The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

Director: John Huston

A superb heist-gone-wrong thriller. The characters are all wryly written and marvellously played, while the robbery sequence itself is absolutely riveting; a masterclass in tension that works without hyperkinetic camerawork, hysterical acting or any music whatsoever. It happens early on, so that the bulk of the film details the subsequent long, painful slide into the inevitably bleak noir ending.

Godzilla (1954)

Director: Ishiro Honda

Just as Godzilla smashes up Tokyo, the film itself does a pretty good job of bludgeoning its audience into submission. Yes, it's true that subtlety doesn't usually figure highly in any monster movie, but this has a particularly oppressive feel - besides the tight close-ups of a model city being destroyed, there's murky lighting, leaps in the narrative between scenes (especially early on) that mean we're continually plunged into the action, and, of course, the metallic din of Godzilla's roar. If you can withstand all this, the film does provide some strikingly gloomy images to revel in, such as the monster looming over a bridge under a black sky while crowds flee beneath it.

Punch-Drunk Love (2002)

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Essentially an unlikely-love-story rom-com, Punch-Drunk Love is considerably less ambitious in scope than Anderson's ensemble works Boogie Nights (1997) and Magnolia (1999). Though nicely filmed, and not without its moments, there are several things wrong with it.

For instance, the intrusive, immensely irritating soundtrack aims for 'quirky' with relentless rhythmic clicks, whirrs and beeps; and there's clumsy, pointless usage of one of Olive Oyl's songs from Altman's Popeye. This is representative of the film as a whole, which strives to be unusual and clever, but more often than not just ends up annoying; and incorporates elements (from 1960's comedy pastiche to arty surrealism) that never quite gel.

Also, since it's very rare to see Sandler in a film that doesn't just consist of infantile, throwaway gags, it's difficult to avoid the feeling that his potential for something a bit more substantial is wasted here on a fairly unremarkable role. As in films like Happy Gilmore (1996), his character still gets comically enraged and smashes things up; it's just that here he does it in a more restrained manner with a slightly more morose look on his face.

John Carpenter's Vampires (1998)

Director: John Carpenter

Jack Crow (James Woods) heads a team of vampire slayers, coming up against a master the likes of which he has never encountered before. A mess of a film, Carpenter's action horror keeps its audience awake with sheer volume and relentless ridiculousness. Creepy suspense is completely out; crazy profanity, carnage and inexplicable visual effects are in.

It's so over the top as to be utterly tongue-in-cheek (Woods is actually very funny), making it reasonably watchable, but overall you're left bemoaning the fact that over the course of that twenty or so years, Carpenter has fallen so far from the heights of such films as Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) and Halloween (1978).

Superbad (2007)

Director: Greg Mottola

Staggeringly awkward Eric (Michael Cera), loudmouthed Seth (Jonah Hill) and idiotic but lucky Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) search desperately for parties, sex and alcohol as high school comes to an end. Nothing new in terms of subject matter, but Superbad transcends cliché through its excellent comic performances - each of the leads brings a different brand of humour to the film, which work well together to give it a broad appeal.

In teen movie terms: imagine a smartly written and perfectly played American Pie, concerned with hopeless but likeable nerds rather than with sneering jocks; or perhaps Dazed and Confused with more belly laughs. The film's absolutely hilarious, and manages at times to be affecting without getting too soppy.

Battle in Heaven (2005)

Director: Carlos Reygadas

Marcos (Marcos Hernández) confesses to prostitute Ana (Anapola Mushkadiz) that he and his wife have kidnapped and accidentally killed a baby. Reygadas' follow-up to his flawed but hypnotic debut Japón (2001), Battle in Heaven shares that film's air of pretentiousness but justifies it even less, seeming to go on forever despite a substantially shorter running time.

The most superficially striking thing about the film is that again, Reygadas often chooses to focus on "frankly" depicting sexual acts that are distinctly unerotic and vaguely uncomfortable to watch, but what's the point? Elsewhere, we have long, seemingly inconsequential takes that wander with Marcos around an underground train station, crowded streets, a farm... Yes, perhaps it all "means" something, but what amount of meaning could justify this much tedium?

