It's a genuine delight and a definite thumbs aloft for kids of about six upwards.

The whole madcap production is at best faintly amusing, at worst, painfully protracted

The road-crime movie is such a formula in Hollywood that almost every debuting director turns one out, but writer-director Matthew Bright rings the changes by modeling this white trash nightmare on Red Riding Hood.

A pleasant package then, easy on the eye, and gently charming but, like The Brothers McMullen, one which places Burns as a comfortable rather than cutting-edge moviemaker.

Shelton keeps the humour straight down the middle and, just like "Bull Durham" before it, uses the rituals and metaphors of sport to relate the complexities of love and relationships.

The rapid-fire editing and glossy photography can't disguise The Fan's hollowness or De Niro's phoned in performance. A disappointment.

Many will find Kansas City unbearable, because Leigh (with a mouth full of jagged teeth and a permanent snarl) and Richardson (who totters along in a druggy stupour), give brilliant performances as extremely unpleasant characters. Furthermore, the ending is a real slap-in-the-face downer. But if you can get past that, this is the real stuff.

Oddly enough, the film scores with Bowie's spellbinding take on the ageing Warhol. Without this comedic but beautiful performance and an offbeat soundtrack, this is little more than wet paint.

The formula for Robin Williams' childish stick wares dangerously thin this time out.

A monumentally misconceived sequel, Escape from L. A. is the huge, shonky blemish on the magnificent history of John Carpenter and Kurt Russell.

Coming from a novice director, the film is not as impressive as "Sense And Sensibility", but as a light-hearted and energetic comedy of who-loves-who? and small upsets, this works well - and it boasts Paltrow's star-making turn.

Matilda is a blackly comic, delightfully off-the-wall picture that both kids and adults will lap up.

Violent and sometimes shocking, this is nevertheless superbly acted, brilliantly shot piece.

Schumacher is never quite smart enough to keep the debate neutral, and the unrestrained hero worship at the close leaves a nasty taste.

Huge ghostly fun, and a fine achievement from the early days of CGI.

Only once dipping into huggy sentimentality, we are happily spared the run-of-the-mill best mates saga the premise threatens. Instead this is a deeper and wonderfully engrossing picture with characters easy to sympathise with

Both assuredly funny without being forced, and smart without being smug, this is one comedy that deserves to go forth and, indeed, multiply.

Like 2001, Star Wars and Jurassic Park, it ups the special effects stakes and gets closer to putting on screen the images you've had in your mind while reading epic sci-fi.

Occasionally irritating farce but inventive and boasting an endearing as well as laugh-out-loud performance from Murphy in and out of fat suit.

Fans of the book will be pleased that most of its highlights remain intact - including Dilbeck covering himself with Vaseline - but overall this is at best patchy, and, more damagingly, not funny.

Even one-scene characters are unforgettable, but Sayles really gets under the skin of his struggling-to-be-heroic leads, Sam and Pilar. Long after this summer's crop of action flicks is gone, you'll watch this for the third or fourth time and see fresh material. Outstanding.

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

Bertolucci fans of old may well sigh for the political passion that made his earlier work more powerful. But the grace, craft and real wit in this country house party make it his most seductive film in a very long while.

The mix of light comedy and really quite dark themes proved too much for many viewers, but this is worth a look for Broderick's performance and Carrey's obsessive touches.

Despite the pleasant feel and fun performance from Zane there's something missing from this superhero adventure.

No masterpiece, but a decent rental prospect. Twohy works the Sci-fi genre well yet again.

Sporadically funny, but never more than a sting of crude gags.

Enormous fun.

Even by the less-than-stressful standards of filmmaking for kids, this is disappointingly by-the-numbers effort.

This film encompasses everything that is both grating and great about the blockbuster. It gives scant regard to character depth or dialogue while still being a must-see hoopla of computer trickery that weakens the knees and raises the neck-hairs.

It's a tale that subtly reinterprets the genre and delivers Jarmusch's most accomplished, if not necessarily his most accessible film to date.

