The things that make me love the movie are the mood, the hardboiled but good-hearted morality, Hawks' consummately professional eye-level style and those wonderful characters. [28 Jul 2006, p.C7]

Hollywood's great holiday musical is this sparkling adaptation of writer Sally Benson's memoir: a movie that takes us on a Currier and Ives 1903 holiday tour of St. Louis with the postcard-perfect Smith family. [08 Jan 2004, p.N1]

Somewhat illogical but full of terrifyingly sustained sado-masochistic emotion. [05 Dec 1997, p.L]

It sounds slightly absurd, but McCarey was a master of on-set improvisation, and Going My Way has the easy-going rhythm, humanity and warmth of life itself. [09 Feb 2007, p.C6]

One of the great, outrageously irreverent American movie comedies. [27 Sep 2005, p.C3]

The suspense is pulse tearing, but Hitchcock, in a movie made explicitly for the war effort, gives it an extra edge. Also, in his favorite and most ingenious cameo role, Hitch solves the problem of appearing in a film with no extras -- the cast consists only of the other shipwreck survivors -- by having himself photographed before and after losing 100 pounds on a special crash diet. [15 Nov 2005, p.C3]

One of the most appealing, beautifully made and well-loved of all the classic children's animal movies. [21 Sep 2001, p.C1]

Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney out West at a boys school/dude ranch. Their best movie musical, adapted from the Ginger Rogers-Ethel Merman stage show, with that great George and Ira Gershwin score. [13 Apr 2007, p.C6]

Nobody ever gathered together a sharper, more pungent international "Golden Age" cast (including Claude Rains, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Paul Henreid, Conrad Veidt, S.Z. Sakall, Marcel Dalio, Leonid Kinskey, John Qualen and Curt Bois) in a more imperishable exotic movieland cabaret (Rick's) than Warner Bros. producer Hal Wallis and director Michael Curtiz did in this greatest of all Hollywood World War II adventure romances.

Shadow is the acme of Hitchcock's special principal of dramatic counterpoint. The surface is sunny and buoyant; dark, deadly currents flow underneath. [26 Nov 1999, p.A]

Cat People is an admirable first entry into the brainy, elegant, spooky world of Val Lewton. [09 Sep 2005, p.C4]

An odd premise for a Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn film--an anti-fascist melodrama with Tracy as the no-nonsense reporter investigating a beloved but tarnished American icon, Hepburn as the icon's wife--but they give it their trademark polish. [24 Feb 2006, p.C7]

Perhaps the most typical of all the "Road" pictures: melodic, low-pressure, funny. [02 Apr 2000, p.C38]

Much-loved 1942 piece of super-romantic schmaltz. [19 Jul 2005, p.C3]

This is perhaps the quintessential stiff-upper-lip homefront drama, with Minivers Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon at their noblest, Teresa Wright at her most adolescently angelic and assorted English-Hollywood expatriates (Dame May Whitty, Reginald Owen, Peter Lawford) at their hardiest. [11 Oct 1996, p.J]

It's a pleasant movie, not quite up to its reputation. [06 Aug 2000, p.23C]

It's very smart, very sleek and one of the great Hollywood romantic comedies. [04 Jul 2003, p.C2]

A classic comedy. [25 May 2007, p.C7]

Errol Flynn deifies Gen. George Armstrong Custer in a silly though well-directed biopic. [25 May 2001, p.C1]

If Hitchcock had kept the book's annihilating original ending, though, "Suspicion" might have been one of his three or four best films. As it is, it's a model domestic thriller that manages to survive a ridiculous turnabout climax. [26 Nov 1999, p.A]

This fourth entry is still full of sophisticated charm and slick thrills. [01 Jul 2005, p.C7]

Based on Richard Llewellyn's stirring memoir of his Welsh boyhood, this is one of the great John Ford films, a multiple Oscar winner (it beat out Citizen Kane) and a strong, lyrical, deeply moving family saga set during a time of labor turbulence and social change. [11 Sep 1998, p.K]

This likable heavenly fantasy comedy was a big '40s crowd-pleaser. [14 Aug 1998, p.M]

