A real mess.

Only Diane Keaton's performance counters the overall heavy-handedness.

At times deeply insightful, at others wholly crass, Rolling Thunder is a fascinating curio, the meeting point between realism and exploitation.

So here we have God's views on most things from TV to avocados, all enunciated in Burns' inimitably crisp'n'dry manner. Fun ultimately falters with some routine satire, but when the Devil's having such a time at the box-office, this comes as a welcome comic riposte from the other side.

Superb adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's novel Ripley's Game, with Hopper as her amiably cynical hero.

With his sharp eye for the bizarre and for vulgar over-decoration, it's always fascinating to watch; the thrills and spills are so classy and fast that the movie becomes in effect what horror movies seemed like when you were too young to get in to see them. Don't think, just panic.

Sticking quite happily to the level of parody, it's full of energy, good nature, and the gross-out humour of fairly obvious targets (the tits and bums of a sexploitation trailer; the festering stiff of a TV charity appeal for the dead). The central sketch is an excellent spoof of Enter the Dragon. Great fun for an undemanding night out.

There is some startling footage, but Anderson's direction dithers perceptibly, and finally opts for an unpleasant mish-mash of phony ecological concern and meretricious sensationalism. The ultimate indignity the beast suffers is to become a simple extension of Harris' threadbare macho image.

Parallel families, Lassie-style pet dogs who turn hunter-killers, savage Nature: exploitation themes are used to maximum effect, and despite occasional errors, the sense of pace never errs. A heady mix of ironic allegory and seat-edge tension.

Bad news indeed. A quite ghastly sequel to The Bad News Bears in which the subject's incipient sentimentality has been left to run riot, with all charm, humour and believability lost in the process.

A lame sequel to Connor's earlier Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptation, The Land That Time Forgot, which was at least occasionally lively.

Cornball mish-mash.

It's all drastically boring.

By the time Sorcerer gets around to its rain-soaked, rickety-bridge set piece, you’ll either be obsessed or fully checked out. Give yourself a chance to pick sides.

If the dolce vita-style intrusion is given distinctly Jacqueline Susann-like overtones by the rather dissociated dialogue in the English language version, Conversation Piece nevertheless comes across as a visually rich and resonant mystery, far more fluid and sympathetic than Death in Venice.

Superbly scored, beautifully designed by Boris Leven to highlight the genre's artificiality, and performed to perfection.

Within this spare plot, Sembene raises issues of obvious pertinence to modern Senegal, such as the tension between spiritual and temporal power, Princess Dior's renunciation of her role of victim to take decisive action, and village leaders who are only too willing to betray their Africanness to maintain the status quo.

It has sex objects for all tastes, instant fun, danger and boredom in unequal proportions, strobe-light climaxes, and Donna Summer in stereo. Furthermore, it does away with a storyline and dances on the spot for two hours, taking voodoo, buried treasure, violence and sea monsters in its stride.

Substantially recut by Boorman after his original version was derided in America, but it's still easy to see why New Yorkers jeered. Boorman completely avoids gore and obscenity, treating the original as a kind of sacred good-versus-evil text, and weaving its sets and characters into a highly traditional confrontation of occult forces.

Ozu's first film in colour, and he uses it sparingly. Subdued dress sense and domestic interiors are set against splashes of significant red (look out for the kettle!), representing the amaryllis which blooms around the autumn equinox - the perfect image for a film about transition.

Sombre and claustrophobic photography, an intelligent script, and Peckinpah's clear understanding of a working platoon of men, are all far removed from the monotonous simplicity of most big-budget war films.

The film uses the CB craze as a metaphor for lack of human communication, and proceeds in a somewhat elliptical manner, but the alternation of moments of black humour and funny-sad incidents lends it a considerable charm.

Richard Sale's adaptation of his own novel hints at something more intimate. His Hickok is haunted, ageing, and diseased, trapped and uncertain in his own myth. Because of this, the movie occasionally takes an interesting turn, but less often than it should, because J Lee Thompson's direction clings to the increasing number of action set pieces with all the relief of a drowning man clutching a life raft.

A few of his labyrinthine concerns and much advanced animation work (plus optical assistance from once-celebrated avant-gardist Jordan Belson) spice the thin conceit, but it's a doomed project.

None of the other recent apocalypse movies has shown so much political or cinematic sophistication.

Sturges turns in a tired study of Cherman and Oirish accents, and little else.

Unfortunately, all the major characters have a whiff of Hollywood artifice, largely because (as has happened too often before in his career) Frankenheimer gets carried away by their verbosity. But perhaps any Hollywood film giving the Palestinian case an airing deserves to be welcomed.

Disaster movie in which a converted luxury airliner laden with guests and art treasures is hijacked by terrorists and crashes into the sea near an oil-rig. The survivors then spend their time trying to overact their way out of the claustrophobic script, which threatens a death even more slow and painful than suffocation or drowning.