Reynolds and Curtis (in a disposable role as Charlie's permanently aghast best pal) race at full speed through reams of dud dialogue, while Minnelli amuses himself colour coordinating costumes and set decorations. Based, very noticeably, on a stage play (by George Axelrod).

Witty despite Hiller's direction.

Eclipsed by its contemporary, Dr Strangelove, Fail Safe eschews the former's black humour and opts for a deadly serious mix of cold-war melodrama and rampant psychosis.

The film can hardly contain itself with its catalogue of memorable songs, battery of dance routines, and strong supporting cast.

It's as sour a vision of male-female interaction as Vertigo, though far less bleak and universal in its implications. That said, it's still thrilling to watch, lush, cool and oddly moving.

Like its predecessor, Siegel's version is at its best while setting up the chillingly ruthless detail of the opening execution (here unnervingly set in an asylum for the blind), less satisfying when it starts providing an answer to the mysterious passivity of the victim (Cassavetes).

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

Zulu is a fairly tough-minded and interesting account of a company of Welsh soldiers doing their bit for somebody else's Queen and Country in an alien land.

Explicitly quoting Chaplin-style routines, Lewis bends the sentimentality into shape to produce a witty and magical essay on comedy, illusionism and fear.

Thin even by Presley standards.

Ozu’s final film is a movingly valedictory affair, its familiar story of Ryu’s elderly widower marrying off daughter Iwashita carrying even more poignancy than usual as a poised and wise reminder of passing time and the inevitable approach of mortality.

Pictorially it's amazing, and even the script and dubbing are way above average.

It takes a little swallowing, but Fuller's grasp of character and milieu is so sure that the film gradually imposes itself as a scathing exposé of hypocrisy.

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.

Frankenheimer's fascination with gadgetry is used to create a striking visual metaphor for control by the military machine. Highly enjoyable.

Perhaps Kubrick's most perfectly realised film.

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.

Certainly, it is one of the finest movies to deal with the plight of those thousands of immigrants who travelled in steerage to Ellis Island at the turn of the century.

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

The first half, set in a single room, echoes Hitchcock's Rope in exploring his moral dilemma while the action takes place off-screen. The second is disconcertingly different in that it focuses excitingly on the police procedures deployed in the hunt for the kidnapper. But the connections, though sometimes overly obvious in appealing to the liberal conscience, span fascinating Dostoevskian depths.

Triumphantly painful Disney adventure; guaranteed to sear the memory, in spite of the 'Derek the Lonely Dingo'-style narration that has always stood for 'nature' in Walt's wonderful world.

Kramer's 'comedy to end all comedy' stretches its material to snapping point but offers happy hours of star-spotting.

With just three actors, a boat, and a huge expanse of water, [Polanski] and script-writer Jerzy Skolimowski milk the situation for all it's worth, rarely descending into dramatic contrivance, but managing to heap up the tension and ambiguities.

Osborne's courageous hatchet job on Fielding's 1,000 page classic novel and Finney's gutsy performance add up to produce an enjoyable piece of irreverent entertainment.

It might be significant as an early independent movie made good, but Poitier got better when he got angrier for In the Heat of the Night four years later.

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

Brook knows he can't have his 10- to 12-year-olds mouthing philosophical and poetic paragraphs, so he shoots it like a documentary, overcoming the starvation budget, the location problems, and the sometimes awkward performances. However, the principals are excellent.

The location (an Irish castle) is used imaginatively, the Gothic atmosphere is suitably potent, and there's a wonderfully sharp cameo from Patrick Magee as the family doctor.

Frothy romantic comedy with Garner taking over from Rock Hudson as Day's foil. The script, by Carl Reiner, takes a mildly satiric look at the world of TV advertising.

Uneven but entertaining World War II escape drama, which even when it first appeared seemed very old-fashioned. Worth seeing the last half hour, if nothing else, for one of the best stunt sequences in years: McQueen's motor-cycle bid for freedom.

Jolly juvenile adventure in which Jason (the rather stolid Armstrong) is aided - or hindered - by assorted whimsical gods on Olympus as he quests for the Golden Fleece, and the film itself is given an enormous boost by Ray Harryhausen's special effects.

In short, a very bleak - but very funny - comedy.

Wilder's soft-centred cynicism provides frequent enough laughs without too many longueurs.

Pretensions are kept nicely damped down by the performances (all four principals are great) and by Wong Howe's magnificent camerawork.

Kurosawa plays most of it for laughs by expertly parodying the conventions of Japanese period action movies, but the tone switches to a magnificent vehemence in the heart-stopping finale.

