There's a boldness, confident stylisation, and genuine weirdness to the movie that totally escaped other post-spaghetti American Westerns, with a real sense of exorcism running both through and beyond it.

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.

The war scenes are extraordinary, although thrown in far too liberally; even better are the daft tableaux vivants which seem to comprise Archangel's only entertainment.

Beautifully shot and well acted (Meredith Salenger in a fine performance as Natty), there's a real sense of period, even if the film does occasionally become over-sentimental.

A '60s-radical alternative to the 'flying glass' action pic prevalent in Hollywood, the film is sustained by a personable ensemble who generously trade off each other rather than grandstand.

Certainly the best of the latter-day musicals in the tradition of Minnelli and MGM.

If the subject matter is bleak and bitterly serious, the tone throughout is darkly comic, while the precise imagery effortlessly conveys the tension, the claustrophobia, and the madness of the situation.

If it lacks the formal perfection of Rio Bravo and the moving elegy for men grown old of El Dorado, it's still a marvellous film.

Crowned 'The Worst Film Ever Made' at New York's Worst Film Festival in 1980, this deserves its niche in history for featuring the last screen performance of Bela Lugosi, as a ghoul resurrected by space visitors for use against scientists destroying the world with their nuclear tests.

Penn's film might seem an altogether ordinary foray into the world of international espionage were it not for his teasing examination of various concepts of 'family', a word much abused throughout to denote not only the Lloyds, but also the several murderous organisations out to destroy them. An uneven film, to be sure, but far more ambitious and intelligent than most spy thrillers.

There aren't many films which tackle the generation gap between middle-aged kids and their old folks with such unsentimental comic acuity - and Reynolds essays her best role in three decades with delectable good grace and charm.

Caton-Jones views all the characters with undisguised affection; the whole thing bubbles along nicely in a fresh, witty, unselfconscious manner, making you forget the dated Capra-corn message.

A cheap and efficient comic horror movie, it's funniest when its dialogue and characters' behaviour are at their most non sequitur.

Alda's skill is with witty, fast-talking patter and in coaxing fine performances from his actors (playing an extended family of gently caricatured New York types). The values are bollocks, but the film is fun.

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.

Ably welding dance numbers and plot, courtesy of light comedy director Potter, it overcomes its lack of '30s snap and crackle with lavish doses of elegance and charm to a tango or foxtrot rhythm.

The film's greatest moments of comedy spring from the bigamous Moore's escalating panic in the face of keeping two marriages together but separate, culminating in a double delivery in adjacent hospital wards of frantic delirium; Keystone cops meet The Hospital.

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

Visually, it's a treat, a perfect marriage of hi-tech graphics and the traditional Disney virtue of strong characterisation and colour. The script crackles with wit and life. Williams' Genie is matched by Freeman's malevolent Jafar, and by Gottfried as Jafar's wisecracking parrot Iago. The only disappointments are the wet Aladdin and his sweetheart Jasmine and five rather ordinary original songs.

The story is classic - a pair of childhood friends go their separate ways as adolescence gives way to manhood - the treatment pure Hollywood.

A relentlessly sadistic and worryingly amusing movie, which will entertain and offend in equal measure.

Though not top-notch Powell & Pressburger, an ambitious low-key wartime thriller that totally transcends any propaganda considerations, thanks to sharp characterisation and imaginative scripting.

With its bravura camerawork, fetishistic Cenobite designs, nerve-jangling soundtrack, and literate Peter Atkins script, Anthony Hickox's film is a worthy successor to Clive Barker's flesh-ripping original. Forget the disastrous Hellbound: Hellraiser II; this is adult horror to die for.

Despite producer Jack Harris' pooh-poohing of the 'political subtext' theory, rampant Commie-phobia pervades as the ever-redder blob sucks the life-blood out of every sacred American institution, climaxing in a truly marvellous scene in which the enemy within devours an entire diner, over easy, with a side salad and fries to go.

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.

In hindsight, it all looks like a rather tentative Hollywood essay at the race angle, but the actors do mesh together convincingly despite the obvious narrative contrivances, and debut girl Hartman's persuasive account of the everyday travails of the sightless is engrossing without overdoing the self-pity.

The film is finally too soft, but the performances are uniformly strong, the humour intelligently adult, and Brooks once again proves a pleasing alternative to Woody Allen.

It’s undoubtedly the consistency of the excellent musical numbers – from the opening ‘Oh, What a Beautiful Morning’ to the stirring ‘Oklahoma’ finale – that sustains the interest as two trios of lovers bicker and dally over their consummation.