You can't move these days for quality American TV dramas—Six Feet Under, The Badge, Boomtown, 24, the increasingly amazing Alias—so it says a lot for the enduring genius of David Chase's Mob epic that it remains the most compelling of the current generation of TV imports. Series Four was as frightening and funny as anything that preceded it, and was especially notable for its treatment of the darkening relationship between James Gandolfini and Edie Falco. The episode where Tony snuffs Ralphy is unbelievable.

The controversial director of Kissed, Lynne Stopkewich, throws the fearlessly versatile Molly Parker into another harrowing role. Here she's running a seedy Nowheresville motel, selling her body to guests and drifters. She wants out, and the latest stranger may have the ticket. But in this director's world, nothing's tender and most things are brutal. Mesmeric and coldly Lynch-like.

Magic spells, a crystal pendant and eco-friendly robots all figure in this animated new age fable from Hayao Miyazaki (creator of Spirited Away) as two children search for a legendary flying city. Not a patch on the director's later work, and the comedy material is tiresome; still, it's streets ahead of Disney, and the flying sequences are just incredible.

Al Pacino is in workaday Mad Mentor mode (see Donnie Brasco and Devil's Advocate) as the CIA talent scout who lures the brooding, intense™ Colin Farrell into the fold while director Roger Donaldson tries to rekindle memories of his definitive '80s paranoia thriller No Way Out by inserting a screamingly obvious twist into a 'mole in the agency' finale.

A handsomely filmed 1976 comedy adventure from a Wilbur Smith novel set in Africa during WWI, Shout At The Devil fails to register. True Blue Brit Roger Moore hooks up with alcoholid Lee Marvin, and they take on the German Navy. Explosions follow. Marvin hams outrageously.

The 2003 Oscar-winner as Best Foreign Language Film, this sees a German-Jewish family flee to a farm in Kenya to escape the rise of Nazism. Naturally, problems abound as the rural life turns tough, relationships disintegrate, locusts swarm and so do anti-Semites. Viewed through a child's eyes, the importance of each event is intensified, making for a visually impressive and emotionally testing experience.

This Korean thriller is arrestingly stylised, impeccably directed and occasionally very beautiful, but jeesh, it's nasty stuff. A deaf-mute tries to kidnap a rich man's daughter to pay for his sister's operation. Naturally, it all goes horribly wrong. The torture of a young woman with electrical cables and the blade attack on a family of organ traffickers are especially gruesome, but beyond that, there's a withering examination of urban alienation and loneliness at play.

With barely a nod to the notion of storyline, this is another loud, brash series of MTV sketches, big on energy, little on brain. Somehow the idea of three scantily-clad chicks getting along okay with each other is pitched as pop-feminist empowerment. Diaz, Barrymore and Liu kick ass and chew scenery; Demi Moore is freakish; the (great) soundtrack rides roughshod over everything. Candy floss.

Feature-length spin-off from the Japanimated sci-fi TV show about a group of bounty hunters in the late 21st century. Here, they're battling renegade bio-terrorist commandos from Mars and a nanobyte virus. Innovative ideas and gizmos a-go-go, and though a tad predictable, its energy keeps you watching.

John Carpenter was 24 when he shot one of the most influential films in movie history in just 20 days, on a budget of just over $300,000, for the apparently meagre salary of $10,000, a cut of the profits and his name above the title. Looking back, a quarter of a century on, it was probably the best deal he ever made. After a faltering opening run, Halloween quickly became a critically acclaimed box-office smash that went on to gross over $50 million and spawned a raft of sequels and an entire industry of mostly inferior slasher movies.