Packed to the rafters with musical numbers, this cheerful documentary features moments from films such as Gone with the Wind, Meet Me in St Louis, and Singin' in the Rain - a fun watch, even though it was not as commercially successful as Part I. [01 Nov 2014, p.32]

A masterly reconstruction of a Brooklyn bank siege on August 22, 1972, built around arguably Al Pacino's finest screen performance.

Thirty-nine years on, it’s as vivacious as ever.

The terror, panic and small town politics are all brilliantly done but this is also a film about bravery and friendship and the scenes in which the trio bond as they sit out at sea waiting to fight death itself are moving and witty.

One of the rawest, toughest, most emotionally scalding portraits of a marriage ever put on screen.

Polanski honed the screenplay, turning the picture into one of the towering achievements of 1970s cinema.

There are fine performances from Donald Pleasence and Delphine Seyrig, but the film fails to build real suspense. [26 May 2015, p.32]

Fifty-three years on it looks utterly magnificent, a glorious record of a group at the height of their powers that will delight every old rocker and should be required viewing for every aspiring young musician.

Finally, a scary fillum that you genuinely, genuinely should watch. It's part werewolf, part Agatha Christie, part blaxploitation. [31 Oct 2013]

In an age when films such as Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven are revered for their trickery, The Sting remains the definitive con artist comedy: as irresistible and ingenious as the scheme that hooks in Doyle.

With a dearth of psychoanalysis, the jazzy pace barely lets up, but the result - essentially an Allen stand-up show that just happens to be set in the middle of a fascistic, architecturally stunning future society - is no less seminal for its slapstick ebullience: a lesson that the pursuits of making art and making a complete idiot out of yourself are not mutually exclusive.

A courageous and gritty police exposé. [11 Oct 2014, p.37]

A gothic horror story and revenge thriller, it’s one of the darkest Westerns going. As much a ghost story as anything else, it stars Eastwood as a gunslinging cowboy paid handsomely to protect an idyllic Californian mining town from bandits.

American Graffiti is more a collection of vignettes than a straight forward movie, and the quality of the different plots is a bit hit and miss. But American Graffiti's appeal has less to do with plot and more to do with seeing the USA of the early 1960s faithfully recreated in celluloid, and Lucas gets every detail right. From the diner waitresses on skates to the hokey-sounding slang to the sock hop line dances to the gorgeous soundtrack (which is a aural treasure trove of late 50s and early 60s pop), Lucas doesn't put a foot wrong.

As much a meditation on weariness and ageing as it is an unsentimental thriller, the film stands up today, particularly Mitchum's performance. [01 Aug 2020, p.20]

Jacques Tati's plot-free masterpiece is a long way from the crowd-pleasing comedy of Mr Hulot's Holiday, but patient viewers will be rewarded by a mesmerising symphony of sight gags and social observation. [24 Aug 2010, p.34]

The effective use of the split-screen creates a splintered sense of reality and piles on the tension. [04 Jul 2015, p.33]

It's bawdy, sexy, gory, schlocky, and rollicks along at a cracking pace. [28 Feb 2014]

This is one of very few westerns that casts African-Americans in the lead roles. [27 Jun 2015, p.32]

Ozu may have made subtler films, but the clarity of his social critique here is wrenching and unassailable.

Featuring a particularly strong central performance and great effects, the film has had an enormous influence on many subsequent sci-fi films.

Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal spar beautifully in Peter Bogdanovich's homage to screwball comedies of the Thirties. [11 Feb 2017, p.32]

Laid-back caper movie, adapted by William Goldman from a Donald Westlake novel and directed with the lightest of touches by the perennially underrated Peter Yates. There's lovely footage of early 1970s New York and Quincy Jones provides the ultra-cool soundtrack. [09 Jul 2011, p.30]

Mawkishness is kept at bay by the lightness of touch in Ashby's direction and Gordon and Cort's wonderful performances. Only the most miserable cynic could resist its unique charm and ultimate hopefulness.

What's clearer about Duel now is its rawness and bleakness as a picture of American life and troubled American little-man masculinity. [19 Mar 2005]

Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman won Oscars, but the work of Eileen Brennan and Timothy Bottoms is even more cherishable.

While the film has a deadly end, Lawman exchanges the typical good vs. evil narrative of Western films for one of moral ambiguity and humanity, and ultimately presents the question of whether murder can ever be justified.

The pitch to the studio was "Romeo and Juliet on junk": fair enough, but it crackles with life, and this is a tremendous rediscovery.