And at least an hour too long. Representing the tail-end of the epic war movie wave, Richard Attenborough's 1977 superproduction reconstructs the disastrous Allied attempt to seize half-a-dozen Dutch bridges behind enemy lines. Ponderous, but with a cast featuring everyone from Laurence Olivier, Dirk Bogarde, Sean Connery and Michael Caine to Gene Hackman, Robert Redford, James Caan and Elliott Gould, it's satisfyingly star-studded.

Mike Hodges' career has ranged from the classic (Get Carter) to the crap (Morons From Outer Space). This 1989 thriller about a psychic (Rosanna Arquette) who foretells violent deaths would be dark and vaguely gripping if it wasn't marred by clunky plot shifts and a hopeless performance from Tom Hulce. When he and Arquette smooch, it's like they're both kissing Hitler.

Director Carl Franklin reunites with Devil In A Blue Dress star Denzel Washington for this stylish-looking contemporary film noir. Denzel's Florida police chief, who's having an affair with nasty Dean Cain's wife, finds himself the subject of a murder investigation headed by his estranged wife. Though there's plenty of twists, the outcome isn't entirely unpredictable. Fun, though, while it lasts.

Pacino is electric in this shamefully overlooked, brilliantly scripted parable of an ageing New York PR man reaching the end of his tether. Footage of the Twin Towers meant its release was screwed up by cuts, but a charged, engrossing film remains, with druggie starlet Téa Leoni and 'good' woman Kim Basinger adding to the heat Al's getting from his health, clients and politicians. No one does stressed like Al: a neglected gem.

Stephen Fry adapts Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies as a rom-com. Great cast of luvvies (notably Peter O'Toole), but the central romance between Emily Mortimer and Stephen Campbell Moore evokes no more sympathy than the endless parade of aristocratic jazz babies subsisting on champagne and "naughty salt". A lively mess.

David Lynch's subversive classic stands the test of time

This documentary about chess grand master Gary Kasparov's duel against IBM computer Deep Blue, in which man was eventually ground down by machine, appears sympathetic to Kasparov's suggestion that IBM cheated, though there appears to be scant hard evidence to support his claim. Kasparov comes across as vain and arrogant and, while this film manages to bring a certain tension to the game, you find yourself pulling for the machine.

This fictitious backstory to the creation of Vermeer's best-known painting looks so impressive, and so precisely mimics the colours the 17th-century Dutchman used, it's a while before you realise it's just a prissy costume drama starring Colin Firth and pouty Scarlett Johansson. A dainty tale of repressed lust, perfectly pitched at its middlebrow audience.

Jean-Pierre Melville's penultimate film, from 1970, is the crime movie's Once Upon A Time In The West, a dark meditation on the iconography of hats, trenchcoats, guns, and the rituals of the heist. Alain Delon is the glacial master thief planning to take down a Parisian jewellery store, though he knows the cops are closing in. A steely, moody piece.

An Easy Riders, Raging Bulls companion piece, co-directed by Fisher King screenwriter Richard LaGravenese and the late Ted Demme, this is a worthwhile talking-heads-and-clips trawl through Hollywood's 1970s renaissance. It lacks any hint of critical distance but is valuable for collecting the testimony of the usual suspects, including Corman, Scorsese, Coppola, Friedkin, Altman, Bogdanovich, Hopper and Paul Schrader on pretty funny form: "The film business was a decadent, decaying, emptied whorehouse, and it had to be assaulted."