Ratatouille [2007]

A sewer rat working undercover at a posh restaurant is a pretty icky premise, but in Pixar's latest and possibly greatest film, you'll be rooting for the rodent. Remy (Patton Oswalt) is a rat blessed with a burning desire to cook. With the help of a kitchen boy whom he literally puppets around the kitchen, Remy can produce dishes to astound the most jaded palate. But how will diners react when they discover the rat beneath the hat?

This is a glorious return to form for Pixar following last year's disappointing Cars. The brainchild of master animator Brad Bird (The Incredibles), Ratatouille is so much more than just another CGI critter caper. It's a thriller, a frenetic comedy, and a love story in the style of Cyrano De Bergerac, as Remy guides the hapless kitchen drudge Linguini through a treacherous romance with a fiery French chefette (Janeane Garofolo). But most of all, Ratatouille is a love letter to food and cooking. Bird goes all out to infect the audience with Remy's love of flavour, using mind-bending visuals to illustrate the aroma of a piece of cheese. Complex as this celluloid dish is, the plot is mere pasta to a rich ragù of slapstick setpieces. A kitchen, as Tom and Jerry proved, is a deadly adventure playground for rodents, and Remy is forever dodging hot plates and flying meat cleavers on his quest to impress cadaverous critic Anton Ego (fruitily voiced by Peter O'Toole.)

" BASICALLY, IT'S A MASTERPIECE"

We could go on for hours about the delights of Ratatouille. The animation is superb, the vocal work flawless, the script witty, the central conflict between family ties and the pursuit of excellence subtly handled. The tasting of the eponymous ratatouille is so expertly done that it's sure to find a spot on any cinemagoer's top twenty favourite scenes. Basically, this is a masterpiece. Don't miss it.

When Harry Met Sally [1989]

Meeting for the first time as they leave college, Harry and Sally share the long drive to New York and immediately fall in hatred. But they keep bumping into one another every few years and even become close friends - despite Harry asserting that it's impossible for men and women to be platonic.

As soon as you hear that, you know what will happen. Much of the movie is inevitable, it's even predictable because it sticks closely to the romantic comedy format and yet it does it so well that you don't care. There's even one long, repeating gag that if you took a moment to think about it you would realise what the pay off was going to be and yet it comes as a big surprise at the very end of the film.

The writing and direction plays with the form and your expectations alike throughout, and with such good performances the film makes for a deliciously prickly ride with laugh-out-loud moments and scenes that resonate through the story.

Meg Ryan looks astonishingly young but she is the better actor of the pair in this case, partly because unusually for a Hollywood film the women characters are better written than the men. She carries off an uptight, rigid character so well that when she does the famous fake orgasm scene she has really been building to it throughout the film.

Billy Crystal gets some great lines and does well with them but at times his reforming New Man character can grate. Only a little, and chiefly as you near the conclusion, by which time you are so anxious for Harry and Sally to get together that you'd accept anything.

"When Harry Met Sally" is on Channel 4 at 10.00pm, Monday 5th February 2001.

Mr & Mrs Smith [2005]

When marriage dampens the fireworks, the bullets start flying between Mr & Mrs Smith in Doug Liman's cracking comic thriller. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie make a sizzling double-act as the titular assassins who exploit a loophole in the clause "till death do us part". Echoing the black wit of the Jack Nicholson/Kathleen Turner classic Prizzi's Honor (1985) but with a screwball pace and doses of hi-tech action, it's not to be missed.

John and Jane Smith are living a lie. Between suburban soirees and picking new curtains, they are contract killers for rival agencies who wind up gunning for the same target (Adam Brody). Quibbling quickly leads to all-out warfare, but it's in the crossfire where they rediscover that missing spark. Sadly by this stage, it's not a marriage counsellor they need but the entire UN peacekeeping force.

"COAXES BIG LAUGHS"

Liman treads stealthily between lightness and dark, coaxing big laughs even while Pitt is cheerfully kicking his onscreen wife in the stomach. He undercuts the violence with a slapstick sensibility and employs rapid-fire editing to match the snappy dialogue. Throughout, screenwriter Simon Kinberg cleverly contrasts the petty frictions of married life with the ruthless hostility between rival killers and the leads carry it off in sophisticated style. Meanwhile Vince Vaughn is hilariously boorish as a hitman who still lives with mum, or as he puts it, "The only woman I can trust!" A busy plot makes for a rambling beginning and a drawn-out finale, but as a hip slice of kiss-kiss bang-bang, Mr & Mrs Smith definitely hits the mark.