Noel Murray

For his first produced screenplay, Black took the best clichés from his favorite movies and honed them until they cut. Lethal Weapon’s heroes were edgier. And thanks in large part to the all-in commitment of director Richard Donner and producer Joel Silver, its chases and shoot-outs were more destructive. This one modestly budgeted genre exercise pumped hot blood back into a stiffening body.

Spike Lee's documentary When The Levees Broke runs four hours, but Lee arguably says what he needs to say in the brilliant opening montage, which cuts together footage of New Orleans in the 20th century, including Mardi Gras parades, segregation marches, and flood after flood.

For all its Jiminy Cricket optimism, Pinocchio is a potent illustration of how people can only improve because they’re so lousy to begin with.

Stalag 17's irreverence likely didn't revolutionize moviemaking for adults so much as it paved the way for the likes of M*A*S*H and Animal House. Then again, that alone is an achievement worth celebrating.

It remains a rapturous, near-indescribable work of cinematic art, spun from a simple story about nuns who travel to the Himalayas to start a school and a hospital, only to have mountain winds and native mysticism weaken their confidence and their faith.

Many of the movies made in the wake of Easy Rider were more accomplished, more sophisticated, and more aesthetically mature. But Easy Rider itself still feels vital, because it was made by people who’d spent years learning what couldn’t be done, before deciding to do it anyway.

Although Billy Wilder's 1950 Hollywood noir Sunset Boulevard gets less attention as a travelogue, it's both an examination of the dark psychological landscape of out-of-fashion show-business types (as underlined by the title) and an actual trip through its physical environment.

The movie Streetcar still seethes with lust, and retains so much of Williams’ florid dialogue and insinuation that it often feels like Kazan and his cast are getting away with something.

It's arguably Malle's masterpiece, marked by a shooting style with little wasted motion or complication, emphasizing tiny, memorable details.

Battleship Potemkin remains remarkable for the way it builds over a brisk 69 minutes, setting the pace for nearly every action movie made since.

Stagecoach gives fine shading to a simple story, making it look and feel like a forgotten American myth.

The movie is first fascinating, then terrifying.

It's one wacked-out melodrama, but it's wildly entertaining.

The affection audiences feel for A Christmas Story is related to the holiday spirit, yes, but specifically to Clark and Shepherd's awareness of how the true meaning of Christmas manifests in the real world, where a warm meal on a cold, dark day—and a surprising moment of parental grace—can ease a troubled mind.

Sunrise remains a magnificent tale of adultery and forgiveness, and contains more lessons in visual storytelling in any given five-minute sequence than most film schools deliver in a semester.

Compared to the breathtaking action sequences and elaborate fantasy landscapes of Miyazaki's early features, the genteel, languid Totoro seems at first slight, and even soporific. Yet My Neighbor Totoro may be the most enduring entry in Miyazaki's impressive filmography, because it's so particular about the nuances of human behavior and emotion.

L'Enfant is intended as a pointed critique of pop culture's celebration of arrested adolescence. The title could refer to Renier's baby, Renier himself, or even the gang of schoolboy robbers that he's gathered around himself.

This movie is a portal, leading to a living museum of childhood at its most poignant.

From the outset, the director lets us know that this won’t be some sensationalistic crime story. Close-Up is more about the power of images, and how what’s on the screen at any given moment can hold our attention completely, even if it has nothing to do with “the story.”

Television tends to trump movies when it comes to staging richly detailed cop dramas, but David Mamet’s 1991 film Homicide is the rare big-screen policier that can stand up to The Shield, The Wire, Hill Street Blues, and Homicide: Life On The Street.

Five Easy Pieces is the very definition of a character study, and one of the best American cinema has produced.

The film would be exciting to watch even completely silent, both because it’s a valuable record of Soviet city life at the end of the 1920s, and because it explodes with visual ideas.

More about well-observed moments of everyday life than it is about heightened melodrama.

By telling their stories, entertainingly and persuasively, Bognar and Reichert make the case that they all deserve better.

WQholly a Coen brothers movie, in that it’s full of exaggerated characters and comic cruelty, anchored to a way of looking at the world that seems to posit a fundamental absence of meaning. And yet there’s something sweet and even a little heartening about the movie, too.