The elements don't quite jell here, and the ending doesn't work, but they all have a racy charm anyway. [19 Dec 1999, p.34]

The second, and some say best, of the "Road" series. Paramount's patty-caking pals, Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, invade Lightest Africa for some songs, dances and snappy patter. [02 Apr 2000, p.38C]

The stars are at their best and most rambunctious and so is Walsh. If you have any taste for Warner Brothers Golden Age studio classics--and want to catch a gem you may have missed--this one hits the spot. [17 Nov 2006, p.C6]

Bette Davis gave one of her best and nastiest performances in Wyler's stylishly sordid 1940 romantic murder-mystery from W. Somerset Maugham's story. [02 May 2008, p.C5]

Energetic but unusually foolish "Hey, kids, let's put on a show!" high-school musical, redeemed by the exuberantly talented Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland combo, as a couple of kids preparing jaw-dropping numbers (choreographed by Berkeley) for a Paul Whiteman radio contest. [12 Dec 1997]

Gregg Toland's cinematography here makes you yearn for what he might have done on a Ford Western. [17 Oct 1996, p.11]

From A.I. Bezzerides' "The Long Haul," with George Raft and Bogie as tough trucking brothers and Ann Sheridan and Ida Lupino as the good woman and the bad.[06 Oct 2006, p.C8]

Even if you think you've sampled all Jane Austen has to offer on screen, you still may jump at the chance to see Pride and Prejudice. [29 Aug 1996, p.7A]

This one features the heartbreaking young Vivien Leigh with her flower-like face, flashing eyes and seductive fragility; Robert Taylor is a little stiff as the hero. (isn't he always?), but it's a nice lush MGM production. [31 Oct 1999, p.34]

Despite Hitch's discomfort at the iron hand of producer David Selznick, it remains one of his best-loved works. [23 Dec 2011, p.C10]

One of the great American social films: strong, ribald, deeply compassionate. [30 Sep 2005, p.C6]

Perhaps the most perfect of the great Disney animated features-the most expressively animated, the least pretentious, the best balanced between horror and joy, adventure and comedy.

Ex-Chicago reporters Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's "The Front Page" may be the greatest of all newspaper plays, but none of the other movie versions matches this snazzy remake. [04 May 2001, p.C1]

Lovingly designed, impeccably stylish and heartwarming.

This is an intoxicatingly amusing blend of cynical urbane comedy, slick detection and breezy romance. [24 Jun 2005, p.C6]

Walsh and producer Mark Hellinger's classic ultra-tough gangster opus about World War I, Prohibition and good-hearted mobster Jimmy Cagney's breezy rise and grim fall. [18 Feb 2005, p.C6]

Hitchcock adapts another Daphne Du Maurier novel -- a tale of pirates and distressed damsels on the Cornish coast -- with less memorable results than either "Rebecca" or "The Birds." But Charles Laughton is a nicely nasty two-faced villain and Maureen O'Hara a staunch heroine. [18 Jun 2000, p.22]

Like many Hollywood classics, Oz benefited from happy accidents: Happiest of all was the casting, as Dorothy, of MGM teenage songbird Garland, whose wide-eyed emoting and passionate singing make the movie. Behind her is a near-perfect supporting cast. [18 Jun 1999, p.I]

Musical bio of the early 20th Century dance team; their weakest. [03 Nov 2006, p.C5]

After "Ninotchka," this is the best Billy Wilder-Charles Brackett script filmed by somebody else: a terrific romantic swindle comedy set in Paris, starring Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche and John Barrymore. [26 Sep 2003, p.C5]

Superb performances by John Wayne, Claire Trevor and Thomas Mitchell -- who won the Oscar for best supporting actor -- make for an authentic classic that has been copied but never equaled. [25 Feb 2008, p.C8]

Reginald Owen stars as Ebenezer Scrooge, the Christmas-hating curmudgeon who finally gets the spirit in this 1938 adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic. [05 Dec 2014, p.C2]

Trains are perfect settings for murder mysteries and thrillers. The best of them -- surpassing Murder on the Orient Express, The Narrow Margin, Runaway Train and dozens of others -- is Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes. [26 Nov 1999, p.A]