The main problem remains the impossibility of subjecting a film that is fundamentally about landscape and history to the demands of such a coarse dramatic form.

The couple's battle to get off the bottle is harrowingly chronicled, so much so that you almost forget it's a Blake Edwards picture - his best by some margin, with a touching score by Henry Mancini.

The film sits somewhere between the bogus virtue of Kramer's The Defiant Ones and the poetry of Laughton's Night of the Hunter, combining racial intolerance with the nightmares of childhood, born out of Kennedy's stand on civil rights and Martin Luther King's marching.

Brando makes a total mess of his English accent, the romantic interlude in Tahiti goes on endlessly, and the visuals (perhaps the main point of interest in the movie) too often resort to travelogue vistas and picture postcard lighting.

Though far from Aldrich’s best, it still makes for an amusing and enjoyable romp, with Davis’s schizophrenic ravings deepened by the poignant awareness the director shows of loss, ageing and faded glory.

All in all, it's an appealing mix, even if the shifts in tone seem to unsettle cast and director alike. First-rate performances, though, especially from Fonda, as a wide-eyed Southern belle.

It’s a sensational piece of genre filmmaking: pacy, compelling, witty and cynical, it depicts, in unflinching detail, the beginning of the end for post-war American optimism.

High on noise, spectacle and heroism as the Allies invade Normandy, generally strong on performances and humour, but still over-long and laden with the usual national stereotypes.

Quietly touching and profound, it epitomises the youthful delight Varda always shows for the tools at her disposal and her sensitive and easeful way of expressing the sways and shifts of life, love and desire.

It's a stunningly impressive piece of work, typically (for Penn) deriving much of its power from the performances.

Stylish and fun, but the short story format denies Corman the stately, melancholy pace that distinguished his best work in the cycle.

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.

A war film is a war film is a war film... except that Siegel, brought into the project at the last moment when Steve McQueen refused to work with the scheduled director, toughened the standard war-is-hell screenplay into an extraordinary study of psychopathology.

Zestily performed and choreographed, beautifully shot by Robert Burks, full of standards like '76 Trombones' and 'Till There Was You', and endowed with a warming nostalgia for old-fashioned ways.

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.

Peckinpah's superb second film, a nostalgic lament for the West in its declining years, with a couple of great set pieces (the bizarre wedding in the mining camp, the final shootout among the chickens).

Sidney Hayers shoots the whole thing with an almost Wellesian flourish, and the script (by Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson) is structured with incredible tightness as the sane, rational outlook of the hero (Wyngarde) is gradually dislocated by the world of madness and dreams.

There is great sadness in ‘Jules et Jim’, what with the war, Catherine’s betrayals and the nebulous tragedy that is growing up, for those who can manage it but, after the whirlwind has departed, it’s the joy – the sense of plunging into life – that remains.

After Carpenter and De Palma, it may seem a little dated; yet Edwards' classical feel for pure cinema remains unalloyed.

Cocteau's last film is as personal and private as its title suggests, and it makes little sense for viewers unfamiliar with his other work.

Brooks' direction seems a little too stolid for all the sleazy, flaming passions.

A brave British melodrama from 1961, one of this country's first explorations of gay life on screen.

A brimming sense of life, in other words, gradually transforms the small talk into a richly devious portrait of humanity being human.

Another gem (given his consistency in style and subject, how could it not be? ); the atypically emphatic music alone disappoints. [06 Aug 2003, p.74]

There are no surprises in the direction, and Abby Mann's screenplay plays the expected tunes, but there's enough conviction on display to reward a patient spectator.

Marvellous one-liners, of course, and Cagney, spitting out his lines with machine-gun rapidity in his final film until his belated appearance in 'Ragtime', is superb (and superbly backed by a fine cast). But the targets of Wilder's satire - go-getting, up-to-the-minute, consumer America versus the poverty and outdatedness of Communist culture - are rather too obvious.

Although it’s impossible to fault the euphoric dance sequences and ultra-melodic tunes, the dramatic scenes linking the big numbers all fall flat and the illicit affair at the film’s core remains fatally underdeveloped until its fudged finale.

Presley escapes the GI Blues and takes a job with a Hawaii tourist agency in this innocuous star vehicle/holiday brochure. Lots of scenery and one tolerable song, Can't Help Falling in Love.

