Beaches. Dismiss it at your film education's peril. It's smart, it's funny and it ain't no chick flick.

Beaches is an intelligent and touching lifelong story of two women who liked, loved and hated one another right up to the bitter sweet end.

There are so many gifts along the way that still puts this out front, and I'd argue it's Midler's, Hershey's and Heard's best film in all of their canons.

This was so beautiful to watch and executed with aplomb.

What a great ensemble piece that really had you rooting for the supporting roles.

Half a star removed for dodging the impactful ending.

Nora Ephron pulled off such a remarkable feat with this classic.

Sleepless in Seattle borrows from and then handsomely re-serves An Affair to Remember with a sprinkling of Brief Encounter. And what's genuinely curious is how Nora manages to keep you engaged with two movies going on at the same time, crossing over twice, once in the middle and finally at the end. When Tom Hanks sees Ryan for the first time across a busy road, Meg becomes genuinely spooky, like a spectre ready to meet him in his future and that's because we've witnessed two separate lives up to this moment, but it's Hanks's eyes that we see it through. Baffling really.

Yes, it's a little rushed at the end to give you that sugar hit you require, but, arguably, no one has done the US rom-com better since 1993.

Props to Rosie O'Donnell and Bill Pullman for imbuing the supporting roles with such depth and heart.

Hmm. I went to this as a fellow Gen X encouraged me to, but I'm not so sure.

I get that it's probably the strongest in a while, but I'm tired of mediocre retreads of incredibly successful legacy series being praised when they're not really bringing anything new to the table apart from maybe some 21st-century style. And that's not good enough.

The first three Alien films are individuals in their own right with bold new takes, coherent screenplays and sophisticated actors; all are brilliantly executed, but, by the time Resurrection came along, it was evident that Alien had probably had its day.

The never-ending cash-ins that have shunted up against the parental series since are never truly good enough, but I DO hope we one day figure out how to really update, upgrade, and continue a brilliant series that was always a bit more sophisticated than its peers.

Until then, we're just going to get Final Girl Ripley retreads running around dark corridors trying to kill the alien while the mad synthetic tries to save them.

This was better than I expected.

Palance, despite possessing the most sardonic looks ever, embues the ripper with such a gentle quality, you nearly understand why he's doing what he's doing.

Great stuff, plus there's a lot of skill, care and attention gone into the filming of this.

Just inject this into my veins.

Lenny at his most beautiful, Virginia's arrival, Bud Cort as the egotistical computer, Moroder on the keys, and, well, you've got me. This film is 80s pop heaven.

With hundreds of iconic pop videos under his belt, Steve Barron's style was always going to be born from and aimed at the MTV generation of that neon decade. What's curious is that four decades later, it still strikes so many contemporary chords; it's almost uncomfortable, especially when 'Edgar' takes over Miles's life to the point of micro managing his health, wealth and social life for him without permission.

Electric Dreams is pure montage with enough to engage you. It's horizontal red blinds with futuristic block graphics and breakdancing.

The eighties really were cool, eh?

The Abyss arguably contains Cameron's most legendary and unforgettable scene. If you know, you know.

This movie kind of sits in the film industry's sweet spot. It was made during the advent of CGi, just before it drunk the Kool Aid, and it's right before James's other waterlogged hit ate everything up, including his future ambitions.

TA mostly works as an action film and not a sci-fi one, as James keeps the aliens so veiled we never truly get to engage with them, but it doesn't really matter as the acting and action are immense. Mary Elizabeth and Ed are just the oddest pairing, but by God do they chime, and The Abyss has one more thing going for it: it's the one film where we actually want Michael Biehn to die.

See it as a forgotten 'masterpiece'

Meh.

I wanted this to be so much better than it was, 'cuz Madeline and Aidan are trying really hard, but unfortunately the writer (and/or the director) can't quite get it over the line.

The problem is in the conceit, in the concept.

Good idea, bad execution.

In defence of Cocktail...

