It possesses a mythic clarity, yet there's also a welcome complexity at work, in the vivid characterisations and the unsentimental celebration of community and collective action. The result is witty, astute, and finally very moving.

This sequel to House offers another blend of humour and horror, but the gags aren't particularly sweet, the chills aren't particularly spicy. On the whole an indigestible affair, which fortunately passes quickly through the system.

It is Depardieu who supplies the heart and soul of the film with a performance of towering strength and heartbreaking pathos.

The result is a well-meaning bore, which isn't sure whether to play it for laughs or to make a serious point, and ends up missing out on both fronts.

More of a clever comic parody than a jokey pastiche, this lively kiddies' horror pic delivers frights and laughs which are rooted in a sure and sympathetic grasp of Monster Movie mythology.

Back to the Beach is fun for a while, but its six-person writing team can't figure out a logical way to wind it all up.

Tiring stuff.

Between Lecce's illicit courtship and Reimers' consternation, there are some hearty laughs of a juvenile nature.

About as dreary as a summit conference in Belgium.

Abysmally uninteresting scenes of rival youth gangs hanging around on a pseudo-post-apocalyptic beach, intercut with apparently unconnected (and uninteresting) surfing footage, and occasional soft-core fumblings. Neither the 'female vengeance' nor the racial tension motifs succeed in raising even a glimmer of interest. Utter horse-shit.

Entertaining enough, but a pity they didn't draft in more of the Eisenhower context.

Roxanne is far and away [Martin's] richest film to date, lyrical, sweet-natured, touching, and very, very funny.

The wit is sharp . . . and the lament to times past, friendships gone and experiences lost is affecting.

The real mystery is what Schlesinger and Sheen are doing making this schlock.

While O'Quinn is effectively scary, one is left longing for Hitchcock's dark, daring wit and disturbingly amoral insights.

Spasmodically effective rather than bitingly funny.

The lunacy on view is strangely dreamlike, and no bad thing. It's only a pity the film actually tries to make sense. More abandon all round, and the result could have been a Z-grade cult classic.

Oldman is brilliant; Molina’s Halliwell less subtle; and the film’s dissection of cottaging quaintly amusing.

Coppola's meticulous direction, and some exceptional acting (especially from Caan) never fail to rivet the attention, there's a pervasive and worrying sense of the central issues being gently but undeniably fudged.

Witty, touching and perceptive as he contrasts the rural village and its strange but generous-hearted eccentrics with the harsher realities of the city, Hallström makes it a seamless mix of tragedy and humour.

The action is lean and tough, the body count huge, and the final shootout an obvious reprise of Peckinpah's finale. But where the latter's vision transformed The Wild Bunch into a savage elegy for the passing of the Old West, Hill can only duplicate its choreographed violence.

Plenty of pigeon-shit, superglue and squirting ketchup sight gags, plus the usual smutty verbal innuendo. Highlights again include Goldthwait's strangulated vocal ejaculations, a couple of Ninja movie naff-dubbing jokes, and a signposted life-saving gag featuring the chesty Easterbrook in a wet T-shirt.

What makes this hectic farce so fresh and funny is the sheer fertility of the writing, while the lives and times of Hi, Ed and friends are painted in splendidly seedy colours, turning Arizona into a mythical haven for a memorable gaggle of no-hopers, halfwits and has-beens. Starting from a point of delirious excess, the film leaps into dark and virtually uncharted territory to soar like a comet.

Using the same breathless pacing, rushing camera movements and nerve-jangling sound effects as before, Raimi drags us screaming into his cinematic funhouse. Delirious, demented and diabolically funny.

A first-person Faustian detective novel presents quite a problem to the screenwriter, and Parker's alterations to William Hjortsberg's Falling Angel slacken the cunning weave of strands.

Stylish and brutally violent, the film escapes the usual clichés of the ex-soldier fighting a war back home by virtue of Gibson's blue-eyed smile.

Borden's calculated dramatic reconstruction falters as one set of stereotypes is substituted for another. Wooden lines stand in lieu of dialogue, caricatures in place of characters.

This pitifully unfunny comedy has only two things going for it: its theme song, Starship's Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now, is a hit single; and it is short. A film about, by and for dummies.