While the subject matter is difficult, the documentary itself is easy to watch and exciting to grapple with. Its biggest strengths are Jackson’s voice and Baldwin’s commentary, which combine to create a distinctively world-weary tone.

The Case Of The Grinning Cat is a sequel of sorts to Marker's epic three-hour 1977 documentary on the decline of the left, "A Grin Without A Cat"--though this new work is both shorter and more playful.

Anyone who enjoys overpowering cinematic sensation and watching people do a job will be predisposed to like Leviathan, Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel’s avant-garde documentary about life aboard a commercial fishing vessel. Leviathan is an immersive experience, plunging viewers into darkness and chaos, amid a rush of vivid color and rapid movement.

This film doesn’t lionize Weiner or justify anything he did. What it does is capture the frenzy of politics, the iron-clad egos of politicians, and the failure of the media to cover the parts of campaigning and government that actually matter.

Timberlake himself is a stunner, whether he’s smoothly pirouetting his way through “Suit & Tie” or he’s choking back tears during his stirring set closer “Mirrors.” But his team is well-matched by Demme’s.

In the end, Black Book may be one of the most fun movies ever made about how people basically suck.

What distinguishes Starless Dreams is Oskouei’s voice, heard from off screen, getting these girls to be honest about where they’ve come from and why they’re less than anxious to return.

This movie offers the kind of effortless Euro-adventure, full and fleet, that Steven Spielberg tried and mostly failed to deliver with his big-screen The Adventures Of Tintin.

Again as with Bong's earlier films, Mother is a genre exercise that honors convention, yet weaves around it whenever possible. Bong carefully turns Mother into a classic gumshoe tale, with red herrings, interrogations, and moments of sublime suspense.

Louder Than A Bomb is a different kind of high-school movie, brimming with life and hope instead of social-climbing, bullying, and furtive first kisses.

Looper is a remarkable feat of imagination and execution, entertaining from start to finish, even as it asks the audience to contemplate how and why humanity keeps making the same rotten mistakes.

Directors Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe (best-known for their Terry Gilliam behind-the-scenes docs Lost In La Mancha and The Hamster Factor) have made The Bad Kids in the “fly on the wall” mold of Frederick Wiseman, crossed with the “year-in-the-life” storytelling of Hoop Dreams. The structure of Black Rock itself is one of their biggest narrative assets.

In the propaganda-filled realms of politics, sports, and the military, that kind of no-bullsh-- -allowed truth feels cathartic. No wonder the Tillman family has spent much of the last 10 years fighting for it.

Taut, tense, and self-consciously stylish.

Yet in his despair, there's something Kudlow misses, and it's what makes Anvil! as moving as it is hilarious.

The brilliance of Long Strange Trip is that Bar-Lev allows for multiple interpretations.

It’s not easy to make a movie as beautiful as Brooklyn, where the stakes are low but the outcome really matters. This is an old-fashioned entertainment, but one so masterfully crafted and heartfelt that it’s hard not to love.

The charming, rousing WWII romance Their Finest is a film that openly stumps for two causes: the value of women in the workplace, and the power of cinema to tell stories that people need to hear.

The first third of Iraq In Fragments is so intense--a masterpiece in miniature, really--that audiences may not have much emotion left for the rest.

Witty, disgusting, eye-popping, and incomprehensible, The Holy Mountain is every bit as pop-philosophical as Jodorowsky's earlier work, but it also contains original visual ideas nearly every 30 seconds, from frogs in armor to crucifixes made out of painted bread.

So James White’s title character is an entitled, self-centered a--hole. But the movie about him is still a marvel: an honest, moving, and occasionally even funny portrait of what happens when a cripplingly immature young man gets hit with one reality check after another.

To an extent, Greenfield tries to have it both ways with her film: she allows us to enjoy the fantasy of being rich, while also letting us see the bastards suffer a little.

Wadleigh crafted a film with a thoughtful flow; it tells the full story of the event, from the paranoia (and eventual acceptance) of the locals to the helpful attitudes (and eventual paranoia) of the throng. [1994 version]

Like the best crime stories, this one isn't about how the bad guys live, it's about how WE live.

