Chic, shallow stuff, but there's one hell of a car chase. [22 Jan 1999, p.F]

Whatever its flaws, Funny Girl is one star vehicle that works perfectly for its subject.

A masterpiece that can still leave you dizzy with wonder. As much as any movie ever made, this visionary science-fiction tale of space travel and first contact with extraterrestrial life is a spellbinding experience.

An improbable masterpiece -- a bizarre mixture of grandly operatic visuals, grim brutality and sordid violence that keeps wrenching you from one extreme to the other.

One of those lurid, macabre, amusingly exaggerated B-horror movies beloved by the psychotronic/Joe Bob Briggs crowds.

Ferocious action saga about an old samurai (Mifune) taking a stand against his lord's cruelty and injustice. [03 Mar 2006, p.C5]

It's based on a novel by a real chain-gang inmate, but the movie itself often seems slick and arch, like a conformist's yearning tribute to non-conformity. Yet the cast is superb: Paul Newman as the rebellious Luke, George Kennedy as his brutish sidekick, Strother Martin as a jailer ("failure to communicate") and about a dozen supporting actors who became widely familiar faces over the next decade. [16 Jan 2009, p.C6]

Point Blank catches the feel of the late '60s and the sunshot, edgy atmosphere of Los Angeles then (the go-go clubs, the used-car lots, the penthouses and the storm drain tunnels) like few movies since. [07 Feb 1997, p.K]

El Dorado is essentially a darker remake of Rio Bravo, with Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Hunnicutt and James Caan as the now archetypal quartet. But, though the situation is the same, the mood is crisper, tenser, with a heightened sense of pain, loss and death underlying the humor and action.

Both a great concert movie and an amazing documentary of mid-'60s cutting-edge pop culture, this cinema verite record of Bob Dylan's pre-electric, pre-Band 1965 British tour was such a candid and unsparing look at stardom's inner sanctums and Dylan's caustic personality, audiences were shocked. [29 Oct 1999, p.M]

Chimes at Midnight is one of Welles' peak achievements. Its depth of feeling seems very real, very deep indeed.

One of the screen's supreme works and perhaps Ingmar Bergman's finest film, "Persona" is also his most radical in form and technique.

Exciting, beautifully shot '60s political western. [10 Apr 1998, p.M]

One of the quintessential '60s foreign art films, a bizarre melange of pop music, revolution, sex, movie allusions and poetry. It's a masterpiece of sorts by one of the most important European filmmakers of that era. But it's also a movie that can drive you crazy.

1966 French masterpiece -- the finest, most deeply personal work of a filmmaker who has been compared, justifiably, to both Dostoyevsky and Bach.

Michael Caine became a front rank star -- and actor -- when he played the title role in this smart, salty, subtly moving adaptation of Bill Naughton's play about a Cockney Casanova on the loose in Swinging London. [30 Jan 2000, p.41C]

Blends a love of semi-trashy pop entertainment with a love of poetry, art and high moral seriousness. It's a young person's movie (Godard was 34 and Karina 24 in 1964) that retains its mysterious pull even as the film and we get older.

A mad, resplendent peacock of a film, a cinematographic riot of color and sensuality that evokes its era -- the swinging mid-'60s -- as much as any movie made during those giddy years.

The sociopolitical issues are lost in the action, but it's quite some action. [11 Jan 2002, p.C1]

Audrey Hepburn is a physical wonder; Rex Harrison defines his role; and production designer Gene Allen is the hidden star. A big screen production for the entire family.

One of the most excitingly contemporary musicals ever made.

Kobayashi's great, laceratingly exciting 1962 Japanese samurai revenge saga, once voted by Japanese critics their country's all-time best film. [03 Mar 2006, p.C5]

Hitchcock's most disturbing film. [26 Nov 1999, p.A]

The story is dumb --Elvis is a race-car driver bellhopping and entering talent contests in Vegas to raise money for his car -- but the songs are hot. And you can't beat that chemistry with the Queen of '60s shimmy, Ann-Margret. [14 Aug 1997, p.7]

A late classic that revisits old territory with masterly serenity and acceptance. [29 May 2009, p.C4]

Fuller amusingly mixes up his usual hard-knuckled muck-raking melodrama with a sort of soap opera, all done in raw, awesome black-and-white images. In its day, this was the locus classicus B-Movie American auteur thriller. [12 Feb 1999, p.R]

This landmark movie's madcap humor and terrifying suspense remain undiminished by time.

