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.

A most fascinating disaster of genre making.

Not a masterpiece, by any stretch of the imagination, but it's pleasing to see a sequel strive so hard to reach the same heights. That it fails is through no fault of its own - the original simply raised the bar too high.

What makes Freddy truly terrifying, and an inspired invention on Craven's part, is that he exists not in the real world but in the shadowy realm of dreams.

Enigmatic and fascinating.

A tense, slickly executed thriller.

Once you get past the ridiculous story this is a fine example of De Palma's lush overkill style and certainly has a redeeming thread of silly sick humour.

Strong performances anchor a series of unforgettable scenes. Breathtaking and unfathomable.

Horrifying, moving and powerful. Watch it by yourself, late at night and never sleep again. Not a good date movie.

Amadeus skewers the period finery - stunning costumes, production design, sublime music - with piercing intelligence and thematic gravitas.

The sometimes dark sci-fi thriller tone is punctured nicely by Quaid's one-liners, and Capshaw is on good form. Very, very '80s, but lots of fun too.

A solid John Woo fu-action hero actioner from the 70s with a glimpse of his later promise.

Red Dawn is at once a mainstream shoot ‘em up action picture and an ideologically demented exercise in American paranoia.

A fairly dappy and overlong attempt to turn Prince the then emergent rock-funk superstar into a movie star.

Jim Jarmusch tried to create the essential road movie and although he didn't manage that, he has still created a classic that captures perfectly the life of a drifter in New York.

This was sweet and charming at the time but now it just lacks either the comedy or sophistication of kids' fantasy film that we've all become accustomed to.

Dated of course, being typically 80s, but maintains a certain charm.

Arnie still swings that sword with aplomb, but with a story this ludicrous, he's on slippery ground.

Ralph Macchio's transformation from high school geek to butt-kicking tough guy, thanks to a little help from Chinese sage Mr. Miyagi (Noriyuki 'Pat' Morita) and his homespun Oriental wisdom, is entertaining enough.

A delightfully offbeat reminder of how inventive and witty blockbusters seemed when you were a kid.

Jokes so stupid as to seem almost surreal, an amazing range of cultural referents and a smattering of genuinely witty conceits.

Very of its time but enjoyable for all that.

Impressive visual invention by Nimoy and the reliability of his cast mean that Trek III does more good than harm to a franchise still competing with it's younger, more tehnologically advanced adversaries.

While The Godfather delivers certainty and a comforting dramatic resolution, Once Upon A Time In America delivers a profound kind of mystery. While Coppola's film delivers answers, Leone's asks questions. It lingers and plays on the mind; its meanings shift and change like a faded memory or a half-remembered dream.

The sustained furore of humour, visual panache and headlong momentum makes for dazzling cinema.

An otherwise fine sports fantasy is dragged down by an overindulgence in sentimentality.

Hall is very funny as the energetic adolescent pest and a good supporting cast includes the Cusack sibings John and Joan.

Film is elegant but never beautiful, a pretence at Lean’s magnificence contradicted by a lavish but anachronistic score by Vangelis. It is the words and performances which excite; their director is out of his depth.

This film is more known for being the one which introduced Goldie Hawn to Kurt Russell than anything else, which is somewhat unfair as at its heart lies a sweet romance, with good performances from both the leads and an Oscar nomination for supporting actress Lahti.

As a fish-out-of-water comedy-drama, it works well.

Douglas and Turner make a great double act in this exuberantly directed adventure movie with a great start turn from the always enjoyable De Vito. Good stuff.

It picks up in the last hour, though this is a very minor compensation in an otherwise long and listless film.

Compelling morality tale that works on multiple layers.

It’s ragged round the edges, but then Fritz Kiersch is working with a budget Roger Corman would laugh at, and he does a good job.

The movie that really showed Tom Hanks' promise as a deliverer of great comedy and heart-warming pathos.

A brave effort from Richardson with another outstanding performance from Foster.

