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USA: Alfred Hitchcock, 1945

Despite being directed by the master himself, I must confess I wasn't blown away by this film. It's slow to start, overly sappy, and Gregory Peck is as wooden as a forest. The best part by far is the Salvador Dali-designed dream sequence (spoiled by Peck's narration of everything that happens in it).

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UK: Terence Fisher, 1958

Hammer's first of many Dracula movies, and the only one to conform at all to the storyline of Bram Stoker's original novel. It takes a while to get going, but once it does it's a hell of a lot of campy fun. Peter Cushing is fabulous as Van Helsing, while Christopher Lee sinks his teeth into the role of Dracula (his first portrayal of the vampire) with great gusto, making him both elegant and menacing at the same time. The climactic scene which, unsurprisingly, sees Dracula's demise, is an all-time classic.

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USA: Hamilton Luske/Clyde Geronimi/Wilfred Jackson, 1953

This is Disney as it should be! Time has not been kind to this 1953 effort, which now looks extremely racist and a bit sexist as well, but the story is as good and fun as it ever was, and the character animation is impressive. Peter Pan has always been a bit of a dick-head, and Wendy doesn't stop complaining for a single moment, but who couldn't love Captain Hook, Mr. Smee and, of course, Tinkerbell? Fun for all the family.

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South Korea/USA: Tony Craig/Bobs Gannaway, 2003

If anyone tells you Disney's cheapquels aren't all that bad, don't listen to them. Stitch: The Movie is the most embarrassing thing I've sat through in a long time. A Z-grade sequel to Lilo & Stitch, designed to launch a crappy TV series, about the only good thing I can say about this "film" is that it's under an hour long. When they're not parroting lines and situations from the original film in a third-rate manner, they're coming up with their own garbage storyline involving a mad scientist (called Dr. Hamsterveil, because he's a hamster, hahaha) who created 625 different aliens, all of them equally annoying (Stitch was Experiment 626, remember? hahaha). Utter dreck.

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USA: John Musker/Ron Clements, 1992

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USA: Terry Gilliam, 1998

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USA: Clyde Geronimi/Wilfred Jackson/Hamilton Luske, 1951

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USA: Pete Docter, 2001

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Spain/USA: Brad Anderson, 2004

Full review here.

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USA: Gore Verbinski, 2003

Pirates of the Caribbean basically has one good thing going for it: Johnny Depp. Had the movie been an hour shorter and focused more on him, it would probably have been pretty good. As it is, though, it's an overly-long, badly-written piece of flim-flam with a terrible score, ropey special effects and Orlando "Can't Act" Bloom. It tries too hard to be camp in a wink-wink sort of way, and overall there just doesn't seem to be any heart and soul in the project - pretty much the usual Jerry Bruckheimer fare, then. Barring a handful of cheap laughs, there really is little to recommend here.

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