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.