This film was made for eighties tweens who dreamed of leaving suburbia and moving to the big city. It's fun, silly and if you squint really hard, it's a little bit like a Manhatten set Romeo and Juliet.

Cocktail is Tom at his height, but arguably it's Elizabeth Shue that keeps this film and Cruise himself anchored, and possibly dodging the car crash vibes that are to come (Days of Thunder).

Shue is a non-traditional co-star for Tom, but she nails it. She's good at stroking his ego and is more than a match for his sometimes bullish instincts, and then you have Bryan Brown as sort of odd pop up Peter Stringfellow who dishes out crap rules for life, but has no real reason to be in the movie. But that's good too, as it's just so odd, it works.

Yes, its a tad episodic with the obligatory 80s montages, but, hey, Cocktail is sweet, colourful, and it introduced the word 'Flugelbinder' into the lexicon.

I never really clicked with the Nolan film, but this was incredible.

This, while epic in nature and beautiful to watch, is one of Lanthimos's most unreachable pieces. It's got all the hallmarks, but it's pretty sprawling.

Having said that, it kept me occupied, and I walked away thinking it's discussing the dilemmas of remaining single when you are more than happy with this status and what happens when you compromise and partner with the wrong person, but that that's better than being alone.

Picking out one fault... He's often trying to resolve the absurd in this one, so when he begins to attempt to do this, you start to look for logic where there is none.

This is SUCH a wonderful, haunting, ethereal, mythical, socially conscious film; it's almost like watching a public information short against social housing projects and the concrete madness they can sometimes conjure.

With stellar performances from Virginia Madsen, Tony Todd, and older-than-their years turns from DeJuan Guy and Vanessa Estelle Williams, Candyman is still a beaut. Add in Philip Glass's biblical score, and you've got yourself a faux religious messianic killer on your hands whose going after anyone who doesn't believe in him.

Candyman is a warning to anyone who doesn't believe in urban legends and a reminder that the power of communities can conjure a hero... or an anti one.

Beautiful stuff, and proof that movie making 'formulas' don't need to be used on every occasion. You just gotta keep us occupied.

Thank God Swinton didn't get on set with one of her wigs.

Two takeaways...

It's difficult to root for a mass murderer, and it's difficult to care for two-dimensional teens.

In A Violent Nature hasn't really reinvented the wheel with its over-the-shoulder of a killer thing as Halloween II already did it, but it's fair to say no horror film has ever been this committed to doing it for a whole film.

If I wasn't such a horror nerd and thirty years younger, I'd probably be all over this, but it's meant for a generation who think they've reinvented the wheel, so good luck to them.

Last thought: frustratingly, It's still repeating Friday 13th's rather dull, stubbornly repetitive formula, so no matter what each death looks like, they just become predictable and way too easy without any sort of decent rebellion.

The makers are interested in playing with the form, not improving the genre.

I think The Lost Boys may be the quintessential 80s movie. It's got sunsets, rock music, way too much leather, montages, booby traps, and there's nothing a kid with a BMX won't try to solve. In fact, it's f*cking audacious.

TLB has so many hobs on the stove, it's a wonder that Joel served up such a tasty film as this. Not only does it update the vampire lore and arguably pave the way for Buffy, but it also manages to serve up a brilliant ensemble piece, some pretty brutal deaths AND extremely funny/quotable lines.

The Lost Boys, made in a time when Kiefer Sutherland was going to be the dark Tom Cruise, and Corey Haim was still with us.

Watching One Hour Photo again, I can see why it never got into my head. Yes, it's fun watching Williams play against type, but it's all a bit off target.

There are quite a few curveballs, one being the inserted scene whereby the father is accused of not being present in the marriage, thus setting up Sy's bizarre revenge plot, and the other being a seriously flawed editing decision in the closing minutes. And don't get me started on the badly handled 'My motivation was my traumatic childhood' speech at the end. Insulting, really.

