Shallow Grave is persistently cynical and uningratiating, a tale of nasty, greedy, stupid people who don’t realise that the finders-keepers rule doesn’t apply to a suitcase full of cash whose criminal owners will not merely want it back but want to create the specific circumstances in which Juliet, David and Alex will be unable to testify against them in a court of law.

Not a romcom, not a romantic drama, but just … a romance, a brief encounter on a train without heartache, a strange and wonderful moment-by-moment miracle that never seems cloying or absurd.

The 1994 film of the play by Alan Bennett is a model of historical accuracy and psychological tact. A triumph.

It is a film of much humanity and very far from smart European pap. But the external brilliance of its making does at times subvert its inner workings, as if its manufacture and its meaning were not quite in perfect harmony.

Interview With the Vampire is still horribly exciting, shocking and funny.

In 1994, all the talk was of former video store clerk Tarantino's indifference to traditional culture. That patronised his sophisticated cinephilia, and in fact, twenty years on, the writerly influences of Edward Bunker, Elmore Leonard, and Jim Thompson seem very prominent. Don DeLillo began the '90s by warning that the U.S. is the only country in the world with funny violence. Maybe Pulp Fiction was the kind of thing he had in mind. Unmissable.

Often, the film-maker seems to be on a journey without a destination, perhaps without a script. Occasionally, brilliantly, he goes entirely off the rails.

It’s a tremendous film that was ahead of its time on LGBT issues and, in some ways, is ahead of ours.

Forrest Gump is Hollywood film-making at its most corn-fed, sucrose-enriched and calorific; you’ll need a sweet tooth for it.

Altogether, this is a dim affair, lacking Hollywood's usual, gooey efforts to convince one of the benefits of family values. [04 Aug 1994, p.T7]

The film specialises as much in a kind of ironic gallows humour as in laughter pure and simple, but bitterness is also avoided - which is a small miracle in itself considering the subject matter and the setting.

Bertolucci has recently called himserf "an amateur Buddhist". But he is still very much a professional filmmaker and these two sides of him don't always match up. [08 May 1994, p.27]

Backbeat is a historically plausible take on the relationships between John Lennon, Stuart Sutcliffe and Astrid Kirchherr, and a thoughtful, engaging film.

This is a movie of virtuoso nihilism and scorn.

The film is in the shape of 32 elegantly constructed sequences and balances [Gould's] music and his personality with rare skill. [14 Feb 1994, p.5]

Of all the American independent movies this year, Ruby In Paradise is one of the strongest because, for all its meandering style, it seems to know exactly what such a life as Ruby's is about. [25 Nov 1993, p.4]

Best of all, though, the film is a reminder of how deliriously odd Les Demoiselles was, with its MGM-style dance routines, kitschy pastels, and Gene Kelly as honoured guest hoofer. [21 May 1993, p.4]

This is a new twist on Home Alone, but not a very convincing one. [01 Apr 1993, p.4]

It’s a strange film in many ways, affectless and directionless, coolly refusing the usual dramatic beats and climactic moments, and as unreflective as MOR rock.

I love all those close-ups of fires blazing when the mood gets frosty. I love the lavish operas they attend, using the glasses to spy on each other. I love Elmer Bernstein's score, its ghostly waltzes and the way it seems to inspire the birds to soar upwards in the final heartbreaking scene in Paris, Wharton's adopted home.

The film is almost totally schematic and this weakens it. What strengthens it is the sheer emotional power of its making.

The stunts are wildly impressive, especially the motorbike riders who sail through the air in a ball of flame, and the gunplay is unique, although I have never found the term “balletic” quite right for something so brutal and quick. It is all so bizarre that you have to enjoy it.

I’ve never been sure exactly how profound this movie is, and it sometimes teeters on the edge of complacency, but it has a trance-inducing strangeness and Swinton is insouciantly magnetic at all times.

Made in America, from 1993, is essentially an extended episode of a lame, cheesy US sitcom from the late 80s/early 90s – more My Two Dads or Perfect Strangers than Frasier or Seinfeld. It's awesome.

There’s an undimmed freshness, warmth and freewheeling energy in this 1992 indie gem, and its director Leslie Harris – whose career since has chiefly involved writing and teaching – deserves a far bigger presence in US film history.

Certainly a film which preserved a decent even-handedness on the matter might have been considerably more intriguing. [17 Jun 1993, p.4]

The result would be hilarious if it weren't for its grisly and often deliberately pointed subject matter. There seems little to do but to laugh or retch. The fact that you may well do both at the same time is probably the film's intention. It has a serious point to make about the media's complicity in violence. But, in making it, it may well defeat its own ends with too many absurdist touches. [14 Jan 1993, p.8]

Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy are joined by Caine as a hilarious Scrooge in this irresistibly sweet musical adaptation of Dickens’ festive tale.