It lampoons a crazed warmongering machismo that never goes out of style.

There's hardly a shot in Polanski's debut that isn't laced with purpose. [12 Jan 2013, p.10]

It is rubbish, and whereas Taylor’s playing can sometimes redeem utter nonsense, it doesn’t quite manage it here.

This adaptation of Leonard Wibberley's novel, and sequel to The Mouse That Roared satirises the space war, Cold War and politics to varied effect. [07 Dec 2013, p.40]

John Ford's Second World War film is a morality play that is both sentimental and comical. [02 Nov 2013, p.40]

The true genius of the film, based on a 1952 short story by Daphne du Maurier, is the way Hitchcock makes the malevolent birds seem like manifestations of his characters' mental unease.

As Mulligan so deftly demonstrates, the story is in the characters, their failings and fragility, their heroism and nobility of spirit. It's in the depiction of heart-breaking cruelty and heart-warming humanity. It's in the innocence of a child's world overshadowed by the evil that adults do.

The ultimate camp-Gothic bitchfight. Vastly entertaining.

Agnes Varda's exquisite New Wave masterpiece, about an hour and a half in the life of a gorgeous, possibly dying chanteuse. [30 Apr 2010, p.31]

The action is underpinned by the men's nostalgic reminiscences and regretful ruminations. A masterclass in unobtrusive film-making. [17 Mar 2014, p.29]

The diversity of the human elements - the wonderful accumulation of interlinked characters and situations in Nakamura's family, daughters, ex-mistresses, business associates, sisters, brothers - builds impassively to a harrowing, unusually bleak climax in which death claims its due and the consolation offered is disturbingly minimal, tenderly as we feel for those bereaved. [20 Mar 2004]

Jerome Robbins’s legendary choreography needs the biggest screen it can get; when the movie’s firing on all cylinders of music, lyrics and motion (twice: “America” and “Gee, Officer Krupke”) there’s little to touch it.

Watching this film as a child, the piercing image of Medina's wife Elizabeth's (Barbara Steele) wide eyes in the iron maiden stayed with me for years.

The construction has a mocking fatalism that might have felt oppressive, but Malle and his actors keep you constantly on the edge of your seat, wondering what curse will befall the desperate lovebirds next.

What a multiple swansong and beautiful accident The Misfits is.

It's hugely overblown, and tones down the novel's force, but is carried along by skilful direction from Otto Preminger and a magnificent score by Ernest Gold. [15 May 2010, p.31]

It's hard to conceive of a sword-and-sandals epic with greater sweep or grandeur than Spartacus...For majestic, mind-blowing sequences, you're spoilt for choice.

Hitchcock's mischievous genius for audience manipulation is everywhere: in the noirish angularity of the cinematography, in his use of Bernard Herrmann's stabbing string score, in the ornithological imagery that creates a bizarre sense of preying and being preyed upon.

Gory, hammy fun. [16 Oct 2010, p.30]

This Ireland-set fantasy adventure, starring Albert Sharpe and Janet Munro as a father and daughter vying with a local clan of leprechauns is benign and deeply genial stuff. [25 Mar 2020]

Wilder’s intoxicating script, co-written with IAL Diamond, flows like finest brandy, and Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine shine as two essentially good souls trapped in a tangle of office politics.

Although it is a spectacle film, the story of how a man takes on the tyranny of the Romans, with all sorts of horrible consequences to himself and his family, is powerful and gripping.

There’s a superabundance of sparkling, often marvellously terse one-liners (when asked what the “O” stands for, Thornhill’s resigned and emotionally relevant answer is, “Nothing”) – and, my, how wittily Grant delivers them.

Hepburn's sensitive and eloquent performance makes it one of her finest films. [03 Dec 2016]

It's a great idea, and the supporting cast (including Sid James) is terrific, especially during the sight gags. It's very funny indeed. [22 May 2010, p.31]