A movie filled with gags and excellent stunts which remains curiously humourless at heart. Stunted, not stunning.

The cast are decent, but not much more. Filmed in Panavision and angled at childre

The performances are all reasonably enjoyable, but it's the sort of film the British cinema could well do without.

Impossibly exotic and glossy, its emotional dynamics make no sense today, so that all we're left with is a trite celebration of Warren and Annette as lovers made for each other.

Martin zips from boyhood to manhood in a ridiculously short period, and in no time at all is getting it together with Beth Logan (Zuniga), who doesn't know about his dad being a creepy-crawly. But when Martin's skin starts falling off, she begins to suspect that it's more than just a case for Clearasil, and resolves to help her loved one sort out his confused chromosomes - too late to avoid the onslaught of latex and squishy special effects for which we've all been waiting, and which is indeed the movie's only interesting commodity. Other than that, it's standard directionless fare.

If Jaffe's previous production credits aren't sufficient warning that this is one for Sensitive Drama suckers, the opening shot's a giveaway.

Burton is too old for the part, and Richardson's turgidly literal approach is none too involving.

The film, simplistically assuming the book's central metaphor to be imperialism - hence the military slant - retains the bare bones of Gollding's narrative, but that's all. There's little attempt to hint at the deeper issues.

Often very funny in its topsy-turvy comments on racism, the script unfortunately has to battle against a director determined to use every gaudy trick in the book.

Pacino, as the boy, proves that he didn't need Coppola to make him act, but Kitty Winn is less satisfactory, and the film is finally subject to an iron law of diminishing returns after its plot plumbs the depths and can find nothing to do except batter us some more.

The Entity doesn't emerge quite as one-dimensionally nasty as its synopsis suggests. The film's men are so uniformly creepy, and its heroine so strong and sympathetic, that apart from a couple of unpleasant moments the story often seems less like horror than feminist parable, especially when Hershey (giving a fine performance) is reduced to a laboratory object with her home recreated in the psychology department.

What matters in this type of film is not so much the plot as the way in which an atmosphere is created. Unfortunately, Rosenberg directs flatly, hopping from one set piece to the next, disjointedly throwing characters of varying interest across Newman's path, while the latter - in his coarsest performance yet - remains content to wisecrack and ham outrageously.

This talky would-be satire can find neither an appropriate tone nor a realised human drama to communicate the ideas. But there are some sharp lines and good scenes.

While the star himself effortlessly commands attention, the film around him too often collapses in a welter of rhubarbing locals, piffling model work, and the most cardboard sets Elstree could offer. The result is weird, but not wonderful.

Everything is predictable, except perhaps for the searching close-ups of the star's behind. In other respects, Lowe's performance is quite decent, and he cannot be blamed for the puerile humour of a director who considers putting false teeth into someone's beer to be a good joke.

Live action cartoonery had been underworked since Tashlin mapped its possibilities with Jerry Lewis, but the novelty value of Sellers' disaster-prone Inspector Clouseau, funny French accent and all, wore off quicker than its commercial value.

Passion, certainly, is lacking, and being a 'town' Western, it's all very conventionally domestic.

The plot is all pot-shots and posses, with a bit of Indian hocus-pocus thrown in for comic relief. In other words, more of the same.

The opening scene on a rain-drenched rubbish tip hints at great things, but despite strong writing and an exceptional cast, the plotting is suspect and the murderer's identity is obvious from very early on.

Not so much a comedy about American values as a 2,500 mile skid on a banana skin. The visual gags come thick and fast, and are about as subtly signposted as the exit markers on a freeway. An exercise in the comedy of humiliation which is the stuff of shamefaced giggles.

As usual it is technically excellent, but the charm, characterisation and sheer good humour that made features like Pinocchio and Jungle Book so enjoyable are sadly absent.

Only Streisand's second movie, but already (as co-star Matthau grumbled) she was hogging the screen. The trouble is that there isn't much to hog in this elephant which gave Star! a helping hoof in burying the Hollywood musical.

Once again Cimino's ability to handle furious action set pieces is well to the fore: a shootout in a Chinese restaurant and a battle with two pistol-packing Chinese punkettes put him in the Peckinpah class. The connecting material, however, is by turns muddled, crass and dull, amounting mostly to Stanley's interminable self-justification.

