Brando tends to upstage and upend the whole picture in his way.

Every second of this noir masterpiece is gripping, and the chemistry between Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor is utterly thrilling.

Entertainment as wholesome as mom's apple pie. [13 Jan 2007, p.53]

Strangers is full of marvellous set pieces and uses the architecture of Washington to dramatic effect.

Structurally the film is a little shaggy but each time you feel it starting to dip, Stewart (and Harvey) brings it back on track.

If you're not interested in all the backstage tittle-tattle, just settle back and enjoy a film whose script is studded with barbed and quotable bons mots, the finest ever part by suave cad George Sanders and a memorable cameo by Marilyn Monroe as an aspiring starlet (practically everyone was playing variations of themselves).

This is an unmissable commentary on Hollywood's rejection of its silent past: a kind of Sobbin' in the Rain.

An early masterclass in the art of the caper movie, John Huston's 1950 thriller stands up wonderfully well, even if we've got used to far more convoluted scheming by movie robbers in the intervening period

Stage Fright has serious fun with the business of acting, a trade that calls for both the cold, calculating Charlotte and the committed, caring Eve alike to transform into other people. And Hitchcock appreciates the charged atmosphere of an empty theatre, as well as the frisson when the doors are closed, the lights go down and audiences wait expectantly in silence, never knowing quite what will happen next.

It is not a simple film to summarise or describe as a comedy, satire or drama. Renoir was too generous to deal with such absolutes, and that's one of the reasons the film endures: nobody is good or bad, they just make good or bad decisions – hence the title.

A gritty and restrained account of men at war. [04 Oct 2008, p.53]

It's a superbly crafted film by a cult film-maker and features a virtuoso bank robbery sequence shot in a single take from a camera in the back seat of a car.

Ray's assured debut as director is a brilliant noir combination of love story and crime thriller. [24 Dec 2005, p.48]

If Under Capricorn is not Hitch's crowning glory, it is undeniably his most underrated film.

A noir classic.

Cagney builds a weird tragedy, and there is no more apocalyptic ending than when he and his world blow up to his triumphant cry, "Made it, Ma! Top of the world!"

Tight, claustrophobic direction by Ted Tetzlaff. [12 Apr 1990]

A Canterbury Tale may be the most loving and tender film about England ever made. It’s a picture that’s steeped in nature, in thrall to myth and history; a re-affirmation of the English character, customs and countryside from a time when many viewers may have wondered whether this underpinning had been kicked clean away.

It's a comical sentimental reworking of the journey of the Magi, with John Wayne, Pedro Armendariz and Harry Carey Jr as the soft-hearted outlaws. [01 Mar 2008, p.53]

The co-directors created from Rumer Godden's novel an extraordinary melodrama of repressed love and Forsterian Englishness - or rather Irishness - coming unglued in the vertiginous landscape of South Asia.

It's an authentically bilious look at the world and its morals as Tyrone Power, taking decisive strides from the standard romantic hero roles he had been typecast in, rises from a travelling carnival mind-reading act to a high society shown to be even more corrupt.

Brute Force was the first important assignment of leftwing director Jules Dassin.

It is a wonderfully fluent, engaging story, with beautiful cinematography by Guy Green.

The documentary vividness that Carol Reed brought to the streets of Vienna in The Third Man and London in The Fallen Idol, he here brings to Belfast in this fascinating but imperfect 1947 thriller.

The film is gripping enough simply with the telling of George's lifestory. A genuine American classic.

The happiness and innocence in this film are beyond compare.

Notorious has fascinating echoes of other Hitchcock movies such as Rebecca and Psycho. A must-see or must-see-again.

The movie's disturbing labyrinthine story of murder and betrayal now looks like a fable by David Lynch: and the witty, charged dialogue between the leads shows that no screen couple, before or since, had as much chemistry as Bogart and Bacall.