After reminding us that the AIDS crisis in the West is far from over in "The Event," Fitzgerald widened his scope with this much-needed perspective on the global dimensions the disease has achieved. Despite the importance and seriousness of the subject, there's plenty of Fitzgerald's brand of sly humor on hand, particularly in the scenes involving the Quebecoise porn industry.

The result is a beguiling and often poignant pageant of outsider musicians, but the broken heart of this extraordinary film comes directly from Zobel's own personal experience.

This great film, made with uncompromising honesty and devastating reality, is, according to Jean-Luc Godard, "the world in an hour and a half."

LaLoggia shares his unique vision with the viewer through an imaginative and innovative visual style that flows skillfully from traditional naturalism into surreal dreamlike fantasies and back again without ever seeming gratuitous or clumsy. A remarkable film.

As a remake, The Fly transcends the original, taking it in new directions and exploring its underutilized potential.

Sprawling over two and one-half hours and never flagging, it successfully introduces and exposes 24 different characters, brilliantly critiquing the country music industry as a microcosm of American society.

Darkly lyrical and imbued with a genuine sense of magic, ROAN INISH has the haunted quality of Irish folk music. It's family entertainment in the best sense of the term.

Lee has perfectly captured the details, textures, sights and sounds of a China caught between East and West, occupied by an ancient enemy and quaking on the eve of an earth-shaking revolution.

This is one of Hitchcock's finest British films, a classic mystery that manages to combine humor with a genuine sense of menace--not to mention the kinds of characters that everyone dreams of meeting on a Central European train journey.

The film rises above the level of agitprop by avoiding sloganeering and using the real words of real people to tell its story. Its feminism, too, is real and unforced, with women simply being shown struggling alongside--and when necessary defying--their male counterparts.

Delicately constructed and deliberately leisurely, TOKYO STORY allows its dramatic content and thematic concerns to envelop an audience the way social mores envelop the films' characters.

Cornish's raw, nuanced performance and Shortland's sympathetic but unsentimental portrayal of Heidi's fumbling steps toward maturity are underscored by Sydney-based band Decoder Ring's catchy, angst-ridden score.

Ocelot forgoes the razzle-dazzle of 3D, computer-generated animation and turns instead to West African painting, sculpture and fabric for layout, character design and the film's gorgeous color palette.

There may have been better songs and even better performances in other musicals, but for effervescent energy nothing has yet come close to the joyous, influential On The Town.

A film which more than gets by on its directorial style, unforgettable imagery, and striking music alone, DON'T LOOK NOW also manages to be a haunting meditation on fear, death and the beyond.

One of Hawks's undisputed masterpieces, and a landmark in the screen depiction of gangsters.

A superior western that mixes fine cinematography, terrific performances, and a script of higher caliber than most to produce a film still fondly remembered today.

This is a powerful, important and, in the end, profoundly poignant movie dedicated to the lives of men and women who fight wars and shoulder the burden of becoming "heroes" to help the rest of us make sense of what remains incomprehensible.

Dog Day Afternoon benefits immeasurably from a cast and crew doing some of the finest work of their careers. One of the finest films of the 1970s.

Del Toro's film ranks with the best examinations of children's inner lives, but be warned: Its haunting insights are best left to adults.

A small comic masterpiece that dares to deal with that of which many Sicilians dare not speak: the Mafia.

The Graduate is a flawlessly acted and produced film. [Review of re-release]

The massive James Jones novel, deemed impossible to put onscreen because of its strong sexual content and language, finally emerged as a lavish, star-studded spectacle, much bowdlerized but redeemed by a slew of fine performances.

Fascinating and brutally realistic, THE PUBLIC ENEMY, along with LITTLE CAESAR, BAD COMPANY, and SCARFACE, set the pattern for the gangster films of the 1930s.

This may be the warmest movie the Coen brothers have ever made. There's something unmistakably human beneath the oh-so-clever surface.

The film features a surprisingly good performance by Rock Hudson, an impeccable supporting cast and stunning cinematography by screen veteran James Wong Howe.

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

The rare expert film bio. Coal Miner's Daughter features an Oscar-winning performance by Sissy Spacek as country music queen Loretta Lynn. Masterfully directed by Michael Apted, the film traces the famed country singer's life from her beginnings in a tumbledown shack in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky, through her huge success, marital discord, and battle with prescription drugs.

Deliberately theatrical but nevertheless greatly indebted to French poetic realism, Children of Paradise is lovingly handled by director Carne. The entire film is crammed with incident and an intoxicating eye for detail.