A masterpiece. Davis' great naughty Southern belle role, co-starring Henry Fonda and Fay Bainter. [07 Jul 2006, p.C7]

Though relatively little-known, this ingenious romantic chase thriller, based on Josephine Tey's "A Shilling for Candles," is one of Hitchcock's most inventive and charming '30s films. [22 Jan 1999, p.F]

Amazingly cynical and howlingly funny. [13 Jan 1994, p.10]

One of the great screwball comedies. [23 Jan 1998, p.N]

A near-classic, "Woman" is let down only by Bacon's sluggish helming. [15 Aug 1996, p.9A]

A commercially compromised but often brilliant updating of Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent. [27 Sep 2013, p.C6]

Second-best of the "Thin Man" series, after the unbeatable first entry, this sparkling sequel boasts a breezy San Francisco setting and an even better cast, topped by William Powell and Myrna Loy. [30 Dec 2011, p.C2]

La Cava was famous for improvising his scenes; My Man Godfrey is the most brilliant, unbuttoned example. It's a champagne farce, sparkling and bubbling from the depths of the Depression. [08 Jun 2007, p.C9]

Swing Time, a Depression-era Manhattan ballad -- and best of the bunch by a hair over Top Hat -- has Fred as a threadbare gambler named Lucky, Ginger as a saucy dance teacher named Penny and a heart-stopping Kern-Dorothy Fields score that includes The Way You Look Tonight, A Fine Romance, Pick Yourself Up and their masterpiece farewell duet number, Never Gonna Dance. [23 Aug 2005, p.C3]

For sheer lavishness, attention to detail, honesty of purpose, The Great Ziegfeld is to be commended. Where the picture falls down - hard! - is in its fulsomeness. [15 Apr 1936, p.21]

It's a Rafael Sabatini pirate movie with almost everything: galleons, high seas, Olivia de Havilland and a fantastic Errol Flynn-Basil Rathbone swordfight. [15 Aug 1996, p.9A]

The first, and best, of the three versions of Charles Dickens' tale of the French Revolution. [05 Dec 2008, p.C5]

The story is spellbinding, the acting lusty and the spectacle everything you could expect from a Golden Age MGM production--though sometimes it's a bit too much on the monumental side.

In Top Hat's all-time showstopper, to Berlin's "Cheek to Cheek," light-footed Fred and feathery Ginger dance us right into paradise. [23 Aug 2005, p.C3]

A definitive spy thriller and one of the masterpieces of Hitchcock's British years, The 39 Steps is one of those paradigm classics that influence filmmaking for decades afterward. [21 Sep 2007, p.C10]

A marvel of shadows and fog -- literal and psychic. [12 Mar 2010, p.C9]

Two advantages of the British version: It's tauter and much faster. [26 Nov 1999, p.A]

The musical evergreen, with Irene Dunne billed over Fred and Ginger. [03 Nov 2006, p.C5]

The movie suffers a bit from the sentimental, violin-underscored valentine approach favored in Selznick movies, but the characterizations, particularly in delivering Dickens' cartoon grotesqueries, are plum. None is better than W. C. Fields, who might be faulted for bringing his own legendary screen persona to Mr. Micawber, but he does so superbly, without sacrificing Dickens' own creation. [13 Aug 1989, p.20C]

First of the classic Fred and Ginger plots. [03 Nov 2006, p.C5]

It's a terrific mix of screwball comedy and detective story, full of wit, romance and suspense. [23 Nov 2007, p.C10]

Fred meets Ginger in this goofy South American romance; they were secondary leads who stole the show. [03 Nov 2006, p.C5]

The Four Marx Brothers -- Groucho the Gabber, Harpo the Honker, Chico the Chiseler and Zeppo the Zero -- were the wildest, most anarchically funny movie comedians of their era. (Of any era.) And this is the high water mark of their unique cinematic insanity: a ferocious satire on government, war and diplomacy that leaves no propriety or pretension unpricked, no sacred cow unslaughtered. [19 Sept 1997, p.O]

Another Universal classic, based on H.G. Wells' tale of an invisible madman. [13 Aug 2007, p.C6]

Busby Berkeley's finest hour comes in this flabbergasting Warners musical, with James Cagney as a Berkeley-like choreographer who directs, for a string of Broadway theaters, a series of "preview" dance numbers that blow your socks off.

