Films on US television: capsule review from the WSWS

World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org

Films on US television: capsule reviews from the WSWS

Listed below in alphabetical order are the nearly one thousand capsule film reviews, written and compiled by Marty Jonas and David Walsh, that appeared on the World Socialist Web Site between March 24, 1998 and December 24, 1999. They include most of the classic Hollywood films that show up on basic cable television in the US. They are posted here as a permanent resource.

12 Angry Men (1957)—Gripping film that takes place in only one room as 12 jurors struggle to reach a verdict. During the process each reveals his character. Great cast headed by Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, and E.G. Marshall. Directed by Sidney Lumet. (MJ)

20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1933)—Michael Curtiz' prison drama, with Spencer Tracy as a hardened criminal and Bette Davis as his girl-friend. (DW)

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)—Stanley Kubrick's science fiction epic. A space vehicle heads for Jupiter in search of aliens. One critic, somewhat unfairly, called it a project "so devoid of life and feeling as to render a computer called HAL the most sympathetic character in a jumbled scenario." Despite silly ending, the film is worth seeing. (DW)

2010 (1984)—A nuts-and-bolts sequel that tries (and fails) to answer the riddles of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Though it holds one's interest and is well made, it lacks the vision, magic, and mystery of the first film. With Keir Dullea, Roy Scheider, and John Lithgow. Directed by Peter Hyams. (MJ)

3:10 to Yuma (1957)—A modest, yet suspenseful western with Glenn Ford as an outlaw and Van Heflin as the farmer, in need of money, who agrees to watch him until the train arrives. Directed by Delmer Daves. (DW)

400 Blows, The (1959)—François Truffaut's semi-autobiographical film about a young boy in Paris suffering the slings and arrows of everyday, lower middle-class life. With Jean-Pierre Léaud. (DW)

42nd Street (1933)—Classic 30s musical, with Warner Baxter as ailing director and Ruby Keeler as the newcomer who is called on at the last moment when the star injures her ankle. With Dick Powell, directed by Lloyd Bacon. (DW)

5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, The (1953)—Charming fantasy film based on designs by chidren's book author Dr. Seuss. With Peter Lind Hayes, Mary Healy, Tommy Rettig, and the manic Hans Conried. (MJ)

99 River Street (1953)—The underrated Phil Karlson directed this crime drama. John Payne is a taxi driver who gets mixed up with jewel thieves and has to clear himself of a murder charge. With Evelyn Keyes, Frank Faylen. (DW)

Abominable Dr. Phibes, The (1971)—Vincent Price stars in this very strange, baroque horror film about a man who devises imaginative forms of revenge. Price's character has been injured in an accident, so he speaks but never moves his lips—an eerie touch. Directed by Robert Fuest. (MJ)

Abraham Lincoln (1930)—D.W. Griffith, director of the notorious pro-Ku Klux Klan Birth of a Nation, made this biography of the US president who freed the slaves. One commentator noted that his "art had become so deceptively simple by the time of Abraham Lincoln (1930) that most critics assumed he was in a state of stylistic decline." (DW)

Ace in the Hole (1951)—Billy Wilder's highly bitter film about a down-on-his-luck reporter who exploits a man trapped in a deep cave for the sake of a big story. Fifty years later, with the media even more ravenous and cynical, the film is still timely. Kirk Douglas is outstanding in the kind of snarling role he perfected. With Jan Sterling. Also known as The Big Carnival. (MJ)

Across the Pacific (1942)—World War II spy and action drama, with Humphrey Bogart as an army officer cashiered so that he can make contact with pro-Japanese forces. John Huston directed. (DW)

Act of Violence (1949)—Fred Zinnemann directed this well-meaning effort. Robert Ryan is a crippled, former soldier in pursuit of a former officer who betrayed his men while a prisoner. With Van Heflin, Janet Leigh, Mary Astor. (DW)

Actress, The (1953)—The film is based on the experiences of Ruth Gordon struggling to be a stage performer in the early part of the century in Massachusetts. With Jean Simmons, Spencer Tracy, and a youthful Anthony Perkins. George Cukor directed. (DW)

Adam's Rib (1949)—One of the stronger Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn films, in which the two find themselves on opposing sides in the court case of a woman (the wonderful Judy Holliday) who has shot and wounded her philandering husband (Tom Ewell). Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin wrote the script; George Cukor directed. (DW)

Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The (1989)—The tall tales of the German baron are retold by Terry Gilliam in his typical brilliant but sprawling style. With John Neville and too much Robin Williams. (MJ)

Adventures of Robin Hood, The (1938)—Lively, eye-catching version of the Robin Hood story, with Errol Flynn, Olivia de Haviland, Basil Rathbone and Claude Rains. Directed by Michael Curtiz and William Keighley, with an award-winning score by Wolfgang Korngold. (DW)

Affair to Remember, An (1957)—Leo McCarey directed this remake of his own 1939 Love Affair (Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer), this time with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. A shipboard romance has unexpected complications on land. Sentimental, but it has something. (DW)

After Hours (1985)—Griffin Dunne is a young upwardly mobile professional who has a rough night in lower Manhattan in Martin Scorsese's not terribly funny comedy. (DW)

