Kubrick manages to handle the moral and psychological nuances with surprising lucidity, but the decision to indulge Peter Sellers' gift for mimickry in the role of Quilty tends to scupper the movie's tone. Fascinating, nevertheless.

Seneca is worth watching, Ry Cooder's score is among his best work, and this certainly isn't sequel fodder.

A farrago of cartoonish exaggeration (mouthfuls of fangs, razor-sharp talons and eyes like burning coals), knowing humour and '80s camp, it shouldn't even begin to work, and yet, strangely, it does, sort of, thanks to the assured handling of writer/director Holland, and two performances in particular - Geoffreys as Charley's pal Evil, and McDowall as the timid vampire killer.

On the plus side are vast, brilliant sets by Tony Walton, a couple of well-staged show-stoppers ('Everybody Rejoice' in the Wicked Witch's sweat-shop, and 'Emerald City Ballet'), Michael Jackson (the Scarecrow), Richard Pryor (The Wiz), and Diana Ross who, as Dorothy, is just gorgeous.

A nicely extravagant tale of horror.

Thanks to an intelligent script, partly by Lorenzo Semple Jr (Pretty Poison, The Parallax View), the action rarely falters, and at its best the film offers an intriguing slice of neo-Hitchcock.

Lithgow is consistently brilliant, while Davidovich makes a good fist as his wife. A really exciting 90 minutes worth, so long as you don't take it too seriously.

Refusing ever to dwell, it cuts sharp rather than deep, but sharp enough.

Harold Pinter's script sometimes suffers from awkward, even implausible dialogue; but careful pacing and casting make for a film that, while directed with cool discretion, is sensual and shocking in its casual evocation of erotic violence, emotional manipulation and moral torpor.

Drawing a parallel with Gennaro's undercover isolation and hinting at a cautious affinity in a bravura sex scene, Landis brilliantly captures a carnal craving laced with blood lust and dangerous eroticism; but, regrettably, all too often the tone lurches from stylish suspense to smart-ass in-jokiness and silly slapstick.

It shows its age, what with indistinct sound, fluffed lines, quaint choreography, quainter songs, a stilted supporting cast and positively arthritic direction. But the Brothers' energy and madness is never in question: when the laughs come, they come loud and long.

In the final scenes, the film slides into a Hardyesque fatalism, with the loose ends tied up a little too neatly, resulting in an air of literary contrivance. It nevertheless succeeds, like the earlier film, in tapping the well-springs of one's emotions.

Less subversive than his earlier work; still hilarious, though. [03 Nov 2004]

Not one of the director's very greatest films on desire (see Letter from an Unknown Woman and Lola Montès for those), Ophüls' circular chain of love and seduction in 19th century Vienna is still irresistible.

Herbie and his plucky stunt drivers steal the show in this agreeable family entertainment.

It's a spectacular return to the shimmering, mesmerising deep-focus animation associated with Disney's classic period: a marvellous use of lighting to create atmosphere, dew-drops glisten from every tree, and the villains are as primally terrifying as cartoon villains should be. The choice of material (Robert O'Brien's novel Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH) is less fortunate, since it lacks the wonder of early Disney, and the mouse heroine is far too insipid and twee. It's still a pretty effective family film, though.

This intricate, intellectually satisfying and emotionally involving murder mystery risks falling between two stools. Neither an 'Alan Rudolph Film' nor a glossy star vehicle, it has a naturalistic tone, a conventional plot, measured pacing, and a serpentine narrative.

Despite some insipid characterisation and one or two lapses, things move along at a fair pace and there's a surprising plot all about property speculation in San Francisco. Can Grandma Steinmetz save her home from the grasping magnate Alonzo Hawk? The comedy is on the whole inventive, occasionally aspiring to almost surrealist heights.

Great fun, provided you disregard the spirit of the original as comprehensively as Disney did. More uneven is the story of bumptious schoolmaster Ichabod Crane and his nemesis the Headless Horseman. It's a trite, chocolate box picture of colonial days - until the Horseman shows up for one of those nightmare sequences with which Uncle Walt so relished terrifying his kiddie audience.

