The trial scenes are scripted and played with electrifying skill, as every turn and twist is amplified through Close's emotions. But it is much more than a courtroom picture. These days it is almost unheard of for a movie to keep you guessing until the last frame, but this one does, partly because Marquand plays it so beautifully straight.

Whereas Spheeris' The Wild Side was weakened by sentimentalising its disaffected punk heroes, her second feature presents a tougher and more balanced view of teen violence; while we're allowed a glimmer of understanding into the murderers' feelings, we never indulge them with misplaced sympathies: these boys are monsters.

Leaden, xenophobic, and utterly stupid, it's far more offensive than Rambo and far less well executed.

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.

Splendidly shot by Sven Nykvist and with excellent performances, it's an agreeable puzzle which doesn't, thank heaven, come up with a solution to the meaning of life.

Graced with a throbbing orchestral score from Philip Glass and John Bailey’s luminous photography, this is appropriately monumental filmmaking.

Starting off as lurid, documentary-style melodrama before it settles into an over-extended and often risible cat-and-mouse chase, this witless pile of prurient sleaze is poorly paced and saddled with a predictable script, stereotype characterisations, and distastefully voyeuristic direction.

This ineptly combines lamebrain comedy and sci-fi adventure, two of Hollywood's most popular genres of the last decade.

It's hamstrung by leaden dialogue and the motley international cast - Python and the Grail are never that far away - but it's admirably unsentimental and by no means stupid.

It's all very humorous and engaging, if only for proving that American whodunits don't have to have car chases and brutality; and it has a wicked eye for the vacuity of middle-class good life and what it may conceal. Lots of feelthy girl talk, too.

A blasé Hanks redeems this string of sexist, racist, comic clichés with winning charm. It's funny.

Any film which features a dead, bald and very hungry punk lurching towards the camera screaming 'More Brains!' gets my vote.

Badham and scriptwriter Steve Tesich keep the syrup and scenery flowing along nicely.

Once again Cimino's ability to handle furious action set pieces is well to the fore: a shootout in a Chinese restaurant and a battle with two pistol-packing Chinese punkettes put him in the Peckinpah class. The connecting material, however, is by turns muddled, crass and dull, amounting mostly to Stanley's interminable self-justification.

It's a change to see young folk are more obsessed with technology than the promptings of the trouser department, but the gizmo-heavy hi-jinks (fun with helium, frozen gas and other science-class materials) do outstay their welcome.

Between shots of stunning mountain scenery there are paranormal breezes, unfeasibly bright night-lighting and buckets and buckets of maggots.

A farrago of cartoonish exaggeration (mouthfuls of fangs, razor-sharp talons and eyes like burning coals), knowing humour and '80s camp, it shouldn't even begin to work, and yet, strangely, it does, sort of, thanks to the assured handling of writer/director Holland, and two performances in particular - Geoffreys as Charley's pal Evil, and McDowall as the timid vampire killer.

As usual it is technically excellent, but the charm, characterisation and sheer good humour that made features like Pinocchio and Jungle Book so enjoyable are sadly absent.

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.