Director Malick neither romanticizes nor condemns his subjects, maintaining a low-key approach to the story that results in a fascinating character study.

Jordan and McCabe's real triumph here, however, is the tenderness with which they imbues "Kitten," and the astonishing grace with which the extraordinary Murphy pulls it off.

The acting is flawless throughout, with top honors going to Davis, who blazes through the picture with devastating intensity and honesty. It's an urgent, unsettling performance, perfectly complemented by Pollack, who projects quiet ease and authenticity in this, his first major role.

Beautifully acted, They Live By Night stands today as one of the most poignant and unforgettable noirs ever made.

Grim, violent, and stylishly directed, Get Carter is an interesting film that brings some freshness to British crime cinema.

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.

Based on Akiyuki Nosaka's semi-autobiographical novel, Takahata's alternately sweeping and intimate animated feature is a moving depiction of the fates of cast-off children who become casualties of war.

Shakespeare himself couldn't have written better or more complex characters, and far from strange, by the end of this extraordinary film you couldn't imagine Shakespeare performed anywhere else.

Sicilian-born filmmaker Emanuele Crialese takes a huge leap forward from his pretty but simplistic "Respiro" with this highly original, startlingly beautiful and emotionally resonant film.

This is adult, intelligent stuff, marvelously shaded by the amalgamation of talents.

Davis gives a lively and humanistic performance, and the direction by Gillian Armstrong (MRS. SOFFEL, HIGH TIDE), in her feature debut, matches her heroine's character: strong, with a good sense of wanting to get something done and then doing it. The mise-en-scene is well composed, and the story is well told in this wonderful Australian work.

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.

Deliberately eschewing the fast pace, strenuous action, frenzied special effects and wall-to-wall songs of the standard Disney animated feature, the film allows the audience to get to know the character of Kiki and feel the emotional highs and lows she undergoes in the course of her year in training.

A raw, penetrating, and terrifying portrait of humanity.

Split into two sequences, this feature-length cartoon is one of Disney's finest efforts, with attention paid to every animated detail.

Director Carl Franklin, who also adapted the screenplay from Walter Mosley's prize-winning novel, isn't particularly concerned with the machinations of mystery plots. Nor is he seduced by the temptations of noir visual style (although Tak Fujimoto's camera work is plenty stylish).

One of cinema's most monumental achievements, Renoir's RULES OF THE GAME passionately tackles the pre-WWII French class system, and succeeds in bringing forth the complexities and frailties underlying bourgeois civility.

The appealing Knightley goes in a promising young actress and comes out a star, but the faultless cast of veterans and fresh-faced newcomers imbues every character with flawed and immensely appealing humanity.

MARTY, coming in the mid-1950s, in an era of epics and extravagant films designed to stifle upstart television, was all the more startling in that it was a movie expanded from an original television drama (with Rod Steiger in the lead), written brilliantly by Chayefsky, one of the leaders of what came to be known as "kitchen sink" or "clothesline" dramas.

Oshima's ambitious film is not without faults, but these are overshadowed by its emotional power.

Perfectly gorgeous and perfectly nasty.

One of the most inventive and invigorating nonfiction features ever made.

It's full of humor, pathos and a deep humanism that comes as a warm blast in this age of lifeless, cinematic junk.

Only a spirited and extravagant production could do justice to the Robin Hood legend; this film is more than equal to the task. Korngold's score won a well-deserved Oscar, as did the editing and art direction.

This tough, brilliant crime film features Hackman as the indefatigable Popeye Doyle, who passionately hates drug pushers.

The most ambitious animated feature ever to come out of the Disney studios, Fantasia integrates famous works of classical music with wildly uneven but extraordinarily imaginative visuals that run the gamut from dancing hippos to the purely abstract. It's like a feature-length compilation of elaborate Silly Symphonies

Spartacus is still a remarkable epic--one of the greatest tales of the ancient world ever to hit the screen. It's especially strong, and more typical of Kubrick, in the first half--before satire gives way to sentiment.

Beautiful, haunting, poetic, and intensely personal, THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER is a unique, terrifying masterpiece.