William Thomas

Simple, but effective.

This will haunt you. The style, the plot, the character and of course ...that tune...

Sidney Lumet's dazzling debut, based on Reginald Rose's teleplay, delivers a masterclass in the pure dynamism of acting, as Henry Fonda's reasonable doubt gradually sways the 11 other jurors from their various prejudices.

This animated treatment does it absolute justice too. The spooky bits are suitably scarey - the production dates back to a time before anybody worried about mentally scarring the little mites, thus the "Have a bite, dearie" scene means a lot of excited peeping through fingers - the slapstick humour content is high and it contains none of the period references that crept into later Disney cartoons, thus doesn't appear to have dated. But largely it succeeds because it really is a great deal of fun.

This is a very patchy affair - while some of the animated pieces work, others come across as downright insane.

The blend of Schrader's script, Scorsese's direction and De Niro's performance is both riveting and unnerving. A film that will stay with you forever.

Faultless, freewheeling-and very funny.

If you want only one Astaire-Rogers musical, Top Hat is obligatory for Astaire at his most debonair with Irving Berlin's title number and Cheek to Cheek in this screwball confused identities plot.

The most purely horrifying horror movie ever made.

Screamingly funny. Few films, if any, can match Spinal Tap for consistent laughs. Every scene is a classic.

We must salute screenwriter Budd Schulberg (his speech for priest Karl Malden in the loading bay is still stirring). Add the acting/writing heroics a restrained score by Leonard Bernstein and a striking, charcoal look by cinematographer Boris Kaufman, and you have an elegiac portrait of labour relations that feels like a kick in the slats.

Little can come close to captivating the grandeur and epic quality of William Wyler's magnificent bum numb-er.

The people do the talking in this rage-fuelled doc and only the stone hearted will fail to be moved by the resilience of the affected and the inaction of their government.

Undoubtedly the finest of Argento's thrilling horrors, this one takes the radical step, for the director at least, to concentrate on a plot that equals the shocking visuals of his other works. David Hemmings is well cast and is given a great script which genuinely frights.

As with most Cassavetes' it is Rowlands who steals this show, this time expertly playing the happy housewife slowly going off the rails while Falk plays the part of her bewildered husband. At two-and-a-half hours, it could easily have dragged but with such strong performances, you're left wanting more.

This is more a favourite of the children than adult Disney fans. It has a few memorable songs and has spawned a very popular stage production.

The rebirth of Disney in the modern era and due to superb songs, enduring humour and a touching plot it remains an animation classic.

Storytelling doesn't get much better than this.

A beautifully presented tale of love, honor and duty from a master film-maker.

Fans can mouth the words of Grant's big speeches along with him, relishing every viperish turn of phrase...this is and always will be a perfect dark comedy and a student staple.

Though glossy, Sirk's film is tightly structured, with a creative manipulation of light and reflection, and heavy with the symbolism of male destructiveness. Unflinching in its often ugly revelation of character and consequence, it's an intense and powerful film.

Sexual tension hangs in the air as the wind blows and native drums beat, but it's on a visual level that the film excels.

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.

Dreamlike Ghibli animation that's well worth seeking out.

Tries just a tad too hard to be a classic, with Ladd's Roy Rogers woodenness not quite getting the depths of author Jack Schaefer's fallen hero, but the support - Jean Arthur as the yearning farmer's wife, Ben Johnson as the conscience-struck bully - are excellent, and some scenes lodge forever in your memory.

Ogata's performance is the obvious highlight, and Imamura constructs an utterly plausible scenario, but at times overreaches, and loses focus. If you can tolerate a few extraneous scenes, though, this is a dark treat.

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

Delightful, but bum-numbingly slow.

Life-affirming and often laugh-out-loud funny, this is feel-good movie-making par excellence.

Unlike a number of director’s cuts, this version does embellish the original film. It won’t, however, win any converts. Fans should see it again, first-timers should believe the hype. Non-believers should suffer eternal damnation. [2000 re-release]

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.

Tragic and tender Fuller classic. Way ahead of its time.

