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.

The film is thrillingly, unapologetically about decency and honour, about, as Laura heartrendingly puts it, controlling oneself.

With Hitch letting rip on the imagery - including a Dali-designed dream sequence - it's as colourful as black-and-white gets. [07 Aug 2010, p.43]

For its control of narrative, its photography of the vanished suburban California of the 1940s, and for its compelling central performance from Crawford, Michael Curtiz’s noir thriller is utterly gripping.

This glorious film is about the greatest mystery of all: how old people were once young, and how young people are in the process of becoming old.

It's a piece of almost instant history – and, as such, it gets the technical and cultural details of military life spot on.

An unmissable big-screen experience.

I love Double Indemnity because it's about a couple who are cheap and greedy, but achieve a kind of tragic heroism; because it has one of the great father-son relationships (although they aren't actually father and son); because it's a thoroughly cynical thriller redeemed by just a fading touch of romance. And it also has a trio of superb performances.

Seventy years on, this great romantic noir is still grippingly powerful: a movie made at a time when it was far from clear the Nazis were going to lose.

Timeless entertainment. [24 Dec 2005]

This is Welles's warmest, most personal film.

There are some marvellous supporting performances. This film comes as close as possible to a distillation of pure happiness.

They Died With Their Boots On is a shameful whitewashing of history. Great battles, though.

The strange, dreamlike tension of the film escalates with each new confrontation, each new tailing, each new beating, with Gutman and Cairo shot from a queasy low angle, and the nightmare culminates in a gripping series of closeups on each strained face.

Sublime moments, of which the most extraordinary must still be Everett Sloane, playing Kane's former business manager Mr Bernstein, remembering the girl in the white dress on the Jersey ferry: "I only saw her for one second and she didn't see me at all – but I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I haven't thought of that girl." I'll bet a week hasn't gone by when I haven't thought about that line and pictured the girl so clearly that she has become a false memory of the movie itself.

Stanwyck supplies a bravura double performance, a showcase for her brilliant versatility.

Kitty is a child of her age, and this melodrama aspires to state-of-the-nation commentary about the limits of the American dream for working-class women, while she cherishes a keepsake snowglobe like a distaff Citizen Kane.