Take out the killings, and you're left with an anguished (even somewhat boring) stab at urban ennui, heavily influenced by Repulsion and Taxi Driver.

The action is lean and tough, the body count huge, and the final shootout an obvious reprise of Peckinpah's finale. But where the latter's vision transformed The Wild Bunch into a savage elegy for the passing of the Old West, Hill can only duplicate its choreographed violence.

Everything seems to revolve around an art fraud, though that's never quite clear since this plot falls into the category kindly known as 'baggy'.

The two Roberts (Duvall as cop, De Niro as priest) turn in potentially great performances, but are given precious little to work with.

Classic soap opera in which good old British understatement has a field day, everybody is frightfully nice, and sentimentality is wrapped up in yards of tasteful gloss.

In its desire to make no concessions to Dirty Harry and its ilk, it destroys any potential interest with almost wilful perversity.

Routine hi-jinks ensue, mixing strangely with ecology consciousness-raising, pseudo-scientific jargon, and everyday telekinesis.

Ten out of ten to Colin Blakely for his cameo (as an itinerant o'booze), but otherwise this is just another weary hack job from a rootless British film industry in decline.

Farmer, as scripted here and played by Lange, unsurprisingly remains something of a cypher.

Goldie's inspirational shot at playing Sly Stallone and Burgess Meredith is undone by the trite, inner-city Hollywood context she always favours. Instead of 'believe in yourself', the message becomes simply 'make believe'.

Everything becomes one long car chase, and in the end it's just a matter of the fat bald bully getting his comeuppance at the hands of the not-so-fat toupeed hero.

Rosman's debut movie was a pretty fair show-reel promising, falsely it seems, more and better to come.

A huge disappointment after The Outlaw Josey Wales and The Gauntlet, this rambling comedy forsakes the subtle, self-deprecating humour of those films and opts for a far rowdier and broader comedy that never really goes anywhere or says anything.

The Who's ludicrous rock opera was in fact tailor-made for the baroque, overblown images and simplistic symbolism of Russell's style, which only means that this is both the movie in which he is most faithful to the ideas and tone of his material, and one of his very worst films.

The film has its moments, but is rendered virtually unwatchable by Furie's mania for weirdly mannered camera angles (you spend half the time peering round, over or under obstacles behind which the action is strategically placed) and enormous, pointless close-ups.

Mediocre action pulp.

A late Wayne Western, depending heavily on recycling better (and no better) earlier pictures.

Mulligan's adaptation of Joseph Olshan's novel doesn't merely flirt with pathos, it positively marries it.

Slick, silly romantic thriller, with Dunaway as an insurance investigator falling for McQueen, the property developer led to commit a bank robbery through boredom. Much obvious 'significance' (the pair playing chess; symbolic, see?), much glossy imagery (courtesy of Haskell Wexler) fashionably fragmented into interminable split-screen nonsense, and little of any real interest.

What the film lacks, however, is the epic vision to match its epic pretensions, something to bind together the action and the ideas.

Hitchcock, seemingly too dour or too uninterested to turn in the title's promise of a Cold War ripping yarn, settles instead for a dissection of the limits of domestic trust.

There are some funny moments, and though she hams it up at times, Barkin is very good in her first comic role. But Edwards milks the comedy, keeps the sexual comment to a minimum, and brings the film to a silly, cop-out resolution.

There is no real social conflict in the film, and it becomes just a period variant on The Last Picture Show, without the vigour of that film or the irony of the original James novel.

The quaint time machine and Oscar-winning special effects hold one's interest initially, but the overall effect is one of glossy emptiness.

Hollywood begins to package its feasts, and That's Entertainment! has all the flavour of the Vesta dehydrated line.

The Fourth War may have been conceived as the thinking person's Rambo, but in the event it isn't a patch on First Blood; for a simple story, it's quite a mess, the very dubious voice-over hardly clarifying a clumsy sense of chronology.

A virtual two- hander, the narrative proceeds by contrasting Berenger's edgy pragmatism with Zane's unwilling induction to the art of murder, though the director's inventive bullets' eye-view shots still fail to dispel the suspicion that the film has little new to say.