OHP is trying to escape itself all the time. It's giving off all the regular deranged stalker signals, but at the centre of it is Robin's nuanced performance and the wicked production design trying to elevate things, but unfortunately the whole thing isn't complex enough to contain them.

Case in point: Trent Reznor was hired to do the soundtrack but was replaced by two dudes who do something with generic sounding lullabies.

Anyway, tick. Mostly like watching a photo develop only to realise it's out of focus, just like you suspected it would be.

This is the only Carpenter I never bonded with.

I literally have not seen this since the eighties, so it's a curious experience to go back to it.

The pros: good to spot the regular Carpenter ensemble, who are not B-listers per se, but more alt-listers, crazy enough to follow Carpenter anywhere, knowing full well they're probably going to get maimed by a Halloween maniac/mask or attacked by a mysterious fog at some point.

The music is another brilliant plus for this film. Not only is it classic Carpenter, but it's got Howarth's more accessible tones all over it.

Cons: It's mostly like dress-up. And not in a cool way. I actually think it's aged badly, unlike its far superior peer Mad Max. Also, who cares about the president. It's all a bit down market Blade Runner. The storytelling mechanisms are all there, but you can really see them, so...

Anyway, tick.

The folklore of EFNY is bigger than the experience of watching it.

This is a nifty little thriller.

With a little distance from when I first watched it and a lazy Monday night brain, this gripped me much more than I thought it would.

In 2007, Fracture's tones were too close to Hannibal Lecter for me, but now, with Ryan on such a career roll and Hopkins still at it, this was so much fun to revisit that time when the two of them jousted away 17 years previous.

Yes, its a bit convoluted with lots of useless threads, but the lads are pretty memorising, so whatever.

I wasn't sure this chimed with me twenty years ago, and now I can see why.

Yes, it's sweet and has a few little laughs here and there, but it's mostly just Greek hating jokes that run out of road pretty quickly as the writings not sophisticated enough. Everything operates behind vague ideas and clichés, so nothing ever really manifests.

Now THIS wouldn't be made today... Or maybe it would, but as a season finale in a rush to wind up the storylines on a new show that's been hastily cancelled after just one season

Amy 3 was technically a load of bull, but my older eyes can now see what they tried to do, so technically, it should be applauded.

The premise that reporters want to debunk the myths around the house is quite fun, especially when one of them then moves in. There's tight enough direction, with some really committed performances, so it's better than a two-star, straight-to-hell video episode.

Ah, 3D films watched without the glasses always make you feel they see you.

Rewatching this made me see why the latest one doesn't really work.

The new one softened Lydia, Delia, and arguably Beetlejuice himself, but really, in the original, they all worked because of Adam and Barbara.

Erasing that energy, that centre, that moral compass made me realise that the peripheral characters of Beetlejuice weren't interesting enough to hold Beetlejuice Beetlejuice together.

Continuing my early nineties, neo noir vibes, this is one I hadn't seen, and it's pretty good.

I think I'd stayed away from it as I'm not a fan of Ray or Kurt as they're both a little odd, but suffice to say, Liotta absolutely nails this.

A terrifying 60 percent, with the rest frustratingly ticking the finale boxes whereby the women are powerless sex objects and the men play around with good cop bad cop.

NASA couldn't build this type of plot even if they wanted to, but Sorkin can, and he knows how to pull it off.

This is ultimately Pullman's film, a regular Joe actor we're always gonna root for. Yes, Kidman seems to finally find her place in Hollywood with Malice, but Alec Baldwin is no match for her efforts, and so their dynamic kinda phuts out.

Anyway, this is two Bill Pullman films in one which feels a bit odd, but it's worth the ride.

Anne Bancroft in anything.

Nothing was ever going to top the original, as it defines the stalker genre to this very day, but Halloween II is an admirable attempt to continue it's legacy while creating it's own, and a lot of it really sticks.

H2 is like watching an art installation. Time is weird, there's long periods of silence, and while everyone else in the town is freaking out about the slain teenagers from the first film, Myers is in a new narrative, just across the street in the hospital, with lots of medical staff lining up to be butchered.

