SpudMons

A colleague of mine got this for free with his DVD player. Even at that price, this movie represents a shockingly bad deal.

It features tremendous acting skills - especially on the part of the female professor character, who seems to believe acting involves twitching your eyebrows in a deranged manner and nothing more.

It also boasts outstanding sets. Actually it has just the one set, which I suspect is the producer's house, but is supposed to be a university. The room in which they put the mummy on display has a fireplace and a sofa in it, for crap's sake! I won't even go into the lacklustre special effects, because awful as they may be, they outshine every other aspect of the production.

I cannot believe that this excrescence has lost its place in the Bottom 100. Get voting "1", people!

I will freely admit what others have said about this film on this movie database: the plot is deeply ingrained, perhaps even nonsensical. Still, how much does that matter when the product as a whole is as stupendous as Donnie Darko is?

I had to watch the DVD director's commentary before I fully understood this film, but at the same time it is practically the only film that has inspired me to watch the director's commentary in its entirety. It features one of the greatest uses of music I have ever encountered in a film; it is cinematographically brilliant and original; it contains an ensemble cast performance that is beyond criticism; it pushes the limits of what can be achieved in the modern Hollywood film industry. What more need you know before rushing out to see this movie?

Add to what I've already mentioned the fact that this film features a giant talking rabbit and you've got a genuine classic on your hands. Ignore any negative comments you may have heard on this topic: Donnie Darko is a work of brilliance.

"Snatch" is fantastic; and not least because it demonstrates emphatically that the British movie industry is capable of rivaling even the best of what Hollywood can offer.

"Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" was one of the funniest movies released in recent years, and "Snatch" takes everything that "Lock, Stock..." did so well and does it even better.

Back are the cleverly intertwined plotlines, the hilarious one-liners, and the simultaneously intimidating and comedic London villains. So is the skillful editing, and often original cinematographic style. This time however, it all looks somewhat slicker and better funded, and alongside the British regulars are the odd American celebrity (Brad Pitt, Benicio Del Toro).

Everyone in the film puts in an excellent performance, but Pitt stands out as a charismatic and near-incomprehensible Gypsy boxer.

Like Ritchie's earlier film, this one takes a little while to find its feet, but once it does the pace doesn't slacken until the finale. One scene featuring three guys and a squeaking dog in a stolen car stands out particularly, and left the audience at my local cinema almost weeping as punchline after punchline was uttered.

When it comes to comedies, I cannot recommend this one highly enough. If you're after a good laugh, you won't find much to better "Snatch".

This film was recommended to me by a friend, and I must say that I was surprised to find that I disagreed so vehemently with his opinion - he thought it was brilliant, I thought it was awful. The basic premise of the film (a group of guys accidently kill a stripper and her escort at a stag party, and then must make a decision on how to deal with the situation) was a promising one. However, it was sorely let down in its realisation. The acting was pretty terrible (especially by Kevin Dillon), the storyline dragged, and the same few ideas on how to shirk the blame for the crime were repeated over and over again. Every now and then someone else says "Hey, why don't we blame it all on the surviving stripper?", followed by someone else saying "Why don't we kill her too?" all the way through the film. And then the resolution, when it finally comes, is disappointingly unimaginative and messy. Don't bother with this one.

This film ranks second among my all time favourites. The only reason it does not hold that coveted first place spot is that I am obsessed with Monty Python's "The Holy Grail". Shawshank is a beautifully crafted film, with one of the best endings I have ever seen; even though in a way it is not entirely unexpected. It is particularly enlivened by the presence of Morgan Freeman, who should have won an Oscar for his voice-overs alone. In a word, Exceptional.