It is brilliant and audacious, with one of the most extraordinary final sequences in modern cinema, and all in a manner which Hollywood in the succeeding decade would learn to call "high concept".

Powerful and atmospheric, if oddly structureless, The Mission is a magnificently filmed and strongly political view of the conflict between church, state and capitalism.

For a long time Crocodile Dundee isn't so much a collection of jokes as a stiff-jointed opposites-attract romantic drama goofed up with stereotypes.

Down By Law is effortlessly laidback, superbly elegant. Jarmusch made it look easy.

The resulting adventure – bizarre, mysterious and moving – is about lost youth and the recovery of innocence through writing and memory. It is also one of those vanishingly rare films where child actors have to carry almost the entire drama.

A very uneasy, uncertain shocker, quite unable to digest the mix of horror and black comedy which became a genre-must after the first TCM.

Hard to believe that this barely watchable animated cash-in from the heyday of those Robots In Disguise was the cinematic swansong of Orson Welles. [05 May 2007, p.17]

A made-for-TV story of an unemployment-wrecked family in Dalston that brought together fresh faced talents Tim Roth and Gary Oldman. Filled with the deadpan naturalism that became Leigh's signature. But what's most remarkable about it is the showcase it provided for its two new stars, each beginning his career at what was another time of crisis for British cinema.

Ultimately, there is something trite at the centre of the movie, most especially in the overuse of Nat King Cole’s haunting Mona Lisa to suggest Tyson’s ambiguity and Hoskins’s puzzlement. But this is almost concealed by Tyson’s sense of desperation and Hoskins’s painful sincerity.

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]