It isn't just the fashions that date this documentary, or the subjects' shared experiences of the European turmoil of the mid-20th-century. It's also their work itself, which is like a relic of some ancient civilization.

Without ever saying exactly what her heroine is thinking, Holmer captures a lot of what she’s feeling. And what Toni’s going through should be familiar to anyone who had an awkward puberty — which is to say, nearly everyone.

The result is one beautiful movie-and no less so for making a strong case that beauty is a lie.

If a team of clever screenwriters tried to script a cautionary tale about the politics of fame (and the fame of politics), they likely couldn’t come up with anything odder or more apt than Erik Gandini’s documentary Videocracy.

In keeping with Jóhann Jóhannsson's score - alternately ominous, triumphant, and elegiac - The Miners' Hymns plays on the broader emotions of the subject. The film is all about the mysterious world down below, how camaraderie turned to conflict, and the nagging feeling of loss.

Woman On The Beach is a stripped-down, witty explication of how we all get stymied by the impulses and options inherent in the simple act of living.

Though Certain Women is difficult, it’s hardly obtuse. And for those willing to trust that Reichardt is in full command of this material, “Certain Women” is utterly enthralling.

What’s perhaps most remarkable about Welcome To Chechnya is the level-headed perspective many of these subjects have about what’s happening to them.

Snappy patter reigns again, but by letting the story develop in open spaces rather than through tight edits, Bogdanovich fosters an atmosphere of freedom and promise.

Porumboiu starts off making a mordant slice of life, but he gradually entwines the personal and the historical, then ends on a poignant note. The story and situation are slight, but in the best possible way.

It’s a taut, intense procedural, with a resonant story that simultaneously follows a journalistic investigation and an attempt to fix a fatally dysfunctional medical bureaucracy—all while criminal organizations, corrupt politicians, and rabble-rousing television hosts work in concert to stymie any real reform.

Neil Barsky's Koch doesn't try to do anything radical as a piece of filmmaking, but Barsky - a former newspaper reporter - covers Koch's story magnificently as a journalist.

The result is a movie that's poignant, bittersweet, and true.

How can a freethinking father mandate his ideals without violating them? Pray covers it all, and movingly so.

Full Battle Rattle works just fine as a two-fisted combat story, with unexpected bursts of violence peppering that old universal message that war is hell.

Some people might find it distasteful to make a movie about guilty rich folks who give themselves permission to splurge. Others will rightly appreciate the honesty.

Whatever a person's opinion of the play's accuracy, William Friedkin's 1970 film adaptation remains gripping, translating a story that takes place in a cramped apartment into a movie that rarely feels stagey.

The characters are sketchy by design, but the set design is wondrously opulent, and Ophüls cleverly picks up on Schnitzler's central theme, about how sexual desire erases class distinctions.

The Future's main characters are, undeniably, dopes. But July and Linklater turn their ineptitude into a funny running joke, which becomes surprisingly affecting in the second half.

An intoxicating performance piece in which skilled actors pinball off each other with such energy and nuance that the audience almost forgets about the dying man on the edge of the frame. The style alone makes the movie's point.

Restrepo can be tedious at times and nerve-racking at others, but why shouldn't it be? That's exactly what Junger and Hetherington saw on the front lines, so that's what they show, with very little filter.

Photographic Memory is less wry and more melancholy than McElwee's earlier documentaries; it's a lot like his superb 2003 film "Bright Leaves," which was also concerned with family history and the shifting meaning of images.

Only Yesterday is animated, but rarely cartoony, in either its design or its storytelling.

All the way up to the stunning final shot, Ozon urgently asks whether, for storytellers, it’s better to be on the outside looking in, or the inside looking out.

In tone and plot, Julia often resembles an extended episode of the AMC series "Breaking Bad"--except that Swinton's character is never NOT bad.

(T)error moves forward chronologically, and features enough astonishing twists to rival any episode of "Homeland."

The film’s real strength is its plainness. Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, like Rogers, tells us what we already know in our bones about how we’re supposed to behave. Hearing it said aloud, so calmly, is unexpectedly shattering.