One of the great movie family sagas, a fascinating revelation of both the dark and bright sides of the American dream. [05 Mar 2000, p.24C]

Superb crime thriller. [07 Sep 1998, p.1N]

The Polish thriller that made Polanski world-famous, a taut psychological drama in which a bourgeois married couple invite a hitchhiking student for a weekend of sailing. The sea becomes an arena for desire, menace and deadly games. [19 Jan 2007, p.C3]

Rousing, stirring, with a great cast: Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough, Charles Bronson, James Coburn. McQueen's performance as "Cooler King" Hilts is undoubtedly his most archetypal. [10 May 2013, p.C6]

Thirty years after its premiere, despite being in black and white and despite the irritating lip-flap from the Italian penchant for post-dubbing dialogue, Federico Fellini's 8 1/2 is a remarkably fresh film, a landmark of cinema that seems to defy dating. [07 May 1993, p.H]

One of the best-loved of all the Ray Harryhausen stop-motion animation special effects extravaganzas, this kitschy version of the mythic tale of Jason's quest for the golden fleece stars Todd Armstrong as Medea's eventual betrayer and is graced with a nerve-rending Bernard Herrmann score, plus such classic visual tricks as the dueling skeletons. [01 Oct 1999, p.J]

Big, bright, corny, muscular, beautifully photographed. [12 Nov 2000, p.27]

A lavish and sometimes lusty version of the French hit musical, minus the songs but with lots of Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon. [17 Jan 2000, p.Q]

The thrilling sequel-return of Mifune's hip samurai from Yojimbo. [01 Nov 2002, p.C9]

Withering study of white-collar alcoholics.

Few films have caught the special feel and rhythms of childhood so well, with such uncondescending warmth and humor. And few bring out more powerfully the themes of anti-racism and the virtues and joys of community and family. [20 Apr 2007, p.C5]

It seems a small miracle that The Manchurian Candidate is able to maintain its mad balancing act as long as it does. That the film slips near the end is a sign of how very hard it is. [11 Mar 1988, p.A]

Varda's touching day-in-the-life of a Parisian pop star. [12 Jan 2007, p.C3]

Anne Bancroft won the Oscar playing Helen Keller's teacher, Annie Sullivan, in this intelligent adaptation of William Gibson's Broadway hit, and it's a fierce, moving job, highlighted by the incredibly savage battles between teacher Annie and pupil Helen (fellow Oscar winner Patty Duke). It's a model serious bio-drama.

Brilliant adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's 20th Century comic-erotic classic. [08 Jul 2005, p.C2]

A smart shocker, scripted by Twilight Zone regulars Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont.

It's a good transcription, though sadly bowdlerized. [02 Jul 2000, p.29]

Ozu's informal '50s-set remake of "I Was Born, But . . . ." Not as lyrical as its model, but just as penetrating, this one, made in bright colors and flat surfaces that suggest the era's television dramas, has another obstreperous brother-combo who stage gas-expelling contests and wage a war to get, coincidentally, a family TV. [25 Nov 2005, p.C4]

Based on a one-act play by Ferenc Molnar, and scripted by Wilder and his frequent collaborator, I.A.L. Diamond, One Two Three is all-Cagney all the time. [11 May 2001, p.C2]

West Side Story has a nonpareil set of songs and dances, with ecstatic, exuberant, wonderful music by Leonard Bernstein and witty or heart-tearing lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. [Sing-a-long]

Superb, vibrantly emotional drama. [27 Apr 2001, p.C1]

Rossen treats the jousts at the pool tables here like mythic battles waged by legendary knights on a playing field composed of nicotine, dirty felt and wasted dreams.

One of the great samurai pictures, its darkly brilliant premise--the cynical mercenary/master swordsman or yojimbo (bodyguard) who walks into a town feud and plays both evil sides against each other--has been copied frequently, most notably in the Sergio Leone-Clint Eastwood A Fistful of Dollars. But Kurosawa's treatment remains the most savage, thrilling, smart and hideously funny. [26 Jan 2007, p.C2]

A very fine and strongly acted, if somewhat stagebound, adaptation of Lorraine Hansberry's great, moving African-American family drama. [06 Apr 2007, p.C8]

One of the cinema's true classics.