Besides a smattering of good gags, David Webb Peoples' script touches on numerous intriguing questions (notably, what constitutes heroism?) while piling irony upon irony. But while Garcia waxes credibly sincere, Hoffman hams, and Davis simply looks lost: small wonder, given Frears' leaden direction, which contrives to scupper suspense and comedy through sluggish pacing and misguided camera placement.

Despite winning several Oscars, Olivier's (condensed) version of Shakespeare's masterpiece makes for frustrating viewing: for all its 'cinematic' ambitions (the camera prowling pointlessly along the gloomy corridors of Elsinore), it's basically a stagy showcase for the mannered performance of the director in the lead role (though he's ably supported by a number of British theatrical stalwarts).

Resnikoff fails to sustain the tension established in the opening sequences, and the plot quickly degenerates into a repetitive pattern of possession and exorcism for the victims requisitioned by Channing's soul to do its bidding. With the exception of Phillips, the performances are remarkably unconvincing.

Watchable mainly for the sheer skill and drive of Preminger's direction, although at 220 minutes even that long outstays its welcome.

Worth seeing for Lee, but still unforgivably wasteful of his talents.

The occasional elegiac tone lamenting the passing of the West seems entirely out of place. Only Michael Parks, still aping James Dean at nearly 40, provides some welcome distraction.

As if the plot weren't perfunctory enough (bags of Yankee dollars, corruption in high places, CIA asassins), we take extended breaks from it to contemplate Quinn's gradual recovery of his roots, culminating in the grateful islanders serenading him with a reggae version of the title song.

The overall result, unsurprisingly, is patchy in the extreme. Weiss' title piece - fragments guying the portentous scripts, wooden acting and non-existent budgets of Z-grade '50s sci-fi movies - is obvious but occasionally spot-on with its appalling sets and repetitive use of the same bit of landscape.

Inoffensive as they are, humble Bernard and the aristocratic Bianca are not the studio's most memorable creations; and for all the quaintly old-fashioned romance and desperately broad comedy, this is nothing if not an adventure film.

The two stars are a pleasure to behold, particularly the genially dizzy Holliday, a telephone answering-service operator who can't help involving herself in the lives and hopes of her clients. And old Mr Nonchalance Martin sidles through his part as a doubting, drunken playwright with his customary charm. But their material just isn't up to the mark.

A worthy but irretrievably dull homily (based on the novel by Chaim Potok) about the conflict between adolescent friendship - two Jewish boys, one orthodox and Zionist, the other a Hasidic - and filial devotion within the demands of the faith.

For a film which defines its characters entirely in relation to each other, there's a curious lack of chemistry between the leads. Only in the childhood sequences are the undercurrents and tensions of the various relationships explored.

Schroeder signposts the imminent homicidal carnage right from the start (stay out of that laundry room!). If his two leads are adequate to the slick mechanisms of a formulaic thriller, neither they nor Don Roos' script (based on the novel by John Lutz) offer any original insights into insatiable emotional dependence.

The artsy silhouette ballet is plain dull and hardly suitable for a kids' audience, but at least it shows the cutesy Disney house style stretching out a little.

A severely flawed but not unamusing venture from a director who should know better.

You'd have to be blind to miss the moral.

There are some fine set-pieces, including a magical release of butterflies and a disturbing dream sequence, but the end opts disappointingly for standard horror-house effects.

The band ride after half a million's worth of stolen gold so they can turn it in for the 50,000 dollars reward; it's that sort of film. Loads of male camaraderie and big country theme music, plus Ann-Margret riding along as a box-office concession and to get the rest of the cast horny in a U Certificate sort of way.

For a Jacobean-style drama about deadly emotions, the film lacks passion; only in the final half-hour, with Michael Nyman's funereal music supplying a welcome gravity, does it at last exert a stately power.

On one level, the film compels through force of intellect, but ultimately it lacks the cohesive emotional force, the ferocity, to consistently nurture its conviction over two hours.

Milestone's direction, veering between stagey two-shots and extravagant but purposeless camera movements, doesn't help either.

Is this not the most Hitchcockian title of all time? Even the exclamation point adds a certain parlor-game fustiness. It’s a pity that the movie’s only so-so.

This rather mushy combination of animation and live-action remains one of Disney's most controversial efforts.

The ugly trio - Midler, Najimy and Parker - perform a show-stopping version of 'I Put a Spell on You' at a Halloween party, but otherwise it's slim pickings.

