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.

It is, on the other hand, enormous and exhilarating fun for those who are prepared to settle down in their seats and let it all wash over them. Which I firmly believe, with the extra benefit of hindsight, is more or less exactly what the vast majority of the cinema-going public want just now.

Cross of Iron is an atmospheric, unflinching tale of the German retreat, though its sedate pace holds it back from greatness.

A demonic limo, driverless behind its tinted windows, vrooms around killing people in this squashy horror that fails to match other vehicular creepies like Christine and Duel. [24 Sep 1999, p.20]

In Annie Hall, Allen again writes, directs and stars with Diane Keaton in a remarkable recreation of a spent love affair, which is both sad and hysterically funny. A film which sticks close to the cutting edge of love, and darts about daringly trying to make philosophical sense of it, is bound to be flawed. This one is, because Allen tried to do in 93 minutes what Proust needed 11 volumes for: to resolve life, love and the passing of both.

Script and acting are equally shaky. [27 Sep 2008, p.55]

The problem is that Rosenberg's drama all but sinks under the weight of its serious subject matter and ponderous script; and there are too many iffy performances from the big-star cast (Faye Dunaway, James Mason, Orson Welles and all). [04 Feb 2006, p.53]