It's frustrating, because Reygadas clearly has potential - there are flashes of brilliance in Japón and, to a lesser extent, here - but immaturity and aspirations of grandeur simultaneously scupper each of the two works.

American Pie (1999)

Director: Paul Weitz

Four teenage boys enter a pact to lose their virginity before they finish high school. You know you're in trouble when you end up watching American Pie with your Saturday night. There are a few funny moments, if you're drunk enough.

Seraphim Falls (2006)

Director: David Von Anken

Until the last 20 minutes or so, Seraphim Falls is an enjoyable, if slight, Western thriller in which one guy (Liam Neeson) chases another (Pierce Brosnan) across the country - and that's pretty much it. After a revelatory flashback sequence, however, the film takes a bizarre, mystical left turn, with the brief appearance of a wise and quirky Native American character that might as well have been nicked out of Jarmusch's Dead Man, and Morticia Addams herself, Angelica Huston.

It's as if Von Anken either a) thought such an approach would lift the film in its final scenes from mediocrity into the realm of rich, symbolic Greatness, or b) panicked when having to come up with a conclusion and thought "I'll just put in a load of weird shit". Whatever, it certainly doesn't come off, though the (fairly severe) failed attempt does lend the film an odd sort of distinction.

Guys and Dolls (1955)

Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz

A sheer joy to watch; a gorgeous musical that manages to be both genuinely funny and genuinely touching, with a magnetic performance from Marlon Brando brilliantly complemented by Jean Simmons, Frank Sinatra, Vivian Blaine and... well, the whole cast. Full of energy, blessed with a constantly engaging adapted screenplay from Mankiewicz, and with memorable songs, mindblowing choreography and marvellous sets to boot.

The Blob (1958)

Director: Irvin S. Yeaworth, Jr.

1. Steve McQueen.
2. An oozing, all-consuming, evergrowing gelatinous mass.
3. A cheerful, catchy title song by co-written by Burt Bacharach.

What more could you ever want from a film? This is a work of pure genius. It manages to be corny yet somehow horrific, deadly serious yet deliberately OTT and ridiculous, and it may be an hour and a half of watching a small town being terrorized by a crappy piece of jelly but it's brilliantly entertaining.

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006)

Director: Adam McKay

From the makers of Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy comes another comedy that is just so relentlessly stupid it's impossible not to laugh. Will Ferrell plays top racing driver Ricky Bobby, whose status is threatened by the arrival of gay Frenchman (insert endless infantile gags) Jean Girard (Sacha Baron Cohen), fresh from Formula One. He must also contend with his ex-best friend and racing partner Cal Naughton, Jr. (an hilarious John C. Reilly), who cheerfully takes over his home and marries his wife.

In a perfect world the film would have been just that little bit funnier - as with recent episodes of The Simpsons, the film sometimes drifts into straight storytelling rather than pure comedy, as in parts of the plot involving Ricky's relationship with his drunken father, and some of the racing scenes - but as it stands, the laughter quotient is still undeniably higher than many films of its type.

One Night in Mongkok (2004)

Director: Derek Yee

A choppy, frenetic, disorienting opening sequence shows us scenes from a Triad war, with so many characters introduced and so many names flying around that it is difficult to tell at first what exactly is going on. After this inaccessible start, the film eventually begins to focus on one aspect of the war; that is, the hiring of an assassin to kill a gang boss and the attempts of the police to find him.

This Hong Kong thriller has frequently garnered comparisons to Andrew Lau & Alan Mak's Infernal Affairs (2002), but it is nowhere near as assured or sophisticated: for one thing, it never truly decides which characters to focus on; for another, its tone wanders a little too much - through chaotic comic sequences (Cecilia Cheung's hysterical performance grates at times) and pitch-dark scenes of brutality (especially lumped towards the end), for example. The black-and-white photography at the beginning even seems to represent a stab at film noir, but the flashy, boy-racer material being filmed is more reminiscent of movies like The Fast and the Furious.

There are moments of genuine tension and excitement - but really nothing that hasn't been seen before; overall, the film is merely a competent thriller.