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.