This is a film about performances and features simply some of the best seen in years.

For all the exploding gore, graphic eviscerations and combustible corpses, it’s not shocking, not sexy and not scary.

Not all the plot developments ring true, but moments carry a real chill - even in a coma, McKellen can terrify a fellow patient almost to death - and it has more than enough thought-provoking material to command your interest.

Like "There's Something About Mary," Orgazmo has a very sweet love story at its core, although it's more consistently entertaining, blending some outrageous moments with a surprising degree of restraint.

It tootles along being cute and fluffy like a twentysomethings' version of Sabrina The Teenage Witch, but to further its notions of sisterhood and the power of women, it also takes a spin through Thelma And Louise territory, then revisits The Exorcist to up the supernatural content. It's enough to make your head spin.

Chucky's smartest, sharpest outing yet.

By turns wry and sarcastic, the film does a good job ridiculing the home shopping phenomenon in general and the audience that supports it, but lets itself down with occasional lapses into lame slapstick, dubious plot twists and the kind of soap opera-isms it elsewhere decries.

This is one of those failures that has so many near-great things that it almost gets by on guts.

Director Blanks delivers a wholly pedestrian feature debut in this by-numbers teen horror flick that could give you the impression Scream never really happened.

His unique vision as a committed artist and unrepentantly crude joker makes this sweet, disarming, intelligent fun.

Not exactly ground-breaking, but an engaging story prettily told.

In the title role, newcomer Smith shows vestiges of an intuitive and moving performance, but he's swamped by a veritable tsunami of sentimentality and hamstrung by cute dialogue.

Sutherland is just Sutherland but his trademark turn is the perfect foil for Crudup's charging rebel, and makes a personal, affecting relationship the centre of a story essentially about a bloke flogging himself round a running track.

It looks attractive, and is enlivened somewhat by the soundtrack's obligatory disco dinosaurs, but those expecting any real insight into the 70s club scene will come away hugely disappointed.

LaBute has crafted one of the most explicit and hilarious films of the year; it's a slow-moving affair, with little camera movement and only the merest hint of a soundtrack.

Director Sullivan lingers too long in every photogenic location and drags out every incident as if he's making six episodes of a not very sparkling serial.

A gripping modern morality tale with a credible cast and a compelling premise. The film is heavy on self examination and will make you think: what would you do?

Director Steve Miner, on board because Carpenter passed, made two of the early Friday The 13th sequels and manages the business of the sudden knee-jerk shocks with ease, realising (as the previous sequels didn't) that Halloween movies are supposed to be scary not violent.

Not an altogether unsuccessful adaptation of the timeless Cinderella story, it certainly scores well in terms of lavish scenery, snappy repartee and brightly-coloured mayhem.

It's worth watching, though, for Minnie Driver, whose luminous performance as the governess in question struggles to save writer/director Goldbacher's film from the doldrums.

Kudos to Anderson and Gilroy for making a low-action, dialogue-heavy geopolitical thriller in this day and age. But aside from finally giving its star some strong material to work with, it doesn’t live up to its promise.

Lyne's efforts to be both passionate and artistic are generally successful, although a few sex scenes are disturbing and arguably close to salacious.

Shot in grainy, high contrast black-and-white with a lot of simple but effective optical and aural tricks to suggest the workings of his unusual mind, this is one of the most intimate movies in recent memory.

Part 4, to its credit, is the noisiest. Disappointingly, it's also the worst: not bad, just not as good.

While never scaling any great heights, there's lots of little points - and some bigger ones, like the pairing of the leads - to enjoy.

Mulan serves up the sort of classic entertainment the Magic Kingdom was built on: stunning animation, sharply defined characters, a smattering of catchy tunes all seamlessly woven into a simple, powerfully told yarn.

The X-Files can stand proud as a genuine movie with a beginning, a middle and an end, two charismatic leads and a franchise ahead of it.

[Hartley] has turned out a film that is the same as his impressive back catalogue - quirky talk-driven curiosities about people living on the fringes of society - yet somehow different, managing to imbue his usual obsessions with the freshness and vitality of a first-time director.

Bright, breezy, thoroughly enjoyable while you're sitting through it yet not likely to stick around in your head for long.

Hope may float, but this bore flounders beyond salvaging.

Casting aside the forgettable ragbag of a cast, tiptoeing round the leaden script, and avoiding the story's many pot-holes (how come he only breathes fire twice?), Godzilla does provide plenty to look at. But that, for fear of sounding ungrateful, is all.

The movie as a whole - an undeserved flop in the US - is energetic, pacey and funny with tons of great fights. What more could any six-year-old want?

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.