After the Thin Man (1936)—Nick and Nora Charles (William Powell and Myrna Loy), the urbane detectives, go after a murderer in San Francisco. Based on the characters created by Dashiell Hammett. James Stewart is in this one, one of the better in the series. Directed by W.S. Van Dyke. (DW)

Against All Odds (1984)—Decent remake of the 1947 film noir Out of the Past. Good performances by Jeff Bridges, Rachel Ward, and James Woods. Directed by Taylor Hackford. (MJ)

Age of Innocence, The (1993)—Martin Scorsese's disappointingly flat, unironic filming of Edith Wharton's extraordinary novel about New York society in the 1870s. Worth seeing, however. (DW)

Ah, Wilderness! (1935)—Based on the relatively lighthearted Eugene O'Neill play about turn-of-the-century small-town life. Directed by Clarence Brown, with Wallace Beery, Lionel Barrymore and Mickey Rooney. (DW)

Air Force (1943)—An early American World War II film, about the inner workings of a bomber crew. Typical Howard Hawks concern with a group of professionals at work. With Arthur Kennedy, John Garfield, George Tobias, Harry Carey. (DW)

Alexander Nevsky (1938)—Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein's famous film, about a 13th century Russian prince (Nikolai Cherkassov) who leads an army that repels Germanic invaders, obviously paralleling the contemporary situation. Some brilliant moments, but the Russian nationalism is hard to take. (DW)

Alfie (1966)—Somewhat unpleasant film about cockney playboy, played memorably by Michael Caine, from the play by Bill Naughton. With Shelley Winters, Jane Asher and Eleanor Bron, among others. Directed by Lewis Gilbert. (DW)

Algiers (1938)—John Cromwell directed this remake of the French Pepe Le Moko, about an elusive criminal living and loving in the casbah in Algiers. Police official uses Hedy Lamarr to lure Pepe (Charles Boyer) out of the quarter. (DW)

Alice Adams (1935)—Katharine Hepburn as social-climbing girl in George Cukor's filming of Booth Tarkington's novel. Memorable dinner-table scene, as Hepburn embarrassingly tries to impress wealthy Fred MacMurray. (DW)

Alice Doesn't Live Here Any More (1975)—Martin Scorsese directed this film about a widow, with a young son, who longs for a singing career and ends up a waitress in Phoenix. With Ellen Burstyn, Kris Kristofferson, Harvey Keitel, Jodie Foster. (DW)

Alien (1979)—A bloodthirsty alien creature pursues the crew members of a merchant space vessel. Beautifully done, one of the most frightening films ever made. Sigourney Weaver plays Ripley, one of the first smart and resourceful heroines in modern film. With Yaphet Kotto, Tom Skerritt, Ian Holm, and John Hurt. (MJ)

All About Eve (1950)—Joseph Mankiewicz wrote and directed this classic about backstabbing in the world of the theater. The dialogue is nonstop witty and incisive. Memorable performances by George Sanders and Bette Davis. (MJ)

All I Desire (1953)—Barbara Stanwyck is a woman who abandoned her family for a career on the stage and returns to her hometown for her daughter's graduation in this Douglas Sirk melodrama. (DW)

All My Sons (1948)—Irving Reis directed this adaptation of Arthur Miller's play about a returning soldier discovering his father's shady business practices. With Burt Lancaster and Edward G. Robinson. (DW)

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)—Film adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's anti-war novel about German youths' experiences as soldiers in World War I. Some memorable sequences, although the overall effect is not as strong as one would like. Directed by Lewis Milestone, with Lew Ayres. (DW)

All That Heaven Allows (1955)—Extraordinarily perceptive view of postwar America. Jane Wyman plays a rich woman in love with a gardener. Her children and friends do everything to disrupt the relationship. The scene in which her children give her a television as a present is a classic. Directed by Douglas Sirk, the basis for R.W. Fassbinder's Ali: Fear Eats the Soul. (DW)

All That Jazz (1979)—Choreographer/director Bob Fosse's overwrought autobiographical film about his mental and physical crackup. Not strictly speaking a musical, but it is filled with musical numbers—including a bizarre one occurring during the main character's open-heart surgery. With Roy Scheider and Ben Vereen. (MJ)

All the King's Men (1949)—Classic film about the rise and fall of a demagogic, opportunist politician in the South. Based on the life of Huey Long, the Louisiana populist who wielded great power in the 1930s before he was assassinated. Written and directed by Robert Rossen, from the novel by Robert PennWarren. Excellent performances by Broderick Crawford, Mercedes McCambridge, and John Ireland. (MJ)

All These Women (1964)—Somewhat heavy-handed Ingmar Bergman comedy, in which a womanizing musician agrees to have a biography written about him. The women in his life intrude on the process. With Jarl Kulle, Harriet Andersson, Bibi Andersson. (DW)

Alternate title: Heaven and Hell.

