It’s all very silly, though it’s impossible not to feel some affection for this film: Cruise’s pure, strenuous earnestness, the disconcerting laser focus of his stare, and the video-game combat sequences with the MiGs – the words “Soviet” or “Russian” aren’t mentioned.

It is a sharp, smart picture, with English eccentricity, sly quirk and political subversion, that represents a brilliant and almost unique engagement with contemporary history in 80s British cinema.

The final scene, a ravishing in a room, with a view, as the bells of Florence chime out, would leave only a stone unmoved.

Some may think it precious, but it's the haunting, poetic product of an original imagination.

Much improved by its new cut, Revolution is an atmospheric depiction of soldiers' lives in the American revolutionary war – despite its flaws.

A beautifully made film, but this version of Karen Blixen's life is thickly coated with sugar.

An ambitious, respectful account of the life and work of Yukio Mishima, the prolific Japanese author who made a romantic cult of Japan's lost world of martial glory and spartan warrior-manhood.

A peculiar, potent film.

Highly entertaining, but that’s about all.

Probably the funniest mobster movie ever...A sublime meld of black satire, high camp and happy farce.

The Goonies has a rich and indomitable air of all-American innocence.

Perhaps we are near to cliche here. Yet the film never really tips over into bathos and predictability. Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy are the students, each giving the sort of performance that heralds considerable talent. The film will undoubtedly speak to those at whom it is aimed, and I hope others too. It isn't that wonderful. But it's much, much better than usual.[16 June 1985, p.20]

Roland Joffé's 1984 masterwork is a solid piece of historical film-making, capturing factual detail without sacrificing fine storytelling.

The detailed sound design is inspired: the ghostly whine of a phone receiver left off the hook seems to intuit the couple’s inner anxiety – and so does the insistent two-tone blip-blip of Julian’s computer. [Director's Cut]

This is a film that doesn’t dramatically harness the vast forces it’s gesturing at, but trundles determinedly along with very little variation of tone or pace.

It is an eerie, sad story whose meaning disappears over the vast horizon as if on a highway heading away through the desert.

Getting the extraordinary physical specimen of Arnold Schwarzenegger for the lead was a stroke of genius and a stroke of fortune. Each of his pecs is the size of a bull’s flank. It is a tremendous black-comic performance and, without Schwarzenegger, the movie is of course unthinkable.

The pleasure of the music is overpowering.

Mesmerising mosaic of a thriller-plus from Nicolas Roeg, bringing dazzling (blinding, to a nervous studio and some critics) new reflections on the woes of wealth. Gene Hackman is excellent as Citizen Kane-ish figure atop mountain of gold and amidst nest of vipers. [07 Sep 1989]

It wasn’t until I saw Threads that I found that something on screen could make me break out in a cold, shivering sweat and keep me in that condition for 20 minutes, followed by weeks of depression and anxiety.

In acting terms Tom Hulce's shrieking, giggling Wolfie was easily outclassed by F Murray Abraham's brooding Iago-like villain, but Forman's distinctive central European locations, painterly night-time exteriors and period crowd scenes still look terrific. [2002 Director's Cut]

There’s no doubt of the rousing urgency and terrific design of this likable movie, and the scene where Atreyu’s beloved horse Artax begins to sink into the swamp is absolutely gripping.

You can even forgive the franchise for cheating the issue of Spock’s death, though another death seems forgotten relatively quickly. The original cast members bring a certain gravitas.

Its subtitle, A Rock & Roll Fable, contains all the elements Hill looked for in a movie as a teenager in the late 50s, and in 94 minutes it manages to be an urban western, a backstage rock musical and a biker flick set in an unidentified, run-down rust-belt inner city that might be yesterday or tomorrow.

The Bounty has an incredible cast and a fabulously well-put-together production, and pays impressive attention to historical accuracy – more than any of the previous cinematic recreations. With all this going for it, it's a pity that the drama falls flat.

The absence of a real point of view, and of any depth of characterisation, prevents the otherwise pleasing entertainment drawing blood.

This story is not about consummation, but about reconciliation; it's a recognition that we want wrongs to be righted, that good will prevail, and that the faithless will be punished or reformed.

A feast of kitsch and gaudy colour, set to the tune of an 80s synth soundtrack, the film plays like a G-rated music video. And Trenchard-Smith maintaining a buzzing energy throughout.

The anarchic spirit of agitprop pulses from this scrappy, smart, subversive film.

The polar opposite of a date movie, Possession is incredibly well directed and acted (great soundtrack and camerawork too). Neill and Adjani are both at the height of their powers here, free of ego and fearless. She, in particular, has one relentless freakout scene that you'll never forget. We're still no closer to finding a category for it, but it doesn't need one. [27 July 2013, p.23]

There are moments of dramatic licence, but overall The Right Stuff is a terrific historical film about the space race: accurately reflective of a complex reality, beautifully filmed, and done with wit, energy and an impressive sense of balance. Top marks.