Sound tricky? It is, and all a little too cutely so, the switches back and forth between realities ever more contrived and eventually tiresome, prompting giggles of relief as the storylines painfully draw towards a soap operatic convergence.

This movie intrigues and disappoints in equal measure.

A stand-out romantic fantasy and surefire hit of Ghost-ly proportions. But all you cynical and smart-arsed brethren, beware: this is definitely not for you.

Though Species II is far from serious and aimed squarely at the hairy-palmed, it really didn't need to be quite this rotten.

Beautiful and resonant, this provokes deeper thoughts on the nature of living with violence than most gangster films.

Though there's an obvious, admirable effort to supply character development and plot twists, the set-work and special effects - both stylish and stunning - tend to dominate.

An anemic time-waster you've seen before that fails to create tension or generate the suspense this genre cries out for.

As double-cross becomes triple-cross becomes quadruple cross, it all gets awfully trying.

It's a film you might argue with, but its sparing use of on-screen violence, some extraordinarily protracted scenes and sensitive handling of thorny subject matter make it also a film you ought to see.

Generic, uninspired and devoid of suspense.

For those who delight in the Coens' divinely abstract take on reality, this is pure nirvana (cross Blood Simple with Raising Arizona if you must), yet beyond the hysterical black comedy, scattered violence and groovy dialogue, there sounds the same song to human goodness which enriched Fargo.

The Real Blonde has lost that certain something that earmarked DiCillo's earlier, more offbeat outings, resulting in a film which is pleasant rather than innovative.

There is nothing reprehensible about Palmetto; it simply falls short of conviction because you're too aware you've seen it all a hundred times before.

A script with a streak of clever cynicism and poignancy, a soundtrack of tunes you thought had long since departed to the vinyl graveyard and one of the most adorable screen pairings in ages in Sandler and Barrymore and the result is a film which, while hardly high art, is simply irresistible.

It's just like a spectacularly excessive and melodramatically daft Cantonese crime opus, but in English, with a thumpingly trendy soundtrack.

Nothing Landis can do makes up for a limp plot bolstered by distinctly Cannonball Run-ish car smashes and an irritating sprog. And the movie's not even out in the year 2000.

This plays like a collection of translated, stylised scenes rather than a seamless narrative that arouses one's sympathy with Finn or forbearance for Estella. File under well-meaning failures.

A colourful and stylish romp, for sure, but a feeling of restlessness sets in long before the series of false endings that finally bring it to a close. Time passes, things happen, but nobody emerges very much wiser.

A rollicking cat-and-mouse thriller in bad weather. And no dog.

The psychological study that is the author's trademark is reduced to superficial and negative motivation - lust, guilt, revenge, escape.

An arch mix of police procedural and supernatural chiller, this is bleak, edgy, sometimes silly stuff.

Maddin's surrealism is always gently persuasive rather than all-out shocking. Nobody else is doing anything remotely like this; reason enough to treasure it.

Amid a cacophony of cack-handed hijacks of Irish politics for Hollywood gain, Jim Sheridan's clear, intelligent directorial voice once again hits the strident notes of realism.

Proceedings are further distinguished by Christie who is simply outstanding in a fiercely demanding role. It's an utterly absorbing performance and the keystone of a film which could, with some justification, be labelled a small masterpiece.

Written in part by David Mamet, Wag The Dog is a lovely idea, with credibility buoyed by its incredible timeliness. But, content with its initial premise, the movie lacks the necessary bite to develop the satire further, to the point where it's difficult to spot whether Washington or Hollywood is the target.

The net result is difficult and demanding viewing yet strangely thrilling.

Nielsen's performance is truly dreadful, yet somehow it seems strangely fitting for the movie, which is unlikely even to engage the younger audience for whom it is so obviously intended. When even the outtakes you see over the end titles don't raise a single titter, you know you're in trouble.

Fast, funny, very British and less militaristic than, say, The Peacemaker. On this evidence, we may be forced to say, Carry on, Bond.

Lane as the greedy schemer and the timid, gangly Evans make a good slapstick team, with great support from a cast of larger-than-life characters including Walken as the exterminator who approaches his task with military precision and outrageous hardware.

Nothing can make an agnostic squirm like full-on religion but by loading his central character with lay weaknesses as well as spiritual strengths, Duvall invests the near-documentary style film with an everyman appeal.

Unnervingly, it is both hilariously funny and quite disturbing, with Allen's neuroses and fixations manifested in some shocking ugliness and intimately personal revelations we'd rather not have seen confirmed.

Spielberg has mounted a courtroom drama to rival the finest Grisham, with a coruscating civil rights debate resonating both within the film and into the present as the audience knows it.