42nd Street is the quintessential '30s backstage song and dance movie-and one of the most influential and much-copied movie musicals ever. [09 Mar 2007, p.C6]

An essential Carole Lombard film, it's her one screen pairing with her eventual husband Clark Gable. To call their scenes electric is putting it mildly. [30 Dec 1993, p.9A]

An unpretentious, rowdy, lecherous good show. [28 Nov 1999, p.35]

One of the quintessential Hollywood shipboard romances, with William Powell and Kay Francis as the seemingly doomed lovers who meet on the high seas. [26 Mar 2000, p.35]

From Vicki Baum's novel, scrumptiously directed by Goulding, with a constellation of a cast that includes Greta Garbo, John and Lionel Barrymore and Joan Crawford. [28 Nov 1999, p.35]

The Marx Brothers in one of their messiest, sloppiest, greatest Paramount comedies. [27 Feb 2015, p.C5]

Gangster classic. [21 Jan 2005, p.C6]

Wallace Ford co-stars, but make no mistake, it's the actual sideshow talents whose unusual traits have kept this film singular and unforgettable. [19 Oct 2007, p.C5]

Great Hollywood kitsch, supremely visualized by Von Sternberg and cinematographer Lee Garmes. [07 Nov 2003, p.C6]

Fredric March plays the split personality doctor/killer in this stylish early version of Robert Louis Stevenson's shivery classic. [06 Apr 2007, p.7]

For its influence alone, this is a movie that more than deserves its classic status. [23 June 2000, p.M]

Volcanically funny. [23 Dec 2005, p.C7]

James Cagney, wielding gats and grapefruit, became a star playing the murderous young Irish-American hood Tom Powers, a character modeled on Capone rival Dion O'Banion, in this classic, grim, unusually violent gangster film. [26 Jun 2009, p.C5]

Lewis Milestone preserves more of the original play than Hawks in His Girl Friday, but it's a much thinner movie: more mechanical, less chilling or ripe in its cynicism, the pace less nimble and charged. Still, the dialogue is gritty, magical, top-flight. Modern screenwriters, see this and weep. [25 Jul 1999, p.43C]

The closing shot of Charlie Chaplin's face in City Lights, his heart breaking: the highest form of screen acting, the most effective tear extraction exercise the medium has yet to offer.

Highly inventive, full of perverse touches and clever flourishes. [26 Nov 1999, p.A]

It remains an anti-war masterpiece. [09 Feb 2007, p.C6]

Hitchcock's first talkie, begun as a silent film and then converted midstream, alternates stiff dramatic scenes with brilliant, highly visual suspense sequences. [26 Nov 1999, p.A]

One of the cinema's imperishable visions of faith against injustice. [20 Feb 1997, p.9E]

It is the aviation scenes that make the movie memorable. The story around which they are built is just another story, similar to, but not so gripping as "The Rough Riders." But any lack here is made up for in the airship maneuvers. They are magnificent. [01 Nov 1927, p.37]

Hitchcock's first thriller and the film that established him: A moody silent melodrama based on Marie Belloc Lowndes' tale of a mysterious lodger in fear-crazed London, who may be a modern Jack the Ripper. [04 Jan 2002, p.C1]

Murnau's silent masterpiece about a troubled young country couple (Janet Gaynor and George O'Brien), a vamp from the city (Margaret Livingstone), murder plots, fate and redemption contains some of the most glorious visual set-pieces in the history of cinema. [01 Aug 2008, p.C8]

Eisenstein's incandescent creativity remains strikingly obvious. The most brilliant of all Soviet silent films. [30 Jan 1998, p.N]

The Seventh Continent is a calm chronicle of hell, a clinical look at how commonplace people can erupt into despair or violence. Bleak, cool, beautifully controlled, liberatingly intelligent, it chills our hearts as it opens our minds. And it establishes Haneke as one of the more remarkable young contemporary filmmakers.