Amarcord (1974)—Fellini's semi-autobiographical work about a small town in Italy under Mussolini. An extraordinary film. (DW)

America, America (1963)—Elia Kazan's account of the immigrant experience, based on his uncle's emigration in the late 19th century. (DW)

American Friend, The (1977)—One of German director Wim Wenders' most interesting films, about the problem of American influence in Europe. Dennis Hopper's Ripley, a shady character, and Bruno Ganz's German picture-framer are thrown together in a criminal enterprise. Based on the novels of Patricia Highsmith. With Lisa Kreuzer and Gerard Blain. (DW)

American Gigolo (1980)—Paul Schrader wrote and directed this flawed but fasinating study of an upscale male prostitute. Starring Richard Gere. (MJ)

American Graffiti (1973)—A film that probably had a negative effect on the course of American film-making, this is director George Lucas' entertaining fantasy about teenage life in California in the 1950s. With Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Paul LeMat, Cindy Williams, Candy Clark. (DW)

American in Paris, An (1951)—Classic MGM musical directed by Vincente Minnelli and built around its Gershwin score; Alan Jay Lerner wrote the screenplay. Gene Kelly is an artist torn between gamine Leslie Caron and wealthy Nina Foch. With the irrepressible Oscar Levant. (DW)

Anatomy of a Murder (1959)—Otto Preminger directed this absorbing courtroom drama. James Stewart is the defense lawyer; Ben Gazzara, Lee Remick and Arthur O'Connell co-star. Duke Ellington wrote the score. Rather daring in its day. (DW)

Andersonville (1996)—John Frankenheimer's made-for-television film about the Confederate prison camp where 13,000 Union soldiers died from disease, starvation and brutality. (DW)

Andromeda Strain, The (1971)—One of the first techno-thrillers, by veteran director Robert Wise, about a terrestrial virus that could wipe out humankind. (MJ)

Angel Face (1952)—An extravagant Otto Preminger melodrama, about a murderous girl who does in her father and stepmother. With Jean Simmons, Robert Mitchum, Herbert Marshall. Described as "a lyrical nightmare" by one critic. (DW)

Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)—Michael Curtiz directed this story of gangsters and slum kids. James Cagney is the gangster who pretends to be a coward on his way to the electric chair to scuttle his reputation with the kids. (DW)

Anna Christie (1930)—Greta Garbo is charming, in her first speaking part, as the woman with a past who returns to her father and the sea, and falls in love. Based on the Eugene O'Neill play. Directed turgidly by Clarence Brown; with Charles Bickford. (DW)

Anna Karenina (1935)—A superficial and turgid version of the Tolstoy novel. But anything with Greta Garbo is of interest. Clarence Brown, for some reason Garbo's favorite, directed the film. (DW)

Annie Hall (1977)—Woody Allen's first serious effort, a semi-autobiographical film about his life and loves, likes and dislikes. Diane Keaton memorably plays his girlfriend. (DW)

Apache (1954)—Pro-Indian film about an Apache (Burt Lancaster) who wages a one-man war against the US government and military for his tribe's rights. With Jean Peters and John McIntire. (DW)

Apartment, The (1960)—Billy Wilder's cynical-sentimental comedy-drama about a corporate lackey (Jack Lemmon) who tries to climb the company ladder by loaning his apartment to his bosses for their trysts. He falls for Shirley MacLaine. Fred MacMurray is memorable as a particularly unpleasant company executive. (DW)

Apocalypse Now (1979)—Overrated and overblown Vietnam war film by Francis Ford Coppola, based loosely on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Special agent Martin Sheen is sent into Cambodia to find maverick US officer, played by Marlon Brando, and dispatch him. The film perhaps says more about Coppola and his circle than it does about Vietnam. Worth viewing. (DW)

Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, The (1974)—Richard Dreyfuss, in an early role, plays a canny, upwardly striving young man in the Jewish section of Montreal. Ted Kotcheff directed, and Mordecai Richler wrote the screenplay from his own novel. (MJ)

Arch of Triumph (1948)—Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman falling for each other in wartime France, from the novel by Erich Maria Remarque. Directed by the stolid Lewis Milestone. (DW)

Arise My Love (1940)—Odd film with Claudette Colbert rescuing Ray Milland from a Spanish firing squad as World War II begins. Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett wrote the script, Mitchell Leisen directed. (DW)

Arizona Dream (1993)—Yugoslav director Emir Kusturica (Underground) directed this self-consciously offbeat film about a drifter (Johnny Depp), his car salesman uncle (Jerry Lewis), and an oddball mother and daughter (Faye Dunaway and Lili Taylor). (DW)

Arsene Lupin (1932)—Jack Conway directed this trifle about detectives and jewel thieves in Paris. The first film pairing of John and Lionel Barrymore; with Karen Morley. (DW)

Artists and Models (1955)—An extravagant Frank Tashlin cartoon, with Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin, Dorothy Malone and Shirley MacLaine. (DW)

As You Desire Me (1932)—Fairly inept version of a Pirandello play, directed by George Fitzmaurice, about an amnesiac returning to a husband she doesn't remember. Greta Garbo has some memorable moments as the woman, with Melvyn Douglas and Erich von Stroheim. (DW)

Asphalt Jungle, The (1950)—One of the best jewel heist films, and one of director John Huston's best. With Sterling Hayden and Louis Calhern (who has the best line: "Crime is nothing but a left-handed form of endeavor"). (MJ)

Assassination of Trotsky, The (1972)—Former Stalinist Joseph Losey's superficial and distorted account of the last year in the life of the great Russian revolutionary, with Richard Burton. (DW)