It's undoubtedly something extraordinary: like a live-action Miyazaki film, with Days Of Heaven narration, set in a dirt-poor community at an unspecified time of crisis.

A Ghost Story has the structure and rhythm of a musical suite, with Lowry working variations on the same themes, the same characters, and the same location. The result can be lyrical and poetic, or more naturalistic and minimalist. In both cases, A Ghost Story is absolutely mesmerizing, with an anything-goes quality that’s endlessly fascinating.

The two main points Persepolis makes are that strife is relative, and all politics are personal.

When others can't see what parents see, there's an inescapable ache. As much as anything, My Kid Could Paint That is about that ache.

So much about The Friends Of Eddie Coyle feels locked into 1973—from Dave Grusin’s jazz-fusion score to the shaggy hair and wide collars—but the dialogue is almost David Mamet-like in its specificity and rhythm, and it remains bracing even now.

The movie has a lumpy shape, and its jokes are often obvious and crude, but it’s a lot sweeter than the other raunchy comedies of the era.

So what happens when people forget about all those people he stalked and snapped? Will his collection still be seen as an invaluable store of late 20th-century art, or the work of a celeb-obsessed hoarder?

In one of the movie’s most famous scenes, Fox practices with his specially engineered rifle (which has been built into a pair of crutches), and as he takes his shots at a practice melon, he keeps tweaking the aim. It all looks very cool, until Fox finishes his adjustments, and fires a bullet that makes this stand-in for de Gaulle’s head explode.

Maddin talks at length about Winnipeg's hidden layers, but what makes My Winnipeg perhaps his best film to date is that so much of it is right out in the open.

Grease is a pure pop construct, fueled by movie-star poses, hit songs, and persistent audience fantasies of being an acceptable kind of "bad." Barry Gibb-penned disco theme aside, Grease doesn't really belong to any one era. It's like it's always existed.

Fateless is a strangely beautiful film, enhanced by a typically lyrical Ennio Morricone score and by Koltai's hazy, grayed-out images.

Some of the hallmarks of Peckinpah's style—most notably the moving POV shots, quick cuts, and off-center close-ups—manifest even in the colorful, smooth High Country.

Lee doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel when it comes to filming live theater, but he moves the camera artfully and edits with an energy that matches the music.

Rat Film doesn’t really make an impassioned political statement. Instead, Anthony assembles striking, allusive pictures and sounds into a one-of-a-kind experience, meant to provoke thought.

It’s a bright, lively movie, with a vision of New York as a multicultural free-for-all, where everybody’s always looking to see what they can take from everybody else.

Whenever the cars are running, Grand Prix is one of the best studio efforts of the '60s. The film only stalls when it's off the track, which is where more than half of this three-hour epic takes place.

A documentary that doubles as a comic thriller, and it’s as entertaining as it is thought-provoking.

What binds the entertaining crime movie to its YouTube-ready musical interludes is the unspoken yearning of its two leads: he for the world of silence in which he'd rather live, and she for all the sounds that slip by every second, uncontrolled and unappreciated.

What’s been forgotten is that the prisoners’ dramatic seizure of Attica was intended to give them a platform for their legitimate grievances—to get the tax-paying citizens to understand what exactly their money was buying. If nothing else, Nelson’s Attica gives these men another opportunity to raise their voices.

Much of the shtick used by Clark and screenwriter Roy Moore was later stolen both by countless hacks and at least one real artist (Halloween director John Carpenter), but few repeated Clark's most devious tactic, accompanying the violence with the sound of the killer's nerve-janglingly maniacal shouting.

Bullhead is well-plotted, with a powerful ending, but its most brutal scene comes early, explaining why for Schoenaerts, life has been one long wince.

In the battle of the classic Hollywood Christmas movies, It's A Wonderful Life feels charmingly ancient, fixed in an early-20th-century America that scarcely anyone today remembers first-hand. Miracle On 34th Street feels more modern, with slangy dialogue and naturalistic asides, and a general awareness of how Christmas has become about the intertwined stresses of shopping and selling.