On the surface, it is just another action adventure set in a well-known theatre of revolution, with a romance to set beside its thrills. But it contains within it the seeds of a political and personal drama that questions both American policy in Latin America and the exigencies of contemporary reporting. [19 Feb 1984, p.19]

A startling piece of film-making, floating free of the conventional demands of period and narrative.

Do you want to laugh already? Then laugh now, before you see this dispiritingly unfunny pirate movie. Later, it's difficult. Very brief moments only, I'm afraid. [25 Sep 1983, p.19]

This is not a very good effort, seeming tired without being emotional. It looks like the end of the line...Superman III never flies as it should, or only does momentarily. [31 July 1983, p.21]

You could say this is all good gory fun, and The Evil Dead remains a triumph of brains over budget. But in retrospect, you can’t help wondering if Raimi and co didn’t have some women issues to work through?

This is a film that carries you along and there is an added savour in seeing those cherubic faces which have since settled into middle age.

Nothing else comes close to capturing the atmosphere of the early days of hip-hop and spraycan art, of the burned-out and derelict Bronx; the only colour comes from the impressive artwork as b-boys and fly girls dream of making "cash money" while scratching and rapping in kitchens, dingy bars and, in an impressive DIY turn from Double Trouble, on stoops. This isn't old skool, this is pre-school.

With the help of his cinematographers, Billy Williams and Ronnie Taylor, Attenborough has produced a very beautiful-looking movie that is maybe a little too seductive for its own good. But Attenborough shows once again his skill in managing the big set-piece.

It has a claim to be the last movie with the authentic spirit of the Ealing comedies; although with a longer perspective we can also see how it’s also indirectly influenced by producer David Puttnam in its high-minded spirit of Anglo-American amity.

More than just an Aussie horse opera, this film employs stunning scenery, technical flair and Kirk Douglas in two roles in its pursuit of an uplifting conclusion.

Like Solaris, his earlier meditation on the future, Tarkovsky's 1979 film Stalker is mysterious and compelling though in my view not, like Andrei Rublev, in the realms of greatness: a vast prose-poem on celluloid whose forms and ideas were to be borrowed by moviemakers like Lynch and Spielberg.

It's a stylish, entertaining movie, starring Frederic Forrest (a dead ringer for Hammett, bar the height) as a drinking, smoking, coughing and typewriter-bashing writer lured back into detection by an old Pinkerton associate (Peter Boyle) and stumbling into the plot of The Maltese Falcon.

Extraordinary.

The menace of the dark polar night and the claustrophobic confines of the base are utilised to raise the fear, tension and paranoia to unbearable heights. This is a creature that doesn't just hide in the dark, but could be your friend, your colleague, or the girl beside you whose hand you are breaking in a terrified vice-like grip.

It’s still entertaining and charming in its innocent idealism.

Films about film-making are usually deeply self-conscious, and sometimes deceiving. But there is one at least that succeeds in surpassing the movie whose making it describes.

What destinguishes the film is the intensity of the performances, with Steiger giving one of his perhaps over-familiar but still compulsive portrayals of an obstinate man beset by problems which render him almost but not quite paralysed. Those who admired him in The Pawnbroker will do so again in full measure. [27 Jun 1982]

A bold, intelligent, romantic film with all the lineaments of a classic, and a score by Vangelis as instantly hummable as the music for Jaws.

Hoskins’ bullish, black-comic Napoleonism makes this movie: pugnacious, sentimental, a cockney Cagney.

An engrossing, beautifully filmed and remarkably balanced portrait of a fascinating moment in history, cleverly enhanced by the intercutting of real-life documentary interviews. Reds is everything a historian could want in a movie.

One terrific moment in which Pat sees what he believes are the killer's shoes underneath a toilet stall door and berates him while Pamela climbs into the green van outside is reminiscent of another scene that arrived years later and was also labelled "Hitchcockian" – the footsteps down the hallway confrontation in the Coen brothers' No Country For Old Men.

It's a riveting, provocative film that rewards several viewings.

It's an allegory about the Vietnam war, a study of American character and a national propensity for violence. Southern Comfort is a masterpiece.

For me, it tends to be a recipe in which you can't taste either of the constituent ingredients. The big man-to-wolf transformation scene is still a marvel.

This is one of the finest films about the process of movie-making, a bleak, complex work that gives Travolta his most challenging role.

Enjoyable spoof horror in which a vampire lures a horror writer to a nightclub populated by ghouls and the like. [28 Apr 2000]

Sarandon’s force and confidence are undeniable, and she easily holds her own against Burt Lancaster.

An unclassifiably brilliant gem of American independent film-making.

An outstanding piece of work.

It is a demanding film, without a doubt – but a passionate one.

