Directed by Mervin LeRoy, the film is epic in scale, with special effects that were quite advanced for their day, and a glorious film score. Some historical facts might not be quite accurate, but it won't make a difference in the end. [10 Apr 2009, p.NC18]

The real reasons to see An American in Paris are for the Kelly dance sequences, the closing ballet, the Gershwin songs, the bright locations, and a few moments of the ineffable, always curiously sad charm of Oscar Levant.

You could make a good case that no performance had more influence on modern film acting styles than Brando's work as Stanley Kowalski, Tennessee Williams' rough, smelly, sexually charged hero.

Strangers on a Train is not a psychological study, however, but a first-rate thriller with odd little kinks now and then. It proceeds, as Hitchcock's films so often do, with a sense of private scores being settled just out of sight.

The movie's strength and weakness is Anne Baxter, whose Eve lacks the presence to be a plausible rival to Margo, but is convincing as the scheming fan. When Eve understudies for Margo and gets great reviews, Mankiewicz wisely never shows us her performance; better to imagine it, and focus on the girl whose look is a little too intense, whose eyes a little too focused, whose modesty is somehow suspect.

Sunset Boulevard remains the best drama ever made about the movies because it sees through the illusions, even if Norma doesn't.

This magical and elusive work, which always seems to place second behind "Citizen Kane" in polls of great films, is so simple and so labyrinthine, so guileless and so angry, so innocent and so dangerous, that you can't simply watch it, you have to absorb it.

When those little mice bust a gut trying to drag that key up hundreds of stairs in order to free Cinderella, I don't care how many Kubrick pictures you've seen, it's still exciting.

Of all the movies I have seen, this one most completely embodies the romance of going to the movies.

Alfred Hitchcock called Rope an “experiment that didn’t work out,” and he was happy to see it kept out of release for most of three decades. He was correct that it didn’t work out, but Rope remains one of the most interesting experiments ever attempted by a major director working with big box-office names.

What we remember with Red River is not, however, the silly ending, but the setup and the majestic central portions. The tragic rivalry is so well established that somehow it keeps its weight and dignity in our memories, even though the ending undercuts it.

While this is not perhaps the best of Disney, neither is it the worst. It is probably perfect for smaller people, ages 4 through 7. [05 Jun 1998, p.20]

The movie has never really been about gold but about character, and Bogart fearlessly makes Fred C. Dobbs into a pathetic, frightened, selfish man -- so sick we would be tempted to pity him, if he were not so undeserving of pity.

Out of the Past is one of the greatest of all film noirs, the story of a man who tries to break with his past and his weakness and start over again in a town, with a new job and a new girl.

The greatest of all the Dickens films, and which does what few movies based on great books can do: Creates pictures on the screen that do not clash with the images already existing in our minds.

It's one of those ageless movies, like "Casablanca" or "The Third Man," that improves with age. Some movies, even good ones, should only be seen once. When we know how they turn out, they've surrendered their mystery and appeal. Other movies can be viewed an indefinite number of times. Like great music, they improve with familiarity. It's a Wonderful Life falls in the second category.

It feels surprisingly modern: lean, direct, honest about issues that Hollywood then studiously avoided. After the war years of patriotism and heroism in the movies, this was a sobering look at the problems veterans faced when they returned home.

Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious is the most elegant expression of the master's visual style, just as Vertigo is the fullest expression of his obsessions.

It is one of the great film noirs, a black-and-white symphony that exactly reproduces Chandler's ability, on the page, to find a tone of voice that keeps its distance, and yet is wry and humorous and cares.

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is a film of balance and insight--a civilized film, which even in a time of war celebrates civilized values.

To describe the story is to miss the nuances that make it tantalizing.

The dialogue is so spare and cynical it has not grown old-fashioned. Much of the emotional effect of Casablanca is achieved by indirection; as we leave the theater, we are absolutely convinced that the only thing keeping the world from going crazy is that the problems of three little people do after all amount to more than a hill of beans.

No one would ever accuse Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt of being plausible, but it is framed so distinctively in the Hitchcock style that it plays firmly and never breaks out of the story.

Cat People wasn't frightening like a slasher movie, using shocks and gore, but frightening in an eerie, mysterious way that was hard to define; the screen harbored unseen threats, and there was an undertone of sexual danger that was more ominous because it was never acted upon.

