Tough-guy maverick Sam Fuller's banned '60s moral melodramas resurface in all their bleak and bizarre glory

As the house band at Motown throughout the '60s, the Funk Brothers were arguably the greatest hit machine the world has ever seen. Yet nobody ever knew who they were. Three decades later, director Paul Justman tracked down the survivors and brought them out of obscurity to pay belated tribute to the men who made the Motown sound. Evocative and nostalgic stuff.

Filmed this summer at Madison Square Garden, this performance confirms Eddie Vedder's Seattle crew as one of the most exciting bands of their generation. Driven by Vedder's intense presence, they move easily from full-throttle punk attack to brooding ballad, and attain a communal thrall equalled only by The Boss in full flight. Ben Harper and Buzzcocks feature, but it's the electricity between the stage and audience that's truly special.

Made between 1930 and 1933, these four films (Horse Feathers, Animal Crackers, Duck Soup, Monkey Business) represent the Marx Brothers in their first flush, prior to moving to Hollywood. Although occasionally marred by musical routines and the over-familiarity of the zaniness, these outings are immortal—the missing link between the lost, tumbling traditions of vaudeville and the surrealist hipster comedy of the present day. Introducing quickfire Jewish wit and an anarchic insolence for authority into the mainstream, these seemingly slapdash movies are cinematic milestones.

The wildly erratic Fred Schepisi (Fierce Creatures, Last Orders) here hits sludgy middle-ground with the outré screwball story of goofy garage mechanic Tim Robbins, who falls in love with quantum physicist, er, Meg Ryan and, with the aid of kindly Uncle Albert Einstein (Walter Matthau), manages to snare her away from her bloodless sociologist fiancé Stephen Fry. Tired and uninspired.

At a provincial asylum, a down-at-heel doctor agrees to shelter an anonymous patient for the US government; soon his village is swarming with international spies, all trying to discover the new inmate's identity. This minor but hugely odd 1957 effort from Henri-Georges Clouzot has none of the suspense, nor the thrills, of his incredible Wages Of Fear or Les Diaboliques, but the atmosphere is strangely compelling.

Utterly predictable slapstick-laden festive fare as Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) prepares to spend an old-fashioned non-stop domestic disaster of a Christmas with his extended family (including Randy Quaid and an extremely young Juliette Lewis). If you'd like to see Mr Chase being hit repeatedly over the head, this could be the movie for you.

From 1992, good guy Brad Pitt and bad guy Gabriel Byrne are transported to another dimension (which just happens to be a Ralph Bakshi cartoon) where they vie for the affections of an animated version of Kim Basinger. It's Roger Rabbit without the jokes: dumb, dull, dire, and a criminal waste of money.

William Friedkin's original was dazzling, intelligent and scary; John Boorman's train wreck of a sequel is none of the above. Richard Burton is at his hammiest as the priest investigating the death of Father Merrin at the end of the first movie, Louise Fletcher plays Regan's psychiatrist, and the screenplay is one of the worst ever committed to paper. Avoid.

Renny Harlin's 1995 bomb comes midway, both chronologically and qualitatively, between Roman Polanski's fascinatingly bad Pirates (1986) and this year's Pirates Of The Caribbean (reviewed on p141). Whether casting Geena Davis as the head swashbuckler on this treasure hunt was post-feminist revisionism or sheer vanity (she's Harlin's wife) is for you to decide. Either way, it doesn't work. Looks nice, though, in a theme park way.