Molly Ringwald established herself as the teen queen of the 1980s in this fresh comedy, Sixteen Candles. The movie is a day in the life of Samantha, whose 16th birthday is turning out to be anything but sweet. All the traumas of teendom come down on one long day, which sees her surrounded by dithery relatives, mooning over a high-school hunk, and pursued by a sawed-off Lothario. Sixteen Candles marked the directing debut of John Hughes, and its goofy energy displayed a promising talent with a great ear for high school lingo. a promise neglected since Hughes became, after Home Alone, a one-man entertainment industry. There are some pretty crass moments (why the stereotype of the foreign-exchange student from Asia?) but Ringwald's steady appeal smoothes over the rough spots. As the pubescent, self-styled lady-killer, Anthony Michael Hall turns in a hilarious portrait of a young swinger; he and Ringwald would reteam with Hughes for The Breakfast Club, another key teen picture of the decade. -Robert Horton, Amazon. [+]

The Forsyte Saga is often cited as the first television miniseries; it wasn't, but there's no question that it was a singular, powerful cultural phenomenon that deservedly got under the skin of European viewers in 1967. Today the 26-episode production, based on several novels and short stories by John Galsworthy, is a more timeless enterprise than many of the protracted British TV dramas that have followed. While it would be wrong to consider The Forsyte Saga high art, it's certainly a mesmerizing and inspired mix of theater, sprawling Victorian narrative, thinking man's soap opera, and some finely tuned, 1960s black-and-white production values that (especially when shot outdoors) are strikingly handsome. Above all, Forsyte is driven by its characters-perhaps to an extreme, though the two-generation storyline makes no apologies for creating compelling people whose capacity for short-sighted blundering, bursts of grace, and slow-brewing redemption make them recognizably human. Eric Porter towers over everything as Soames Forsyte, a humorless attorney whose guiding principles of measurable value cause great heartache but slowly evolve, leaving him a graying, good father, arts patron, and sympathetic repository of memory. From the cast of 150 or so, other standouts include Susan Hampshire as Soames's troubled daughter, Nyree Dawn Porter as the wife of two very different Forsyte men, and Kenneth More as the family's artistic black sheep. -Tom Keogh.

The Forsyte Saga is often cited as the first television miniseries; it wasn't, but there's no question that it was a singular, powerful cultural phenomenon that deservedly got under the skin of European viewers in 1967. Today the 26-episode production, based on several novels and short stories by John Galsworthy, is a more timeless enterprise than many of the protracted British TV dramas that have followed. While it would be wrong to consider The Forsyte Saga high art, it's certainly a mesmerizing and inspired mix of theater, sprawling Victorian narrative, thinking man's soap opera, and some finely tuned, 1960s black-and-white production values that (especially when shot outdoors) are strikingly handsome. Above all, Forsyte is driven by its characters-perhaps to an extreme, though the two-generation storyline makes no apologies for creating compelling people whose capacity for short-sighted blundering, bursts of grace, and slow-brewing redemption make them recognizably human. Eric Porter towers over everything as Soames Forsyte, a humorless attorney whose guiding principles of measurable value cause great heartache but slowly evolve, leaving him a graying, good father, arts patron, and sympathetic repository of memory. From the cast of 150 or so, other standouts include Susan Hampshire as Soames's troubled daughter, Nyree Dawn Porter as the wife of two very different Forsyte men, and Kenneth More as the family's artistic black sheep. -Tom Keogh.

What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? sees a change of direction for Robert Aldrich's unofficial trilogy which all involve "ageing actresses" in macabre thrillers (What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and Hush. Hush, Sweet Charlotte). The busy Aldrich only produced What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice?, calling in TV director Lee H Katzin (a Mission: Impossible regular) to handle the megaphone. Aldrich also opted to shoot the film in pastel colours appropriate to the unusual Arizona desert setting rather than the gothic black and white of the earlier films. The film cast the less iconic Geraldine Page as the genteelly unpleasant Mrs Clare Marrable. Left apparently penniless by her departed husband, Mrs M opts to keep up appearances by hiring a succession of timid elderly housekeepers, bossing them around with well-spoken nastiness, duping them out of their life savings and, on the pretence of getting help with a midnight tree-planting program, lures them into their own graves, batters them to death and plants lovely pines over them. Page gets her own way with the meek likes of Mildred Dunnock, until the feistier, red-wigged R!uth Gordon applies for the job and gets down to amateur sleuthing. While Bette Davis and her partners went wildly over the top in previous films, Page and Gordon play more subtly, finding odd pathetic moments in between the monstrous, irony-laced horror stuff. [+]