Whatever he did, Cagney came across as one of the most dynamic performers in movie history--a short man with ordinary looks whose coiled tension made him the focus of every scene.

The movie is essentially a series of conversations punctuated by brief, violent interludes. It's all style. It isn't violence or chases, but the way the actors look, move, speak and embody their characters.

Its surface is as much fun as any movie ever made. Its depths surpass understanding. I have analyzed it a shot at a time with more than 30 groups, and together we have seen, I believe, pretty much everything that is there on the screen. The more clearly I can see its physical manifestation, the more I am stirred by its mystery.

If I were asked to name the single scene in all of romantic comedy that was sexiest and funniest at the same time, I would advise beginning at six seconds past the 20-minute mark in Preston Sturges' The Lady Eve, and watching as Barbara Stanwyck toys with Henry Fonda's hair in an unbroken shot that lasts three minutes and 51 seconds.

Throughout Fantasia, Disney pushes the edges of the envelope.

The message is boldly displayed, but told with characters of such sympathy and images of such beauty that audiences leave the theater feeling more pity than anger or resolve. It's a message movie, but not a recruiting poster.

The movie is genuinely exciting and romantic, great to look at, and timeless.

A towering landmark of film, quite simply because it tells a good story, and tells it wonderfully well.

The Wizard of Oz has a wonderful surface of comedy and music, special effects and excitement, but we still watch it six decades later because its underlying story penetrates straight to the deepest insecurities of childhood, stirs them and then reassures them.

Stagecoach holds our attention effortlessly and is paced with the elegance of a symphony.

The word genius is easily used and has been cheapened, but when it is used to describe Walt Disney, reflect that he conceived of this film, in all of its length, revolutionary style and invention, when there was no other like it--and that to one degree or another, every animated feature made since owes it something.

One of the treasures of 1930s screwball comedy.

What Fred and Ginger had together, and what no other team has ever had in the same way, was a joy of performance. They were so good, and they knew they were so good, that they danced in celebration of their gifts.

At a point when many dancers would be gasping for breath, Astaire and Rogers are smiling easily, heedlessly. To watch them is to see hard work elevated to effortless joy: The work of two dancers who know they can do no better than this, and that no one else can do as well.

It's satirical, exciting, funny, and an influential masterpiece of art direction.

To see The Thin Man is to watch him (Powell) embodying a personal style that could have been honored, but could never be imitated.

The film retains a certain power and is ripe for rediscovery. Its theatrical morbidity and poetic earnestness could make it a favorite of moony teenage depressives everywhere, especially as Grazia -- like Romeo and Juliet -- appears to prefer Death to a compromised life. [25 Dec 1998, p.12]

There is an odd moment when Harpo shows Groucho a doghouse tattooed on his stomach, and in a special effect a real dog emerges and barks at him. The brothers broke the classical structure of movie comedy and glued it back again haphazardly, and nothing was ever the same.

But King Kong is more than a technical achievement. It is also a curiously touching fable in which the beast is seen, not as a monster of destruction, but as a creature that in its own way wants to do the right thing.

If only one of Charles Chaplin's films could be preserved, “City Lights” (1931) would come the closest to representing all the different notes of his genius. It contains the slapstick, the pathos, the pantomime, the effortless physical coordination, the melodrama, the bawdiness, the grace, and, of course, the Little Tramp--the character said, at one time, to be the most famous image on earth.

Certainly it is Lugosi's performance, and the cinematography of Karl Freund, that make Tod Browning's film such an influential Hollywood picture.

Lumbers a little on its way to a preordained conclusion, but is intriguing for its glimpses of backstage life in shabby German postwar vaudeville, and for Dietrich's performance, which seems to float above the action as if she's stepping fastidiously across gutters.

To modern audiences, raised on films where emotion is conveyed by dialogue and action more than by faces, a film like The Passion of Joan of Arc is an unsettling experience--so intimate we fear we will discover more secrets than we desire.

Charlie Chaplin was a perfectionist in his films and a calamity in his private life. These two traits clashed as he was making The Circus, one of his funniest films and certainly the most troubled.

The more you consider Sunrise the deeper it becomes -- not because the story grows any more subtle, but because you realize the real subject is the horror beneath the surface.