I can still remember my 19-year-old self's awe at how Jake provokes a gorgeous, reluctant smile from the incandescently beautiful Moriarty. Throughout university, I was obsessed with this film, and watched it about once a month.

It is an absorbing and satisfying drama, and Hurt’s Merrick is very powerful.

This grim picture of borstal life packs a real punch. And kick, and headbutt. [13 Feb 2010]

This ingenious erotic thriller full of unexpected shocks is best seen with no foreknowledge and even better at a second viewing.

The stunts are still awe-inspiring, and there's plenty of laughs. They really were thinking big.

The unhurried pace, extended dialogue scenes and those sudden, sinister inter-titles ("One Month Later", "4pm") contribute to the insidious unease. Nicholson's performance as the abusive father who is tipped over the edge is a thrillingly scabrous, black-comic turn, and the final shot of his face in daylight is a masterstroke...Deeply scary and strange.

A cast-iron, self-evident hit, but also just a tiny bit boring, perhaps?

John Huston's hellfire burlesque is one of the great lost films of the 1970s and a movie to stand alongside his Maltese Falcon or The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

Mad Max has always radiated an otherworldly vibe, a slightly sickly sensation that something at its core is fundamentally wrong.

Like Woody Allen's "Take The Money and Run", The Jerk is basically designed to allow Martin to use as many of his standup jokes and routines as possible, but his charm and timing makes this cleverly constructed movie seem fantastically loose and easy.

It’s a bit overextended but very watchable with flourishes of exotic invention.

Mysterious, complex and brilliant: the disquieting portrait of a serial killer, seducer and con-man in Japan whose motivation remains an enigma. [9 Sept 2005, p.13]

This is Herzog's journey to the heart of darkness, a film that specifically echoes his earlier offerings The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser and his South American odyssey Aguirre, Wrath of God.

But what a triumph this film was for Chapman, who gave a convincing, touching performance as the bewildered everyman who decides to make a stand, and in his battle with the evil empire makes a Luke Skywalker-style discovery about his lineage. Life of Brian is an unexpectedly earnest, sweet-natured hymn to the idea of tolerance.

The film itself is a kind of free spirit, and one that has made an indelible print on Australian cinema.

A film that needs to be seen on the big screen.

The film is fun and stirring; a robust portrait of youth at the crossroads and a bittersweet salute to the town at its centre.

Editors Terry Rawlings and Peter Weatherley cut the film so cleverly so that we never have a clear notion of what the alien actually looks like until the very last shots.

Dirty Harry director Don Siegel reunited with Clint Eastwood for this taut 1979 thriller about real-life bank robber Frank Morris, who led the one possibly successful (bodies were never found) escape attempt from the notorious maximum-security prison on San Francisco's Alcatraz Island.

If Ferrara is indeed a Van Gogh, then The Driller Killer is his Potato Eaters – an early work that displays, in rudimentary form, all the groundbreaking innovation of the mature works.

Above all, everyone in a Meyer film looks like they're having an absolutely great time.

A masterpiece in minimalist horror.

Very convincing, deeply disturbing tale. [31 Dec 2005, p.49]

This Superman alludes explicitly to its origins in the Depression-era comics, and Clark has a quaint 30s habit of using the phrase “Swell!” from his boyhood. Maybe now this movie looks quaint in the same way. But there’s still a surge of adventure and fun.

The idea of sacrifice permeates everything, along with the cruelty and horror. This is Cimino's masterpiece.

The unmasking "reveal" at the beginning of the movie is a great coup, and the film continues to be very scary, helped by Carpenter's own theme: a trebly plinking of piano notes and that buzzy synth in low register.

The silence of Jeanne Dielman is the film’s weather and its atmosphere. It is a silence of terrible loneliness, and a silence in which a storm is gathering.

The film, with its transcendentally beautiful visuals...is a rich and rewarding experience. [1 Sept. 2011]

A period piece, still reasonably funny.

Maybe in the end it's just an exuberant collection of great scenes – but what Big Wednesday has is heart.

Like The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Fury yokes together a spy thriller and a domestic drama while also incorporating elements of SF and horror.

It's beautiful and strange, with its profoundly disturbing ambient sound design of industrial groaning, as if filmed inside some collapsing factory or gigantic dying organism.

A splendid recreation of Napoleonic France and a compelling movie to boot.

Woody Allen said that he could watch a Bergman movie and feel himself gripped as if by a thriller; that's how I felt watching this restored version of John Cassavetes's 1977 picture Opening Night.

Devane gives a performance of anguished depth, the final carnage is spectacular and it's a time capsule of a movie.

Silly but fun adventure starring b-movie specialist Doug McClure as an adventurer trapped on a mysterious island where badly animated dinosaurs roam. [26 Apr 2000, p.24]

A Bridge Too Far is a fantastic historical and cinematic achievement but, if you're not a die-hard war obsessive, prepare to snooze.