Rio Bravo is an excellent film featuring strong, proud, but very human characters who fight against their various handicaps and pull together to do a job and do it right.

Jean-Luc Godard visited the world of young folk to create his most humane film. (Review of Original Release)

A masterpiece...DUCK SOUP is perhaps the best, and funniest, depiction of the absurdities of war ever committed to celluloid.

One of Hitchcock's best British films, and a prototype for so much of what would follow in his American career. For those who love a grand spy mystery, a wild chase, and a harrowing portrait of an innocent man struggling to prove his innocence while the world turns inexplicably against him, The 39 Steps is ideal.

A brilliant surrealistic joke about a group of friends whose attempts to dine are continually thwarted.

A grim and dirty slice of bleak frontier life rendered with extraordinary beauty.

The best coming home movie ever made. "I don't care if it doesn't make a nickel," Sam Goldwyn reportedly said of THE BEST YEARS, "I just want every man, woman, and child in America to see it."

If this film is less engaged with social and political realities than most of Godard's other work from this period and seems like nothing more than a playful attempt to re-create an old Hollywood genre, one must remember that even a lesser Godard is likely to be much more stimulating than another director's better films.

The classic western, Stagecoach is one of John Ford's greatest frontier epics.

One of the most celebrated films from the extraordinary director-writer partnership of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP is a warm and wise work that displays extraordinary generosity of spirit.

After years of work-for-hire, writer-director Wong Kar-wai found his creative voice, discovered his themes and styles, and solidified his collaborative creative team with this brilliant examination of one-way love and crashed relationships. (Review of Original Release)

Ambitious, deeply flawed and studded with sequences that achieve pure, majestic greatness.

Bogdanovich's finest effort; bleak and beguiling.

It is a subtle and humane entertainment with a refreshingly serious view of the world.

Creatively edited and as insightful as any film can be about the lowest rungs of the music scene, this overview expertly captures the time and place. Still, the movie lacks the crossover potential to appeal to non-punk viewers.

The film could easily be reduced to a parable of post-Communist Eastern Europe, but the allegory digs deeper into the very order of things, exemplified by 17th-century musicologist Andreas Werckmeister's arbitrary imposition of a "tempered" tonal system over naturally occurring tunings.

The fourth pairing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and the first with a screenplay written specifically for them, Top Hat is the quintessential Astaire-Rogers musical, complete with a silly plot, romance, dapper outfits, art deco sets, and plenty of wonderful songs and dance numbers.

Brother's Keeper offers a rich tapestry of rural American life in both light and dark shades.

Sankofa succeeds, on both a personal and a political level, because of the immediacy with which it conveys human suffering.

A remarkably revealing documentary.

8 1/2 is a grab-bag of Felliniesque delights, with stunning photography by Di Venanzo, superb performances, a haunting score from Nino Rota, and a labyrinthine structure that keeps the viewer in a pleasurable state of confusion.

With Mifune's tongue-in-cheek performance and the wildly stylized battle scenes featuring mallet and pistol-wielding samurai, YOJIMBO may just be the first post-modern samurai film.

Slow, but ravishingly beautiful and charged with a real poignancy.

Seamlessly directed by Vincente Minnelli, The Band Wagon is one of the finest musicals ever made. Playing its hackneyed story with tongue firmly in cheek, it simultaneously reflects upon the musical genre, satirizes its conventions and delivers marvelous entertainment.

One is left with an overwhelming sense of knowledge about these characters and of human nature, and finally, a recognition of the profound sadness of everyday life. LATE SPRING is truly transcendent.

A beautiful and unusually quiet film from one of the world's greatest living directors.

There's no place like home, and there will never be another movie like this one, a dazzling fantasy musical so beautifully directed and acted that it deserves its classic status.

Peckinpah's attention to detail and character makes this film a multifaceted jewel to be studied and enjoyed again and again. The honest, subtle, and consummately skillful performances by Scott and McCrea and promising newcomer Mariette Hartley continue to draw viewers in.

Amalric is extraordinary, creating a character literally without moving a muscle.

A superbly crafted film by innovative director Siegel, this low-budget science fiction tale became one of the great cult classics of the genre.

PLATOON is a shattering experience. Writer-director Stone, a Vietnam veteran, used his first-hand knowledge to create one of the most realistic war films ever made, one whose success lies in the mass of detail Stone brings to the screen, bombarding the senses with vivid sights and sounds that have the feel of actual experience.