At Long Last Love (1975)—Burt Reynolds and Cybill Shepherd can neither sing nor dance—they are definitely not Astaire and Rogers. Still, it's fun to watch them mangle Cole Porter's beautiful music and lyrics. Peter Bogdanovich's glitzy, expensive film proves that a warm affection for 1930's film musicals is not enough. One of the great bombs. With Madeline Kahn (often funny, despite her material) and John Hillerman. (MJ)

Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)—Mike Myers plays a double role in this consistently amusing sendup of James Bond movies and the manners and styles of the 1970s. (MJ)

Autumn Sonata (1978)—Ingrid Bergman (in her last film) is a concert pianist who faces the daughter she's neglected in this somewhat tired and cliched.work by Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. (DW)

Avanti! (1972)—One of Billy Wilder's later films, about an American millionaire (Jack Lemmon) who travels to Italy to claim his dead father's body and falls for the latter's mistress. (DW)

Awful Truth, The (1937)—Classic screwball comedy. Cary Grant and Irene Dunne divorce, and plan to re-wed. Each does his or her best to interfere in the other's life. Ralph Bellamy is memorable as Dunne's would-be Oklahoman of a husband. Perhaps Leo McCarey's best film. (DW)

Babes in Arms (1939)—One of the original "Hey, kids, let's put on a show" movies, with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland as teenagers of vaudeville parents. Busby Berkeley directed with his customary energy. (DW)

Bachelor Mother (1939)—Ginger Rogers plays a sales clerk who discovers an abandoned baby and is assumed to be its mother. David Niven plays the store-owner's son in this fairly sharp-eyed work, directed by Garson Kanin. (DW)

Back Street (1941)—One of the great tear-jerkers of all time in its second and lesser version, directed by Robert Stevenson. Margaret Sullavan is the "back street" woman having an affair with married Charles Boyer. (DW)

Badlanders, The (1958)—A minor, but well-made Delmer Daves Western, with Alan Ladd and Ernest Borgnine planning a gold robbery in Arizona at the turn of the century. Each attempts to outsmart the other. With Katy Jurado and Claire Kelly. (DW)

Badlands (1973)—Terrence Malick's strangely idyllic recounting of a killing spree in the 1950s Midwest. Martin Sheen plays the main character, based on killer Charles Starkweather, and Sissy Spacek plays his teenaged girlfriend, who narrates the film with naive, romantic passages from her diary. Beautifully photographed. (MJ)

Band of Angels (1957)—A remarkably complex look at black-and-white relations in Civil War America. Clark Gable plays a Southern gentleman with a past as a slave trader, Yvonne DeCarlo is a Southern belle who discovers she has black ancestors and Sidney Poitier is an educated slave. Directed by Raoul Walsh, from the novel by Robert Penn Warren. (DW)

Band Wagon, The (1953)—Superior Fred Astaire vehicle about a film star trying to make a comeback on Broadway. This is the film that featured the song "That's Entertainment!" Some sharp satire on Broadway pretensions of the time. Directed by Vincente Minnelli. With Cyd Charisse and Jack Buchanan (particularly good). (MJ)

Bank Dick, The (1940)—Eddie Cline directed, but the mastermind here is W.C. Fields, who wrote the screenplay and starred. Fields is a lowlife who gets a job as a bank guard; Grady Sutton is his prospective son-in-law, Franklin Pangborn a put-upon bank inspector. (DW)

Barbarians at the Gate (1993)—James Garner is outstanding in this saga of the 1980s, about the corporate piracy that led to the takeover of RJR Nabisco. Larry Gelbart wrote the witty screenplay for the made-for-cable film. (MJ)

Barefoot Contessa, The (1954)—A trashy effort by Joseph L. Mankiewicz that pretends to tell some hard truths about Hollywood. Great fun, though, and some memorable lines. With Ava Gardner, Humphrey Bogart, and Edmond O'Brien. (MJ)

Baron of Arizona, The (1950)—In the great Samuel Fuller's intense film, a swindler tries to use forged land grant documents to grab the entire Arizona Territory. With Vincent Price, Ellen Drew, and Reed Hadley. (MJ)

Barretts of Wimpole Street, The (1934)—Sidney Franklin directed this stolid and tasteful MGM production, the story of the romance between poets Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett in Victorian England. With Norma Shearer, Fredric March and Charles Laughton. (DW)

Barry Lyndon (1975)—An intelligent adaptation of William Thackeray's novel about an 18th-century scoundrel who gets his comeuppance, directed by Stanley Kubrick. (DW)

Barton Fink (1991)—One of the Coen brothers' weakest and most inadvertently revealing efforts, a cynical look at a socially conscious playwright working in Hollywood in the 1930s, and the "American reality" he uncovers. With John Turturro, John Goodman. (DW)

Battle Cry (1955)—Raoul Walsh World War II melodrama, about the lives and loves of a group of Marines getting ready for battle, with Van Heflin, Aldo Ray, Tab Hunter and Dorothy Malone. (DW)

Battleground (1949)—William Wellman directed this dramatic reenactment of World War II's Battle of the Bulge. The large cast includes Van Johnson, John Hodiak, Ricardo Montalban and George Murphy. (DW)

