Unfortunately, all the major characters have a whiff of Hollywood artifice, largely because (as has happened too often before in his career) Frankenheimer gets carried away by their verbosity. But perhaps any Hollywood film giving the Palestinian case an airing deserves to be welcomed.

Disaster movie in which a converted luxury airliner laden with guests and art treasures is hijacked by terrorists and crashes into the sea near an oil-rig. The survivors then spend their time trying to overact their way out of the claustrophobic script, which threatens a death even more slow and painful than suffocation or drowning.

A film which plagiarises so brazenly - and so badly - that it seems like little more than a pile of out-takes from recent supernatural successes.

Unbelievable tosh.

Its strongest card is the outrageously charismatic Schwarzenegger, but its view of musclemen and physique contests in general has a charm not unlike Rocky.

Rosenberg here confuses seriousness with tedious solemnity, and with the star glut has produced a compacted TV series.

The direction is agonisingly pedantic for a comedy, and leaves O'Neal and Reynolds totally exposed, mugging away in charmless and clumsy fashion.

With an imaginative use of locations, carefully controlled atmosphere, and superb performances all round, it's an often impressive, always watchable modern noir thriller, based on credible human motivations.

Apart from the flash new environment, this version vaunts its modernity by vulgarising everything in sight, making the characters mouthpieces for foul language and equally foul sentimentality

The results of this technological bonanza are pretty mixed.

Nothing jells at all - least of all the central conceit of the hero becoming shaggy (sometimes the dog's a dog, sometimes a man with fur). It's also not much fun seeing Jones, Pleshette and Wynn getting older and older, staler and staler, playing the parts they've been stuck with for years.

The fifth Pink Panther effort might seem marginally disappointing even to diehard Clouseau fans, with slapstick gags for the pratfalling clown hung very loosely on increasingly implausible jetsetting plot antics.

An overlong, sentimental and lifeless biopic of Woody Guthrie.

Rocky is an old-fashioned fairytale brilliantly revamped to chime in with the depressed mood of the '70s. Although its plot - nonentity gets to fight the heavyweight champ - is basically fantasy, the film deftly manages to suspend disbelief by drawing back at its more implausible moments.

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.

Although uneven, the result is still a lot better than Hollywood's last look at itself (Day of the Locust) and its last slice of Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby).

This still-prescient vivisection of modern culture’s vapidity crackles with the nervous energy of midtown’s hothouse broadcasters.

Far more than a sterile exercise in suspense: Communion constantly keeps the audience on its toes with a wealth of incidental detail, excellent set pieces and technical versatility.

Efficient enough as formula suspense, but it fails to confront the implications of its subject, preferring instead evasiveness and fast cynicism to pull it through.

The remarkable thing is the way characters, jokes and meaning are dovetailed into a single rhythmic flow that makes the film look like TV's Laugh-In redesigned as a Minnelli musical. Highly enjoyable.

God Told Me To overflows with such perverse and subversive notions that no amount of shoddy editing and substandard camerawork can conceal the film's unusual qualities.

It's gruellingly long, the four-track stereo relentless, and the music a mechanical recreation of Zeppelin standards (eg. 'Whole Lotta Love', 'Stairway to Heaven).

The current minor boom in American horror films has two notable features: the single-minded concentration on the nuclear family as a point of attack, and the consistent rejection of happy endings. This tale of a family taking a spooky old mansion for the summer would be strictly formula stuff were it not for these elements; but veteran Eugène Lourié's art direction helps.

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.

Paul Williams’ annoyingly hummable honky-tonk soundtrack punctuates proceedings, which graze the zenith of that seventies inclination towards sexualising teen performers (think ‘Minipops’ in America).

Scantily clad Ms Munro, vengeful telepathic pterodactyls and cut-price explosions comprise a familiar mix, but it's daft enough to enjoy if you're in a schoolboy mood.

Too much of this is tedious, rather like off-cuts from his recent movies, but the reasonable photography and good action material help. Country singer Jerry Reed makes a good heavy, and when Reynolds keeps it simple, his direction suggests the makings of a modest craftsman.

A subtle, touching valedictory tribute to both Wayne and the Western in general.

The script, which labours under polysyllabic mumbo-jumbo at times, is infantile, while the performances, apart from a sprightly Danner as Fonda's TV cohort, are spineless.

Schrader and De Palma's tribute to Hitchcock's Vertigo may lack the misogyny and bloodbath sensationalism of De Palma's later work, but it's still dressed up in a mortifyingly vacuous imitation of the Master's stylistic touches.

The film's unlikely trump card is Richard Widmark as a credibly sceptical supernatural investigator, who romps through the proceedings with a disarming stoicism, but regrettably faces his devilish opponent Lee only in the closing sequence. It's a good deal more interesting than the rest of the possession cycle, but still a disappointment.

Pitched at cartoon level, with a bizarre collection of speed enthusiasts crudely taking care of the comedy, it relies almost exclusively on the exceptional stunt work, the plot only occasionally dropping into first gear for some boring and irrelevant dramatic stuff.