More an icon than a work of art, CASABLANCA is still thoroughly entertaining romantic melodrama, flawlessly directed, subtly played, lovingly evoking our collective daydreams about lost chances and lost loves and love versus honor; everything about CASABLANCA is just right--it seems to have been filmed under a lucky star.

The cast is universally strong. Hackman, Freeman and Harris don't do anything they haven't done before, but the roles suit their personae to a degree where they approach archetypal status.

By turns awe-inspiring and deeply human.

One of Hitchcock's greatest entertainments, Foreign Correspondent is also a stirring propaganda piece which clearly indicts the Nazi regime.

Rosson's moody photography and Rozsa's moving score further enhance this film noir masterpiece.

Superbly scripted, the film features wonderful performances from all its major players. Equally brilliant, especially in a film that emphasizes script and character, is the cinematography by Robby Muller, perfectly capturing the notion of "America." A final factor in PARIS, TEXAS's success is the remarkably haunting score by blues musician Ry Cooder.

Both a starkly realistic and a carefully stylized masterpiece of murder.

Since much of the action takes place in the tiny apartment, director Petrie had to pull out all the stops to keep it from being stage-bound, and, with the help of cinematographer Lawton, he succeeded.

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

VERTIGO is also a masterpiece of filmmaking which includes one of the most important technical discoveries since the dawn of cinema--the dolly-out, zoom-in shot, which visually represents the dizzying sensation of vertigo. The result is a shot unique to Hitchcock, unlike any other before in film, one which will always bear his stamp.

One of director Jack Conway's finest efforts, the film never suffers from a sense that the novel has been compressed or rushed. Moving, fresh and aware of its effects, this film stands as one of Hollywood's finest adaptations of a novel.

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.

A masterpiece of satire and one of the more controversial films of its day, TO BE OR NOT TO BE is a brilliant example of how comedy can be as effective in raising social and political awareness as a serious propaganda film, while still providing hilarious entertainment.

Thankfully, Coraline is appropriately dark, and like its inspiration, is only a children's movie by the thinnest of margins.

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

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.

A superbly lighthearted production, and the epitome of 1930s screwball comedies.

One of Bertolucci's best films, The Conformist makes a provocative connection between repressed sexual desires and fascist politics. It's an intriguing, elegantly photographed study of the twisted Italian character of the 1930s. (Review of Original Release)

The Lolita of the 1940s, and just as sexy. A sparkling farce that marked Wilder's American directorial debut after years of writing witty screenplays for other directors, The Major And The Minor sails along breezily from its very first scenes until its romantic ending.

Bloody well done. Hammer finally gave the Dracula legend the treatment it deserved here, entrusting it to the brilliant director of The Curse of Frankenstein, Terence Fisher, who injected glorious life into the familiar material.

David Lean's splendid biography of the enigmatic T.E. Lawrence paints a complex portrait of the desert-loving Englishman who united Arab tribes in battle against the Ottoman Turks during WWI.

Minnelli proves his eye for detail and captures the era and its values in richly colored, gentle images, displaying a startling balance of emotions from scene to scene, song to song.

This grand and powerful biography begins in 1908 when, at the age of three, Pu Yi was named emperor of China and follows him through a tumultuous life inextricably intertwined with the history of modern-day China, one that that ended with the once-coddled emperor working quietly as a gardener at Peking's Botanical Gardens.

That Ledger stands out in such a powerhouse ensemble is a tribute to his radically unhinged interpretation of a familiar character: The lank hair tinged seaweed green, the darting tongue and faint lisp that call constant attention to the ghastly rictus of his mouth, the nightmarishly smudged make up… taken together, they make previous Jokers feel like, well, jokes.

A radiant, heartbreaking film.

By common consensus, Stop Making Sense is the best concert film ever made.

A finely observed film but insufficiently developed as a satire of middle America. [Review of re-release]

It can hardly be called a children's film, but a masterpiece of feature-film animation for all ages.

One of the ultimate expressions of Paramount Studios chic, Desire remains one of its desirable star's finest films.

A stunning directorial debut from screenwriter John Huston.

First-time feature director Sanaa Hamri's virtually perfect romantic comedy is a marvelous mix of brains and heart that confronts serious questions about race and dating with sensitivity, humor and enormous sex appeal.

Bright cunningly translates the story of Little Red Riding Hood into the trashy vernacular of tabloid TV and reality-based cop shows.

