Fat City is both an extraordinarily realistic look at the bottom rungs of the fight game and a moving exploration of the human condition.

A great supporting cast and Bacon's well-judged direction help make Footlight Parade one of the greatest of the Berkeley extravaganzas.

A remarkable example of Hollywood's not choking on the prestige adorning the filming of a classic, Pride and Prejudice is an unusually successful adaptation of Jane Austen's most famous novel.

Cheung gives a revelatory performance.

Douglas gives an appropriately fiery star turn as Van Gogh, delivering some of the best work of his career.

The title, by the way, is age-old slang for a soldier's complete combat gear, which for the U.S. soldiers in Iraq -- both real and otherwise -- weighs over 50 pounds.

Powerful crime drama does more than just expose the criminal underbelly of South African township life.

Face to Face is an extremely intense experience from start to finish, due in large part to Ullmann's performance as she powerfully expresses a range of emotions seldom seen in American films.

SOME LIKE IT HOT expands a one-joke premise with hysterical results, due in no small part to the contributions of the near-perfect ensemble, with each of the major characters shining like a perfect jewel. Lemmon and Curtis are marvelous as the men-turned-women, creating believable characters and generally eschewing the lower forms of camp.

Day Of The Locust exudes authenticity, from the costuming to the cars, from the exotic clothes to the marcelled hair styles.

A gorgeous, fluid, wonderfully exhilarating movie.

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

Excellent, but nasty stuff.

The Magician is still fascinating, presenting a myriad of challenging ideas about magic, reality, and the nature of film itself. The acting, as in typical in Bergman, is exceptionally good, with Bjornstrand a standout.

But overall, Jackson goes for the magic by sidestepping every error of judgment and failure of imagination that brought the ponderous 1976 remake thudding to Earth before Kong ever did. He delivers three solid hours of breathless, enchanting entertainment.

A vigorous, manic drama, this Lewis Milestone classic about newspapers and newsmen wonderfully preserves a host of Depression-era attitudes and a glorious headline era.

Powell is nothing less than magnificent as the mustached philosophizing patriarch, and Dunne casts a warm glow beside him. Elizabeth Taylor, Martin Milner, Jimmy Lydon, and Edmund Gwenn all contribute strong supporting performances; Michael Curtiz provides his usual sure-handed direction.

Song of the South's cartoon sequences are as fine as anything produced by the Disney animators.

If one masterpiece were to emerge from the recent glut of generally good quality Japanese horror movie, this chilling apocalyptic ghost story from Kyroshi Kurosawa is it.

Generally free of the party line one usually associates with Soviet films of its period, THE CRANES ARE FLYING is an antiwar love story, set during WWII, which centers on the romance between pretty young Samoilova and sensitive factory worker Batalov.

It's simply one of the most beautiful films he's (Hou Hsiao Hsien) made to date.

The craftsmanship, acting, and history lesson all make it among the most satisfying films of Ron Howard's career.

Tran's film is a startling achievement: brimming with moments of exquisite tenderness and shocking brutality -- sometimes simultaneously -- and each invested with an almost perverse beauty.

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

A fascinating if problematic early film from Stanley Kubrick, perhaps the most obsessive of the great auteurs of the 1960s, made just on the cusp of a run of cinematic masterpieces.

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

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.

THE STORY OF LOUIS PASTEUR is well told, with an intelligent script, excellent performances, and careful attention to scientific accuracy. Muni offers a fine characterization that shows the famed scientist as a man faced with extraordinary obstacles.