From the pitch-perfect characterisation to John Williams’ soaring score to the magical effects, it’s every bit as good as you remember. [2002 re-release]

This is hands-down the best Trek flick made so far.

Most importantly, The Long Good Friday features one of Bob Hoskins' best performances, as Harold Shand, the patriotic mobster who's heading for a fall. Without this towering central performance, it's likely that The Long Good Friday would have been sidelined as "that dodgy '80s gangster film" years ago.

Wonderfully whimsical children’s fantasy about a young boy’s journey through the space-time continuum in the company of six cantankerous dwarves.

The three leads are on outstanding form, while Jack Nitzsche's score shimmers with foreboding.

A grandiose Western based on the Johnson County War of 1892, when cattle barons brought in mercenaries to massacre immigrant settlers, it suffers badly from narrative incoherence. But there’s a grand romantic sweep to the action (enacted by a solid cast including Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken and Isabelle Huppert), the set-pieces are majestic and its disenchanted view of the American frontier myth still rings ominously true.

De Niro is brilliant, as are the then-untried Pesci and Moriarty, and Scorsese pulls out all the tricks (slo-mo, visceral sound effects, twitchy editing) for a truly extraordinary modern classic.

The Shining buzzes madness and malevolence from every frame.

Madness and death hang over Herzog’s Wagner-scored vision like a black cloud, while Kinski adds much poignancy to Dracula, the lonely immortal.

Francis Ford Coppola went into the jungle to make his surreal ’Nam epic and almost lost his mind during one of the most protracted and accident-prone shoots in history. Thankfully the hallucinogenic results justified the means.

If you've never seen Alien on the big screen, this is a must-have cinematic experience that will leave you shivering and adrenalised. And even if you have seen it, the same holds true. It really is that damn good. [2003 re-release]

Largely lensed in the window between sunset and nightfall, it’s a magic-hour masterpiece. [26 Aug. 2011]

Gena Rowlands gives one of her bravest, most startling performances here, waging guerilla combat with the demands of a play she can’t abide, wrestling with demons so real they kick her in the teeth.

Drags like an arthritic snail.

It's a warm, tender movie underpinned by the gentle tug of melancholia.

A brilliantly played, stone-cold '70s classic.

It’s ambitious, artful and unique. As for Bowie… what a star, man.

Watch this 4K restoration of Scorsese’s ’76 masterpiece, its colours a seeping virus, and marvel that he originally planned to shoot on black-and-white video.

Between the vast exteriors and candlelit interiors, the expressive authority of Kubrick’s direction is breathtaking.

Playing the mental-hospital firebrand who rebels against monstrous Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher), Nicholson seduces in an anti-establishment classic with a gut-punch exit.

The greatest trick he pulls is making you think he’s not genuine: beneath befuddling, bracing digressions on Picasso, Howard Hughes, biography, confidence tricks, growing beards and “girl-watching” lies a searching interrogation of ideas of authorship.

Robert Altman tore up the filmmaking rulebook in the mid-'70s with this satire on the American country and western scene, for which the cast composed their own songs. It juggles the fortunes of two dozen characters and presciently explores how politics has become another form of showbusiness.

The plotting is elliptical and the sweep intoxicates, but the contrast between De Niro’s meditative Vito and Pacino’s soul-starved eyes brings piercing focus to Coppola’s resonating study of corrupting power.

A truly cerebral fear flick, edgy, brooding, packing the power to freeze your bones and claim your sleepless thoughts at two in the morning.

The story itself is more satisfying, while the power of the jolts is boosted by the immaculate sound and sneakily effective subliminal extra frames. See it and shiver. [2000 re-release]

One of the most dynamic and radical British films ever made.

Refracted through Holly’s naive, emotionally flat narration and Malick’s poetic visual style, this familiar tale is transformed into something strange and oddly beautiful. [29 Aug. 2008]

It’s strong on the details of itinerant life, and allows plotting to take a back seat to character.