Screenwriter Amanda Silver gleefully exploits parental fears, and skilfully depicts the shifting loyalties, malevolence and escalating paranoia within Claire's household. But as the film progresses, malicious schemes and loony excesses are combined, with Hanson's self-conscious direction rendering one particularly sensational murder even more implausible.

Like a Thunder Road filtered through the perceptions of the '70s, it's an invigorating and touching movie.

A soap for the slack generation, that'll strike a chord way outside the confines of the New Queer Cinema.

While there's no doubting the sincerity of writer/director Gerima's film, one can't help sensing more than a little déjà vu in his account of the manifest evils of slavery.

Ford is up to par for the strenuous stuff, but falls short on the grief, anxiety and compassion, allowing Tommy Lee Jones to walk away with the show as the wisecracking marshal on Kimble's trail.

Based on a Charles Gaines novel about the rootlessness of the so-called 'New South', it has its slack spells, but Rafelson's sure feel for the inexpressible subtleties of emotional relationships is evident throughout.

An outrageous, melodramatic shocker touching on madness, homosexual prostitution, incest, disease and cannibalism, replete with enough imagery to sustain an American Lit seminar for months.

The rich vein of 'innocent' anarchy running through Burt Reynolds comedy showcases around this time is mined again to good effect as his Smokey and the Bandit persona transmutes seamlessly into the ace Hollywood stuntman of the title, and director Needham (an ex-stuntman himself) slips effortlessly into a lightweight satire of the movie biz and an almost Hawksian action-comedy of male-group professionalism.

With Monkey Business, their first screen original, the team cast caution to the winds, helped by a perky script and some lunatic sight gags.

The progression from mutual suspicion to friendship may not be revelatory, but the performances (Fishburne, Stewart, Beach) are lively and Sheen's direction assured.

Not Chapter 2 of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, but it does find that old sexist reprobate Russ Meyer in agreeably rumbustious form.

Steve Tesich's script sometimes smacks of screenwriting classes, but Yates (who worked with Tesich on Breaking Away) easily accommodates these lapses with his unfussy, medium-fast direction. Indeed, he guides his cast around the furniture better than most. The result is an enjoyable entertainment whose box-office failure was thoroughly undeserved.

Richard Benjamin directs the smartish script and the chaotic tomfoolery quite brilliantly; but all concerned mishandle the soppy section where O'Toole gets misty-eyed about his discarded daughter. Still, the pace picks up for the magnificent comic climax.

The comic byplay between opposites - everyday guy Spence and haughty Kate - is a consistent pleasure, even if its sexual politics are ambiguous.

Light, cheery and shading into darker areas for the climax, it's fun.

Its erotic content now seems tame indeed; but the grotesquely caricatured performances and the evocation of the baking, dusty, indolent homestead make for witty and compelling viewing.

Fred Zinnemann's feature debut, a neat, unpretentious and really rather enjoyable whodunit about the hunt for the killer of the town's crusading mayor.

Happily the cameo lowlife, an excellent manic beaver, the famously villainous Siamese, and classic songs rescue the film from dumb animal sentiment.

A film about desire and its control is hardly what one might expect, but then Eastwood has always been Hollywood's most experimental star. And he's still one of the best.

While hardly as sturdy or provoking an entertainment as North by Northwest, say, it remains an entertainment.

A highly inventive updating of the Phantom of the Opera story to the rockbiz world - complete with borrowings from Faust and The Picture of Dorian Gray.

The plotline is classic Western morality-play stuff, with the goodies and baddies clearly delineated, but the set pieces are well constructed, and the whole thing is beautifully staged and shot.

Aussie director Wincer handles the action convincingly, and Rickman's splendidly snide villain is a real treat.

A likeable film, particularly in its observation of the evolving relationship between the anti-social prisoner and the hostile warder (Brand, excellent) from whom he is forced to beg favours.

Satisfying, old-fashioned family romp, but hardly a modern classic.

The cast lend the film an authority that Yates' curiously pedestrian approach fails to provide, and Mitchum's agonies over codes of underworld honour segue perfectly into his subsequent explorations of loyalty and obligation in The Yakuza.

Offering only hackneyed insights into the war, the film makes for stodgy drama. But Williams' manic monologues behind the mike are worth anybody's money.

