Four-letter words and gags about periods fail to disguise the adolescent wish-fulfilment quality of script and direction.

As usual there are some incidental pleasures (among them a 'roo with its arm in a sling, and Scacchi continuing in her mission to spontaneously combust the male population of the planet). Against these, however, is a plot that goes AWOL in the interests of true love, and Roberts, as the kid from Coke, who is well on his way to becoming the world's worst actor.

What really lifts this into the stratosphere of heady entertainment is its dizzy wit and intelligence. The dialogue is deliriously deadpan, the story surreal but surprisingly convincing, and the wealth of references to movie and TV classics hilarious rather than mere smartass posing.

Miller unveils some marvellously original cinematic snaps (the lost city of the feral children; Master Blaster, the dwarf-powered giant; Thunderdome itself); and if the thrills and special effects lack a little of the punch of Mad Max 2, there's still enough imagination, wit and ingenuity to put recent Spielberg to shame.

Worst of all, there's a charmless brat prince for Sonja to take under her wing. Pap, and Fleischer - who at least brought a touch of humour to Conan the Destroyer - should know better.

There aren't many films we'd describe as perfect, but Robert Zemeckis's oh-so-'80s time travel tale fits the bill.

There are sufficient question-marks inserted to lift it out of the routine: Eastwood's preacher man seems to carry the stigmata of a ghost; and he arrives as the answer to a maiden's prayer. Furthermore, his care for the landscape puts him in the Anthony Mann class. It's good to be back in the saddle again.

Estevez and Nelson are as unappealing here as in The Breakfast Club, though in fairness they're hampered by a script that seems to despise its characters. So, by the end, will you.

Lifeforce is a near-impossible film to review, at once indescribably awful and hugely, brilliantly entertaining.

The movie's success lies in Huston's very sure manipulation of mood and tone, somehow connecting black comedy, tongue-in-cheek acting, heavy irony, and even high camp into a coherent story.

Here is the stuff of classic French farce - Marivaux rewritten Neil Simon-style - were it not that this game of love and chance offers no notable insights into the lust, gluttony, and other deadly boring sins of Middle America. Howell, the young star of The Outsiders and Red Dawn, evinces a certain ingenuous comedic flair. For the rest, the characters are rather less memorable than the Pepsi cans, Fruit Loops and other brand name junk foods looming large in the foreground of almost every frame.

Stellar stuff.

This demonstration of journalistic integrity sits uneasily beside the unscrupulous methods Travolta deploys in his health club story, and if that's the point, the movie certainly meanders towards it.

The body count is rising, Sly's pecs are blowing up, and Rambo himself is becoming more of a brand-name than a character, a mascot for masochism and murderous self-assertion.

The ideas here aren't nearly up to the scratch that writers Herschel Weingrod and Timothy Harris established in Trading Places.

This fizzing cheapo sci-fi actioner from no-frills genre specialist Band is a shameless amalgam of Blade Runner and The Terminator. So shameless, unpretentious and fast-paced, in fact, it's actually a lot of fun.

Mediocre action pulp.

It's deeply flawed by Reynolds' less than lustruous but screen-hogging performance, by a tortuous but dull plot, and by leaden direction. One for completists only.

Like all the best fairy-tales, the film is purely sensual, irrational, fuelled by an immense joy in story-telling, and totally lucid. It's also a true original, with the most beautiful visual effects to emerge from Britain in years.

All rather facile sword-and-sorcery stuff, of course, but at times very funny (special mention to McKern as a bumbling priest) and always beautifully photographed in the Italian Dolomites.

Adults forced to accompany three-year-olds to the movie would have had a little moment of satisfaction when the time came to shovel the Care Bear toys out of the house into landfill sites.

The look of the film certainly achieves the right rubble-strewn, monochrome period feel with precision and genuinely cinematic scope. Perhaps the greatest hurdle cleared, however, is the problem of incident. Radford's achievement is to have incorporated the impossible preaching and crazed ideas into the fabric with hardly any loose threads. The locations look very like modern Britain; and Burton at last found the one serious role for which he searched all his life.

Bogdanovich invests the story with warmth, generosity and considerable power.

The juxtaposition of head-spinning break dancing and mild martial arts (in which the fighters glow to show their level of mental attainment and nobody gets badly hurt) provides lots of whirling limbs, but the working into the storyline of a crook who wants to take over the nightclub to provide valuable exposure for his aspirant rock-goddess girlfriend seems lame indeed.

There is the usual gamut of silly voices and gang of goody-goody creatures, including a gluttonous green tiger, but the cuteness is kept to a minimum. The amalgam of fairytale, sci-fi and Greek mythology is exciting, the backgrounds dynamic, the music catchy, the pace furious: kids will love it.

Hurt is in good vicious form as the shaded hit man; Stamp once more wears a smile like a halo; and the prospect of approaching death is handled without too much metaphysical puffing and blowing. All in all, a very palpable hit.

The plot is minimal, but the film scores partly because of a high sense of fun, and partly because of the way Landis uses his LA locations.

The imposing Fiorentino helps adjust the gender balance, Modine gives his customary un-showy performance and Ponicsan tries to find a few fresh-seeming angles in his coming-of-age scenario. Still, it does cover awfully familiar ground.