Blast is as bleak as noir gets, packed with black-and-white images of '60s New York City that recall Jean-Pierre Melville's French thrillers, and a street-tough taste that suggests Cassavetes and points ahead to Scorsese. [29 Oct 2004, p.C2]

It's a low-budget romance-thriller that changed the face of cinema. [14 May 2000, p.8]

This movie offers four of the best -- and best-looking -- Hollywood stars cavorting together in material so slight and inconsequential it often seems ready to float away like a toy balloon. [16 Oct 1997, p.1]

Otto Preminger's adaptation of Leon Uris' best seller about the founding of the state of Israel occasionally threatens to collapse under its own weight, but a strong cast, including Paul Newman, Eva Marie Saint, Ralph Richardson, Lee J. Cobb and an Oscar-nominated Sal Mineo, helps maintain focus. [08 Nov 2008, p.C10]

A British horror classic, filled with enough creepy imagery to keep "normal" children awake at night, and parents looking over their shoulders at the "little monsters" plotting away in the room down the hall. [29 Nov 2004, p.C4]

Even when informed by Douglas' characteristic intensity, Spartacus has no real identity apart from "the common man"; at his side, the beautiful Jean Simmons is never anything more than Spartacus' chick - the proof that he's a manly man, as opposed to those mincing Roman aristocrats. Whatever Trumbo's progressive leanings, he was not past equating homosexuality with unspeakable evil and perversion.

Kurosawa's 1958 classic samurai comedy adventure; George Lucas used it as the model for Star Wars, in which Mifune and the two squabbling farmers are transformed into Han Solo, C-3PO and R2-D2. [03 Mar 2006, p.C5]

Frank Sinatra and his Clan knock over Vegas. [07 Dec 2001, p.C1]

An exciting World War II romantic triangle drama about a young woman (Tatyana Samoilova) caught in war's turmoil, "Cranes" was hailed by 1950s U.S. critics for its humanism. But what burns this movie into memory is its stunning visual style: the rich, mobile camerawork of Kalatozov and genius cinematographer Sergei Uresevsky. [22 Feb 2008, p.C2]

Featured a strong supporting cast that included another Oscar nominee, Thelma Ritter, as a wisecracking maid, and Tony Randall as Day's fussbudget suitor. [09 Sep 2011, p.C6]

Perhaps Bergman's most typical variation on one of his major themes: the clash between raffish theatrical artists and sober rulers. [10 Dec 2005, p.C4]

Director Otto Preminger excelled at intellectual thrillers and he's at his peak here. [07 Feb 2007, p.C12]

The movie, beautifully written, photographed and acted, remains Bergman's most characteristic work, alternating between terror and charm, sentiment and humor. It has one of the loveliest last scenes in any Bergman film. [10 Dec 2004, p.C5]

Bravo shines with humor and character. [28 Jul 2006, p.C10]

Adapted from the Goodrich-Hackett play, it just misses the spiritual and emotional majesty it reaches for.

A film that can tear you apart emotionally; it's both one of the great movie soap operas and a powerful indictment of racism. Sirk's cool, elegant style--smooth as silk on top, jagged and hot with feeling below--has rarely been joined to a more perfect subject. [05 May 2006, p.C9]

An Oscar winner for best foreign-language film, its ideas were later perfected in the masterly "Playtime." [27 Aug 2004, p.C3]

Wyler's return to the western form (where he specialized in the silent era) is a vast range-war saga full of majestic vistas and full-blooded characters brawling and firing away. [07 Jan 2011, p.C5]

Blithely sophisticated, would-be French naughtiness, sleek as a bolt of silk. [08 Jan 2004, p.N1]

From the very first images of Saul Bass' credit sequence, the whorls and patterns revolving in darkness, the huge eye bathed in red, the movie lets us feel the heartbeat and divided soul of its hero. And its creator. It is a movie about desire, darkness and the pull toward destruction. Most of all, it is about impossible love and overwhelming fear--conveyed with consummate control and art. Watching it, we feel the fear, suffer the desire. [Restored version; 18 Oct 1996, p.1]

A colorful version of Bram Stoker's deathless tale of the bloodsucking count has Christopher Lee as a suave Dracula and Peter Cushing as his nemesis Von Helsing. [02 Oct 1998, p.J]

The courtroom scenes are terrific, with brittle dialogue expertly delivered. And Wilder milks Christie's surprise denouement for all it's worth. [21 Nov 1986, p.92]

Still seems close to the pinnacle of film noir. [Director's Cut]

Egypt's foremost filmmaker Chahine directs and stars in the movie most beloved by Egyptian audiences: a vibrant, lower-depths saga of the working community at a Cairo train station: concessionaires, porters and baggage-handlers, beset by bosses and torn by inner conflicts. [09 Jul 1999, p.L]