Shindo's stylish black-and-white ghost story forms a companion piece to his earlier film Onibaba. Once again we have a woman and her daughter-in-law preying on a lone samurai. But the mood here is a little gentler and more poignant than we are accustomed to. The two women are victims of a brutal gang of samurai: they are raped and killed and fire is set to their hut. But when their cat licks the blood from their corpses, they are transformed into shape-shifting demons that favour the form of black cats. Waylaying benighted warriors, they wreak their revenge. A champion samurai is sent against them, but he finds the monsters he's hired to destroy are his own wife and mother. Shindo skilfully builds an atmosphere of eerie menace-draperies waving in the wind, Hikaru Hiyashi's score mimicking the desolate caterwauls that precede each killing. Shindo, faithful as ever to his left-wing principles, includes a strong measure of barbed social comment in his portrayal of the arrogant samurai class. -Philip Kemp.

The Forsyte Saga is often cited as the first television miniseries; it wasn't, but there's no question that it was a singular, powerful cultural phenomenon that deservedly got under the skin of European viewers in 1967. Today the 26-episode production, based on several novels and short stories by John Galsworthy, is a more timeless enterprise than many of the protracted British TV dramas that have followed. While it would be wrong to consider The Forsyte Saga high art, it's certainly a mesmerizing and inspired mix of theater, sprawling Victorian narrative, thinking man's soap opera, and some finely tuned, 1960s black-and-white production values that (especially when shot outdoors) are strikingly handsome. Above all, Forsyte is driven by its characters-perhaps to an extreme, though the two-generation storyline makes no apologies for creating compelling people whose capacity for short-sighted blundering, bursts of grace, and slow-brewing redemption make them recognizably human. Eric Porter towers over everything as Soames Forsyte, a humorless attorney whose guiding principles of measurable value cause great heartache but slowly evolve, leaving him a graying, good father, arts patron, and sympathetic repository of memory. From the cast of 150 or so, other standouts include Susan Hampshire as Soames's troubled daughter, Nyree Dawn Porter as the wife of two very different Forsyte men, and Kenneth More as the family's artistic black sheep. -Tom Keogh.

The flaws are easily forgiven in this beautiful version of Louisa May Alcott's novel. A stirring look at life in New England during the Civil War, Little Women is a triumph for all involved. We follow one family as they split into the world, ending up with the most independent, the outspoken Jo (Winona Ryder). This time around, the dramatics and conclusions fall into place a little too well, instead of finding life's little accidents along the way. Everyone now looks a bit too cute and oh, so nice. As the matron, Marmee, Susan Sarandon kicks the film into a modern tone, creating a movie alive with a great feminine sprit. Kirsten Dunst (Interview with the Vampire) has another showy role. The young ensemble cast cannot be faulted, with Ryder beginning the movie in a role akin to light comedy and crescendos to a triumphant end worthy of an Oscar. -Doug Thomas.

This Western has become a modest cult favourite since its release in 1993, when the film was met with mixed reviews but the performances of Kurt Russell (as Wyatt Earp) and especially Val Kilmer, for his memorably eccentric performance as the dying gunslinger Doc Holliday, garnered high praise. Tombstone opens with Wyatt Earp trying to put his violent past behind him, living happily in Tombstone with his brothers and the woman (Dana Delany) who puts his soul at ease. But a murderous gang called the Cowboys has burst on the scene, and Earp can't keep his gun belt off any longer. The plot sounds routine, and in many ways it is, but Western buffs won't mind a bit thanks to a fine cast and some well-handled action on the part of Rambo director George P. Cosmatos, who has yet to make a better film than this. -Jeff Shannon.

