This film no doubt planted the seeds for more good ol' boy action pics (White Lightning, Smokey and the Bandit), but while many of those vehicles relied solely on high-speed hijinks, Mitchum's story and charismatic screen presence make Thunder Road a ride to remember.

The great director's masterpiece of bad juju. [Director's Cut]

Kubrick’s film vividly depicts the harsh realities of war and remains a great anti-war drama.

Elvis' third movie is surely his best. He plays a guy vaguely like himself, who hits it big after learning to play music while in prison. Not only does this film have some of the best tunes in an Elvis movie, the choreography is great too.

This oil-family story is way, way east of Eden. Were I asked to choose, Written on the Wind would blow in as my favorite Sirk film.

There is no better way to while away a Sunday afternoon than with this sprawling saga about the growth of Texas and the families that matured along with the state. If Texas had a state movie, then Giant would be it.

As good as the story and direction are, though, the true strength of The Killing lies in the characters and characterizations.

A meditation on survival, The Searchers is about the loss of faith and the death of heroes.

Ageism, sexism, classism, and unabashed snobbery rear their ugly heads in a provocatively told story by probably the greatest film melodrama stylist who ever lived.

It's been 40 years since James Dean essayed his quintessential role in as a troubled American teen and, along with co-stars Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo, established an iconography of adolescence whose potency extends into the present.

Hitchcock's comedic charms shine in this delightful story about a corpse that just won't stay buried.

Preminger strips the musical of all excess and frills. He creates an austere, depoeticized, anti-lyrical world in which nothing obstructs his camera's detached recording of the action. The great themes of Preminger's oeuvre are obsession and the conflict between freedom and repression, themes which are central to Carmen Jones.

White Christmas endures – despite not being a very good movie.

Based on a Cornell Woolrich short story, this is one of Hitchcock's finest moments, full of subtle humor and nasty black turns, not to mention a wonderful score by Franz Waxman and gorgeous cinematography from longtime Hitchcock director of photography Robert Burks.

This Stanley Kramer-produced film is the original biker movie.

Minnelli's direction has seldom attained such a perfect fusion of form and content. The Band Wagon is quite simply a masterpiece.

Clift's performance is moody, the kind of slow, psychological approach rarely witnessed in Hitchcock's films.

Kurosawa's international breakthrough is a masterstroke in unreliable narration.

The camera tracks, cranes, and dollies through the dance space, anticipating with the boldness of the greatest director working at MGM in 1951, that the New Wave is, indeed, not so very far away. Finally, like all of Minnelli's collaborations with Lerner (Brigadoon, Gigi, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever), An American in Paris is a paradox - a musical that embraces solitude and romantic despair. It is a resplendent motion picture.

Streetcar is always a wonderful screen drama and now, also, a study in film archeology. [Director's Cut]

Celebrate Father's Day in grand movie style.

So thick and rich you'll be tempted to eat it with a fork - but use a spoon to get every drop.

Billy Wilder’s cynical edge is finely honed in this darkly amusing satire, which won three Academy Awards. It’s a film that is perennially ready for its close-up.

It has a classic Hitchcock scenario in which a man is mistaken for a murderer, but the film lacks humor and suspense. Even the great cast is unable to make much headway with this torpid thriller.

Talk about your baby boys – Cagney takes the cake here as a psychopathic gangster with a seriously perverse mother complex. A gangster classic.

It's a giddy blend of horror and comedy.

This sentimental perennial is a holiday chestnut.

Bergman and Grant sizzle in this espionage tale written by Ben Hecht.