National Lampoon’s Animal House

In recent years John Landis' frat-boy farce has had much to answer for, its legacy spawning a glut of imitations with twice the gross-out factor but half the humour. The original, now 25 years old but still rampantly immature, has real comic gusto, and allowed the late, great John Belushi to belch out a memorably madcap performance. Set in 1962, it asks us to root for the scruffy, skiving outsiders (the term "slackers" still hadn't been coined) on a campus ruled by the monied, suave elite.

Identity

Entertaining thriller from James Mangold, only slightly marred by a dodgy psycho-babble explanatory twist. A terrific cast of John Cusack, Ray Liotta, John C McGinley and Amanda Peet are among or around those bumped off one by one in a desolate motel in a rainstorm. Who's the killer, and why does Cusack look so ambivalent about stopping him?

The Adventures Of Robin Hood

There's only one real Robin Hood, and that's Errol Flynn, now buckling his swash in this lovingly restored version of the 1938 classic. "You speak treason," observes cowardly King John (Claude Rains). "Fluently," Errol proudly admits, before crossing blades with Olympic duellist Basil Rathbone, rescuing the blushing Olivia de Havilland and feeding the poor of Sherwood. Hurrah!

A Revengers Tragedy

Alex Cox's gory update of Thomas Middleton's 1607 play about anarcho-nutter royal assassins. The ghost of Derek Jarman clearly lurks behind Cox's ambitious vision of Liverpool as a post-punk, retro-futurist city state. Christopher Eccleston spits nails as the hard-bastard anti-hero, but not even Eddie Izzard, Derek Jacobi and Sophie Dahl can lift the drama above flawed curio level.

Lone Wolf Mcquade

To say this ultraviolent 1983 flick is Chuck Norris'best movie might smack of faint praise, but what's good is mostly down to David Carradine as his strutting, butt-kicking, cigar-sucking nemesis. It's a modern-day western, heavy on the spaghetti, with Norris'Texas ranger taking on Carradine's gun-runner and his army of disposable borderland Mexicans. Did Walter Hill watch this before making Extreme Prejudice?

Respiro

Another reworking of the Betty Blue mythology, with the always watchable Valeria Golino as the Sicilian free spirit who is deemed nuts by her husband and run out of town for such sins as spontaneity and unconventionality. Sun-baked scenery and a lurch into magical realism at the end makes it more than the sum of its parts.

Hollywood Homicide

A fascinating study in waning star power disguised as a cop movie, disguised as a comedy, this reveals the Harrison Ford screen persona at its most intransigent, here playing a 'big dog' cop who hates rap music and yoga, punches people, solves murders and sleeps with Lena Olin.

Whale Rider

A contemporary coming-of-ager about a fiery 12-year-old Maori girl (Keisha Castle-Hughes) and her bid for the hyper-masculine tribal throne, Whale Rider is full of apposite Disney pluck, yet simultaneously shot through with a worthy, odd and inexorably cloying adoration of the mystical juju in Maori tradition.

City Of Ghosts

Directing, co-writing and starring, Matt Dillon does a pretty solid job. Set in a modern-day Cambodia full of outcasts and fugitives, the plot slowly curdles from globe-trotting crime thriller into primal psycho-weirdness. Dillon never shakes off the second-hand influences, notably David Lynch and Apocalypse Now, but a rich cosmopolitan texture is added by an eccentric cast including Gerard Depardieu, Stellan Skarsgård and James Caan.

Buffalo Girls

Originally a TV mini series, this is a satisfying, three-hour adaptation of Larry McMurty's offbeat and poignant take on Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok. A strong cast (Anjelica Houston, Sam Elliott, Peter Coyote) get blown off the screen by Jack Palance as a grizzled, dusty old trapper.
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