Underrated Jerry Schatzberg directed (he later did Pacino's 1973 Scarecrow), and the script is by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, so it's smart. [22 Jun 2007, p.3D]

With gorgeous Australian outback photography and minimal dialogue co-defining it as "pure" cinema, Nicolas Roeg's masterpiece was once designated by Premiere magazine as its "most wanted" movie on video. [04 Apr 1997, p.3D]

Generally unheralded, this is one of the really good Douglas performances, smoothly matched by Fonda's. [12 Jan 2007, p.6E]

Robert Altman's first movie after M*A*S*H introduced Shelley Duvall and was among the director's personal favorites. All kinds of icons are satirically skewered, from Margaret Hamilton's Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz to Steve McQueen's sweater-clad Bullitt character. [04 Jan 2008, p.11D]

This unearthed cheapie and fast-forwarder's delight is redeemed by the dubbed- in cathedral tones (they're vintage gladiator pic) coming from our hero's larnyx. [20 Dec 1991, p.3D]

Still mesmerizes on the strength of George C. Scott's chew-your-behind performance. [5 Nov. 1999, p.6E]

Though dully directed and a bit prettified by Martin Ritt, James Wong Howe's outdoor Pennsylvania vistas often combine stirringly with Henry Mancini's score. [26 Jul 1996, p.3D]

Dolly lost a fortune and helped to all but kill the genre, yet this famed musical adaptation of Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker is more fun than its rep indicates. [15 Nov 2005, p.8D]

The best fictional movie about skiing. [27 Nov 2009, p.13D]

Looked at from the vantage point of more than three decades later, the movie is frequently incoherent; the dialogue sounds like it was being made up on the spot; and the acting is spotty in many cases. [01 May 2004, p.70]

Jason Robards and Norman Wisdom brilliantly perform knockabout stage routines in director William Friedkin's energetically patchwork portrayal of New York burlesque in the 1920s. [23 May 2008, p.10E]

Though it seems even spottier today than it did in '68, Cassavetes' most acclaimed work rebounds impressively after a near-unbearable opening half-hour. [29 Mar 1996]

This is director Stanley Donen's spotty but superior original -- made before Dudley Moore's superstardom but after his and co-star/co-writer Peter Cook's Beyond the Fringe stage glory. [06 Apr 2007, p.8E]

Director Roman Polanski co-stars with and directs wife Sharon Tate in their only collaboration. That's one reason this box office bomb, which came out less than two years before Tate was murdered by Charles Manson's crew, has picked up a following. [08 Oct 2004, p.4E]

Among the great cult movies of the '60s, this was director John Boorman's second feature and first of note after his debut with the Dave Clark Five's Having a Wild Weekend. [08 Jul 2005]

Director Richard Rush, who later made the classic The Stunt Man, overindulges the arty bike footage. But this is certainly an artifact of an age, photographed by Leslie (later Laszlo) Kovacs, who became one of Hollywood's best cinematographers. [02 Jan 2004, p.4E]

An intimate portrait of the Bringing It All Back Home Bob Dylan during his final acoustic tour through England, it hits with escalating emotional force as the decades go by, capturing a fleeting musical period as brilliantly as any movie ever has. [07 Jan 2000]

Donen (previously Hepburn's director in Funny Face and Charade) gets everything out of a brainstorm romantic teaming that didn't - and doesn't - spring automatically to mind. [05 Nov 1993, p.3D]

Anything but cutting-edge. [28 Jul 2003]

Victor Mature became a star in the 1940 original, which was simply called One Million, B.C. Happy New Year, Vic, but nothing in your version can compete with a blond Raquel Welch -- she wearing the latest '60s open-navel cavewoman garb here [27 Dec 1996, p.3D]

The drama sputters through a 70-minute second half. [14 July 2006, p.4E]

Michelangelo Antonioni's famed mod mystery (complete with a funny scene with The Yardbirds) examines the nature of reality-or-not as captured by photography -- throwing in sexual titillation and brilliant use of sound on the side. [20 Feb 2004, p.13D]

Sometimes uproarious but overly sentimental. [14 July 2003, p.1D]

This cult movie for the ages suggests a Twilight Zone episode taken to gruesome extremes. [09 May 1997, p.3D]

Despite little dialogue, the story and screenplay were Oscar-nominated -- and, at 50, Wilde's physique is amazing for an actor who once played Chopin. [18 Jan 2008, p.4D]

The movie is more fun than Breathless, a minority (though not sacrilegious) opinion. [10 Jan 2003]

A young-Turk poker player challenges an old pro the way pool shooter Paul Newman took on Jackie Gleason in The Hustler, though the result lacks its predecessor's depth. Carrying Kid is one of the best casts ever. [03 Jun 2005, p.7E]

Ahead of its time in its attitude toward unwed motherhood, director Otto Preminger's psychological drama has always gotten the same pro/con reaction that typifies Preminger's career. On the chilly side, it also has a great understated Olivier performance, an effective Paul Glass score and some of the era's best widescreen black-and-white photography. [28 Jan 2005, p.4D]