Drawing a parallel with Gennaro's undercover isolation and hinting at a cautious affinity in a bravura sex scene, Landis brilliantly captures a carnal craving laced with blood lust and dangerous eroticism; but, regrettably, all too often the tone lurches from stylish suspense to smart-ass in-jokiness and silly slapstick.

It shows its age, what with indistinct sound, fluffed lines, quaint choreography, quainter songs, a stilted supporting cast and positively arthritic direction. But the Brothers' energy and madness is never in question: when the laughs come, they come loud and long.

In the final scenes, the film slides into a Hardyesque fatalism, with the loose ends tied up a little too neatly, resulting in an air of literary contrivance. It nevertheless succeeds, like the earlier film, in tapping the well-springs of one's emotions.

Less subversive than his earlier work; still hilarious, though. [03 Nov 2004]

Not one of the director's very greatest films on desire (see Letter from an Unknown Woman and Lola Montès for those), Ophüls' circular chain of love and seduction in 19th century Vienna is still irresistible.

Herbie and his plucky stunt drivers steal the show in this agreeable family entertainment.

It's a spectacular return to the shimmering, mesmerising deep-focus animation associated with Disney's classic period: a marvellous use of lighting to create atmosphere, dew-drops glisten from every tree, and the villains are as primally terrifying as cartoon villains should be. The choice of material (Robert O'Brien's novel Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH) is less fortunate, since it lacks the wonder of early Disney, and the mouse heroine is far too insipid and twee. It's still a pretty effective family film, though.

This intricate, intellectually satisfying and emotionally involving murder mystery risks falling between two stools. Neither an 'Alan Rudolph Film' nor a glossy star vehicle, it has a naturalistic tone, a conventional plot, measured pacing, and a serpentine narrative.

Despite some insipid characterisation and one or two lapses, things move along at a fair pace and there's a surprising plot all about property speculation in San Francisco. Can Grandma Steinmetz save her home from the grasping magnate Alonzo Hawk? The comedy is on the whole inventive, occasionally aspiring to almost surrealist heights.

Great fun, provided you disregard the spirit of the original as comprehensively as Disney did. More uneven is the story of bumptious schoolmaster Ichabod Crane and his nemesis the Headless Horseman. It's a trite, chocolate box picture of colonial days - until the Horseman shows up for one of those nightmare sequences with which Uncle Walt so relished terrifying his kiddie audience.

Screenwriter Amanda Silver gleefully exploits parental fears, and skilfully depicts the shifting loyalties, malevolence and escalating paranoia within Claire's household. But as the film progresses, malicious schemes and loony excesses are combined, with Hanson's self-conscious direction rendering one particularly sensational murder even more implausible.

Like a Thunder Road filtered through the perceptions of the '70s, it's an invigorating and touching movie.

A soap for the slack generation, that'll strike a chord way outside the confines of the New Queer Cinema.

While there's no doubting the sincerity of writer/director Gerima's film, one can't help sensing more than a little déjà vu in his account of the manifest evils of slavery.

Ford is up to par for the strenuous stuff, but falls short on the grief, anxiety and compassion, allowing Tommy Lee Jones to walk away with the show as the wisecracking marshal on Kimble's trail.

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.

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.

The rich vein of 'innocent' anarchy running through Burt Reynolds comedy showcases around this time is mined again to good effect as his Smokey and the Bandit persona transmutes seamlessly into the ace Hollywood stuntman of the title, and director Needham (an ex-stuntman himself) slips effortlessly into a lightweight satire of the movie biz and an almost Hawksian action-comedy of male-group professionalism.

With Monkey Business, their first screen original, the team cast caution to the winds, helped by a perky script and some lunatic sight gags.

The progression from mutual suspicion to friendship may not be revelatory, but the performances (Fishburne, Stewart, Beach) are lively and Sheen's direction assured.

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

Steve Tesich's script sometimes smacks of screenwriting classes, but Yates (who worked with Tesich on Breaking Away) easily accommodates these lapses with his unfussy, medium-fast direction. Indeed, he guides his cast around the furniture better than most. The result is an enjoyable entertainment whose box-office failure was thoroughly undeserved.

Richard Benjamin directs the smartish script and the chaotic tomfoolery quite brilliantly; but all concerned mishandle the soppy section where O'Toole gets misty-eyed about his discarded daughter. Still, the pace picks up for the magnificent comic climax.

The comic byplay between opposites - everyday guy Spence and haughty Kate - is a consistent pleasure, even if its sexual politics are ambiguous.

Light, cheery and shading into darker areas for the climax, it's fun.

Its erotic content now seems tame indeed; but the grotesquely caricatured performances and the evocation of the baking, dusty, indolent homestead make for witty and compelling viewing.

Fred Zinnemann's feature debut, a neat, unpretentious and really rather enjoyable whodunit about the hunt for the killer of the town's crusading mayor.

Happily the cameo lowlife, an excellent manic beaver, the famously villainous Siamese, and classic songs rescue the film from dumb animal sentiment.