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

One of those instances where everything good about Hollywood just fell into one place at the right time, it's almost impossible not to get swept up in the vivaciousness of The Sting as a whole. Magnificent, timeless stuff.

With such a strong cast, the film almost turns into an ensemble film instead of a star vehicle for Stewart in his first of many collaborations with Mann. An Archetypal Western with the required cowboys, gunfights and damsels in distress, it has become an all time favourite.

Lesser Hitch, but still superb entertainment.

Despite some fuzzy thinking in the third act, when it gets hard to see what is on Guare's mind, the result is a thoroughly engaging and pointed film.

Enormously influential, it spawned Hollywood's interest in smaller scale, prosaic dramas, few of which failed to match its resonance.

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

Manages to capture the pure heart and spirit of this comic book Americana.

Whatever you want to call Sick, it's anything but a piece of exploitative voyeurism, by turns sombre, hilarious, wince-inducing and inspiring.

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

Enigmatic and fascinating.

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 spare and authentic screenplay unfolds in an almost documentary-like enviroment, there are no histrionics and the acting is of the highest order, but the film shocks and disturbs as much for its morally questionable purpose as in its ugly subject.

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.

A raw, blood-soaked glare into the seedy underworld of sport, with terrific performances by two of Hollywood's heavyweights.

The combination of Neil Simon and Mike Nichols has the pair of them back to somewhere near their best.

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.

The Duke's last hurrah is one of the very best of a cycle of 70s movies that served as obituaries for the Western itself.

Good performances from a strong cast and paranoid plotting enough to keep even the staunchest of remake nay-sayers quiet. Hitchockian production with a modern twist.

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.

It's Newman's performance itself that really makes this film work and helps it truly get close to Lumet's own '12 Angry Men'.

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.

Suffused with the pessimism of Taxi Driver, Blue Collar is one of the most brutally honest films to have come out of 70s Hollywood.

At times puzzling due to the diverse panorama of subject matter, the film nevertheless corners touchy issues more than it flinches them.

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

The twist-filled storyline, which digs up nasty secrets all over the show and offers a satisfying range of suspicious suspects and a truly disgusting killer, remains gripping, and the excellent, understated lead performances don't harp on the racial angle in that embarassing fashion which makes so many Socialy Significant films instantly dated.

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.

Pollack does right to put his faith in one man and a whole lot of mountains. The result is impressive.

This was the film which fixed Wayne's image forever as a tough-as-leather patriot with a well-hidden heart.

A light and lively showcase for a very under-rated double act, Road To Morocco was also unusual for its time in constantly drawing attention to itself as a movie.

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.

A solid, enjoyable, beautifully animated Disney movie, but one not quite out of the top drawer.

Leslie Dixon’s script is effective, though sometimes seems stranded between the domestic humour and the big issues being played out. Still, engaging, undemanding stuff.

Likeable Robert Townsend — who also co-wrote and directed — is a delight in this patchy but consistently enjoyable chronicle of a young black actor’s efforts to crack Hollywood.

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

The second half occasionally descends into melodrama, but for the most part this is bleak, non-judgemental, riveting stuff.

The quintessential '50s rom-com.

A small film, but fresh and immensely charming.

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.

The gaudily gory, virtuoso, hyper-kinetic horror sequel/remake uses every trick in the cinematic book, and confirms that Bruce Campbell and Raimi are gods.

Steinbeck himself praised it for reaching the parts his book couldn't. Need a better endorsement?

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.

A whimsical but optimistic tale of mistaken identity, it starred the Material Girl as the cheekily irresistible Susan, and turned Rosanna Arquette (repressed housewife Roberta) into a star.

Mamet’s gem of a movie, with a great final twist, goads the Godfathers with just as much invention and wit as the much higher profile Married To The Mob.

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.

Labyrintine and hypnotic, there's undoubtedly more style than substance to the film, but Von Trier manages to blind and bewilder his audience in a truly masterful manner.

Stone takes gritty subject matter and hacks it into a perilous ride based on Boyle's life in Salvador. Showing the true, upsetting and harsh realities of which most of us try not to think of. Pure Oliver Stone.

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.