Battleship Potemkin (1925)—Sergei Eisenstein's monumental film about the naval mutiny and the consequent participation of the masses in pre-Revolutionary Russia. Exciting and essential viewing. (MJ)

Beat the Devil (1954)—Humphrey Bogart, Robert Morley and Peter Lorre team up in this cynical John Huston film about a group of lowlifes planning to acquire land rich in uranium deposits. (DW)

Beau Geste (1939)—A story of the French Foreign Legion, filmed two other times. William Wellman directed this version, with Gary Cooper, Ray Milland and Robert Preston. (DW)

Before Sunrise (1995)—A remarkable work. An American man and a French woman (Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy) meet on a train going through Germany, and she agrees to get out in Vienna to wait with him for his U.S. flight the next morning. The whole film is then filled with their conversation and eventual lovemaking (which is low-key and unsensational). Much of the talk is banal and young, but it centers on the universal subjects of birth, death, love, and sex. The film creates its own special moment in Vienna; and when the couple first decide never to see each other again, but then resolve to meet at the same place next year, we are uncertain and know it could go either way. Like life, the film wanders in all directions and has no certain resolution. Directed by the talented Richard Linklater. (MJ)

Beggar's Opera, The (1953)—Laurence Olivier in something of an oddity, John Gay's 18th century work, brought to the screen by famed theater director Peter Brook ( Marat/Sade et al). Play that inspired Brecht/Weill's Threepenny Opera. (DW)

Beguiled, The (1971)—Don Siegel directed this film about a wounded Confederate solider (Clint Eastwood) who meets his emotional and physical match when he is tended to by a school full of women. Geraldine Page and Elizabeth Hartman co-star. (DW)

Bells Are Ringing (1960)—Delightful Comden-Green musical about an operator at a telephone answering service who falls in love with one of her clients. Starring Judy Holliday, whose early death robbed us of a significant musical talent. With Dean Martin. Directed by Vincente Minnelli. (MJ)

Bells of St. Mary's, The (1945)—If you can bear the sentimentality of this Leo McCarey film about the doings of priests and nuns, it has its pleasures. With Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman. The sequel to Going My Way. (DW)

Ben-Hur (1959)—Turgid retelling of Lew Wallace's "epic." Charlton Heston stars as the Jew Ben-Hur and Stephen Boyd as Messala, who remains loyal to Rome. Famous for its chariot-race. Directed by William Wyler. (DW)

Bend of the River (1952)—Excellent Anthony Mann-James Stewart collaboration. Stewart is former outlaw guiding wagon trains west; Arthur Kennedy is his ex-partner in crime who now steals settlers' supplies. Remarkable moral drama about what violent events do to people and the choices they have. (DW)

Berlin Express (1948)—Spy drama set in postwar Germany, as agents from a number of countries attempt to rescue politician kidnapped by Nazi underground. With Robert Ryan, Merle Oberon and Paul Likas. Directed by Jacques Tourneur. (DW)

Best Intentions, The (1992)—Bille August directed this film, written by Ingmar Bergman, about the courtship and marriage of Bergman's parents, in early 20th century Sweden. With Samuel Froler, Pernilla August. (DW)

Best Years of Our Lives, The (1946)—William Wyler's occasionally affecting drama about ex-servicemen in postwar America. With Fredric March, Dana Andrews, Myrna Loy, Virginia Mayo and Teresa Wright. (DW)

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970)—A Russ Meyers extravaganza, more or less about a female rock trio trying to make it in Hollywood. Not for the tastefully inclined. (DW)

Bhowani Junction (1956)—Stewart Granger and Ava Gardner as star-crossed lovers in this melodrama about postwar India. Directed by George Cukor. (DW)

Bicycle Thief, The (1948)—Vittorio de Sica's great film helped usher in the period of neo-realism in Italy. A poster hanger's bicycle—essential to his livelihood—is stolen, and he and his son search the streets of Rome for the thief. It is all set against the background of widespread postwar unemployment. A beautiful and moving film. With Lianella Carell, Lamberto Maggiorani, and Enzo Staiola. (MJ)

Big Carnival, The (1951)—Billy Wilder's highly bitter film about a down-on-his-luck reporter who exploits a man trapped in a deep cave for the sake of a big story. Fifty years later, with the media even more ravenous and cynical, the film is still timely. Kirk Douglas is outstanding in the kind of snarling role he perfected. With Jan Sterling. Also known as Ace in the Hole. (MJ)

Big Clock, The (1948)—Reporter investigating a murder case finds he is actually hunting himself; the murderer, his publisher, has set him up. Excellent suspense film, directed by John Farrow, adapted from the novel by poet Kenneth Fearing. With Ray Milland, Charles Laughton, Maureen O'Sullivan, and George Macready. (MJ)

Big Heat, The (1953)—Fritz Lang film about a policeman (Glenn Ford) who sets out to break up a crime ring and pays a heavy price. Lee Marvin is chilling as a tough guy, Gloria Grahame is excellent as a mob girl who turns good. (DW)

Big House, The (1930)—Called by one critic "the most powerful prison movie of all time," the film, directed by George Hill, stars Wallace Beery and Chester Morris. Prisoners stage such a powerful revolt that army tanks have to be called in. The censors would never again allow "such massive violence in the screen's penal system." (DW)