This adaptation of Roddy Doyle's novel may not display the glitz and relentless energy of The Commitments, but it has wit, feeling and authenticity.

This sweet if somewhat implausible first feature is a gentle, occasionally dark comedy-cum-coming-of-age drama, held together by strong interplay between the conflicting leads (Place is particularly good) and by a wry, pleasingly understated sense of humour.

Gruesome almost to a fault, but not quite, it emerges as an efficient shocker.

Adapted by William Goldman from his own novel, this thriller is quite effective in its basic set pieces, even if the overall thrust seems a trifle ponderous.

This may not be Wilder at his best - the story develops along fairly predictable lines, with Arthur switching her starchy uniform for a glistening evening gown - but there are some precious set pieces, notably a seduction among a row of filing cabinets and Dietrich's club act, not to mention a crackling script.

Stallone's performance is a superb blend of stubborn-jawed gravity and ironic hamming as he heads, Godfather-like, for a confrontation with the Senate.

Parallel families, Lassie-style pet dogs who turn hunter-killers, savage Nature: exploitation themes are used to maximum effect, and despite occasional errors, the sense of pace never errs. A heady mix of ironic allegory and seat-edge tension.

Ozu's pessimism is deeply reactionary, and the idiosyncrasy of his methods is more interesting for its exoticism than anything else; but anyone who finds the socio-psychological problems of post-war Japan engaging will find the movie both fascinating and rather moving, simply as evidence.

If it hardly breaks any new ground either formally or politically, it's nevertheless a moving and highly professional affair, in which Brown and Thompson give particularly good performances.

Director Cohen keeps the vehicle cruising in fourth gear, hoping the audience won't get too impatient with the familiar scenery. Big, efficient, mindless entertainment.

More of a clever comic parody than a jokey pastiche, this lively kiddies' horror pic delivers frights and laughs which are rooted in a sure and sympathetic grasp of Monster Movie mythology.

The film is often sentimental, sometimes brilliant as well as horrifying, and it is intriguing to speculate on what Buñuel, whom Trumbo originally wanted to direct, would have made of it.

Considering neither Bisset nor Bergen had ever shown the slightest acting ability before in movies, their performances in the Bette Davis/Miriam Hopkins roles in this loose reworking of Old Acquaintance are very capable.

Solid performances lend weight to the flakier elements, with Liotta turning crazed excess into something wild.

Learning to fit is what this dodo of a camp is all about, showing that the American Way is big and blowsy enough to take a few off-the-wall-style persons, once the ol' sexuality is straightened out.

The special effects are superb, easy winners in an engaging inter-denominational free-for-all that blends Marvel Comics' Doctor Strange with Corman's The Raven. A successful excursion, spoiled only by the director's habit of plopping in postcard views of the Golden Gate Bridge instead of exteriors.

Aimed squarely at the under-12s, it won't displease most parents, if only for the welcome absence of marketable accessories.

The resolution, cynically demonstrating the relativity of good and evil, comes a little too pat; but the performances, the set pieces, and the overall tone are irresistible.

If plot, script and supporters are below par, the score by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields is peerless.

This documentary, shocking and enlightening, succeeds in contextualising, and thus humanising, misunderstood sexual deviancy.

It's the usual heavy Wambaugh brew: police procedure closely observed without a trace of romanticism, suggesting simply that life in the force is psychological hell.

Three of the episodes are rough-and-ready but vigorous Grand Guignol fun. The fourth is something else again, a marvellous mood piece of chilling intensity.

Mann's first film with James Stewart, with whom he was to make a series of classic Westerns, this offers the clearest example of Mann's use of the revenge plot.

Great knockabout visual gags, mercifully little cutey-poo sentiment, and reasonable songs, including The Bare Necessities. The animation has only the bare necessities, too, and the storyline is weak, but it doesn't seem to matter much.

Relaxed and leisurely, it's an effortless blend of documentary and fiction, part road movie, part sociological satire, part polemical reminiscence.

A flawed but immensely appealing film adapted in part from Vardis Fisher's Mountain Man, a superb historical novel which explores the myth and the reality of the tough trappers who roamed the unconquered West in the 1850s.