It's a hugely entertaining slice of sunbaked Gothic.

A wonderfully brooding, suspenseful revisitation of the land of film noir, Chinatown is not only one of the greatest detective films, but one of the most perfectly constructed of all films.

The ultimate monster movie and one of the grandest and most beloved adventure films ever made, KING KONG is a film that has given us one of the most enduring icons of American popular culture--a massively destructive but curiously sympathetic giant gorilla whose rampage through New York City suggests, on a psychological level, the re-emergence of repressed desire.

One of the greatest films of all time and one of the handful of masterpieces to emerge from the Italian neo-realist period, Umberto D is as cerebral as it is emotional, as bleak as it is warm.

A radiant, heartbreaking film.

Hitchcock's first British film in almost two decades marked a smashing return to his earlier form .

A touching, exquisitely handled film dealing with two ordinary people who accidentally fall in love.

Too cool for words, then switches past midstream into a work of poignancy and power.

This unabashedly sentimental adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's novel remains, to this day, an example of Hollywood's best filmmaking.

Though the story feels standard, the fun comes from the meticulously realized details that director Steven Spielberg and associate producer-writer Melissa Mathison have injected into the material.

A masterpiece. It is a credit to Cocteau's genius (and to that of his collaborators) that he has taken the unreal world of a fairy tale and made it as real as the world around us.

It's a mixed blessing, in some ways even richer and more atmospheric than the original version, in others attenuated and logy.

The simplicity of the seemingly impromptu story, set largely in Allen's beloved New York City, is part of Annie Hall's undeniable charm, along with Allen's flashbacks to childhood (with side-splitting Jonathan Munk as a young Woody) and constant asides to the camera, a device that sometimes has to carry the laughs.

Above all, Jackson evokes an almost palpable sense of the will to power trapped within the ring. Without this evocation of the ring's insidious ability to sniff out the potential for corruption and capitalize on it, the entire enterprise would be precious drivel.

It's a blessedly old-fashioned, well-made and well-acted narrative.

Hilarious pseudo-documentary spoof of a British rock group that was so on-target in its satire, many viewers took it for the real thing.

Scorsese's rich tapestry is both broader in scope and more detailed than a mere recounting of the events in the trio's life of crime.

A marvelously entertaining, deeply moving treatment of a highly controversial practice: female genital mutilation.

Not only is it a reintroduction to a fascinating culture that has survived 4,000 years in a remote and most inhospitable climate, but it's also the first film ever directed by an Inuit filmmaker and featuring an all-Inuit cast.

Director Curtis Hanson keeps the hugely complicated story zooming along the boulevard of broken dreams without losing sight of the details that make the trip worthwhile.

Top Hat may be more energetic and glossy, but Swing Time is arguably the most magical of the ten films Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers made together. Their dancing and acting rapport are at a peak and director George Stevens shows more finesse than Mark Sandrich in lending the couple's rocky romance a genuinely heartfelt quality.

It can be funny, but the humor is too often based in stereotypical perceptions of Asians (they're short, they're laughably polite, they eat weird food), and Coppola shamelessly invites us to laugh along with Murray's character, who, believe it or not, thinks it's hilarious when his hosts get their "r"s and "l"s switched.

Breaking Away is a very funny and touching story about love, growing up, bicycle racing, and class consciousness.

A superb romance, the film deftly mixes humor with pathos and passion, and takes us on an emotional voyage that never fails to please.

Nothing can detract from the power of the most influential monster movie ever made.

The film is immensely entertaining and occasionally inspiring, a delirious combination of Slavic solemnity, Latin exoticism, Communist idealism and breathtakingly beautiful images.

A film that has everything--adventure, humor, spectacular photography and superb performances.

The manic energy of the lively and outrageous opening sequence sets a tone and pace the film can't maintain.

A zany, hysterically funny, and sometimes brilliant if sometimes sophomoric send-up of every medieval movie ever made.

A delightful and memorable film.

Perhaps the greatest antiwar film ever made, holding considerable power even now due to Lewis Milestone's inventive direction.

Repulsion has often been compared to "Psycho," but Polanski's film, rather than presenting a portrait of a psychotic killer from outside, pulls the audience into the crazed individual's mind. (Review of Original Release)

A superb motion picture, and one in which Ford's obsession with Americana and the forces and emotions that made this country what it is are plainly in view.

