Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991)

Utterly ridiculous and extremely weak retelling of the standard myth. This film made $390.5 million, but it’s difficult to see why. 

Kevin Costner is fair enough in the lead role (even if he looks like Jon Bon Jovi), but Alan Rickman is utterly woeful as the Sheriff of Nottingham. There’s a silly “pantomime” style about the way his character is written and directed. You are reminded of the second Blackadder series, although that was much funnier. The constant changing of lenses is distracting: baddies are shown in grotesque fish-eye close-ups. 

Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio is merely adequate as Maid Marian, while Christian Slater is slightly odd as Will Scarlett. 

Production values are poor, with constantly changing light and an often washed-out quality to the footage. 

The famous theme song by Bryan Adams ("Everything I Do) I Do It for You") doesn’t even appear in the film, although it is used over the end credits.

Labyrinth (1986)

Fantasy adventure directed by Jim Henson, recycling story elements from Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz and adding in a bunch of grotesque Muppets. David Bowie is the goblin king Jareth (why Jareth, of all names?), while Jennifer Connelly plays a teenage girl on a quest to save her baby brother imprisoned in a castle within a maze. In doing so, she throws off the trappings of childhood and embraces adult responsibilities. 

The sets are often inspired – in particular, the camera trickery that brings to life a series of impossible Escher-like staircases – and some of the puppets are highly inventive. But the aesthetics are ugly and parts of the plot seem stilted or disjointed. It’s less than a sum of its parts. The script went through multiple rewrites and it’s fascinating to see glimpses of plot threads that were either cut or left undeveloped. 

Bowie seems uncomfortably miscast, lost in the labyrinth of his mid-1980s career. Even when he gets to sing, he’s performing some of his weakest material – so Labyrinth doesn’t work as a musical either. He should have been more extreme – nastier and funnier, hamming it up like a pantomime villain. Instead, it’s an oddly tepid performance. 

Beyond those points it’s difficult to say why it ends up being a bit of an awkward mess – albeit an enjoyable mess. Indeed, it’s nearly brilliant, but the difference between nearly brilliant and actually brilliant turns out to be a huge one.

The Jewel of the Nile (1985)

Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito reprise their roles from 1984's Romancing the Stone. Six months have passed and the couple now embark on a new adventure in Africa, seeking the "Jewel of the Nile" and tackling a demented dictator. 

It’s just as daft as the original and I enjoyed it a lot, despite the common consensus that it was a disappointing sequel.

It’s spectacular, silly and fun. There’s a particularly strong scene in which Douglas drives a fighter jet around crowded streets, causing havoc.

On the down side, DeVito doesn't really need to be there and the plot sometimes struggles to accommodate him. But Turner is endlessly appealing – charming and funny enough to rise above the good-natured but sometimes less than sparkling material.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)

Walter Mitty (Ben Stiller) works at Life magazine as a “negative assets manager”. His world is humdrum but he daydreams incredible and heroic scenarios, often involving a colleague he has a crush on. When the magazine is threatened with closure and their jobs are endangered, Walter needs to locate a missing photographic negative for the image that will feature on the magazine’s final front cover. This takes him on a journey to Greenland, Iceland and Afghanistan in search of a photojournalist (Sean Penn), as his actual existence becomes as remarkable as his fantasy life. 

Stiller is charming as the “dull” worker who inevitably becomes a rugged hero. Kristen Wiig is hugely appealing as the woman he falls for (and she even gets to sing him David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”). Shirley MacLaine is a nicely rounded character as his mother. 

This rousing film is funny in places (such as Stiller’s ongoing conversation with a dating agency) and heartwarming in others (you root for him to keep his job and win over the girl). Often it looks like a mobile-phone advert (vivid colours, exotic locations, emotive music), but oddly that works because the idealised escapism of unreality is a central theme. 

It’s unusual, rewarding and refreshing.

