Sentimental comedies must walk a fine line between mawkishness and insipidity: although this one slips off the wire occasionally, a strong script, careful treatment and some spirited performances keep it aloft.

A hesitation in dealing fully with the central relationship, coupled with an over-reliance on slow-motion photography, finds the film losing momentum almost before it leaves the starting blocks.

Dennis Potter's remarkably intelligent transatlantic adaptation of his BBC serial turns the pitfalls of 'Hollywoodisation' into profit, now stressing the 'pennies' over the 'heavenly' symbolism by specifically locating Arthur Parker's grubby melodrama in the Chicago of the Depression, and culling his liberating daydreams from not only the era's popular music, but its even more culturally resonant musicals, recreated with both MGM opulence and biting Brechtian wit.

In fact, ruthlessly ironing out Berger's subtleties of tone in favour of a rumbustious Animal House collision between Belushi and Aykroyd, it becomes increasingly tiresome, with few funny moments to leaven the proceedings.

Disconcerting in its kaleidoscopic shifts in tone, it's nevertheless too absorbing simply to dismiss.

Two of Hollywood's best-loved veterans deserved a far better swan song than this sticky confection.

It's precisely its pretensions which make this a surprisingly agreeable cross of angst-ridden '70s road movie with Hitchcockian thriller.

Mad axeman action yet again, cravenly conformist in every department.

Harper proves she can sing, O'Brien proves he can't act, and Sharman films inventively, but fringe theatre material does not a big screen musical make. Rocky Horror succeeded in its spot-on sense of style, but here the style, like the whole concept of rock musicals, seems a decade out of date, bypassed by films like Quadrophenia which integrate music and story in a different way.

Mostly pretty silly and uncertain whether to be tongue-in-cheek, it has one or two good scenes and some intriguing hardware, including the Looker (Light Ocular Oriented Kinetic Energetic Responsers) disorientation gun.

It might be possible to extort money from Benjamin and Prentiss to forget you've seen this.

Maggie Smith and Alan Bates successfully personify the cold spirit that Rhys held to be pre-war England, but Adjani manages merely to reduce Marya's fatalism to spinelessness. The direction, intimate yet retaining a sense of distance, is true both to Rhys and to Ivory.

Riveting, exhilarating stuff.

Considering neither Bisset nor Bergen had ever shown the slightest acting ability before in movies, their performances in the Bette Davis/Miriam Hopkins roles in this loose reworking of Old Acquaintance are very capable.

Gruesome almost to a fault, but not quite, it emerges as an efficient shocker.

When it became obvious that the film's mix of cutesy sentiment and vague scariness wasn't working, the company ordered whole sequences to be rewritten, re-shot or re-edited, then imposed a stupid ending that explains precisely nothing.

Any notion that a topical social issue will be taken as seriously as it deserves is decisively scotched long before the thoroughly predictable romantic ending; but Paternity is difficult to actually dislike, largely because of its engaging duo of stars.

Even on the level of unintentional humour this fails to entertain: the mark of a truly dreadful movie.

Forget the story, 'cause there isn't one, but see it for the gory bits and marvellous gutsy make-up. Yech!

Straight-line conflicts, low-light visuals: the film's basics, its strengths, and its critical Achilles' heel are all those of the classic American male action movie.

The two Roberts (Duvall as cop, De Niro as priest) turn in potentially great performances, but are given precious little to work with.

Most of the humour on display in this would-be screwball comedy has an inanity which follows suit with this central conceit.

Although the direction is occasionally a little precious - with studiedly stylish tableaux accompanied by Ravel - Sutherland is suitably haunted and cold as the confused assassin, and John Alcott's superb camerawork, on location in an icy Canada and a leafy Suffolk, is a definite bonus. And there are some fine supporting performances, particularly from Warner, Hurt and, most memorably, McKenna.

Spacek herself is given free rein, and turns in all that you'd expect and more, including a number of marvelous little insights from her own Texas childhood. Something as slight as this could never have got off the ground without her, but she makes you glad it did.

The narrative, from a story by Peter Straub, juggles ambiguously - if not carelessly - with themes thrown up and better developed in The Turn of the Screw, Don't Look Now and Rosemary's Baby... But there is much to commend in Farrow's performance, complemented by Colin Towns' softly chilling score, which is more than can be said for Conti and Dullea.

This particular wet dream is wrapped in a vacuous blackmail plot (which enables the young hero to fantasise that he's f.cked Sylvia to death, and her to reveal her heart of gold) and padded with lots of horrible Adult Oriented Rock (Clapton, Rod Stewart, etc).

Amazing, though, what a competent director, cameraman and cast can do to help out a soggy plot. Tolerably watchable by comparison with the average Halloween rip-off.

An astonishing in-depth portrait of the interlocking worlds of police and hoodlum results, with no punches pulled and no easy solutions.