Manages to be a charming little movie, nothing to write home about but a perfectly acceptable way to while away a rainy Sunday afternoon with the child, or children, in your life.

Midnight is a mildly engaging hotchpotch of disparate ideas - courtroom drama, small town expos and witchcraft-infected magicking - but a far cry from Eastwood's best.

It's just so unremarkable. Which, considering its director's monumental output (both good and bad) is, frankly, a bit depressing.

It would miss the point to complain that the plot is nonsensical drivel peopled by paper-thin characters and a paucity of ideas.

It's a good job this works so well as a machine-made movie, because its grasp of political realities is nebulous.

For another, this film is that still shamefully rare pleasure, an absorbing ensemble piece in which a fine group of actors get to show their class and range, playing a black American family who are prosperous, cultured and complex.

Yet in trying to be honest and non-conformist, Mad City does the most dishonest thing imaginable: it conforms to Hollywood routine.

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

In the absence of any genuine emotional wallop, it is the directorial pizzazz that pulls you through. Just about.

It's a great set-up but sadly the plot unfolds slowly and with little action, playing like a short story.

Proves that nouveau horror is alive and kicking hard.

As horribly funny as it is depressing, it gets pretty hard to take after a while, especially for anyone who is a committed cat-lover. A melancholy edge of deliberate poetry mutes the ugly realism but also serves to make bearable what might otherwise be an hour-and-a-half of hell.

The ensemble acting is so strong the characters are likeable without being annoying, and aside from the odd corny line which serves as a reminder of the movie's stupidity, if taken at face value it becomes a fair enough yarn with bundles of energy.

A carefully evoked and unhurried number that won't bring the house down, this nonetheless ends up being more absorbing than you'd think.

It's a million miles from MTV chic; instead a timeless record of a timeless band, now fifty-somethings uniting an everyman/woman/child audience. Feel the power.

Writer/director Jim Kouf certainly knows his police procedures, packing the movie with sharp dialogue and authentic set pieces. Unfortunately, the final half-hour, with its told-you-so conclusion, takes the knife-edge away from what clearly could have been a masterly thriller. Then again, just watching Tupac ponder death on the big screen is probably all the knife-edge you need.

But for the most part, what you have here is a topnotch filmmaker getting back to basics and really delivering the goods.

The dazzling ensemble perfectly captures every nuance in one of the finest acting showcases you could hope for.

Echoes of "Waiting To Exhale" are obvious, but this is a more smiley affair altogether, with perhaps a spoonful too much sugar stirred in at times, and emotional development often mixed from the most basic of recipes.

Bart, the bear used in the dramatic attack sequences, gets top billing in the end credit crawl. Which is fair enough, but hardly inspiring.

Far too light and reliant on the Hollywood romantic clich_ to explore its topic intelligently, and - appropriately enough - leaves Kline looking like a Muppet.

However, it is probably the screenplay that is most at fault, and while "Demolition Man" director Brambilla again makes things look okay, his hands are tied with flat dialogue, zero comedy and not much caper, either.

In spite of a catalogue of downsides, including clunky dialogue, fuzzy morals and preposterous story lines, G.I. Jane does offer a perverse level of enjoyment.

Audacious, yet sensitive, Fire may shock traditionalists but is the sort of film that ought to win Indian cinema a whole new audience.

An honourable attempt to return the mainstream thriller to a more serious, intelligent vein, yet ultimately lacks the complexity of characterisation, dense subterfuge and overall feeling of weightiness that separates the great from the good.

Superbly styled in techno-Gothic space-grunge chic, this sci-fi/horror cross-breed is a directorial triumph of reference and homage.

Though it tries to be different, with hair's-breadth escapes that don't depend on implausible stunts or Bondian-scale explosions, Conspiracy Theory is an uneasy mix of laughs and thrills; suspense and soap.

As is the norm with the best of Leigh, Career Girls is a masterly observation of the foibles of the human condition, rendered with an incisive bite and delivered with boisterous wit.

Aniston deports herself competently, here showing us nothing she hasn't on Friends, and Bacon is pretty much on autopilot as the company stud but it is Mohr who actually shines, skilfully giving an underwritten role a genuinely deft sense of nobility and charm.

Fulfils all its early promise, delivering a well oiled, no-nonsense, supremely entertaining crowd pleaser.

Whatever it is they do so successfully on TV clearly fails to translate to the big screen, particularly when saddled with a script that does no one any favours. Sinbad, as an Afro-heavy 70s throwback, does his best to elevate things, but this stodge is beyond help.

Before you know it, you're caught up in a difficult but touching friendship, and enjoying a history lesson more than you ever thought possible.