A film that can narrow choices down to making a million as a car salesman, or drifting with alternate complacency and anxiety into middle-age as a superannuated beach bum, has something going for it in the way of cumulative obsessiveness.

Cannonball lacks its predecessor's dramatic tension, and by the middle of the film Bartel's disregard for narrative in favour of a series of jokes leaves no dramatic resolution.

Misanthropic, indeed, but the black humour and general inventiveness place it high above most contemporary horror pictures.

Everything except the dubbing of the French supporting cast is a model of craftsmanship, but as the plot escalates into increasingly arbitrary excesses of fantasy and heads for the predictable pay-off, the movie looks more and more like a potboiler.

Some of it comes off well, and Newman is superb. But the film shows tiresome signs of its origins as a stage play (by Arthur Kopit), and the good moments aren't quite enough to make up for its overall predictability.

The lavish production has some good effects sequences, but its plot is as corny as the dreadful lurex drape costumes and Jerry Goldsmith's slushy score. Fundamentally, this is just further proof of Hollywood's untiring ability to reduce all science fiction to its most feeble stereotypes.

Murder by Death is entertaining enough, even though the joke wears a little thin.

Noisy, incomprehensible and lumberingly irrelevant, complete with shell-schlock Sensurround.

It's a piece of low-budget rubbish (based on a portion of HG Wells' 1904 fantasy) featuring all the genre's well-loved ingredients: a frightful script, variable special effects, and a weird bunch of actors who manage to look just a little less ludicrous than the giant rats.

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

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.

It may be time to stop calling Nicolas Roeg's sexed-up sci-fi film that vaguely demeaning term - a cult classic - and start addressing it as what it is: the most intellectually provocative genre film of the 1970s.

It's one of the few truly major Westerns of the '70s, with a very clear vision of the historical role played by fear and violence in the taming of the wilderness.

'No way!' twice in the first five lines of dialogue let you know what to expect from this attempt to ape Jaws, so to speak.

The juxtaposition of clips is mindless; and between the indigestible chunks come newly-filmed scenes with Kelly and Astaire, which manage to be even worse than some of the clips. And their asinine commentary damagingly intrudes into the numbers.

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.

Inevitably softened by hints of self-congratulation concerning the success of Woodward and Bernstein's uncovering of the Watergate affair, Pakula's film is nevertheless remarkably intelligent, working both as an effective thriller (even though we know the outcome of their investigations) and as a virtually abstract charting of the dark corridors of corruption and power.

Beneath all the fun, there's a vision of humans as essentially greedy and dishonest, presented with a gorgeously amoral wink from Hitchcock, and performed to perfection by an excellent cast.

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.

The acting is intense, as you would expect from Ullmann and Josephson, working under a director who was coming to terms with his own breakdown in this film; and the nightmare imagery (washed-out backgrounds clashing vividly with stark colours) delivers a strong jolt to the subconscious.

In failing to reveal the model's persona as the materialisation (maintained at some cost to herself) of collective male fantasy, the script underlines its teleplay blandness.

A film which never really manages to confront us with the enormity of its subject, nor with any kind of analysis as to why rape occurs.

It's one of those rare movies, like King Hu's Touch of Zen, that handles its historical imagery so cleanly, and contains its pretensions so solidly within sure characterisation and plotting, that it is often sublimely expressive.

Like a shaggy dog story operating inside a chase movie. Chinese Bookie is the more insouciant, involuted and unfathomable of the two; the curdled charm of Gazzara's lopsided grin has never been more to the point.

Forty years on, Taxi Driver remains almost impossibly perfect: it’s hard to think of another film that creates and sustains such a unique, evocative tone, of dread blended with pity, loathing, savage humour and a scuzzy edge of New York cool.

The film's strength lies in its depiction of surfaces, lacking the visual or intellectual imagination to go beyond its shrewd social and psychological observations and its moments of absurdist humour.

Remarkable contemporary film noir that cuts the dirt and corruption of Los Angeles with a strain of allusions to (and, in the case of Reynolds' cop, illusions of) European romance.

Unmistakable Peckinpah - not a masterpiece, but enough to be going on with.

Barry Lyndon is best known for its photography – Kubrick borrowed a low-light camera from Nasa so he could shoot in candlelight – and it is uniquely, heart-stoppingly gorgeous. But there’s much more to it: this is a story of identity, and the lack of it. And it’s fascinating.

Connery and Caine (both excellent) become classic Huston overreachers, and echoes of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Moby Dick permeate the mythic yarn.

The supporting cast is flawless, with a special mention owed to Brad Dourif as poor, doomed Billy Bibbit. But the script lacks the woozy, otherworldly subtlety of Kesey’s book, relying instead on pop psychology and finger-pointing: once again, it turns out women are to blame for pretty much everything.

What lifts things right out of the rut is the cynical commentary provided by the hero's dog, communicating telepathically (in voice-off admirably spoken by Tim McIntire) and kicking the daylights out of all those boy-and-his-dog yarns.

Strong supporting performances, good locations, and well-staged fights contribute to what is an impressive example of how to assemble this kind of material.

The jokes and details are delightful, yet there's real anger behind them, and it bursts spectacularly into view in the concluding frames.