With suitable suspension of disbelief this makes for agreeable enough nonsense.

As a barrel of easy, unsophisticated laughs, Kingpin delivers in spades.

DJ Audrey Wells' crafty screenplay brims with truths about the sexes, providing great lines for Garofalo, and great business for Thurman's confused waif, and cranks the feelgood factor up so high it's almost off the scale.

A film unlikely to do much for either the serial killer genre or motorway services tourist trade.

Sloppy crime epic.

It's all a little too coincidental for comfort, and surprisingly short on laughs for a comedy, but nonetheless this is a light, well-meaning flick, improved considerably by Lake's scatty heroine.

Not to everyone's tastes then, but for fans of the show - big, big laughs.

Here's a film consisting entirely of things you've seen before. Especially indebted to the hardly classic students-on-rampage sagas Class Of 1984 and The Principal, it even takes its title from a forgotten Amanda Donohoe DTV movie of a few years back. Furthermore, it's choppily directed by Robert Manel (School Ties) and toplined by the still-in-decline Tom Berenger.

This is - gasp! - a Hollywood movie actually daring to bare its teeth at silly American flag-waving.

Fear, a sort of pubescent Fatal Attraction, is derivative and often risible, in the competent hands of Foley it's also highly enjoyable.

The vocal cast are great fun, and the animation is smooth and vibrant. Except for a few treacly songs, this is great entertainment for all.

From its baddie-eviscerating opening sequence through innumerable car chases, shoot outs and tongue-in-cheek dialogue exchanges, this is exactly the kind of film that James Cameron would make if they ever let him through the Disney front gates.

Not fractionally as clever or as fast-paced as the television series upon which it's based.

It may not be to everybody's taste, but this is a daring antidote to its more saccharine cousins.

Vintage Lee visual flourishes and a couple of chucklesome fantasies spoofing a 70s sitcom and blaxploitation flicks make this more watchable than the infuriatingly pointless content warrants.

The acting is all first base, the script a laughable stream of gung ho-isms, the action merely solid and the effects indifferent. Yet, you still stroll out with a grin a mile wide.

If it weren't so darned "sincere" this would be an unmitigated bird-brained delight, but it undoubtedly remains a genial crowd pleaser.

Almodóvar lets rip with a story of great emotional intensity, while retaining his signature stunning visual style and a central performance quite unlike anything previously seen in his work. A potent and strikingly well-delivered combination.

At barely 70 minutes long, this still manages to stammer and stall between the meaningless atrocities. It's time this series met Abbott and Costello.

Painstakingly shot, but emotionally fallow.

This is amiable enough and perhaps one shouldn’t expect anything more from the team that brought you Police Academy (writer Hugh Wilson) and Major League (director Ward). What really lets this down, though, is the uninspired plot and one-dimensional characters. While it’s true that this was never going to be a high-brow evening at the pictures, the air of familiarity it leaves behind proves to be a major disappointment.

Judged by any rational standards, Rumble is absolute bollocks, but it at least has some pretty darned amazing Chan fight scenes.

This isn't afraid to be a horror movie.

In an era not exactly short of quirky bungled heist movies, Anderson and Wilson take an interesting tack – coming in late on lifelong relationships, and showing us the pay-offs to friendships and resentments that have been simmering for years.

The real surprise is that it's a lot of fun, with Sandler becoming more personable as the film progresses, and a couple of truly side-splitting scenes.

The sight of the Muppets making their first movie appearance since 1992's Christmas Carol - with no technological wizardry or flashy special effects applied to update the simple but effective puppetry techniques - proves to be a sobering experience. And the attempt of Jim Henson's bug-eyed creations to keep up with the times results in a breezily entertaining yet old-fashioned brew.

Charismatic performances push this into a higher bracket of political thriller.

The film really succeeds with its warm treatment of ordinary hang-ups - no life-shattering revelations or pain repressed since childhood, just the genuine, everyday trials of life.

It's entertaining in a laughable, six-pack kind of way, acceptable if you're in the mood, slightly irritating if you're not.

