Whatever the moral perspective, it keeps you gripped right to the end.

This is not a film about narrative but loneliness and life on the road, which it captures with a mysterious brilliance.

It's a deep film, but also elusive, accepting that some mysteries can never be solved.

Roald Dahl's immortal, sugar-coated morality play finds Gene Wilder as disturbing and fault-ridden but compelling as the book described. Okay, so its pacing may be slightly off (taking nearly 40 minutes to arrive at the factory gates), but this is still a Golden Ticket if ever there was one.

Alan J. Pakula directs with an aptly chilly eye on blue steel and grey walls, favouring whirring tape recorders and silently lurking voyeurs. Sutherland's melancholy title character is constantly challenged and prodded into the background by Fonda's Oscar-winning turn, which takes centre stage until the film becomes more obsessed with probing the riddles of her personality than solving the fairly transparent mystery.

They say that great actors are never knowingly caught acting; Altman's best movies are similarly effortless - experiences to be lived in, rather than simply watched.

The usually reliable thriller-director Lumet falls short. With an irritating score and bizarre performance by Martin Balsam, it's alleviated by a promising performance by a young Christopher Walken.

Poor attempt by Hammer to create their version of Frankenstein, featuring the usually reliable Bates offering a rather irritating performance as the scientist who goes beyond the call of science. Meanwhile before the call of Darth Vader Prowse begins to practice his heavy breathing and ominous walk.

With the potency of the central idea diminishing, Escape still manages the tricky move of carrying on a story that really should have ended with the last film, while setting up the series' mythology and paving the way for future chapters. But it's still a dilution.

Flimsy plot (as usual for Argento) but stunning set pieces and camera work.

Although there are fine homages to Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Eisenstein and Harold Lloyd here, this is a scattershot offering full of apolitical mockery.

Another coming-of-age tale about three boys and their quest to become men, which invariably revolves around having sex and puerile behaviour but then changes tack completely by giving us lush scenery. If the director had remained with one idea then perhaps the end product wouldn't seem so varied.

One of the best Amicus anthology movies, this is an enjoyable affair full of affectionate horror homage.

One of the least famous of Clint's Western this is an enigma of the genre with ambiguity and psychological depth all over the place.

Arguably the best British gangster movie ever made.

Wise (and Crichton) concoct the most absorbing, riveting take on science fiction tempered with science fact.

Downright depressing.

Amusing and imaginative and, of course, beautifully animated, this movie has all the superficial hallmarks of a great Disney picture.

Episodic western with a great performance from Hoffman.

Less melodramatic and earthier than the classic 1939 version with Olivier, Robert Fuest’s take still heaves with passion thanks to Dalton’s fiery chemistry with Anna Calder-Marshall’s Cathy. John Coquillon’s cinematography expertly captures the drabness of the Moors setting, while Michel Legrand offers a haunting score.

Fairly routine western makes a disappointing swansong for Hawks. Still good fun though, if you like this kind of thing.

Violent, visionary, vital.

If Cassavetes' hipster cine-language has lost a little of its age and the innovative improv style won't be for everyone, the themes he tackles, riffed by a masterful group of actors, remain enthralling.

A true evocation of the spirit of the Strand Magazine, this is the best Holmes movie ever made and sorely underrated in the Wilder canon.

A key turn-of-the-decade film, with Nicholson railing against waitresses and barking at noisy dogs as Rafelson observes seedily picturesque roadside America.

A typical older male mentore story...told with sensitivity and perceptiveness.

The life and crimes of Virgil Starkwell, a petty hoodlum who finds love with a laundress, Louise, in between botched blags and stints on a chain gang.

It’s instilled with the bite and bark of Bilko’s capitalist fervour, and has a fun line in cool, snappy dialogue, although never intending to be quite so broadly a comedy.

Not a sequel to the bland film of Jacqueline Susann’s trashy best-seller, this is more like a demented remake, alternating modish psychedelia with deliberately square moralising.

Those with the patience to sit through a slow first half will be rewarded with another gutsy ending.