I'd never seen a sequel carry on the same night in real time before, so I like this one second best.

There's some great stuff in this, and you can see Bergman' s taste for character study marching on, but I'm not sure it's a complete experience. In fact, it's always operating behind a haze of concepts that don't seem to play out.

Yes, there's some killer lines, but I wanted more restraint rather than this much sobbing. Maybe it's just aged badly.

'Don't cry, nearly cry' goes the old adage - it's much more interesting.

This is one of those forgotten sequels that is more fun than the original. It's not better, but it's more than a worthy opponent to its prequel.

A2 is mad, and director, Damiano Damiani obviously knew how to pull off a psychological horror because this one is intense. It's also evident that his artistic choice was to make every scene uncomfortable, haunted, or narrative-led. The trick he also pulls is that this film should not be this good, but it is. In fact, it's one of my all-time favourite horrors.

Yes, it owes a lot to Friedkin, but its individual voice is strong enough, and Lalo Schifrin's score elevates it even further.

'Take off your top.'

'What?'

There are some remarkable visuals in this, and in any other hands, The Fury would be even more of a hot mess than it is, but, no matter, it's still a curious film that's worth maybe just one watch.

It's been a good decade since I'd seen this, and although I know all the moves, it was so great fun to take another spin around the floor again with this game changer.

It's easy to forget T1's impact AND the world in which we all lived in while viewing it. Every news outlet was predicting nuclear war within a decade, and tech really had started to infiltrate so much of our lives, and Cameron knew it.

The Terminator, in some ways, is almost pre-Cameron as its sequel eclipses it; Aliens proved he was something really special; and the deftly executed 'The Abyss' paved the way for his obsession with water. It's just a shame he drank so much CGi Kool Aid later on; otherwise, we'd still have the restrained genius that's on display here.

The Terminator is rough, evil, urgent, and terrifying, and despite being 40 years old, it's not ready to be retired yet as it can still dance the dance. If you look carefully, you can see the crew united on every shot, trying to make it all happen live, in real time, on screen.

And they so did.

I have a massive soft spot for this movie as Goldie got to show off her 'serious' acting chops, and it was a joy to witness someone so funny turn so sad. To add to the glee, the script is decent and the director knows how to tighten the screw; albeit in a nuanced fashion.

Yes, its ending is very post-Fatal Attraction, but this film is a decent, haunting thriller with some excellent stuff on screen.

Reality Bites and I never really clicked.

The film, mostly about rich kids thinking they're poor whilst having the luxury of turning down a job at Gap, mostly grated on me. Sure, Ethan and Winona are luminous together, but ultimately it all felt like well trodden ground, and the UK already had This Life, which was ten yards ahead of this.

Anyway, watching it again, I can see why it hit, but curiously, it's a bit post-90s cool, despite being released in the thick of it.

A bit like Stiller himself. There's just one setting here.

I was all over this as a kid, and going back to it now has been wonderful to see how much I remembered and what I remembered.

It's not only the rather trippy plot that's stuck with me, but the buttons, colours, suits, and futuristic tools that are pretty standard for us now that have been emblazoned on my mind (the microphones and x-ray scans!)

Anderson's world is always a delight to visit, especially the live action stuff, but this one is a design marvel, and it was great to stumble across it again. Ironically, his use of models now makes my eyes spin as I no longer possess the skills to spot a practical prop thanks to today's movies relying so heavily on CGi, but that's why it's been so much fun to go back to analogue to observe the efforts to trick the audience's eye.

Watch it for the real-size futuristic cars.

It pains me to grade this so low, as twenty-one-year-old me would probably give it four stars.

