The “fascist” staging could have been hackneyed, but Loncraine carries it off superbly as the showcase for action-thriller noir.

As for Williams himself, his wild-man routine is only in evidence in his opening scenes; otherwise he dials it down, perhaps sensing that the way to upstage the loony creatures is to be relatively rational. There is something touchingly innocent in his performance.

It is strident, yes, and naive, too perhaps; but lyrical and passionate and visually dazzling.

From the current vantage point, this film, not yet entirely dominated by digital effects, looks like a 1960s-vintage second world war film.

Maybe it’s the last great mainstream exploitation picture, a film which owns and flaunts its crassness; a bi-curious catfight version of All About Eve or Pretty Woman.

Never was a title more misleading. This is sophisticated pleasure.

A somewhat double-edged Arthurian romance. There's a sharp side, with Sean Connery the noblest of kings, Julia Ormond an impressive Guinevere, and some genuinely epic imagery; on the blunt side, the tragedy is Camelot-via-Tinseltown: Richard Gere's Lancelot is far from convincing and the armour is just too shiny. [31 Dec 2005, p.49]

Perhaps it’s quaint, but it’s also watchable, and it is the kind of sci-fi that is genuinely audacious, trying to envisage what the future will be like – and often succeeding.

Bill Condon's Candyman II: Farewell To The Flesh is a woefully inadequate sequel with straight-to-video written all over it. [30 Nov 1995, p.T9]

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.