Straining for significance at every moment, this is one of a wave of late '60s/early '70s Westerns that represent Hollywood's idea of the counterculture in love beads, feathers and picturesque gore.

A lurid gothic gangster psychodrama from Roger Corman, this is Shelley Winters’ finest hour-and-a-half, cast as Arizona Clark ‘Ma’ Barker, a role it would be impossible to overplay.

Scott is simply awesome as the one-of-a-kind General George Patton, the brilliant campaigner and man among men renowned for the rage he directed at the berks in authority and the adulation he inspired in his men.

Shot in a grainy grey and white helps to give the film an amateurish and at the same time realistic feel, particularly as it's based on true events. With standout performances from Lo Bianco and Stoler, this is a forgotten gem that's waiting to be rediscovered.

Dour script but sterling performances from the two male leads, this is basically watchable if you're interested in the subject.

Bitterly funny with perfect set-piece after perfect set-piece.

This is the Bond flick blessed with the best plot, a genuine sense of emotion and a spirit closest to Ian Fleming’s novels.

Emphasis has been placed on extravaganza, when it should really have been placed on getting good performances out of a talented cast.

Like the stranded astronauts, we are forced to sit around for too long in stale air, waiting for something to happen. An overly-long, vacuous foray into space.

Costa-Gravas at his hypocrisy and oppression-fighting best.

Note-perfect performances, a screenplay steeped in both nostalgia and a timely sense of insight, and anti-heroes you can't help but love.

It's a long way from Top Gun, but it's still stirring stuff.

Mind you, Eastwood went on the star with an orang-utan, twice, so this is only his third maddest film. Although, it could be his dullest. Which was one thing no one would of expected of this madcap enterprise, born of a what-the-heck attitude from its macho stars — that it would struggle so hard to be fun.

Once the pop sensibilities are out of the way, this clever foursome becomes more than the sum of its part.

As a metaphor for England at the dawn of the 70s, The Italian Job is a hard one to top.

While you cannot dismiss its place in history, its power is in what it represented rather than what it did.

From The Godfather to Heat, the stamp of The Wild Bunch is self-evident. Italian director Carlo Carlei summed up the debt owed to the film and its director when he said, "There is a chain of inspiration like The Bible... Everything comes from Peckinpah."

Although some say Wayne's Oscar was given out of sympathy instead of his performance, he still acts well as the sheriff who's past his peak. Proving he wasn't always a serious as he was made out to be, he plays the role with aplomb, even pastiching himself in other films.

Superb performances and a compelling script have made this film a strange mix of Oscar-winner and Cult Classic.

An uncompromising documentary which simply lays its subject bare and dares us not be moved by the raw humanity on display.

The first of the silly VW Beetle with a cute personality comedies, is as childish dated and occasionally sweet as the others.

Classic War caper with a few too many plot contrivances but high on adventure.

This has a lot of good ingredients but just doesn't quite manage to pull it off. It's looks dated and Shirley Maclaine doesn't quite capture the sympathies of all audiences.

The film is too long at well over two hours, but the effects are impressive for the time and the musical numbers zippy.

Even if you're not a 'fan' of the musicals, Oliver is so witty, so bright and so endearing that even the iciest viewer should start melting in it's corona.

A garish, gorgeous example of pop art at its finest.

Overlong, it'll most likely try the patience of audiences now accustomed to a bit more bang for their buck, but it's a great deal of fun for those with a penchant for old-style action.

Fleischer mastery of tension and attention to detail make this riveting story a great piece of cinema.

Cheerful, kitsch and camp.

Falls into the "interesting failure" category.

Part of its strength is that it’s not a glossy, predictable Hollywood horror and so it has a grainy, semi-amateur, black and white look which gives it a dread sense of conviction.

For the rare uninitiated, this is a fine introduction to Babs' talents.

It's that smile playing on Rosemary's lips, suggesting that her maternal instinct and the conspirators' hold on this vapid baby doll have prevailed, that provides the biggest chill.