If you back away for a moment, it's useful to remember that The Bodyguard was quite the project. It was Whitney's first film, and as one of the biggest pop stars in the world, the pressure must have been immense. Costner was at a peak, and we had another case of the music being bigger/better than the actual film, almost hazing us into handing over our cash. Houston absolutely pulls it off, and yes, it's a first jaunt, but she shows real conviction here. Whereas her more desperate to become an actor contemporary, Madonna, could only really offer performative gestures towards acting as long as it preserved her image, Whitney was more than happy to challenge her good Christian girl persona. Arguably, Kevin's the one out of water here. He's playing an absolute middle of the road security guard opposite someone who's more than famous than him, but he hunkers down and delivers Frank in the only way it could be delivered: Frankly.

Anyway, this film was an event, and 33 years later it's a tad episodic with some truly decent moments, but it's not really engaging enough.

The Bodyguard is like watching one big trailer. You drink it in, but you're not quite being shown everything.

I'm not sure why it's taken me so long, but it was worth the wait.

Two take aways:

- I'm glad I wasn't actually raised by privileged hippies.

- And Ben Wishaw should've been born in the 50s in preparation for this film.

The issue with this, and many other rehashes of 80s and 90s movies, is that they try to make it relevant to the younger audience members at every turn, thus betraying and arguably excluding its original fanbase.

F*ck the kids and just make a continuation of the story for the original youths who are now the grown ups.

Meanwhile. This.

Longlegs looks good, but it's very well trodden ground. Like Hereditary, it's got so much going for it, but it never really escapes its own initial ambitions.

LL is Clarice Starling using Will Graham's deduction skills to hunt the zodiac killer. There are the obligatory jump cuts and some great visual decisions, but that's only where this film is going: towards a visual auteurism and not towards being a truly original, 21st-century horror film that conjures its fear via the plot. Case in point: if you have to explain your film at the end via a narration, you have not been lining your ducks up in a row for the big finale.

Note: I don't think Nicolas Cage has ever fully recovered from shooting that little girl in Kick Ass and so we're basically watching his career spiral. It's great.

Tobe Hooper was the original director on this, which explains its classy look. The producers replaced him, which explains it's incoherence.

The Dark looks good, but is a very odd affair. So much so, it's practically avant-garde.

Costner's arrival still really holds up.

Was never really sure about the ending.

This was better than I remembered.

Phil Collins was better than I remembered.

Julie Walters was as good as I remember.

It had me at 'Soundtrack by Tangerine Dream.'

This feels like a decent episode of "ChiPs," but inside it is a De Palma movie dying to get out. All of the actors went on to better things; it's just a shame that the director didn't possess the know-how back in '84 to weave them, and this interesting take on the JFK murder all together.

If William Friedkin was British and made horror films with only 500k.

It's always fun to discover someone's back catalogue, and Pete Walker's is quite the find. Often billed as a British Tobe Hooper, I'm finding his films to be totally nuts, but that they are so well put together, they make some Hammer films look like kiddie flicks.

Glad to finally witness the legendary conviction of Sheila Keith noted to be the female Boris Karloff.

This was a real treat.

Pretty tight thriller with tones of Hitchcock. Amazing camera work too that keeps your imagination rolling over and over, concealing the killer until the last moment.

Having grown up with Red Setters, I was always gonna lay down for this one.

It's classic 60s Disney fun, with sumptuous colours that don't really exist.

Grab a hot chocolate and a blanket 'cause this is dozy fun.

I've always been super conflicted over Prince of Thieves. On the one hand, it looks great, and it has a very honest swashbuckling theme running right through it, but on the other, it will never surpass ITV's Robin of Sherwood. Arguably, nothing ever will.

Placing the legendary small screen version aside though, Prince of Thieves looks beautiful, it flirts with Errol Flynn's legacy rather well, and it's not afraid to shoot people in the eye with flaming arrows and show Marian's attempted rape. Throw in the brilliant witch, Mortiana, and you've got yourself a mediaeval movie two steps away from being a glorious Hammerstein musical. It's stunts are pretty cool, there are some really neat battle shots and the set up of hanging six merry men at the end is so brave. I remember gasping in the cinema when the stool is kicked from beneath the child thief, Wolf

While this is all well and good, POT suffers from mixed messages. Costner is miscast and American; Rickman is the baddie, but we love him, and the outlaws themselves feel like lost opportunities. Much like the film itself.

