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.

Alex Cox’s retelling of the Sex Pistols’ story from the point of view of Sid (Gary Oldman) and girlfriend Nancy Spungen (Chloe Webb) works as both spirited punk biopic and tragically touching love story. It’s a hard film to watch at times, as Vicious plunges deeper into his heroin-induced slump, but told with skill and compassion, which make up for the onscreen squalor.

More style than substance... but such sexy, sexy style...

As involving and intellectually rich as all Tarkovsky's work.

Passionate performances from De Niro and Jeremy Irons in this stark but thematically complex historical drama.

Howell makes the least convincing black guy ever, his eventual contrition feels hollow and forced — much like the laughs.

It wouldn’t be like Martin Scorsese to pick up the tabs on a simple sequel, and this glossy, hard-spoken pool drama, a follow-on from The Hustler, never aligns to the simple organising principle of repeat value.

Unpretentious, warm, at times hilarious, it's hard to find a bad word to say about Crocodile Dundee.

Really, really bad. Production company-destroyingly bad.

The entire cast is superb and it so perfectly paced, that the story unfolds with wit, pathos and sensitivity and completely free of emotional shortcuts.

Joan Allen, Tom Noonan and Dennis Farina contribute to the class in a truly underrated chiller.

In Tobe Hooper’s sequel, the toolkit cannibals are living under a theme park. The mood follows suit, pitched as Evil Deady black comedy. The first third is terrible; the rest judders with abrasive, ultra-demented splatter.

A commendable rarity: a sensitive children’s film that neither patronises them nor insults their intelligence.

Has cult status now but the plot is fiendishly complicated.

Howard the Duck manages to be two or three types of fun: as a crazy comedy, it has some good risque/sick jokes to go along with its messy slapstick and bland rock music; as a monster movie, it has an outstanding performance from Jeffrey Jones as a scientist-cum-monster and an astonishingly repulsive Dark Overlord of the Universe shows up for the exciting climax.

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.

Safe when it's ripping genre jokes word for word, this pallid pastiche never goes for the jugular, the heart, or any other part of the audience, for that matter. It breezes by like the tamest of ghosts, almost unnoticeable.

Truly great cinema- manages to dodge that 'dodgy sequel' curse with ease.

It falters a little in its confusing climactic battle, but is breathlessly paced, wittily scripted, amusingly played, action-packed and relentlessly spooky.

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

The genuinely witty and endearing Disney animation that everyone forgets.

Fabulous fantasy from the godfather of modern puppetry Jim Henson.

Decent premises and the promise of Billy Crystal pale in a film that fronts up to, then whimpers away from, the prospect of leaping out of its genre's boundaries.

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.

As vehicles for fat comedians who were big in the States but never exported well go, this self-proclaimed slob comedy is nearly a masterpiece and certainly much better than the comparable Revenge of the Nerds films.

The world Jordan envisions is desperate, but Hoskins’s human heart offers a lovely thread of hope.

A sadly lightweight spar through rule-breaking cop conventions that doesn't utilise it's star's bulk to any great effect.

Pitched halfway between a comedy and a morality tale, this space race often falls between the two, but is mildly diverting and boasts a strong young cast that will go on to make better things.

Top Gun is not so much a movie in the conventional sense as an escalating series of masterfully crafted adverts: motorcycles, aircraft carriers, pectorals and planes all look as if they’ve been shot for a particularly luminous beer campaign.

Safe, sentimental, and loved by kids, Short Circuit never tries to dissect it's predecessor (E.T.) nor outdo it in any way. Would have been nice to see a human-robot love triangle.

It’s quite an entertaining little effort, combining the craziest aspects of classic Hollywood screwball comedy with the kind of fresh insanity found in the great cartoons.

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.

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

A general disappointment, but then with David Bowie and Patsy Kensit what did you expect.

All-in-all a fairly unpleasant experience for most audiences.

Derivative but tongue-in-cheek enough to have a following.

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

Stunning cast and scenery cannot fill the hole where the heart of this film should be. A satire with an unnaturally soft centre.

An uncliched teen movie that features terrific performances from a young cast.

Almost palatable, with some fast-moving stunts but dreadful dialogue.

This has some very, very funny bits...interspersed with a very slight film.

It has all the required Police Academy staples and is one of the better sequels but this whole franchise is so dated that isn't saying much.

Sweet but predictible angst-ridden Brat Pack outing.

Erotic at times, certainly, but that's down to the appeal of it's stars and not the minimal clean lines vs. heavenly bodies approach of director Adrian Lyne.

A stunner of unrelenting tension interrupted by action, violence and gore.

Greater drama and prehistorical weight are to found in the earlier Quest For Fire or the BBC's Walking With Cavemen, and without so much as a trailer for extras, this feels like a relic.

It's a fine line between high art and overblown nonsense. Bizarre accents and annoying camerawork abound in this package of tripe which isn't sure whether it has just left the butchers or is on its way back.

Just as the film captures a world (Imperialism, hunting, colonialism) that has faded away, so this film feels like one of the last of it's kind.

Gilliam's dystopian epic remains among his best, blending his trademark visual inventiveness with a vicious brand of social satire. Unique and essential.

