Intriguing, clever, and often surprisingly funny there's plenty to please in this thriller, that remains fresh and original.

A film as epic and rich as Sergio Leone's imagination, Once Upon a Time in America sits at the head table of gangster movies. 

Sadistically beautiful and viciously exciting, welcome to true terror with Dario Argento's shockingly relentless Tenebrae.

Cinema rarely gets this close to poetry in motion.

It's a bona-fide piece of cultural history. If you love hip hop, this is unmissable.

Stalker is an epic and frequently puzzling inquiry into freedom and faith, which unfolds in an unspecified totalitarian society.

A witty, playful intelligent film as enjoyable as it is influential.

A touchstone for many of the sub-standard gangster films Britain mercilessly churns out today, The Long Good Friday is classy fare and superior viewing to its modern counterparts in every way.

The film's message may be a clichéd staple of comic books - with great power comes great responsibility - but it's handled with sincerity and skill.

It becomes increasingly hard to care as pace, reality, and even believable fantasy are buried under a wreath of ye olde boredom. As always though, Elizabeth Taylor brings a little bit of class to her scenes.

There are some outstanding sequences in this movie that are truly chilling

Made in 1979, the film has aged superbly, the shock of its violence and acuity of its insights still retaining their punch. True, its lengthy running time is demanding and the momentum does dip in the second half, but it's held together by cool-headed technique and Ken Ogata's imposing lead performance.

Ultimately Rabid boils down to zombified sluts and shock moments but it's an irresistible combination that Cronenberg handles well.

There are some fine gory moments in "Carrie", but the real shocks come from the slick emotional exploitation employed by director Brian De Palma.

The film itself is filled with great tunes and a slightly loopy plot. So it's just like your common-or-garden musical in that way. Where the film really takes off is in its subversion of sexual mores as Brad and Janet break free from their normality.

There are some cheesy moments (and gaping plot inconsistencies) as one might expect. But any laughter soon turns to screaming as the screen fills with calculated gory mayhem and some fine shock moments.

The sufferings were well worth it, and the Pythons delivered a classic comedy.

Like any decent slasher movie, there's something unsettling about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre that goes beyond the blood and gore. [4 star rating for DVD only]

Maybe because or in spite of this near psychedelic experience, Floyd at Pompeii has become my favourite concert film of all time. Maybe it's because the lack of an audience means you don't feel like you're having a second hand experience. Maybe it's because you're getting to see a legendary band playing sometimes genuinely transcendent music in a strange environment.

With Sutherland and Christie in fine form it all adds up to one of Roeg's finest films and an undeniably key work in British cinema.

Al Pacino takes on police corruption in the gritty Serpico, a film that's entirely dominated and driven by Pacino's empowered performance.

They're all rather deliciously far-fetched stories but fun to watch. And the demented camera angles and fast pacing makes the tales far more unsettling than you might imagine.

Hardly anything actually happens, and yet it's one of the most emotionally involving dramas ever made.

Klute still perhaps stands as Pakula's finest moment. Informed in part by the conventions of film noir - duplicitous female, ambitious private investigator, and murky goings on of the sexual variety - Klute manages to distill them all into something highly original and distinctly unsettling.

As bleak as it is hard and viciously uncompromising, Get Carter is one of those films that has become increasingly interesting over time.

Without the aid of mind-expanding narcotics though, El Topo can't help looking laughably ramshackle, the combination of bad dubbing, shoddy camerawork and over-the-top performances making it pretty much unwatchable by modern standards.

Fortunately, the script is brilliant enough to work even in this reduced form - with the captivating performances of Stephens and Blakely putting a hilariously camp spin on Wilder's overblown adventure.

If more attention had been paid to plot and characterisation, this would have been a great rather than a good movie. Even so, it stands as a cinematic landmark. Without it there may well have been no Dirty Harry or The French Connection.