Davis' direction is Miami Vice-tight, though with frequent attempts at humour: this, together with the caricature psycho-baddie (Silva), and the mixture of spectacular, bone-crunchingly realistic violence with a stab at topical socio-political commentary, makes for a very uncertain tone.

It has some good moments, though its surreal beginning promises a generation war of apocalyptic dimensions that is never delivered, and the film finally falls into some unconvincing liberal moralising.

The cheap 'message' of the ending fails to salvage a film that at best is well-meant but misguided, at worst, flashy and garbled.

The monochrome photography and pseudo-documentary interpolations can't disguise the basic Harold Robbins material, and the good performances (Hoffman and Perrine) stand little chance against Fosse's withering direction: the subject matter needs far defter psychological handling than it gets.

Despite the testosterone-charged violence and jaw-dropping sexism, the tone is one of self-conscious excess - a strategy which constantly undercuts the film's celebration of male bonding conventions.

In the final count, nothing is satisfactorily resolved because tensions remain unexplored, while the atmospherically beautiful images merely entice and divert. The result is little more than a discreetly artistic horror film.

Over-extended and sloppily characterised Agatha Christie whodunit, with Ustinov's Poirot investigating the murder of an heiress aboard a steamer in the 30s.

Ward is physically fine for Hoke, Baldwin a wired Junior, and best of all is Leigh's hooker, but it doesn't quite translate to the screen. Willeford didn't write genre, and the film washes about a bit finding a tone.

Despite a vaguely interesting premise - something like a chaos theory of police karma, the two partners precipitating their own downfall via a series of triggered repercussions - this never rises above the functional.

Meticulously schoolmarmish, John Hale's script lays out all the power plays behind Elizabeth Tudor's battle to keep Mary Stuart off her throne, but fails to provide much else.

Silver Streak, the train which travels from LA to Chicago and houses a murder, dawdles rather than streaks. Characters and plot ramble at will, and no matter how high Colin Higgins' script flies, Arthur Hiller's direction remains with feet and hands firmly on the ground.

The period atmosphere is evoked with careful delicacy, but the characters rarely become more than stereotypes with performances (Judy Davis excepted) to match.

Carlino's direction doesn't help: he was responsible for the atrocious Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, and The Great Santini suffers from the same triteness, with its Deep South setting and a 'progressive' racial subplot that plunges deep into tear-jerk territory. See it for the acting; wallow in the sentiment.

Two of Hollywood's best-loved veterans deserved a far better swan song than this sticky confection.

Sheer eccentricity and ambitiousness place Inside Moves above the Kramer class, but ultimately the film only reconfirms that good liberal intentions rarely produce good Hollywood movies.

Disgracing itself only with McConaughey's over-extended bit as a psychotic trucker, the film delivers more or less comfortably on what you'd expect, then sits down for a rest.

It's an interesting example of how a stock Western plot can assume some fairly explicit political ramifications once it is transposed to a modern setting (not that that is any recommendation).

A maestro of the action movie, McTiernan effectively captures the horrors of a climactic jungle fire, but at other times, the setting merely provides an exotic backdrop to bolshie posturing and feats of derring-do.

It's the kind of silliness that's too strained and self-indulgent to be enjoyable.

Writer/director Dearden's version of Ira Levin's novel is routine stuff, neither thrilling nor revealing as a portrait of a psychopath.

The trouble is that all of these characters are more interesting when things are going badly for them than when the tide has turned, and Carroll's determination to make the final reel an extended bout of audience tummy tickling is disappointingly conventional.

Griffith's directorial debut - after 20 years of scripting for Corman - does deliver the expected race/chase/demolition derby mayhem, but every time the focus switches to Ron Howard's adolescent romantic worries, it stalls.

Things plod to their inevitable conclusion, helped along by the script's assortment of stereotypical underdogs and manipulators, and with Candy hamming up the oppourtunity to get into lots of tight spots while wearing funny disguises. At their silliest, such moments actually provide light relief from an otherwise unremarkable comedy caper.

Clearly a labour of love for director Hackford, the film oozes integrity and is heavy with the stench of an authentic milieu; but forceful set-pieces and astute cultural observations are lost amid a sea of confusing (and eventually dull) stand-offs between warring gangs.