Big Knife, The (1955)—Robert Aldrich turns Clifford Odets' overheated play about the ruthless treatment by a Hollywood producer of a talented screen star into a fine film. Jack Palance gives a good, intense performance as the star; Rod Steiger goes all out as the venomous, manipulative white-haired producer (apparently based on Sam Goldwyn); and Wendell Corey plays the producer's weasely flunky. With Ida Lupino. (MJ)

Big Lebowski, The (1998)—A lovable, sprawling mess of a film by the Coen brothers about mistaken identity and bowling. Generally hilarious. With Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, and Steve Buscemi. (MJ)

Big Parade, The (1925)—King Vidor directed this powerful silent work about World War I, with John Gilbert as an American soldier who comes of age in the fighting. With Renee Adoree, Hobart Bosworth and Claire McDowell. (DW)

Big Picture, The (1988)—A recently graduated film student tries to succeed in Hollywood. Many hilarious moments. Starring Kevin Bacon, Martin Short, and J.T. Walsh. Directed by Christopher Guest. (MJ)

Big Red One, The (1980)—Sam Fuller's war film, semi-autobiographical, about an infantry squadron doing battle in World War II. A vivid account. With Lee Marvin. (DW)

Big Sky, The (1952)—One of Howard Hawks' most unsettling Westerns. For the first hour and a half the film seems simply to be a picturesque adventure story, then Hawks makes something different out of it. With Kirk Douglas, Dewey Martin, Arthur Hunnicutt and Elizabeth Threatt. (DW)

Big Sleep, The (1945)—Howard Hawks' version of Raymond Chandler novel, with a script again by Faulkner. Detective Philip Marlowe (Bogart) becomes involved with wealthy girl (Bacall) and her spoiled, irresponsible sister. Don't bother to figure out who did the murders, the director reportedly wasn't certain. (DW)

Big Steal, The (1949)—Crime drama, in which Robert Mitchum is chasing a payroll robber and is, in turn, chased by William Bendix. Jane Greer provides the love interest. Directed by Don Siegel. (DW)

Big Trail, The (1930)—An early sound picture, with John Wayne, in his first starring role, shepherding a flock of pioneers westward. Somewhat stiff and awkward, but with very nice touches. Directed with his customary vigor by Raoul Walsh. (DW)

Bill of Divorcement, A (1932)—Early George Cukor film about a man released from a mental institution who meets his strong-willed daughter. Katharine Hepburn's film debut. (DW)

Birds, The (1963)—Alfred Hitchcock's terrifying drama about swarms of birds attacking humans in a small northern California town. With Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren and Jessica Tandy. (DW)

Birth of a Nation, The (1915)—D.W. Griffith directed this film about events before and after the Civil War. The film, impossibly racist, revolutionized Hollywood film-making. With Lillian Gish. (DW)

Black Angel (1946)—Woman tries desperately to prove that her husband did not kill another man's wife. Based on a story by Cornell Woolrich and directed by Roy William Neill, the film stars Dan Duryea, June Vincent, Peter Lorre, Broderick Crawford and Wallace Ford. (DW)

Black Fury (1935)—A fascinating film, a little bit of Proletarian Culture created in Hollywood. Paul Muni is a immigrant coal miner at war with the union. In the end, he stages his own one-man sit-down strike. With Karen Morley, Barton MacLane, J. Carrol Naish. Directed by Michael Curtiz. (DW)

Black Orpheus (1958)—Much was made of this French-Brazilian film at the time, a version of the Orpheus-Euridice story, set in Rio during carnival. Romance between a street-car conductor and a country girl. Directed by Marcel Camus. (DW)

Blackboard Jungle, The (1955)—Glenn Ford is a high school teacher in an inner-city school in this social realist film. He deals with violence, racism and threats against his family. With Anne Francis, Vic Morrow, Sidney Poitier, Louis Calhern, Richard Kiley; directed by Richard Brooks. (DW)

Blood and Wine (1996)—Jack Nicholson plays a bankrupt wine merchant pulling off a jewel heist with an over-the-hill, nerved-up safecracker (Michael Caine, in an unusual role as a murderous heavy). With Judy Davis and Stephen Dorff. Another neglected film by underrated director Bob Rafelson. (MJ)

Blowup (1966)—Vanesse Redgrave and David Hemmings in Michelangelo Antonioni's film about art, artists, and truth. A photographer spots a killing in one of his shots, but the picture disappears. (DW)

Blue Angel, The (1930)—Josef von Sternberg's classic, adapted from a novel by Heinrich Mann, about a middle-aged professor (Emil Jannings) who falls for a night-club singer (Marlene Dietrich). (DW)

Blue Collar (1978)—Paul Schrader (screenwriter of Taxi Driver, among other films) wrote and directed this work about corruption in an auto union in Detroit. Richard Pryor and Harvey Keitel co-starred. (DW)

Blue Dahlia, The (1946)—Raymond Chandler scripted this melodrama which sees discharged serviceman Alan Ladd come home to his unfaithful wife. When she is murdered, he becomes a suspect. With Veronica Lake and William Bendix. George Marshall directed the film, and John Houseman produced. (DW)