A film that is voyeuristic in the extreme, extending no warmth to the bizarre mother and daughter as they battle out their lives together, but choosing instead to film them in the most offensive of ways.

For all its nods, winks and witty asides, it’s a richly personal work, picking over the questions every creative artist must eventually ask: Am I ‘for real’? Does it matter? And what is all this work worth, anyway?

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.

Though seemingly a prettily made, pretty erotic exploitation movie, one suspects that there is value in Wertmüller's observation of the potency of sexual chauvinism. The film fails, however, through the absence of credibility and objectivity, and its refusal to move into the realms of fantasy, allegory, or even irony.

It starts off promisingly with some stylised and ridiculous heroics involving a German sub, but once the island has been occupied and a few excellent monsters vanquished, the plot settles down to some very ordinary machinations.

The film's triumph is Mitchum's definitive Marlowe, which captures perfectly the character's down-at-heel integrity and erratic emotional involvement with his cases.

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.

The traditional ingredients of homely moralising, sentimentality and raucous slapstick are used sparingly, the dialogue is fairly bright, some visual gags are neatly executed, even Knotts is bearable, and Susan Clark makes an auspicious Disney debut as the Calamity Jane-type heroine.

When the explanations begin (mainly a flashback to 17th century ancestors), things become heavy-handed, revealing the ragged direction, a dire script, and performances which range from the bemused (Albert) to the awful (Borgnine).

A wittily efficient quickie, the film is a winner all the way - a surprise, since Starrett's career thus far had been the movie director's equivalent of a criminal record.

Streets ahead of the average blaxploitation effort, yet is still something of a disappointment. Partly the fault lies with the script, and partly with a certain commercial gloss; one or two of the characters nevertheless do come over with some distinctiveness, thanks to OK performances.

Ultimately, Rollerball gets by on its sheer monolithic quality - an abundance of quantity. Despite indifferent direction and dire humour, it is well mounted and photographed.

A masterpiece.

Occasionally lacking in plot logic, it's nevertheless an imaginative little B thriller that manages to be genuinely suspenseful.

It's a film of unrelieved blackness, from the seedy photographer who snaps his junkie wife cowering in the bath to homicidal babies, from mongol child at a petrol station to Kennedy's brutal sergeant. It's all the more absurdly fatalistic for refusing to draw political, moral or social conclusions.

Milius once more reveals that his overriding concern is with the formation of myth rather than realism, as he balances the fates of his two legendary figures - Brian Keith's Roosevelt and Sean Connery's kidnapper Raisuli - to dynamic effect.

Fourth in the series, promisingly reuniting Edwards and Sellers with their respective careers not exactly buoyant since A Shot in the Dark ten years earlier, The Return of the Pink Panther delivers a good deal of that promise, from Richard Williams' ultra-ritzy animated credits to the four or five brilliantly timed set pieces of Clouseau-engineered mayhem.

Hackman takes the enlarged role by the scruff of the neck and delivers yet another fine performance of doubt and the dawning awareness of his own weakness. Frankenheimer directs in taut, pacy fashion to keep the suspense high.

Events degenerate into miscalculated farce and underline Nichols' continuing slick superficiality. Adrien Joyce's much hacked-about script sounds as though it was once excellent: a pity everyone treats it so off-handedly.

Perhaps a more caustic picture was intended, but the film grows to like its characters, and the final result is amusingly indulgent and generous in a way few current American films are: one has to look to East Europe (especially the work of Milos Forman) for a similar quality of ironic compassion.

Admittedly the book, an elusive, mesmeric work of associated images and ideas, surreal and analytical, would present problems for the most talented of film-makers. But Schlesinger really blows it.

Overall the movie isn't as synchromeshed as it might be; the rivalry between champions Carradine and Stallone isn't very interesting, and some of the gags aren't sick or funny enough. But it's a great audience film.

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

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.

A truly enigmatic thriller and a key film of the '70s, brilliantly scripted by Alan Sharp.

Made with all the awareness of hindsight, Shampoo offers a sharp sexual satire and a mature statement on both America and Hollywood in 1968.

An underrated attempt to scrutinise the immature American screen hero, which simultaneously works as a fine belated addition to Hollywood's recurrent romantic fascination with flying.

The second half of Lester's brilliant The Three Musketeers is a reasonably beguiling, if noticeably padded coda, with the best bits containing in abundance that quality of penetrating period wit which made its predecessor such a delight.

Assets there are: Caine is served with some nice deadpan lines by Rod Amateau, and John Coquillon's photography is characteristically cool. But this is an unpleasant and invidious film, like Soldier Blue creaming the surface off profound racial issues to ease the killing along.

William Goldman's leisurely script and Forbes' dull direction never quite capture the subtleties of Ira Levin's novel about an idyllic Connecticut commuter village where the housewives are a bunch of domesticated dummies.

Quite simply vulgar in comparison to its predecessors (especially Hawks' brilliant His Girl Friday), it relies too much on foul language, inappropriate slapstick, and superficial cynicism.

This is the disaster film which set the style for the genre in the decade to come.