Now Breakfast at Tiffany’s is iconic in fashion circles and Holly Golightly seen as a proto-Carrie Bradshaw – a trailblazer for women who use their ovens for shoe storage. Re-released by the BFI, it’s as ditsy and delightful as ever – with charm enough to forgive it plenty. [Review of re-release]

A wonderful hymn to the last true era when men of substance played pool with a vengeance.

Far from being just another vehicle for Mifune, this belongs in that select group of films noirs which are also comedies.

Corman at his intoxicating best, drawing a seductive mesh of sexual motifs from Poe's story through a fine Richard Matheson script.

Strasberg’s doe-eyed dedication to her role and Douglas Slocombe’s brilliant black-and-white cinematography counterbalance the film’s increasingly ridiculous plot turns, which nonetheless have a crude, jaw-dropper effectiveness.

The nouvelle vague was already underway by the time Breathless arrived, but Godard truly codified it here, with his unconventional jump cuts, improvised dialogue and a score blending classical music with French pop.

The final screen outing for stars Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable, this is a sparky but rather shallow story of emotional frailty in the Nevada desert.

Everyone in this movie - adapted from a flummery stage comedy by Hugh and Margaret Williams - stands around like mannequins in Bond Street stores.

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

Zinnemann's customary care for detail pays occasional dividends, but the film goes on rather too long.

You don't get much explanation, and the overall plot may not withstand detailed analysis. But the atmosphere and pace are superbly handled, and the performances of the sinister, inhumanly intelligent 'children' never falter.

Once thought of as racy and adventurous in its treatment of sex, this turgid nonsense about a high-class whore with love in her heart has dated atrociously. Taylor hams away and Harvey in his debonair mood is distinctly unappealing, while the overall effect is too excruciating even to be unintentionally funny.

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

A smoothly efficient variation on the 'frightened lady' thriller.

The movie that confirmed Kurosawa's greatest strength, his innovative handling of genre.

John Osborne's quirky indictment of '50s stagnation still looks stagebound, despite extensive location shooting and the cool, inventive photography of Oswald Morris. Too many words, too many tantrums, too much kitchen-sink sentimentality; yet there are moments when this looks like a good film.

The antics of Sinatra & Co become rather hard to bear, and the evocation of Las Vegas as a neon nightmare may possibly be unintentional, since the film was made by Sinatra's own company as an extended advertisement for the Clan's shows there. The heist itself, though, is a superb piece of movie-making.

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

Tolerably gripping in its old-fashioned way, thanks chiefly to old pro performances from Tracy and March as the rival lawyers and ideologists, but rather let down by Kelly's inadequacy as the cynical journalist who is comfortably denounced as the real villain of the piece.

Perhaps to the relief of many, Lewis (in his bellboy character) remains entirely mute for most of the movie.

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.

It registers as a pretty hokey entertainment. But Peter Ellenshaw and Eustace Wallace's effects are put together with the studio's customary care.

The first of Corman's eight-film Poe cycle, and one of his most faithful adaptations. Price is his usual impressive self as the almost certainly incestuously inclined Roderick Usher who, having buried his sister alive when she falls into a cataleptic trance, becomes the victim of her ghostly revenge; but it is Corman's overall direction that lends the film its intelligence and power.

The quintessential New York movie – with exquisite design by Alexandre Trauner and shimmering black-and-white photography – it presented something of a breakthrough in its portrayal of the war of the sexes, with a sour and cynical view of the self-deception, loneliness and cruelty involved in ‘romantic’ liaisons.

There is much to admire: the vital performances, notably that of the dark-eyed Tatyana Samojlova as the left-behind Veronika; Sergei Urusevsky's beautifully composed b/w camerawork; the urgent crowd scenes and dynamic mise-en-scène. But Vajnberg's too pointed and occasionally gauche and melodramatic score is unfortunate, given the movie's overall subtlety and emotional restraint.

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.

Fine photography, but the script is a typically numbing affair, and the cast, aside from Peck and Meillon (whose part was considerably cut), seem totally out of their depth.

Its qualities are almost entirely abstract and visual, with colour essential to its muted, subtle imagery. Christopher Lee looks tremendous in the title role, smashing his way through doorways and erupting from green, dream-like quagmires in really awe-inspiring fashion.

With a blue and moody Mingus soundtrack and steel-grey photography, it's still a delight.

Frothily enjoyable, although in comparison with (say) the battle-of-the-sexes comedies of Hawks, it often seems complacent and shallow.

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

Widely underrated, probably because of its strong comic elements and a tour-de-force scene derived from horror movie conventions, Bergman's chilling exploration of charlatanism is in fact one of his most genuinely enjoyable films.