A curiously compulsive drama that for all its inevitable Dead Sailors’ Society trappings is still highly entertaining.

Utter, unforgivable bilge.

Despite the schmaltz this reviewer lapped it up, not least for the engaging teens, including Alicia Witt, and the spectacle of Dreyfuss strutting his wily stuff to Louie, Louie.

Enjoyable, if slight.

Rigorous adaptation of the notoriously "difficult" play.

Warm but unassuming family comedy.

It's mindless entertainment, but its critical and commercial failure doomed the pirate genre to a watery grave.

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.

Long but consistently engaging biopic.

On a scene by scene basis, it is mostly great fun but suffers from a contrived script which repetitively drags characters back to the eponymous magical board game for another effect-producing throw of the dice.

The City Of Lost Children is as great a film as you thought "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" was when you were five years old.

Forgettable, innocent, old fashioned fairy tale with not nearly as much sexual chemistry as is required.

Sugary enough to induce immediate diabetes, this is not one for cynics.

This is a valiant but overcomplicated Western that aims to redraw the lines on Western mythology: with heroes as mere humans, and heroics as distortions of the truth.

Just perfect. Script, character, animation....this manages to break free of the yoke of 'children's movie' to simply be one of the best movies of the 90's, full-stop.

Of course it's hokey and silly, but Reiner really knows how to skirt potential schmaltz and there is a political backbone to the piece which gives it reassuring depth.

This is the best bond movie since "On Her Majesty's Secret Service".

Staggeringly laboured though this premise may be, it also has the potential for some lightweight farce to pass the time.

Although there are some great moments (one for Nicholson recalling the toast scene of "Five Easy Pieces"), Penn's intentions lose their way.

Carrey tries hard but the success of his excessiveness has always been down to pegging it to good plots and good partners.

There are few surprises on offer here; the comedy is engaging without ever being side-splitting, the dramatic conflict convinces without going overboard, and the denouement, feelgood as it is, can be spotted a long way in the distance.

Though well directed, Thewlis and Di Caprio simply do not gel (John Malkovich and River Phoenix were the original cast choices), the latter is too hyperactive in delivery, the former too static in expression.

It must be hard for actresses as unconventional and gutsy as Weaver and Hunter to find scripts worth making. Although this offers them both meaty parts with plentiful neuroses and snappy lines, it is otherwise a completely mechanical load of old cods.

While this may not quite be a stake through the heart, Wes Craven's curious mix of the comic and the horrific is another nail in Eddie Murphy's career coffin.

As a stylish black comedy its uncompromising nature should be applauded, though as an indictment of the hopelessly violent American society, the message gets lost.

Meat and potatoes teen drama.

From the visceral plunges of the first person mind clip sequences (including a terrifying, controversy courting rape sequence) to the overwhelming finale this is a, literally, stunning event. Some directors can, thank God, still make you experience films.

Jade tries so hard to be a serious, lush noir but, like the cheap sex it revels in, it is ultimately a hollow, anti-climactic experience.

Compared to similar genre offerings, this ain't much cop. But standing alone, it's an entertaining and amiable film.

Another soulless, pointless rip-off, this doodles around the plot parameters of John Carpenter's Halloween movies with only Pleasence, who died during production, and Carpenter's theme tune as links to the series' beginnings.

For all its faults, the good-natured, quirky humour that this for the most part offers ultimately makes it very hard to dislike.

Keaton handles her appealing ensemble, the early 60s period and child's perspective of tragedy, love and reconciliation with a sure, gentle hand.

Not Lee's finest but intriguing nonetheless.

Despite the stars best efforts this is neither funny or original.

Without a doubt, hard hitting and thoguhtful, but Clarke's style here (as it would continue to do) hints at something altogether more disturbing.

Good ideas. Average film.

The filmmakers try to solve the problem of turning an experience which merely consists of a series of fights into a story by... ignoring it, presenting a film which merely consists of a series of fights.

Pfeiffer's performance supersedes any of the material, but the rest of the film is a seething mass of clich's despite the "true story" origins.