Dragon Wars (2007)

Also known as D-War, this is an instantly forgettable South Korean fantasy film with mostly American actors. The “plot” is almost entirely nonsensical. Wikipedia attempts to explain how Ethan Kendrick (Jason Behr) is tasked by the mysterious Jack (Robert Forster) to “protect the Yuh Yi Joo, an individual who had been born able to change an Imoogi chosen by heaven into a Celestial Dragon, from a corrupt Imoogi identified as ‘Buraki’, who was prevented from obtaining it in the past by Ethan and Jack's previous incarnations. To this end, Jack gives Ethan a medallion formerly belonging to Ethan's previous incarnation Haram, and reveals that the reincarnated Yuh Yi Joo is Sarah Daniels (Amanda Brooks), whom Ethan will find in Los Angeles.” And so on. 

Huge snake creatures appear and terrorise the city, as do high-tech warriors, flying dragons and magical balls of light. None of it is really explained, but it keeps moving so quickly that your questions are quickly replaced by new questions. It would probably seem like a masterpiece if you were a nine-year-old boy. Occasionally the monsters recall the silly creatures shown in the Battle of Naboo in Star Wars Episode I, which is distracting, but the CGI effects are fairly sophisticated and worth seeing if you enjoy that sort of thing. 

The script goes beyond cliché into a surreal world of its own. The plot certainly doesn’t bother with logic. Anything can happen – and it does. The acting is merely functional. There’s no suspense whatsoever. Eventually you give up asking “What?!” and just enjoy the mildly engaging monsters-vs.-copters showdown in the knowledge that it will all be over soon enough.

Swallows & Amazons (1974)

Enchanting adaptation of Arthur Ransome’s classic novel about four young siblings from the Walker family on holiday in the Lake District. They sail a small boat to an island to camp out and seek adventure. They encounter two girls (the Blackett sisters) doing much the same and – after some initial friction – they team up. Remarkably, their mother doesn’t seem the slightest bit worried about them disappearing for days at a time, entirely out of contact and in various dangerous situations (deep water, cliff edges, talking to strange adults, and so on), but then it is presented from the childrens’ point of view (allowing safety concerns to be ignored). Plus, kids were tougher in those days. They never argue among themselves and they never come to any harm, but they do have a lot of fun.

It’s an innocent story from a more innocent time – jolly japes for posh people with fathers in the navy and an early induction into sailing techniques. The story does develop to an exciting climax involving petty theft, but mostly it’s just about the children playing – and that’s enough. It’s so sweet and endearing that it doesn’t require any further drama. The 2016 remake, while also entertaining, felt the need to introduce an unnecessary plot about a secret agent.

All four child actors are excellent. Not sure what happened to the other three, but in a fairly extreme shift of roles Suzanna Hamilton went on to play Julia in 1984.

Back to the Future (1985)

Absolutely wonderful time-travel comedy starring Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly. He is accidentally sent 30 years into the past in a DeLorean modified by his friend Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd). He then has two major problems to resolve. Not only does the car lack the plutonium it needs to get him “back to the future”, but also his presence in 1955 leads to wide-reaching ripples in the fabric of time itself. For example, instead of his mother (Lea Thompson) meeting his father (Crispin Glover), she falls for Marty instead. As events start heading towards an outcome in which the couple never date and marry, Marty and his siblings begin to fade from his family photograph. That’s silly and makes little sense (they would either have existed or not existed), but pretty much all of the clever plotting works perfectly if you accept a few basic leaps of faith.

The direction by Robert Zemeckis is lively and precise. Every detail matters and the dovetailing of events in 1955 and 1985 is ingenious indeed. The storytelling is so clear and uncluttered that a potentially complex and tangled narrative really works. It's both an exciting adventure and a warm-hearted love story. Plus, there are plenty of laughs.