Lemmon and Mathau's finest hour.

Very dated farcical comedy but Peter Sellers is charming despite the anachronistic character-humour.

A film rich with unforgettable imagery, killer lines and physical thrills.

Its faults - sketchy narrative, overblown abstraction - are counterbalanced by its gripping engagement between man and machine, and its rhapsodic wonder at heaven and earth and the infinite beyond.

Also known as The Liver Eaters (although no livers are eaten only a rabbit that may have been a cat) and Cannibal Orgy (though there are no orgies), the long-delayed Spider Baby is definitely one to file under weird and wonderful.

Cruel comedy with a delicious light touch.

Not even a decent performance from Richard Attenborough can save this disappointing production.

Funny and scary, this is vintage Polanski.

Paul Newman gives one of his best performances in this prison film, where he inspires life in to his fellow inmates. Has something important to say with several memorable moments and a superb supporting cast.

An outstanding thriller based on a stageplay (by Frederick Knott) that fits so much better on the screen because, as well as the expansive, cinema is really good at claustrophobia.

It's a slight tale, of course, and incredibly short, but the characters and songs are pretty much perfect viewing time and again.

In a cast of hand-picked loons with ridiculous accents, only Brian Keith, as Taylor's thuggish lover, suggests a human being, while Brando gives perhaps his worst ever screen performance, not counting Christopher Columbus: The Discovery.

Showing that "the little man" CAN make a difference. Marvin is exceptional.

For better or worse, American cinema changed forever the day Bonnie And Clyde was released. Almost every aspect of it was revolutionary.

The twist-filled storyline, which digs up nasty secrets all over the show and offers a satisfying range of suspicious suspects and a truly disgusting killer, remains gripping, and the excellent, understated lead performances don't harp on the racial angle in that embarassing fashion which makes so many Socialy Significant films instantly dated.

Unarguably one of the great war movies of all time.

Director Lewis Gilbert effortlessly marshals the intricacies of the plot (a nutty plan by SMERSH to ignite a world war), the exotic Japanese locations, and the extravagancies of having hundreds of ninja warriors abseiling into a huge enemy base unfathomably constructed in the belly of an extinct volcano (quite the engineering feat!).

Wonderfully revealing and mythologistic.

It has a wealth of marvellous Western imagery, grotesque-comic business (Van Cleef striking a match on seething baddie Klaus Kinski’s hunchback), Ennio Morricone’s baroque score, iconic stars and unforgettable supporting faces.

Despite being not officially a Bond film this is good solid, entertaining action.

Sharply scripted with a melancholic charm.

Orson Welles second tribute to Shakespeare is an often-ignored masterpiece. Check it out.

Wonderfully complex but warmly human, Bergman's drama is one of his very best.

Leone makes the borders of the frame feel limitless, his camera moves striking out unpredictably as if he could barely tame his vision. Ennio Moriconne’s indelible score added a wild swagger to this oddball tale of a lone guman conniving plan to set two gangs of killers against one another.

An absolute must.

Prestigious, well turned out piece of British historical drama with enough genuine intrigue and wit to persuade some audiences they aren't watching a history lesson.

The story isn't as strong as either Leone or Corbucci's best work, but the iconic imagery and solid central performance from Nero make it easy to see why this became a worldwide success.

Shades of Pinter and Beckett are affectionately retouched with dark humour, dynamic wordplay and a tension all Kubrick's.

Funny in places but not Allen's best writing...and its difficult to get beyond the conceit.

Rarely has screen satire been so bleak or so mercilessly funny.

If you can see past the heavy-handed religious overtones you will encounter an inspired and deeply intelligent Bresson classic.

The effects may have dated, as have the Cold War themes, but the almost real time adventure still has some tension to offer.

Terribly dated, but worth watching for Caine's performance.

A time capsule now of all that was considered controversial and gutsy in 1966.

Less audacious than A Bout de Souffle, this is, however, one of Godard's most accessible pictures. A good place to learn how much of a debt modern cinema owes him.