managing to slip the odd political curve-ball into proceedings as if he's been watching too many Oliver Stone movies.

Like the stranded astronauts, we are forced to sit around for too long in stale air, waiting for something to happen. An overly-long, vacuous foray into space.

It all adds up to just another glossy Love Story.

A self-consciously grubby and silly slasher that'll be lapped up by gorehounds, but which really belongs on the rental shelves.

Vice Versa knows its place and, rather than attempting anything oddball, sticks close to the body swap formula in order to gain a decent smattering of laughs. No classic, but a watchable comedy that will find an audience.

An otherwise fine sports fantasy is dragged down by an overindulgence in sentimentality.

Disney’s adaptation of the first book in T. W. White’s colourful Arthurian trilogy The Once And Future King (which also served as the source for the musical Camelot) is formulaic matinee fare, competent and sprightly but undistinguished.

An embarrassing mish-mash of comedy and horror which fits neither criteria.

Don't expect the puppet to wisecrack - there's more pain here than in "The Passion Of The Christ." It never quite comes together in a satisfying way, but it's still a brave, strange, brain-stirring piece of filmmaking.

This is arguably although unfortunately Goldie Hawn's most memorable role. For while she embodies the character perfectly and when the jokes are funny they are hilarious, sadly there just isn't enough to keep the film going and it begins to run out of steam half way through, with an attempt at a deeper meaning ruining the film.

What could have been an effective excoriation of US drug policy and a proper look at the violence inherent in the trade is wasted on a simplistic thriller that offers very little, especially given who is behind the camera. Sorry if that harshes anyone's buzz.

A sentimental drama that's 'good in the air' and something of a throwback to war films of old.

Another coming-of-age tale about three boys and their quest to become men, which invariably revolves around having sex and puerile behaviour but then changes tack completely by giving us lush scenery. If the director had remained with one idea then perhaps the end product wouldn't seem so varied.

Thankfully Annaud's stunning direction takes in the beautiful scenery allowing a mild diversion from the scenes of romance.

Same old sequel squanderings.

Take an uncharismatic leading man (Bill Campbell), an obviously pre-Oscar Jennifer Connelly, a scene-chewing Timothy Dalton and action that doesn't start until halfway through the film and what you have is one of 1991's more disappointing summer flicks.

An unsatisfying conclusion, but an inspirational story deftly handled by Freeman.

Despite some good moments, Agents J, O and K are missing an E.

Reynolds was coasting at this point of his career, with zero risk-taking it ends up as a soulless, below-average movie.

Impressive visual invention by Nimoy and the reliability of his cast mean that Trek III does more good than harm to a franchise still competing with it's younger, more tehnologically advanced adversaries.

Interesting but flawed.

The likeable veneer of the film never threatens to evaporate, which is both a good and a bad thing; the comedy is plentiful but the dark laughs are never quite dark enough, given the subject matter.

A fun, action-packed reintroduction to Conan Doyle's classic characters. Part Two should provide more in the way of scope.

A fair-to-middling auto-noir with a hole in the middle roughly the size of its leading man’s head.

Unashamedly sentimental, but all the better for it.

Good performances, but If you're looking for an uplifting tale of hope against despair, look elsewhere.

It wants to be a modern "Taxi Driver"; it manages to be the new Falling Down, with Foster as fierce as ever.

Slow, ponderous and as shallow as it thinks it is deep, lifted only by an impressive opening and fine work from Damon and Howard.

Both leading ladies display great willingness to send up themselves and Hollywood, and Willis' quiet nervous breakdown showcases his previously unguessed-at comic skills. But it's the pitch-black comedy and celebrity satire that make this so enjoyable.

Always a spoof rather than a homage, this comedy soon realises there's only so many laughs you can plunder from the heavy premise and the repetitive carriages.

There's some likable energy to the performances and a strong soundtrack, but the lack of sustained dancing make this more of a nostalgic fantasy than a proper musical, whereas 'Shagging' itself seems far too complicated to catch on.

Sweet but predictible angst-ridden Brat Pack outing.

Hardly a classic given the talents of Carell, Rudd and Roach at his best. It bungles utilising plenty of talent in a lightweight comedy effort that brings little fresh to the table.

Unfortunately shallow characterisation, a script so laid-back you can almost hear it snoring and the occasional outburst of hokey dialogue lead to a movie a good deal less charming than it thinks it is.

Election Year maintains the nervy tension that made the first films entertaining, but doubles down on the political metaphors, overwhelming you with its soap-box rhetoric.

A bizarre, intriguing combination of political allegory and old-fashioned paranoid horror.

Life stinks, Brooks' character stinks and the film, after all the Brooks magic in the past, stinks.

Ultimately lost in it's own contrivances, Big Business still manages a few laughs thanks to it's big name leading lady.

An unusually thoughtful look (and a broad one) at powers on the wane, at America's shift from Vietnam polarisations to 80's apathy, and at one man teetering on the brink of a lonely old age.