Caught midway between 1970s soft-porn clunker The Story of O and Bunuel's sado-masochistic fantasy Belle de Jour, the 1968 erotic curio Girl on a Motorcycle is one of Marianne Faithfull's chief claims to notoriety. She stars as Rebecca, a leather-clad, former bookstore clerk in search of sexual fulfilment who flees her dependable schoolteacher husband for a dangerous liaison with Daniel (Alain Delon), a dashing Professor addicted to speed. The story is told entirely in flashbacks as Rebecca rockets along the road, having donned her leathers and walked out on her sleeping husband at the crack of dawn. It all must have seemed fairly daring and provocative in 1968, providing viewers with ample opportunities to view a naked Faithfull at the height of her allure. But today the existential musings of the lead character seem achingly pretentious, the erotic symbolism merely gawky and unintentionally amusing: the sight of Alain Delon with a phallic pipe dangling from his mouth is like something out of a Rene Magritte painting. The sex scenes between Delon and Faithfull are all swamped in a polarised visual effect that, while garish and psychedelic, is dated and distinctly unerotic. Director Jack Cardiff is better known as a cinematographer on classics such as The African Queen and Black Narcissus. Among Cardiff's other directorial credits is a worthy adaptation of DH Lawrence's Sons & Lovers, but Girl on a Motorcycle is a saucy road movie with no final destination. On the DVD: This DVD version is misleadingly presented as being the fully restored and uncut version of the film. Yet it was the US version not the European one that was heavily cut (and titillatingly re-titled "Naked Under Leather"). [+]

Now you can achieve multiple viewings of the best Sex on TV. Winner of Golden Globes for Best TV Series and Best Actress, Sex and the City is based on Candace Bushnell's provocative bestseller. Sarah Jessica Parker stars as Carrie Bradshaw, a self-described "sexual anthropologist", who writes "Sex and the City", a newspaper column that chronicles the state of sexual affairs of Manhattanites in this "age of un-innocence". Her "posse", including nice girl Charlotte (Kristin Davis), hard-edged Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and sultry party girl Samantha (Kim Cattrall)-not to mention her own tumultuous love life-give Carrie plenty of column fodder. Over the course of the first season's 12 episodes, the most prominent dramatic arc concerns Carrie, who goes from turning the tables on "toxic bachelors" by having "sex like a man" to wanting to join the ranks of "the monogamists" with the elusive Mr Big (Chris Noth). Meanwhile, Miranda, Cynthia, and Samantha have their own dating woes. Seinfeld has nothing on Sex and the City when it comes to shallow, self-absorbed characters or coining catch phrases. Episode Two, for example, introduces the term "modeliser": a guy who is obsessed with and will only date models. Some may accuse this series of male-bashing but women, after years of enduring shows with "men behaving badly", will relish this new equality. Some may blanche at the ladies' graphic language and ribald humour, or dismiss some of the situations as unrealistic (Carrie doesn't bat an eyelid when she discovers that an artist friend surreptitiously videotapes his sexual conquests). [+]

The Forsyte Saga is often cited as the first television miniseries; it wasn't, but there's no question that it was a singular, powerful cultural phenomenon that deservedly got under the skin of European viewers in 1967. Today the 26-episode production, based on several novels and short stories by John Galsworthy, is a more timeless enterprise than many of the protracted British TV dramas that have followed. While it would be wrong to consider The Forsyte Saga high art, it's certainly a mesmerizing and inspired mix of theater, sprawling Victorian narrative, thinking man's soap opera, and some finely tuned, 1960s black-and-white production values that (especially when shot outdoors) are strikingly handsome. Above all, Forsyte is driven by its characters-perhaps to an extreme, though the two-generation storyline makes no apologies for creating compelling people whose capacity for short-sighted blundering, bursts of grace, and slow-brewing redemption make them recognizably human. Eric Porter towers over everything as Soames Forsyte, a humorless attorney whose guiding principles of measurable value cause great heartache but slowly evolve, leaving him a graying, good father, arts patron, and sympathetic repository of memory. From the cast of 150 or so, other standouts include Susan Hampshire as Soames's troubled daughter, Nyree Dawn Porter as the wife of two very different Forsyte men, and Kenneth More as the family's artistic black sheep. -Tom Keogh.

Noel Coward's favourite play, Blithe Spirit, was certainly a departure for David Lean, best known at the time for adapting Dickens. While it's the director's only comedy, the result is a delightful gem. Rex Harrison is an acerbic author haunted by the ghost of first wife Elvira (Kay Hammond), who tries to seduce him all over again. This throws his second wife (Constance Cummings) into a panic, second-guessing her lack of passion. It's a celestial sex romp that hasn't lost its bite. Margaret Rutherford, as always, steals the show as the sardonic medium. -Bill Desowitz.