Blue Velvet (1986)—This is the quirky film that launched director David Lynch's career. It was then a short jump to his influential, idiosyncratic TV series "Twin Peaks." And then he flickered out like a shooting star. With Dennis Hopper. (MJ)

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969)—Paul Mazursky's comic, perceptive look at the sexual mores of the American middle class in the 1960s. With Robert Culp, Natalie Wood, Elliott Gould, and Dyan Cannon. (MJ)

Body Double (1984)—Another homage to Hitchcock by the talented Brian De Palma—this time, however, unnecessarily violent, especially in the early scenes. (MJ)

Body Heat (1981)—Lawrence Kasdan directed this latter-day film noir, with William Hurt as a Florida lawyer manipulated by femme fatale Kathleen Turner (in her debut). Not as good as any of the films it pays homage to, but better than most of the other imitations. (DW)

Body Snatcher, The (1945)—One of the Val Lewton-produced thrillers, with Henry Daniell as a doctor forced to deal with the nefarious Boris Karloff to obtain cadavers for his work. Based on the Robert Louis Stevenson short story; directed by dull Robert Wise. (DW)

Bonjour Tristesse (1958)—A critical and disturbing look at post-war morals and manners, with a memorable performance by Jean Seberg as a selfish teen-ager determined to break up her playboy father's romance. (DW)

Border Incident (1949)—US and Mexican officials team up to crack down on smuggling of immigrants across the border. Anthony Mann directed, with Ricardo Montalban, George Murphy, Charles McGraw. (DW)

Bound (1996)—A fine first film by brothers Andy and Larry Machowski. Cinematically, it's a bit of a show-off, but it all works, re-mining familiar film noir elements. A mob money-launderer's mistress and her ex-con lesbian lover conspire to run off with the mobster's loot. Played broadly, and often with humor, by Jennifer Tilly, Gina Gershon, and Joe Pantoliano. (MJ)

Boys in Company C, The (1978)—One of the better realistic films about the Vietnam War. Avoids the cliches of most other war films. With James Whitmore, Jr. and Stan Shaw. Directed by Sidney J. Furie. (MJ)

Brazil (1985)—Brilliant, undisciplined satire by Terry Gilliam about a future dystopia that strangely resembles the Great Depression of the 1930s and other bleak periods of the recent past. Starring Jonathan Pryce and Michael Palin. (MJ)

Breakdown (1997)—Suspenseful thriller in which the wife of a meek computer programmer (played by Kurt Russell) disappears during a cross-country trip. One of the last performances by the late, great character actor J.T. Walsh. (MJ)

Breaker Morant (1979)—Australian film, directed by Bruce Beresford, about three soldiers in Boer War court-martialed for murdering prisoners. With Edward Woodward and Bryan Brown. (DW)

Breaking Away (1979)—Intelligent story of group of "townies" in Bloomington, Indiana, home of Indiana University. Directed by Peter Yates. (DW)

Bride Wore Black, The (1967)—On the day of their marriage, a woman's husband is shot dead in front of the church. From that day on, the bride (Jeanne Moreau) methodically devotes herself to finding and punishing the snipers. A suspenseful film about obsession and revenge, directed by François Truffaut from the novel by Cornell Woolrich. (MJ)

Bridge on the River Kwai, The (1957)—Tedious David Lean epic about British soldiers, prisoners of the Japanese, who are forced to build a bridge. Alec Guinness is their obsessive commander. (DW)

Brigadoon (1954)—Vincente Minnelli's rendition of the Lerner and Loewe musical about two hikers (Gene Kelly and Van Johnson) in Scotland who happen upon a village that comes to life every 300 years. Colorful and charming, but suffers badly from being shot on an obvious Hollywood soundstage. Also starrring Cyd Charisse. (MJ)

Bright Leaf (1950)—Michael Curtiz directed this interesting saga about the tobacco industry in the 19th century. Gary Cooper, seeking revenge on old enemies and old lovers, builds a cigarette empire. With Lauren Bacall, Patricia Neal, Jack Carson. (DW)

Bringing Up Baby (1938)—Classic screwball comedy, with Katharine Hepburn as bedazzling, eccentric heiress and Cary Grant as the sedate zoologist whose life she turns upside down. Howard Hawks directed this comedy of sex and morals. (DW)

Brink of Life (1958)—Swedish director Ingmar Bergman's look at the lives of three women in a maternity ward awaiting childbirth. Each faces a critical point in her life. With Eva Dahlbeck, Ingrid Thulin, Bibi Andersson. (DW)

Broadway Melody of 1936 (1936)—Eleanor Powell's astonishing and slightly intimidating tap-dancing highlights this revue. Insofar as there is a story, it concerns gossip columnist Jack Benny's efforts to frame producer Robert Taylor. Directed by Roy Del Ruth. (DW)

Broadway Melody of 1938 (1938)—Eleanor Powell tap-dances her way to immortality and Judy Garland sings show-stopping "Dear Mr. Gable" in this star-studded film. With Robert Taylor, Buddy Ebsen, Sophie Tucker, Robert Benchley et al. (DW)

Brothers McMullen, The (1995)—In the suburbs of New York City, three brothers, temporarily living in the same house, struggle to make sense of their relationships with the women in their lives. This small, independent film is strong on character and full of well-written, often funny dialogue, primarily about sexual relationships, family, love, and the Catholic Church. The brothers are played by Edward Burns (who also wrote and directed), Mike McGlone, and Jack Mulcahy. (MJ)