The last of the comedies produced by the Ealing Studios, and one of the finest, with a supremely dark tone which makes a climactic series of murders as hilarious as they are grotesque.

A draining experience from beginning to end, relentless in its portrayal of inhumanity.

Denis dispenses with most of Melville's hefty Christian symbolism in favor of the story's other great theme -- repressed homoerotic desire.

No great director confined both his subject matter and technique like Yasujiro Ozu, and this, his final film, sums up so much of what makes that tunnel vision so eloquent.

There's nary a drop of blood on screen in this rollicking funhouse of a movie but there is enough sheer cinematic ingenuity on display to coax screams out of the most jaded gorehound.

Piercing, sweetly melancholy and acted with a breathtaking eye for nuance.

This mordantly funny, emotionally piquant depiction of post-adolescent angst also has its roots in the graphic novel format.

Director-writer Philip Kaufman's script brings a wealth of humor to a faithful retelling of the astronauts' fascinating stories, the actors fit smoothly into their roles and even physically resemble their characters, and the direction is well-paced and visually exciting.

This honest, non-sugar-coated approach to the hard truths of life, however, is what gives Bambi its lasting emotional power, and makes it stand apart, not only from Disney's cartoons, but from virtually all others as well.

A delightful piece of utter absurdity and one of director Hawks' most inspired lampoons of the battle between the sexes. Hepburn and Grant are superb in this breathlessly funny screwball comedy with a plot that could have been hatched in a mental institution.

This sweet film is a genuine treat, even if there's little plot, no antic mayhem and its 90-minute running time is mostly consumed by nonstop, sometimes pretentious dialogue.

Directed with restraint and impeccable taste by Cukor, produced by Selznick, David Copperfield is diverse and satisfying intellectually and emotionally, capturing the unparalleled beauty of Dickens's melancholic truths about life's hardships and human survival.

The movie's greatest strength lies in phenomenal performances that reach from the leads right down to the smallest supporting roles.

Predictable but magnificent and satisfying.

Thematic issues aside, The Crying Game pulls off a tremendously difficult technical feat; its screenplay contains not one, but two, wrenching twists, each of which could easily derail the narrative in the hands of a lesser storyteller.

A masterful realization of Charles Dickens's novel, this may be the best cinematic translation of the author's work, as well as director David Lean's greatest achievement.

Melville coolly mixes the conventions of American crime films from the '40s and '50s ( THIS GUN FOR HIRE is one key reference point) with a distinctly European austerity, yet the film still manages to pack quite an emotional punch.

Mirren, who's played her share of queens in the past, is hypnotic.

Steven Spielberg proves decisively that a special effects-dependent film need not be cold, mechanistic, or simpleminded.

Cinematographer Willis superbly captures the turn-of-the-century period, applying a seriographic tint to flashback scenes for a softer, richer look than the sharp image of the ongoing contemporary story.

This dark stunner, based on Walter Tevis's novel, boasts Paul Newman in the role that made him an overnight superstar.

Mifune is as great here as he ever has been.

The accents are thick and the soundtrack noisy, but even as the screen explodes in chaos, Greenglass maintains a solid grip on the story.

An excellent guide to some of the highlights of post-World War II Italian cinema.

A massive, many-faceted film that continues to hold up, viewing after viewing.

Pekar's autobiographical chronicle of day-to-day banality is a rich, if dingy, tapestry of ordinary life in all its infinite, homely peculiarity, which filmmakers Sheri Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini bring to uniquely eccentric life.

With very little dialogue and a creative use of sound, Tati (the actor and director) gives us an entirely new way of looking at a very familiar landscape.

Such a glorious cast, deployed to such trivial effect!

Hailed as one of Hitchcock's masterpieces by some and despised by others, The Birds is certainly among the director's more complex and fascinating works.

The dialogue is sharp, the direction first-rate, and the acting superb, but To Have And Have Not is undoubtedly best remembered for the on- and offscreen romance between Bogart and Bacall.

The colorful and kid-friendly characters are a delight, though very young children might be alarmed by some of the larger creatures, who tend to come into view teeth first.

A loving, gently funny and slightly claustrophobic tribute to theatrical life.

The film's story line is a clever and perceptive story, superbly told.

Bizarre, utterly original and truly indescribable comedy...You just have to see it for yourself.