But it is Angela Lansbury's incestuous, power-mad mother who makes your blood run cold. This was the peak of the first part of her career, which depended upon these hardbitten kind of characters. Forget Hitchcock--here's the monster mother of all time.

The results are quite frightening and far superior to the lengthy gloom and doom that fill many earlier Bergman films. A magical movie, Fanny and Alexander is likely to be the achievement for which Bergman will be most remembered. (Review of Original Release)

Thom Andersen's idiosyncratic, three-hour masterpiece is both a dazzling work of film criticism and a fascinating piece of urban anthropology.

This is a gorgeous, fascinating account of the interplay between the personal and the social, directed with the kind of insight that only an aristocrat turned Marxist like Visconti could afford. (Review of Original Release)

Hopkins plays the cannibalistic doctor with a quiet, controlled erudition, lacing his performance with moments of black humor. His Lecter is a sort of satanic Sherlock Holmes whose spasms of violence are all the more terrifying because they erupt from beneath such an intelligent and refined mask.

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.

In a film mercifully free of the usual warm and fuzzy movie sentimentality, director Maggie Greenwald and her fine cast shatter most hillbilly stereotypes.

Joan Allen -- playing goody-two-shoes Elizabeth Proctor -- is the standout: She gives Proctor both spine and a desperate, late-blooming awareness that her own unyielding righteousness has helped bring about her family's destruction. Her performance is so true it's almost painful.

A comic masterpiece.

Of all the recent Disney wannabes, THE SWAN PRINCESS comes closest to capturing the ineffable magic of THE LITTLE MERMAID and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. With its scrupulous attention to background detail and buoyant song score, this animated delight is a children's film crafted with enough sophistication to weave a spell around cynical grown-ups.

Woo's direction is clean and direct, with a clarity of purpose behind every scene that makes each wrenching development seem inevitable. It's strong stuff.

For all the casual terribleness it records, it is entertainment; the characters are real and fleshed-out, and we care about what happens to them.

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.

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.

Quietly devastating... Extremely unsettling, at times amusing, cold yet personal, Dead Ringers gradually and deliberately comes to horrify the viewer, rather than shocking outright.

Landmark gangster film that made a huge commercial and cultural splash.

A beautiful, confounding picture that had half the audience cheering and the other half snoring. Kubrick clearly means to say something about the dehumanizing effects of technology, but exactly what is hard to say.

Sharply observed, bittersweet and suffused with the kind of detail that only someone who lived through the era could summon up, Crowe's script is funny, heartfelt and very cool.

Sidney Lumet directs effectively, keeping the tension strong, and unfolding David Mamet's intelligent screenplay slowly but with maximum impact.

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

With MINNIE AND MOSKOWITZ, Cassavetes took a break from the decidedly somber mood of FACES and HUSBANDS, and produced the most accessible, and endearing example of his very exceptional art.

An uneven but unusually thoughtful melodrama, Carnal Knowledge avoids most of the the trendy excesses that make some other films of its era so difficult to watch today.

Stunningly cinematic and audacious on every level, writer/director Tim Robbins's look at the collision of the Depression-era art world and politics may well be a masterpiece.

THE STRAWBERRY BLONDE is a delightful romantic comedy which combines a strong cast, great production values, and a good musical score with professional direction by Walsh in a skillfull entertainment.

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

Star Wars brought back for a new generation many of the most attractive elements of studio-era moviemaking, and it did so in breathless anthology form. For some young filmgoers this film acted as a doorway to the glory of the movies.

Enthralling or infuriating.

Predictable but magnificent and satisfying.

The film's opening dedication to Pasolini acknowledges Arslan's debt to Neorealism, but the gritty, documentary style is offset by a charming bit of chalkboard animation that helps lighten the mood considerably.

It's very funny, and the little woodland critters that make up the cast are a kiddie-pleasing bunch.

A sad and sometimes funny tale of Alzheimer's, love and loss.

A fun and moving family film with a subtly dark feel rarely seen in kids' movies since the '80s, City of Ember succeeds despite its shortcomings, not only because of its fun and inspiring story, but because most of its flaws are things kids won't notice anyway.

Directed with charming restraint by the acclaimed American producer Dan Ireland, the film is a quiet triumph for Dame Joan.

It's the one movie so far this summer that demands to be seen on the big screen.

There is plenty to amuse and delight here, including fine performances from Michelle Pfeiffer, Matthew Modine, and Dean Stockwell.

Important, awareness-building documentary.

It's a bit like a Chinese "Splendor In The Grass."