Brad Dourif shows he was always great in one of John Huston's better later films.

Despite the always-good Harvey Keitel, this is just embarassing sci-fi nonsense.

Simple, but effective.

Ghoulish, tense and utterly fantastical, John Carpenter's tale of shipwrecked spectres squelching their way through a fluorescent fog to wreak vengeance on a seaside town is a classic campfire yarn.

A pretty craven attempt by Disney to cash-in on Star Wars blockbusting success, this lightweight but well-written sci-fi adventure movie is well pitched at the very young. More discerning fans of the genre would do well to smother their indignation at the levels of general plagiarism floating around the deck of the supership Cygnus.

Savagely witty on backstage life and audaciously edited, Jazz stands alongside Cabaret as the best “musical” of the last 20 years.

This looks, in retrospect, like nothing much more than a glossy soap passed off as serious drama.

A placid, poignant, well-kept secret of a movie.

Loud and ludicrous, The Jerk is a strong contender for the funniest film of all time.

The big screen was where none of them had gone before, and you can tell.

If an uneasy mix of humour and sadness never quite gels, its message is clear and its cast uniformly strong.

Poor script, poor direction and poor performances mean a dismal 70's disaster movie is the result.

Ogata's performance is the obvious highlight, and Imamura constructs an utterly plausible scenario, but at times overreaches, and loses focus. If you can tolerate a few extraneous scenes, though, this is a dark treat.

A competent, atmospheric remake, but, considering the quality of Murnau's masterwork, is it necessary?

Star Wars it wasn't and still isn't...camp 70's space stuff but the TV series spin-off is a fond memory for 30-somethings throughout the Western World.

Thoughtful trial movie with a disturbing edge.

Flawed but staggering cinema, the unforgettable Apocalypse Now setpieces are extraordinary.

Some interesting creative choices make this more a curio than a great film.

Worth a look, if only for the surreal groupings of the gangs (The Wongs, the Del Bombers and the Fordham Baldies...that's right, they're bald).

Bond meets Star Wars in one of the series' sillier outings.

A movie masterpiece.

Sequel manages to retain some pathos and credibility.

Abel Ferrara's debut is in the exploitation ballpark, but it's as much a product of Warhol low-budget artiness as the slasher genre.

It deliberately makes no sense, but it has more bizarro gimmicks to the minute than any other horror picture of 1979.

Genuinely disturbing horror but with Cronenberg producing a slightly deeper edge in his portrait of a troubled family.

Grim, gruelling but beautifully shot, this is intelligent, sophisticated horror.

Despite delicate performances, the lead characters never escape stereotype, and the relationship between them, which should be the emotional heart of the movie, never becomes remotely convincing even on an I Love Lucy level.

The ideas are good enough for you to allow for some risible performances.

Technology, as ever, is examined through a pessimistic prism, but the script is equipped with enough jargon and detail to expose the work and responsibility of the filmmakers.

Forman and screenwriter Michael Weller brought a sense of coherence to the original freewheeling structure and Twyla Tharp's choreography imparted an infectious dynamism. But, the profanity, nudity and disregard for the fourth wall that had made the stage show such a sensation were lost in the translation.

One of Woody's most aesthetically gorgeous films as well as his classic love-hate letter to the city of his soul.

Hill, shooting by night and on location together with his OOP Andrew Laszlo, gives the film dazzling style. New York's oil-slicked streets become a labyrinth lit by pools of reflecting light, both scary and strangely beautiful - grimy realism it isn't. It also manages to humanize the gang-bangers to a surprising extent, illustrating the material and emotional poverty that forces them onto the streets in the first place.

This is lots of fun and the actors definitely look like they're having a good time.

A splendidly detailed and rousing caper movie.

A fascinating film that is by turns fascinating and mysterious.

For once, a great remake, smartly executed. Great performances and a killing ending that will stay with you forever can't hurt, either.

Clint doing roughneck humour with an orang-utan, what's not to like?

Manages to capture the pure heart and spirit of this comic book Americana.

A simultaneuosly touching and harrowing experience that puts the audience directly in the shoes of one man's experience of Vietnam.

Really, really bad. It's not good on any level. Not a good horror, not a good revenge flick, it's poorly constructed and has absolutely nothing to say or offer. Utter shit.

What most people remember is the mix of the live-action tracing within the traditional animation and just how effectively creepy it managed to be, but for the time this did a pretty good job of adapting the dense novels.

Director Alan Pakula's sympathies seem to lie in the landscape, never less than exquisitely framed. But even this mute star can't fill the space left by dour performances.

Halloween remains about as distilled, raw an experience in terror as is ever likely to be committed to celluloid.

For much of its slowburn build there is a classy, intelligent thriller at work, something closer in tone to The Odessa File. Still, you must remain guarded to how over the top and quasi-horror events will finally turn.

Fun, but it mugs too hard.

