By far the most compelling voices are those of the impoverished Haitian people; unfortunately, they're only heard briefly at the end. While the film's real-life twists and turns are difficult to follow, the human desperation it depicts is all too easy to grasp.

Fundamentally a quite serious movie, relevant to contemporary personality problems and stresses, but shot through with a wicked streak of black humour. It doesn't always come off, but Romero makes stunning use of his Pittsburgh locations to create a desolate suburban wasteland, and at its best it is rivetingly raw-edged.

CB4 is not in the Spinal Tap league, lacking that film's merciless detail and consistency. But in parts it is hugely, monstrously funny.

More notable perhaps for a roster of future stars and Oscar winners than for its unexceptional plot, this well executed film nevertheless has its charms.

As audience movie-making in its purest form, the film is a delight, but it's also so obviously based on Stallone's own personal struggle with success that the mind boggles as to what Rocky can possibly do next.

Cuteness is never far off, though Badham has enough sense of pace, and the robotics are sufficiently inventive, to keep the laughs coming. Only Guttenberg's tongue-twisted Asian sidekick (Stevens) is off-key.

The narrative is a little plodding, but adult punters will soon slip back into reverie for the lost visions of Saturday morning cinema, and their kids can get off on the extraordinary undercurrent of febrile sexuality. Acting honours go to von Sydow as Ming the Merciless and Mariangela Melato as his dark-eyed henchperson.

With an assured visual style, Harlin stokes up the temperature to near-riot conditions before exploding the screen with electrifying special effects mayhem - floors glow red hot, barbed wire is vivified, the very pipes take on murderous life. A tough, entertaining, intelligent hybrid of hard-ass prison drama and horror-shocker exploiter.

For a comedy double-act who make their money out of people stoned beyond discrimination, Cheech and Chong are probably better than we deserve...The plot is, er, like an irrelevant hassle, and the observations on sub-culture work better than the slapstick paced for the brains of the wasted, but there are enough of these - especially a welfare office freak show - to serve as a reminder of how good the high times can be.

Some delightfully unexpected visual gags and off-the-wall one-liners, along with the good-looking period settings and a wealth of minor characters, give the film its strength. It becomes a little predictable in the middle, but the pace picks up in time for the classic final shootout. Despite lapses, infectiously good-humoured.

It's not an action film: there's little in the way of exciting set pieces, and Eastwood's restrained performance is low-key almost to the point of minimalism. Rather, as he slowly tries to tunnel out with a pair of nail-clippers, it's an austere depiction of the tedious routines of prison life, and of the courage and strength of spirit needed in coping with unpleasant warders, tough fellow-inmates, and a life sentence.

De Palma actually has the gall to combine the plots from both Vertigo and Rear Window in one big voyeur-fest and pull it off with a certain sly efficiency.

Based on Kurosawa's Yojimbo, it sets a fashion in surly, laconic, supercool heroes with Eastwood's amoral gunslinger, who plays off two gangs against one another in a deadly feud.

Reitman, who also originated Animal House and Meatballs, manages a reasonable success rate at pulling off the numerous verbal and sight gags with which the script is peppered.

It's basically kleenteen fun. If you're worried about the Ramones, rest assured; they make a very adequate chunka chunka chunka sound.

Richter's comic genre hybrid comes complete with its own mythology, and team of established superheroes, and is curiously appealing.

Given the inevitably knotty plotting, the message is oddly unrevealing, although the film features more than enough intelligently, wittily scripted moments to remain a fascinating insight into a crucial episode in the souring of that old American Dream.

Expect this straightforward, compelling adaptation to provoke just the same level of domestic debate. As ever, the writing is rich, flexible, masterly.

The camera's vision is a fresh one, and though the wolf's eye view sequences threaten at first to become a nuisance, they are soon justified as a dramatic device, and ultimately as essential to the plot.

An effective shocker which has the blind Hepburn alone in the house when psychotic villain Arkin and his hoodlum pals (Crenna and Weston) arrive to retrieve a doll containing heroin which her husband (Zimbalist) unwittingly brought through customs for them. Though based on a stage play (by Frederick Knott), the skillful use of interiors for once transcends the visual limitations.

Polanski's thriller boasts several superb set pieces, even if it doesn't quite snap shut on the mind the way Chinatown did. Funny and unsettling.

Striking an effective balance between suspenseful intrigue and wacky humour, director Marshall handles both the spy-jinks and Goldberg's eccentric antics with confident panache. There are occasions when Goldberg does rather too much, arresting the action by lapsing into stand-up comic routines; fortunately, the plot soon regains its brisk momentum.

After the delightful Muppet Christmas Carol, this fourth Kermit and pals star vehicle comes as a slight disappointment, but it's a treat all the same.

Sometimes you find yourself wishing for an alternative version of the film unfolding before your eyes. ‘Belle’ is a good-looking and exceedingly polite film where perhaps a more complex one with less good manners would have been better.

Rather than letting the CGI do all the graft, Hardy unleashes a beautifully handcrafted army of puppets and animatronic demonic creatures. Too many, too soon, really. It’s overkill and pretty quickly you’re suffering from fiend fatigue.

Using home-video footage and talking-head interviews, Dinosaur 13 dramatically depicts the thrill of archaeological discovery. But the overbearing soundtrack and shots of weeping palaeontologists do feel a touch manipulative.

The film can feel truncated, as if only a longer film or TV series could do proper justice to the details of the story. But it’s a sensitive and moving tale nonetheless.

This super-gargantuan historical drama may not be much of a movie, but it delivers Hollywood spectacle of the sort we’ll never see again.