Circuitously derived from the tale of the rape of the Sabine women, this rather archly symmetrical movie musical is best seen as a dance-fest, with Michael Kidd's acrobatic, pas d'action choreography well complemented by ex-choreographer Donen's camera.

Terry Southern's dialogue occasionally sparkles, and the imaginative designs, as shot by Claude Renoir, look really splendid.

Strange and scary enough to fascinate parents and offspring alike.

Another enjoyable fantasy adventure from Studio Ghibli, the animation house that gave us the delightful Spirited Away. This is not in the same class, but lovers of Miyazaki’s masterpiece will recognise the same worldview – essentially that of Lewis Carroll’s Alice stories refracted through a modern Japanese sensibility.

They don’t make many like this any more; Roger Corman would be proud.

One of Hollywood's better 'growing up' movies, this steers well clear of tear-jerker material by tracking the on-off juvenile romance of car-mad (post-Star Wars) Hamill and apprentice hooker Annie Potts through the neon glare of Las Vegas.

It's a terrific piece of junk: the top-notch screenwriters (Stirling Silliphant and Wendell Mayes) never let a cliché slip through the net, and Neame's anaemic direction ensures that every absurdity is treated at face value.

Bacon scores strongly, but it is Streep's beautifully natural, unshowy performance which keeps the film on course, even when the machinations of the plot become very rocky indeed.

As so often with this director's work, the film is craftsmanlike rather than brilliant, but the performances, Robert Surtees' lush camerawork, and Mulligan's solid psychological insights make for thoughtful, sometimes even chilling, entertainment.

Good baddies, good poignant bits, and an archery contest that degenerates into all-action American football make up for the familiar, repetitive plot and the several lapses of taste and intelligence inevitable in medieval Nashville.

Lynch's third feature may have been a commercial disaster, but it gets under your skin and is marked by unforgettable images and an extraordinary soundtrack.

Hurt is in good vicious form as the shaded hit man; Stamp once more wears a smile like a halo; and the prospect of approaching death is handled without too much metaphysical puffing and blowing. All in all, a very palpable hit.

Unfortunately, with its faintly uneven pacing and straggling structure, the film lacks depth or narrative economy. That said, Zhang's use of colour is as vivid as ever, his stylised depiction of violence is mostly effective, and Gong Li is gloriously watchable.

John Ryan's performance as the husband is particularly astute, and Bernard Herrmann's score milks the suspense for all it's worth.

Gruelling yet humorous look at a bunch of Marines through training and posting to Vietnam in 1968, this turns every war film cliché upside down: transistor radios grind out rock music over the life-and-death patrols, and the GIs behave less like soldiers than shambling tourists.

A smooth blend of sentiment and slapstick.

In format, this is no more than the classic mission movie: first they train, then they do it for real. But the film belongs to Eastwood.

There's such a wide disparity of graphic styles from sequence to sequence. Some of them, though, still look terrific.

Most surprising is the impressive showing of Gary and Martin Kemp (of Spandau Ballet) as the twins, despite fears that the 'youth cult' dimension might be too strong a factor in the concept.

Sturges' remake of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai is always worth a look, mainly for the performances of McQueen, Bronson, Coburn and Vaughn.

Less polished than The Tomb of Ligeia, but still the best and most ambitious of Corman's Poe cycle.

In retrospect, this adaptation of John Braine's Bradford-set novel, with its moral melodramatics as Laurence Harvey cheats his way to success (a good marriage) via the death of his 'true love' and the bed of his mistress (Signoret), may not stand the test of time. But it remains intriguing as a sort of Brief Encounter, '50s-style.

A bizarre, often hilarious melee of weird drugs, weird sex and off-the-wall camp.

The taut action, sparse dialogue, and faultless technique keep things moving so fast that there's no time to reflect upon the morality of war or the miraculous way in which Flynn and his men survive against such overwhelming odds.

Logan's rotund version of Lerner and Loewe's musical Western may lack actors (Presnell excepted) who can actually sing, but that's compensated for by a solid plot involving a farcical discovery of gold, and the growth of a mining town (No Name City) that develops from amoral shantydom to respectability and a holocaust.

Updated from London 1890 to contemporary California, George Pal's version of the HG Wells novel still works pretty well, thanks to its attractive special effects.