Speed (1994)

Terrific action thriller. The concept is simple: a Los Angeles city bus is armed with a bomb that will detonate if the vehicle’s speed dips below 50 mph. Cute, funny Sandra Bullock is the passenger who becomes the heroic driver. Keanu Reeves is the cop jumping aboard the bus to save her and the other passengers while trying to defeat the crazed villain (Dennis Hopper). He’s helped by fellow cop Jeff Daniels, who is as reliably watchable as ever.

With exceptional pacing, the film ramps up the tension from the start and somehow sustains it for 111 minutes.

Some of the dialogue is weak, with a silly Bond-like quip about death that could have been skipped, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s so full-on in terms of excitement that you are swept away by the rush of energy. And the blossoming romance story is developed just enough to make you engage with the characters. It’s telling, though, that only Reeves is shown on the DVD cover, despite Bullock being every bit as integral to the film.

Supergirl (1984)

A ludicrous mess. Kara Zor-El, the cousin of Superman, comes to Earth in pursuit of the Omegahedron – an orb with remarkable powers. This mystical ball falls into the hands of an evil witch called Selena who, for some reason, lives in a disused fairground with her annoying friend Bianca. It’s difficult to say whose acting is worse: Peter O’Toole, Peter Cook or Faye Dunaway all ham it up like mad, wrestling with a fundamentally flawed script. Unsure whether to play it for laughs or kitsch kicks, they flail around like pantomime actors who failed their am-dram audition. Helen Slater is actually quite appealing as Supergirl/Linda Lee. There’s a vulnerability and naivety that is endearing. And the sections in which she starts at school and befriends a girl called Lucy Lane – Lois Lane’s sister, amazingly enough – hint at another, more charming film with human-interest elements you can relate to. More of this would have been welcome. But it’s wildly uneven in tone and there are colossal holes in the plot logic. For example, when Selena first acquires her sinister powers she inexplicably puts aside the thoughts of world domination she has already shared with Peter Cook. Instead, she decides to kidnap a gardener, drug him with a love potion and then – when he wanders off – uses telekinesis to steer a construction vehicle through the streets to return him to her. Why? This is one of the few action sequences, but it’s still a small-scale affair involving a few cars, some burning tyres, a water tower and some hay blowing around the street. It certainly doesn’t have the epic scale of the first two Superman films, which seemed to use the whole Earth as their set. In fact, Supergirl seems relatively low-budget despite being made for $35 million by the same production team. Despite all the woeful elements, it was just about entertaining enough for me to make it through to the end. The flying sequences are a thrill, just as they always were with Christopher Reeve, and the rare moments in which Supergirl displays her powers are enjoyable. But the film could have been so much better.

Romancing the Stone (1984)

Another film watched on TV while on holiday. This is an action-adventure romp starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. 

The plot is ludicrous, but it’s also charming and fun. Turner is terrific as the lonely romantic novelist from New York who finds herself in her own romantic saga in Colombia. Douglas is passable as the male lead, an American bird smuggler. I like the line when – reading an old magazine in a crashed plane – he exclaims “Dammit, man” having finally learned that “the Doobie Brothers broke up!” 

I could have done without Danny DeVito, who seems to play the same part in every film he’s in, but even with his unfunny antics this is still highly enjoyable fluff.

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

Finally saw this on TV, 37 years after it came out. Disappointing. It’s a good-natured swashbuckling romp that veers on pantomime in places (daft running around and escape scenes, camp bald man who takes off his shirt to have a fight, a monkey who works for the Nazis), with cartoonish violence (like James Bond, Indiana Jones can be sprayed by machine-gun fire and never be hurt). There’s also queasily intrusive music by John Williams, who lazily recycles his themes from other films (including Star Wars). On the plus side, Harrison Ford is always watchable (he was at the height of his good looks) and Karen Allen is impressive as the love interest Marion Ravenwood. The ending is utterly preposterous, with the semi-realist narrative suddenly turning supernatural. As with all Steven Spielberg films except for Duel and Jaws, I couldn’t quite see what all the fuss was about.