Only distinguishable from the original movie by its obvious cheapness.

The young cast, which resembles a collection of Gerald Scarfe illustrations, acquits itself reasonably well, but is too ordinary to be heroic. And, once action is introduced into the mix, Barry Levinson'’s direction falters.

The jingoism is blindingly awful, but by the time of the showdown, the film has descended into an unaware parody of itself.

More style than substance here but what style it is and what little gems of cinematic moments collect together in this enjoyable ensemble.

This hastily-produced sequel ignores the dreamstalking premise that had made A Nightmare on Elm Street successful and reverts to the overfamiliar possession story.

The main problem is that the supposed good guys are all such reprehensible toads it’s impossible to care whether they get to bring down Willem Dafoe’s charismatic, polo-necked super-crook.

Re-Animator remains a splashy hark back to the glorious 80s love affair with all-things bloody — to the point that Gordon was convinced he'd used more fake blood than anyone else in the history of horror.

Joe Eszterhas conceives a winning formula, and this is perhaps his best film.

Conceptually, this flop has potential for the satirisation of military responses to an alien threat, but it ís wasted in a loose script whose weaknesses are all the more glaring for the film's inability to exploit the power of absurdity.

Martin Scorsese’s take on NYC puts a hip spin on Joe Minion’s cleverly constructed nightmare.

Essential, enormous fun.

Not only do the pair have to prepare for the upcoming race, but, hey, they also have to deal with a hysterical mother, a dying father, and the knowledge that one brother is destined for the same fate as pops. Not quite as sickly as it sounds, with a fair few hints of the onscreen magnetism to come.

Everything from the style to the casting feels grubby and worn.

Burton's first feature revels in the weird, the unpredictable, the infantile and the absurd. A dazzling debut.

Distinctly predictable offering from the ever-overworking John Hughes, who has taken a step back from his previous work.

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

It's an intelligent, well-written, excellently played movie, with top flight gore/horror effects, perverse humour and a provocatively bleak vision. Also, it has the world's first true zombie hero in Bub, who listens to Beethoven and eats people.

Engrossing western which inspired a huge genre revivial.

Disjointed but it still rocks.

Among the plethora of innocent charms on offer, there's the near perfect script by Zemekis and Bob Gale which not only negotiates its time travel paradoxes with deft, exuberant wit but invests the light-hearted plot machinations with a seasoning note of honest drama.

It’s enthralling as well as rambling, you do miss the songs, but there is clearly no place for them here. Best to see them as individual films with nothing in common apart from source material, one a classic, the other a strong enough picaresque amongst some decent fabulation.

The sugar level is positively diabetic, but the whole aura of warmth and cuddliness is hard to resist.

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

Dreamlike Ghibli animation that's well worth seeking out.

A rolicking good time is had by all in this adventure that is built on archetypal plot strands that tie together oh so well.

A gaudy, flamboyant expose that asks a lot of its stars, and gets more than it deserves.

Christopher Walken sleepwalks his way through playing smarmy Nazi geneticist Zorin, where you would think he would have a ball hamming it up as a Bond villain. Indeed, it is a rare moment when Grace Jones makes the biggest impression as an Amazonian (naturally) henchman called May Day.

Here is a film fully xenophobic, abhorrent film, touting guileless version of military honour, but with Jack Cardiff’s furtive camerawork and some excellent editing, it sucks you in to its disturbing heroic sweep.

A satisfying come-down by the director, who stays safely within, rather than pushes against comedy conventions.

One of the liveliest, wittiest, cleverest cheapies ever made.

Mia Farrow is note-perfect in this charming little movie.

It is a complex and at times infuriating structure — it often helps to conceive of the film as the book of short stories it stems from — but simultaneously vivid and disturbing.

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.

This is a criminally neglected piece of good gothic fairy tale fun.

It’s juvenilia, straight-up goofballing, but there is a tittering innocence at work here.

A solidly made, sternly acted, and faithful realisation of the distopian novel.

An unredeemable failure on all levels, other than living up to our expectations.

Smart, sassy and sweet. This showed John Cusack's promise as a romantic lead, and some.

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.

Hughes has made funnier (Ferris Bueller) and better (Pretty In Pink), but this is the only one you could get away with calling iconic. Good and bad, it's still the definitive '80s teen movie - and, to paraphrase Simple Minds - don't you forget about it.

Arguably Harrison Ford’s finest performance, and one of the strongest thrillers to emerge from the heady gloss of the ‘80s, this is director Peter Weir at his most adept.

A mighty accomplishment, and possibly the bravest Britflick yet made.

Perhaps, it was the choice of material, a much more internalised story despite its glossy Raj setting, or the absence of Robert Bolt as screenwriter (it was he who put the fire in Lean’s belly), but the film, for all Lean’s innate elegance, is strangely remote and unmoving.

For a change, we're in a privileged position, always knowing more than the characters we're following, understanding their wrong-headed thought processes, appreciating the ironies they miss, seeing where a slightly different bit of behaviour would have saved lives or led to happier endings.

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.

The film's period settings and spectacular on-stage showbiz set-pieces are fabulous, its meandering script much less so. The thing feels like a movie with its heart ripped out.