It's all just kind of 'OK', with a few really thrilling moments. Similar to Kevin's career.

One Dark Night is a genuine gem, an authentic video nasty and it punches way above its weight.

When you read up on it, it's one of those moments when a frustrated director (Tom McLoughlin), having got nowhere with the Hollywood system, decides to take matters into their own hands.

It's a bit creaky here and there, most notably with Adam West not quite sure how to act natural, but the premise of a girl having to sleep in a crypt when the audience knows there's an undead guy with telekinetic powers just dying to be reborn, is pretty engaging when so many other horror makers would've just chucked her inside shouting 'And it's haunted!'

There are two films going on at once here. The sorority initiation, the other about a dead dude who possesses tonnes of power, and they collide very well. The last twenty minutes were legendary in my house as I'd watch them over and over, trying to figure out how they got so many corpses to float around a mausoleum.

ODN has reams of fans, all who probably discovered it via the pirate system in the eighties, me included, and so it quite rightly lives among video nasty folklore. McLoughlin's direction is so creepily choreographed it adds a whole other level of impending doom, it's just a real shame he didn't get/take any other decent shots at the target.

Anyway, if you like the Phantasm series, this is a decent partner piece.

If you ever want to observe how Hollywood imposes its often juvenile theories on what makes an excellent film play out, watch this, then it's remake by the same director.

This was cute and simple enough. Like watching a faded 1940s postcard for 75 minutes.

Ah, 75 minute films. I miss those.

It's easy to dismiss this one, but montages aside, it's a discreet representation of a young woman's journey towards her ambition.

Flashdance is Adrian Lyne's second feature, and already the ambitious dark tones we see in Fatal Attraction and 9 1/2 weeks are present.

Jennifer Beale is a real find; the dancing is immense, and with Giorgio Moroder in charge of the tunes, Flashdance deserves its place in the MTV generation's cannon.

Note: it won't survive using today's cultural criticisms.

What a bizarre treat to go back to this.

Tootsie is an actor's film in so many ways, and this is why it jumped into my brain back in the eighties.

Hoffman is an absolute delight, somehow looking like someone else in a wig rather than him in makeup. Teri Garr is in full Garr mode, Murray is Murray, Lange is as unusual as ever, and to top it all, the film questions the treatment of women in a masculine space.

A silly, harmless romp that keeps you on your toes.

If this were an episode of The Waltons, it'd be at number one on a top ten best episodes ever list. As a film, sure, it's got Spacek, Roberts, Shepard and a young Henry Thomas all going for it, but its world is too small to house such big ideas.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Friedkin's career is not as great as we think.

Yes, he made two massive game changers, but after them, he, arguably, dished out some pretty half-baked ideas... With a few interesting efforts along the way. His career is something to learn from but should also serve as a warning.

The problem for directors to solve (and the film industry?) is that when they create something like The Exorcist or Sixth Sense, they must then be protected from this massive shot in the ego they receive because if they don't keep their eye on the creative ball, it's going to be feast or famine. With Spielberg it was feast after feast; with Friedkin it's unfortunately a case of diminishing returns.

Rampage is an odd film. It's subject matter (based on a true story) is interesting enough, but it feels like William is phoning it in, so what you get is something that should really be on the Hallmark channel, not the big screen. There's a bizarre creative decision running through the whole film whereby everything is filmed from far away so when you do finally get a close-up on an actor's face, you realise what's been missing. Unforgivable, TBH.

To add to my controversial thoughts, William is not not not a writer either. Biehn does what he can, but the words are just tatty exposition ('I want', 'I feel', 'We must'), so what you get are actors forcing out one-liners with tonnes of meaning behind them, when really, that's the lamest type of acting. He's just not a good enough writer to pull off the themes in this piece.

Anyway, TICK, but, UGH.