Not only is the wide screen black-and-white "Angels" Sirk's best movie -- dramatically richer than his more popular '50s romantic melodramas, but just as visually beautiful -- it is the only film from a Faulkner story that the novelist himself liked and praised. [05 Jun 1997, p.8]

Paths of Glory is an antidote to false movies about the glories of war, nonsensical fantasies like John Wayne's The Green Berets or Sylvester Stallone's Rambo. [25 Feb 2005, p.C2]

Even when it's stiff and staid in moviemaking terms, Peyton Place has every kind of performance working for it, or against it. Over here, there's Turner's gliding charisma; over there, you get the powerful skill of Oscar nominees Varsi and Hope Lange. Through it all, Lloyd Nolan anchors the frothy seas as the sensible, seen-it-all town doctor, the one who knows all and tells some, depending on the needs of the story. [31 Mar 2020, p.C1]

The all-time great Stoller-Lieber title number, performed by The King in jailbird regalia, is just one highlight of this '50s rock-the-house classic. [04 Sep 1998, p.H]

Based on an Elmore Leonard story: the classic suspense western in which a desperate farmer (Van Heflin), trying to save his spread, hires on to transport a sardonic outlaw chief (Glenn Ford) to Yuma. [25 Jul 2008, p.C8]

A perfectly balanced blend of romance in exotic settings (shipboard, in Italy) and the trauma-drama of accident and heartbreak. [08 Aug 1999, p.23]

Love in the Afternoon is a 1957 romantic comedy by writer-director Billy Wilder that fondly re-created the atmosphere--the brio, wit, star personality and sardonic joie de vivre--of the great Hollywood-continental comic romances of the 1930s. And there's an obvious reason: It's a tribute from one movie comic master to the man who taught him how to do it. [15 Oct 1997, p.1]

Based on Reginald Rose's legendary TV play, under Sidney Lumet's sympathetic hand, this is one of the great '50s actors' showcases. [16 May 1999, p.27]

Classic low-budget '50s sci-fi thriller, brilliantly scripted by Richard Matheson from his novel. [01 Sep 2006, p.C7]

Hitchcock's most realistic film is also his ultimate "wrong man" suspense nightmare. [23 Jul 2010, p.C3]

Baby Doll failed because it was stigmatized as dirty. Watching it now, it seems fresh and witty, knowing but not lewd. [26 May 2006, p.C1]

The movie, one of Sirk's most popular, is impeccably designed and shot but also gaudy, garish, full of jukebox colors and feverish emotions. It's about the "broken" screen characters Sirk says he loves most--and it really gets to you. [14 Apr 2006, p.C6]

The key to this 1956 bio-pic is the sumptuous cinematography and art direction, which is to be expected from the man who gave us "An American in Paris" and "Gigi." [23 Nov 2001, p.C11]

It suffers from stilted Vista Vision staging and a lack of gloss -- but has some sparkling Cole Porter musical numbers. [26 Sep 1999, p.26C]

Right in the "Rebel Without a Cause" vein, of course, but grittier and less romantic. [16 Jun 2006, p.C8]

Forty years later, The Killing has lost little of its punch. It's both vintage '50s noir and a stunning introduction to a killer director. [22 Jul 1998, p.L]

Hitchcock's glossier and more complex remake of his classic 1934 spy thriller, with James Stewart and Doris Day as the average American couple caught in a whirlwind of intrigue and terror. [26 Nov 1999, p.A]

John Wayne's Ethan is his all-time top performance: funny, romantic, hard-bitten, scary, the personification of machismo.

The Harder They Fall was Bogart's final movie, and something of a lost classic. But unlike most boxing stories, this isn't about a fighter looking to overcome personal demons or beat the odds. This is an excoriating look at the underbelly and the unscrupulous wheelers and dealers behind the scenes. [19 Aug 2016, p.C3]

One of the best-loved '50s sci-fi movies, with a plot boldly cribbed from Shakespeare's The Tempest. [30 Jun 2006, p.C7]

One of the greatest films--Akira Kurosawa's poignant 1952 masterpiece Ikiru...is both a tragicomedy about how our best intentions are misinterpreted and a profound meditation on an old man's reactions to impending death. [26 Sep 2003, p.C2]

Incredibly chilling, this Don Siegel movie still delivers a powerful punch. [04 Sept 1987, p.54C]