Soft porn from Columbia Pictures (let's name 'n shame 'em) without a single redeeming feature.

A justifiably angry film, fast and full of violent action, though there's plenty of humour too; and the lack of originality is amply compensated for by its manifest sincerity.

Hawn, atypically cast and supported by all-round excellent performances, proves that she can act. But still this bitter-sweet concoction is very much Demme's: not only in the warming celebration of friendship and community values (the unsentimental generosity extended towards the characters positively glows), but also in the assured handling of period, place, music and mood.

The first version played with moral dilemmas but reached only Bible-class conclusions. By '84 independent and liberated women can pay to see themselves represented as slutty, avaricious and brutal.

Rhetoric apart, the film offers some stirring entertainment, and a memorable ham sandwich from Richardson, allowed to steal the show as the grandfather in what proved to be his last film.

Very little seems to happen in this social vacuum, and none of it is memorable.

Part vigilante movie, part sitcom, part tearjerker, part cracker melodrama, it's redeemed by yet another of Garner's graceful, effortless performances.

Reiner's brilliantly inventive script and smart visuals avoid all the obvious pitfalls, making this one of the funniest ever films about the music business.

Cox's weird and wonderful first feature defies description, with a plot and characters at once grounded in the seedy reality of Reagan's America and effortlessly enhanced by flights of pure, imaginative fantasy. What distinguishes the movie is its offbeat, semi-satirical sense of humour, seamlessly woven into its wacky thriller plot. But there are endless things to enjoy, from Robby Müller's crisp camerawork to a superb set of performances, from witty movie parodies to a tremendous punk soundtrack.

A curiously indigestible phenomenon, like being forced to eat five courses of avocado by an overbearing dinner-party host.

Somewhere in the Hollywood hills there's a computer loaded with a software programme called BuildaStar. A hack punched in the script requirements for this intended star vehicle for Selleck: an action yarn pitting an American loner against evil Nazis, bent coppers, a sultry girl-friend; sardonic sex with a lashing of perversity and gratuitous nudity; dare-devil stunts and chases for excitement.

It does confirm Argento's dedication to the technicalities of constructing images - Grand Guignol for L'Uomo Vogue, perhaps - but you'll still end up feeling you've left some vital digestive organs back in the seat.

Amiable but half-baked remake of what was anyway one of Preston Sturges' least satisfactory comedies.

The jokes are firmly embedded in plot and characterisation, and the film, shot by Gordon Willis in harsh black-and-white, looks terrific; but what makes it work so well is the unsentimental warmth pervading every frame.

Traditional immigrant films from Hollywood (The Godfather?) end in fame, money and beautiful women for the inheritors of the new found land's promise; but El Norte gives us a vision of the downside of the American dream. The film's concentration on the plight of its young hopefuls, however, is done with much humour and compassion, so that the tragedy of its message is very bracing.

Predicting that we might soon weary of downhill action, this virtually plotless ski picture is decorated with hot tub frolics and a wet T-shirt contest.

Tarkovsky remains as much a metaphysician as anything else, and Nostalgia isn't an entertainment but an article of faith.

This lumbering, overwrought, and wildly self-indulgent adaptation of Isaac Bashevis Singer's frail short story is clearly cranked up with the full quotient of sincerity and conviction.

Obviously made on a TV budget, the plot is weedy, and the film is saved only by some neat stunts and the splendour of the Australian landscape.

Johnson may not quite have Lubitsch's lightness of touch, but he puts an excellent cast through their paces with great verve, and the charm is as potent as ever.

Hurt and Dennehy are excellent, as ever, but Marvin is badly miscast as a ruthless smoothie; and the film as a whole, while never less than involving, seldom generates any real suspense as it moves towards a curiously muffled showdown.

The real problem here is technical; Eastwood the director is far less sure-footed than he was with the likes of Play Misty for Me or The Outlaw Josey Wales.

A plummeting lift, seances, a spontaneous combustion set-piece and prophetic-of-doom photos are timed to keep us engaged, but never coalesce into a joined-up plot.

A shamelessly artless horror movie whose senseless story - a girl inherits a spooky, seedy hotel which just happens to have one of the Seven Doors of Hell in its cellar - is merely an excuse for a poorly connected series of sadistic tableaux of torture and gore.

The whole thing feel(s) more like a naughty snapshot than any artistic achievement.

Borden charts the explosive coming together of the women as they forge their own liberation, handling her story with audacity and making even the driest argument crackle with humour, while the more poignant moments burn with a fierce white heat.

A gentle, loving, noble, angry and heartrending film.

There are plenty of movies which seem to have been made by madmen. Possession may be the only film in existence which is itself mad: unpredictable, horrific, its moments of terrifying lucidity only serving to highlight the staggering derangement at its core. Extreme but essential viewing.