This is about as noir as Pete’s Dragon, best to accept its superficiality as a boon - Hackford, at least, gives it a slick exterior - and enjoy it is a vacuous thriller and extended Phil Collins video.

The greatest laugh-out-loud comedy of the 80s.

Fine, stylish debut from Alex Cox with some great turns from the two leads.

Except for the success of Three Men and a Baby, (NOT Little Lady), Tom Selleck had great problems making the transition to the big screen. Here is another case in hand with such stereotypical characters as Hutton dominatrix and Hoskins Londoner.

Tenebrae is essential viewing for fans of the Italian stallion thanks to some of his most arterial gore to date.

It’s a fairy-tale, a glittering New York fable told in a silvery black and white, laden with nostalgia for times and oddities long gone from the hallowed halls of Broadway. Another Allen gem.

Wildly uneven, but funny in a bittersweet tittery sort of way in places.

A hauntingly beautiful film.

Not to everyone's taste, but an earnest and hearfelt tale nonetheless.

Ultimately, BMX bikes and Day-Glo elbow pads just ain't cool. One best left to fond memory.

The Keep wears its crap bits proudly on it's sleeve, its qualities are more hidden and emerge only once you've watched it, dismissed it and then found that it's atmosphere refuses to disperse.

Perfomances are excellent, and despite its moralistic conclusion, the film has since become de rigueur viewing for crack barons, who know a good shoot-em-up when they see one.

Adapted from the Stephen King killer car novel, this John Carpenter film is more like an assembly line vehicle than a customised job, but is nevertheless a slick, entertaining piece of work.

James L. Brooks's clever and witty cry-a-long which has as many guys pretending not to cry, as women unashamedly sobbing.

It has some of that episodic ‘compressed miniseries’ feel which a lot of King pictures get stuck with (the book was later redone as a TV serial with Anthony Michael Hall) but still manages a lot of powerful material.

There is a tender resonance in its cheesy sports drama operating with all the obvious moves.

Consistently compelling, capturing all the ambiguity and tension of the book.

Connery was perhaps wise to call it quits the first time round.

Interesting but flawed.

An entertaining look at the 80s embourgeoisement of 60s student activists steers skillfully between social satire and sentiment.

Lewis Gilbert, and two career best performances from his leading actors, give this film such energy it leaves the pleasant aroma of life and possibility.

As an exploration of cultural discord, Nagisa Oshima's film is pretty thin stuff, despite its reputation. Bowie is a potent irritant, but Tom Conti is solid in support and Sakamoto's mesmerising score sparkles anew.

Better avoided unless you're doing a study on vaguely titillating rubbish 80s animation.

Regardless of its dense intellectual and autobiographical content, however, Mirror can still be appreciated as an attempt to capture the human soul and to show that, for all our diverse individual experiences, we still have much in common on an emotional and spiritual level.

It’s "Ferris Bueller" with an existential crisis. Very funny and very weird.

One of the dreariest outer space swashbucklers of all time.

A toothless, tedious farce which deserves to sink without a trace.

Less a hangover of a sequel than a satisfying belch to rid the world of the original.

One for the die hards. The saving grace here is a knowing sense of humour so lacking in its predecessor, For Your Eyes Only.

Saturday Night Live activist Murphy, capitalising on the promise he showed in "48 Hrs.," steals the show as the quick-witted Billy Ray Valentine in what is certainly more mainstream fare than the earlier SNL staffed capers.

Pure escapist madness. And a helluvalota fun.

Walter F. Parkes and Lawrence Lasker's script is tight, and Badham directs the whole thing with economy and pace but it's Matthew Broderick's film.

Surprisingly, even after waiting 20 years, they managed to turn out a smart, darkly-comic thriller with some imaginative twists.

The most disappointing of the original three episodes but still charming and thrilling.

The script self-destructs, but the performances — including Daniel Stern as an expendable sidekick — are fun, and John Badham stages some super stunts with the insectile title machine.