A long, marvellously vulgar tribute to the circus world, the penultimate movie by the septuagenarian veteran, that brought him a sentimental 'best picture' Oscar after 40 years in the business. [05 Feb 2006, p.2]

Long, well-mounted early Christian epic based on the novel by 1905 Nobel prize-winning Polish author Henryk Sienkiewicz about eager Christian martyrs and hungry lions in ancient Rome. [03 Aug 2014, p.45]

A noir classic by the distinguished team of producer John Houseman and director Nicholas Ray. [06 Jan 2013, p.43]

Engaging, occasionally downbeat monochrome biopic of pop-composer Gus Kahn (Danny Thomas) and his devoted wife (Doris Day) who stood beside him through his affairs, the Wall Street Crash and his subsequent breakdown. [15 Dec 2002, p.8]

The Gershwin songs are magnificent, and the climactic ballet a tour de force that won the great Hungarian-born cameraman John Alton an Oscar.

Inventive, economic, masterly.

This elegant, imperishable romantic comedy is lighter in tone than the play and has a haunting score by Oscar Strauss (no kin to the waltz family).

Wise achieved fame and riches with West Side Story and The Sound of Music, but he's most highly regarded for his splendid genre movies like this sci-fi classic, one of his numerous minor masterpieces.

Conventional, highly efficient patriotic war drama, made during the Korean War but set in the Pacific during the Second World War. John Wayne as a martinet US Marine Crops squadron leader is confronted by Robert Ryan as a compassionate second-in-command, and the flying sequences are as outstanding as one might expect from a movie produced by ace aviator Howard Hughes. [08 Dec 2002, p.8]

Delightful period musical set in a small town on the eve of America's entry into World War Two. [09 Apr 2006, p.14]

Still the best, most penetrating picture about Hollywood, its surface charm, its underlying cruelty, its lack of interest in its own history, its ruthless disregard for failure. The casting is perfect. [16 Mar 2003, p.7]

Attractively staged, it is one of numerous versions of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic adventure and is most notable for an unforgettable, over-the-top performance by Robert Newton as an eye-rolling Long John Silver. [7 May 2006, p.2]

Dan Duryea (manic outlaw) and Shelley Winters (pioneer wife) are excellent, as is the photography by William Daniels. [22 Jul 2012, p.43]

A sweet-natured romantic movie. [15 Dec 2002, p.8]

Inspired by the story of Bonnie and Clyde, superbly performed by Granger, O'Donnell and (as the evil gang leader) Howard De Silva. The opening scene shot from a helicopter was revolutionary in its day. [01 Jun 2014]

This, you feel, is really a story with roots in the nation, not just a fiction snatched out of the busy air. [16 Apr 1950, p.6]

A critical and box-office disaster that the Master himself dismissed. It is in fact a fascinating film, and was revered in France by Truffaut and others as Les amants du capricorne. [02 Apr 2006, p.10]

This underrated picture opens with a superbly staged bank robbery, is strikingly shot in Death Valley, and is dedicated to the great Harry Carey, who starred in Ford's 1919 version of this story and died in 1947 after appearing in Red River. [22 Aug 2004, p.63]

Historically important Hollywood expose of the grim conditions in America's mental institutions and an influential plea for more sympathetic treatment of the mentally sick. Olivia de Havilland is harrowingly good as a deranged, incarcerated middle-class housewife; British actor Leo Genn is convincing if a trifle glib as a pipe-smoking shrink. [18 Jul 1999, p.10]

It's a landmark film that brought a new psychological complexity to the genre and gave John Wayne the first truly challenging role of his career.

Both a landmark and some sort of masterpiece.

Amusing first screenplay by Betty Comden and Adolph Green (who went on to script On the Town and Singin' in the Rain). The evergreen numbers include 'The Best Things in Life Are Free' which, in a romantic, slightly camp sequence, is sung first by a very young Mel Torme, then (in French) by Peter Lawford. [09 Jan 2000, p.10]

In the fifth and funniest of the Road movies, Hope and Crosby play third-rate vaudevillians rescuing heiress Dorothy Lamour from her wicked aunt (the incomparable Gale Sondergaard) in Latin America. [09 Apr 2000, p.10]

Kathleen Byron is unforgettable as a sister who goes dangerously off the rails. A beautifully designed movie with Oscar-winning colour photography by Jack Cardiff. [27 Apr 2014, p.48]

The script is dense, subtly shaped, and bristles with stylised, often witty hard-boiled dialogue and voice-over narration, eg: 'I never saw her in the daytime. We seemed to live by night. What was left of the day went away like a pack of cigarettes you smoke.'

Tyrone Power is outstanding in the most demanding role of his career as a con man who emerges from the fairground world to exploit the credulous rich as a mind-reader and descends to depths he's never dreamed of as a pre-avian flu carnival 'geek', biting off the heads of live chickens in exchange for alcohol. [04 Dec 2005, p.14]

One of the best acted, most technically accomplished movies ever made in Britain with a great cast of British and Irish actors, though at times a trifle self-conscious in achieving its effects. [29 Aug 2010, p.50]

Director Cromwell lays on the expressionist style of tilted cameras, graphic shadows and sinister silhouettes with some relish. [31 Jul 2011, p.47]