Hard to call something this gratuitous entertainment but certainly lingers in the memory, thanks mainly to the bombast of Stone's script.

Avant-garde triumph revolving around the seemingly mundane life of a widow in Brussels.

Ustinov may not be the Poirot that we all think of now, after the David Suchet series, but this is pure Agatha Christie, steeped in nostalgia and atmosphere.

Although evidently a rip-off — there were hints of Lucas even taking the matter to the courts — this spacebound wagon train, whose limits are readily apparent, is great fun.

Rarely has a film bared itself to simple majesty...it feels epic yet runs barely over and hour and a half. [22 Oct. 1997]

Like all the best exploitation flicks, Piranha is driven by a ruthless desire to entertain and, in this non-pretentious ambition, it succeeds magnificently.

Too glossy to evoke real sexual tension or, more crucially in this genre, fear, Laura Mars suffers from the over complication of something so simple as serial killing.

From Elmer Bernstein's sweeping dramatic strings - perhaps the first counterpoint score in comedy - to the gleeful mixture of low-brow and lower-brow gags, Animal House is arguably the most influential comedy of our time.

A fair-to-middling auto-noir with a hole in the middle roughly the size of its leading man’s head.

Hammy action yarn with an entertaining performance from Michael Caine.

A noisy but enjoyable destruction derby of a film, sadly with none of the subtlety, invention or skill of Spielberg's Duel.

It's every bit the great songfest it's hailed as, with bucketloads of innuendo thown in behind some of the most energetic musical numbers ever to grace the inside of a movie theatre.

It never comes close to the classic status of its predecessor, but for drive-in horror thrills, this still has sufficient bite.

A rerun of the first one but satan junior is now a teenager.

Clearly not a |Disney classic as almost no-one has heard of it, this is vaguely enjoyable 70s hokum.

Shadowy political trickery is one thing, fabricating an entire NASA mission is near impossible to credit. Get over that and it’s a whole lot of fun watching Hal Halbrook’s — who played supergrass Deep Throat in All The President’s Men — wicked scheming unravel thanks to the gutsy work of Elliot Gould’s tatty hack.

A key film from the movie brats-era, and quite possibly Milius best.

A self-consciously grubby and silly slasher that'll be lapped up by gorehounds, but which really belongs on the rental shelves.

Suffused with the pessimism of Taxi Driver, Blue Collar is one of the most brutally honest films to have come out of 70s Hollywood.

Gothically shot in black and white and numerous shots that have influenced the next generation of directors, this is a classic, no matter how comfortable it is to watch.

A suspense-filled nailbiter that plays on a fear no weapon weilding psycho can top.

As with all great spoofers, you can feel the love the director has for Hitchcock, the thoroughness of his jokes vouches for that and the entire plot is loosely based on Spellbound. Perhaps, he was too devoted, the film lacks daring, it’s soft, Hitch would have sneered at such weakness.

For fans of Cassavetes, Opening night is a must see. As per usual it features a superb cast.

A disjointed mish-M.A.S.H. of cliched comedy and misplaced observational wit.

It's telling that the film is still only truly memorable for the closing five minute bulletfest, which turns Clint's bus into the only thing with more holes in it than the screenplay.

With insightful one-liners by the bucketload and a memorable duo in Dreyfuss and Mason, this serves as a joyful reminder of a genre which has long since past its best.

An epic masterpiece, albeit in need of a tweak here and there.

The film seems to be pitched at shrieking level, as if that’s the only timbre children can register.

Bruno Ganz is excellent as the victim deceived into committing murder.

Suspiria is the perfect antipasto.

Smart and satirical but very dated, obviously.

Roger Moore’s third outing as Bond is undoubtedly his best.

Important, but it echoes a better film - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Jaws but bigger, more mammal, and just plain bad.

Every bit as contrived as the leading lady's hairstyles, and rather less technically impressive, this is still trashy fun.

A solid, child-friendly work which will keep little ones content, if not mesmerised.

More than a fascinating misfire, it’s a rare and telling glimpse into a legendary filmmaker’s fiercely guarded soul.

A famously disastrous follow-up to William Friedkin’s horror hit.

This sprawling epic rewards patience with an emotional pay-off and non-triumphant ending that reminds us all too starkly of the sacrifices made during war.

Arguably Woody's finest, now neurotic intellectuals have a film they can cherish.

Though the clumsy geometric tentacle that does most of the machine’s evil will cries out for morphing, this is remarkably prescient in its tackling of issues the cinema is only now catching up with, and Christie adds depth to the lady-in-peril heroine. Well worth reassessment.

Cronenberg's sleaziest, funniest film, jammed with juicy gore and infectious shocks.

Michael Caine as a Nazi and Donald Pleasance as Himmler...what more could you want?

Chronicling the 1975 Mr. Olympia contest, where Schwarzenegger faced off against TV Hulk Lou Ferrigno, this is now more a compelling document of his days before superstardom than it is a real insight into bodybuilding.