It's not just Swinton's performances—first as a nobleman, then as a woman, then as a lover, then as a mother—that drive the film. Orlando is a movie deeply fascinated by performance, and so over and over again, we see characters putting on shows.

It’s action-packed without being too violent, and smart without taking itself too seriously.

Beatty made a film with visionary elements but without a guiding vision.

Howard the Duck, the movie, is as bad as you've heard. Actually, it's worse. But its failings as a film have overshadowed the frequently brilliant 1970s comic book that inspired it. Using only the most superficial elements of its source material while discarding most of what made the comic interesting, the film serves as a textbook example of how to turn something into nothing.

But there's still a great deal to love in The Black Cauldron. The untested animators Don Bluth left behind created some amazing sequences, including a dramatic scene of Taran's oracular pig, Hen Wen, being captured by pterodactyl-like gwythaints...For all its flaws, The Black Cauldron was a movie ahead of its time.

It's no wonder young musicians say they learned to be rock stars from This Is Spinal Tap. It came to satirize and stayed -- and stays on -- to celebrate.

There are utterly transcendent moments amid this 87-minute music video. It’s all about that pumping, hypnotic, emotionally-gripping Philip Glass vibe.

Yes, Gandhi is a hagiography and not a nuanced, darkly shaded, or even very convincing portrait of an ambitious and deeply strange man. And as an account of the muddled, messy origins of Indian independence, the film is guilty of historical malpractice. But taken as a black-and-white morality play, Gandhi is unmatched. Simplifications and all, this is the movie my parents wanted me to see as a child—and it's the movie I'd want my own (purely theoretical) children to see as well.

The Decline of Western Civilization is the finest cinematic distillation of punk ever made, not simply as music but as ethos. Featuring performances by X, the Germs, Black Flag, and the Circle Jerks, the film is frantic, caustic, electric, imbued with all the rage and love of a pogoing teen throwing punches at his friends.

The scariest movie in history is actually a bit shy. The subtle, romantic score by Jerry Goldsmith is what keeps the tension at a simmer.

The joys of The Boy in the Plastic Bubble aren’t all camp. The script, by Douglas Day Stewart, is surprisingly funny and sharp, especially the prickly banter between Todd and Gina (Glynis O’Connor), the girl next door who teases him at first, then gradually falls for him.

The movie is both an antidote to the sentimentality that currently affects sports movies and the last hurrah for the glorious disreputability that characterized the genre in the late '60s and early '70s.

One of the most relentless scare pictures ever made.

The mother of all conspiracy movies.

The difficulty of humanizing killers without romanticizing them may present a challenging problem, but Malick showed it’s not impossible to solve.

Every detail of staging, movement, and utterance is studied, affected to the highest degree, while the lust, anger, malice, and grief are wildly, shockingly real.

A movie that looks off into the distance and keeps its gaze there, Two-Lane Blacktop is a lean and melancholy beauty.

The madcap, sexy, borderline-surrealist film is impossible to summarize, but calling it a fast-and-loose Hollywood fantasia on A Midsummer Night’s Dream would not be totally inaccurate.

Z makes political intelligence seem chicer than skinny neckties.

Stripped to its bones, Faces is the elegantly simple story of two equal and opposite betrayals.

Steiger got the best actor Oscar for his masterful, Method deep-dive portrayal of Gillespie, a man just smart enough to know he's neither as talented as Tibbs nor as ignorant as the people around him. His jaw always working a wad of gum, his beady eyes darting, his blood pressure stroke-level as he spits out orders, he manages to play big without ever splitting the seams of his character.

Though it’s not concerned with global politics and warfare, Seconds is a blistering assessment of the cultural politics of the mid-1960s, equally bleak in its view of the establishment and the counterculture.

As brilliant and grotesquely funny as Dr. Strangelove is, the neglected Fail-Safe is the more mature and damning take on the nuclear enterprise. It feels like it could have really happened, and it’s terrifying as a result.

Watching the opening of A Hard Day's Night is like getting a direct injection of happiness.

Though it’s often cited on lists of the greatest sports movies, or horse movies, or movies for children—all citations this magnificent film deserves—National Velvet is perhaps dearest to me for its lovingly detailed and precise portrait of this very particular mother-daughter relationship, and for the intertwined performances of the dry, laconic Revere and the tremulously radiant Taylor (who was already, at age 12, a sophisticated and sensitive actress).

The more secure the audience feels, the more susceptible they are to the horrors of disruption Hitchcock will visit upon them later in the film.