For those of us who like to immerse ourselves in sense-assaulting love stories, this 1957 Leo McCarey classic is as good as it gets.

Cushing relishes the role of his career as the sociopathic dandy whose passion for science overrides all moral considerations, while Christopher Lee conveys the dire plight of the creature through body language alone.

It must be added that Giant, in spite of its length, seldom seems long – its story is too eventful, its effects too picturesque, and its director too skilful for that even over so long an expanse of time. It may not be a great film but it is certainly an awesome one.

The glorious vigour and strength of this film is presented with such theatrical relish and flair: its energy flashes out of the screen like a sword.

A watchable biopic, backed up with excellent historical research.

Wonderful entertainment.

Thematically, The Killing anticipates themes, motifs and incidents to come in Kubrick’s oeuvre, most famously the notion of master plans undone by human fallibility, that are also to be found in the tales of fate and life’s absurdity of by his mentors Lang and Huston.

The second version of The Man Who Knew Too Much, which Hitchcock made in 1956, is a curious film. Some of it doesn't really work.

The Americans got hold of the much superior Japanese original, Godzilla, and edited into it 20 minutes-worth of Burr, with his vacant and oddly stiff expression, in order to spice things up. Still, without Godzilla: King of the Monsters!, the awesome cinematic hero might have remained a merely regional success, a giant Japanese lizard confined to its own country.

This forthright and watchable picture, with its terrific cast of veteran players such as Jack Warner, Thora Hird and the totemic Sam Kydd, is entirely happy in its own B-movie skin, with the “X” in “Xperiment” gleefully signalling its identity as a pulp shocker.

Impressively made though some of the acting lets it down: Robbie's a real scene-stealer. [04 Mar 2006, p.53]

Olivier has made a superbly dramatic film, in which by variations of tempo, by superb acting on the part of the awe-inspiring cast, and by a wonderful knack of indicating the side-shows while maintaining the main theme of Richard's own drama, he has cheated the clock. His long film never, or hardly ever, seems long.

It's a film with jazz in its bones and rhythm to its beats.

The film features an acting cameo from Siegel’s assistant and protege Sam Peckinpah, who also worked on the script, and is known for its high-octane pulp thrills. It should also be praised for elegant satire.

This 1950s melodrama – as underscored by Todd Haynes' modern riff, Far from Heaven – offers smart insights into the American class system and carries a powerful emotional clout way beyond the usual limitations of its genre.

The face-off between two of the biggest legends in American pop culture, Sinatra and Brando, is something to be relished, although the roles are perhaps a little too atypical for each for the pairing itself to be legendary as the individuals. But still, what a joy it always is.

There is some stuffy, faintly reactionary stuff in this famed 1955 teen drama, but James Dean is truly extraordinary, and it has some brilliant scenes

Very few films or plays can survive the stigma of having an exclamation mark after the title, but Fred Zinnemann's bigscreen version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, originally released in 1955, still has some breezy charm and robust American music, under those vast cloud-dappled skies in Cinemascope.

Hitchcock's superbly insouciant crime caper from 1955 must surely be one of the last movies in which the American super-rich are indulged so extravagantly and adoringly – the kind of people who stub their cigarettes out in fried eggs.

Every frame of this film is brilliantly contrived, particularly the underwater nightmare at the end. A gripping, complex chiller.

Joan Collins is the only person in this film who seems to be enjoying the fact it's a big camp mess.

The 1954 film version of Oscar Hammerstein's all-black Broadway musical now feels like a relic from the gruesome social straitjacket that was segregation; every frame, you feel, is freighted with the tension imposed by the never-appearing white folks. It was, however, laudable in its desire to showcase the talents of African-American performers who were denied opportunities in Hollywood.

It's a nice, if undemanding, Yuletide treat.

What's extraordinary, for a film that works on these different levels, is that it also manages to be a riveting thriller.

This is one of the better films of its kind. [31 Jul 1954, p.3]

The movie is perfectly composed with a light touch that is the work of a certain kind of gravity and sophistication.

The result is a rather stagey film whose back projections look quaint, with 3D apparently used to foreground items of furniture, such as table-lamps, giving rise to some eccentric camera-angles. But the set-up is ingenious and the "kill" scene genuinely thrilling. [2013 3D Release]

Salt of the Earth has humour, genuine feeling and great sincerity: it's a film about hope.