Browning Version, The (1951)—Michael Redgrave gives a remarkable performance as maligned teacher in Anthony Asquith's film. (DW)

Brute Force (1947)—Jules Dassin's prison drama with Burt Lancaster, Charles Bickford, Yvonne DeCarlo and Hume Cronyn as brutal prison official. Scripted by Richard Brooks. (DW)

Buccaneer, The (1938)—Cecil B. DeMille presided over this film about Jean LaFitte, the pirate who aided the American side in the War of 1812. With Fredric March, Franciska Gaal, Margot Grahame and Akim Tamiroff. (DW)

Buchanan Rides Alone (1958)—Another of the renowned Budd Boetticher-Randolph Scott-Harry Joe Brown westerns. This time Scott battles a corrupt family in a town on the Mexican border. (DW)

Bullets over Broadway (1994)—Woody Allen film set in the 1920s about a playwright who will do practically anything to have his play produced, including casting a gangster's girl-friend. Overdone and not as funny as it should be. With John Cusack, Dianne Wiest, Jennifer Tilly, Chazz Palminteri. (DW)

Burglar, The (1956)—A forgotten, suspenseful film about a heist—full of stunning visual effects, some obviously inspired by Orson Welles. Starring Dan Duryea (a frequent talent in film noir) and Jane Mansfield. From the novel by David Goodis. Directed by Paul Wendkos. (MJ)

Burnt by the Sun (1994)—Nikita Mikhalkov's film, in which he plays the leading role, about a Soviet leader in 1936 brought face to face with the realities of Stalinism. (DW)

Caged (1950)—In the words of one critic, a "minor classic of repression." A prison drama, with Eleanor Parker, Agnes Moorehead and Hope Emerson. Directed by John Cromwell. (DW)

Call Northside 777 (1948)—A solid, matter-of-fact drama about a reporter (James Stewart) righting a wrong: proving that a convicted killer is innocent. With Richard Conte and Lee J. Cobb. (DW)

Cameraman, The (1928)—A late silent film with Buster Keaton as a love-sick newsreel cameraman. Edward Sedgwick directed, and this is not considered one of Keaton's major films, but none of his films should be missed. (DW)

Camille (1937)—Perhaps Greta Garbo's finest film. She plays Dumas' tragic courtesan, forced to give up her love, a young man from a "good family," for the sake of his family's honor. Robert Taylor and Lionel Barrymore are adequate, but Henry Daniell enlivens the proceedings as the villain. Directed by George Cukor. (DW)

Canadian Bacon (1995)—To divert attention from domestic problems the US president (Alan Alda) and his advisers cook up a scheme to launch a war against a most unlikely enemy, Canada. John Candy has several marvelous moments as a red-blooded American patriot, but, all in all, Michael Moore's script and direction are too buffoonish. (DW)

Canyon Passage (1946)—Stylish Jacques Tourneur directed this Western set in Oregon about settlers facing Indian attacks and the consequences of white man's greed. With Brian Donlevy, Susan Hayward and Dana Andrews. (DW)

Cape Fear (1962)—Robert Mitchum is the best thing about this film, playing a menacing ex-convict in a Southern town who blames lawyer Gregory Peck for his jailing, and plots revenge. Directed by J. Lee Thompson; with Polly Bergen and Martin Balsam. Based on a John D. MacDonald novel, music by Bernard Herrmann. (DW)

Cape Fear (1991)—Martin Scorsese directed this ambitious, but overblown and generally unsuccessful remake of the 1962 J. Lee Thompson-Robert Mitchum-Gregory Peck film. This time Nick Nolte is a lawyer whose family is stalked by a vicious ex-convict (Robert De Niro). Jessica Lange is Nolte's wife, Juliette Lewis his daughter. (DW)

Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951)—Raoul Walsh directed this sea epic set in the Napoleonic wars, based on the C.S. Forester novels, in his vivid, muscular style. Some remarkable sequences. The normally dull Gregory Peck is well-cast as Hornblower. (DW)

Captain Lightfoot (1955)—Rock Hudson is a somewhat unlikely 19th century Irish rebel in Douglas Sirk's costume drama. With Barbara Rush and Jeff Morrow. Made in Ireland with Sirk's usual visual precision and beauty. (DW)

Carnival of Souls (1962)—Effective very low-budget horror film shot with an unknown cast at a deserted amusement park in Lawrence, Kansas. Directed by Herk Harvey. (MJ)

Carousel (1956)—Hollywood turned a great dark Broadway musical into a perky feel-good film. Most of the Rodgers and Hammerstein songs are intact, however. Starring Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones. Directed by Henry King. (MJ)

Carrie (1976)—Director Brian De Palma can never entirely restrain himself, but this film is more interesting than most of his others. Sissy Spacek plays a high school misfit, equipped with telekinetic powers, who wreaks revenge on her tormentors. Piper Laurie, a fine actress, is memorable as her mother. (DW)

Casablanca (1942)—The Michael Curtiz classic about life and love in wartime Morocco, with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. (DW)

Casino (1995)—Martin Scorsese directed this story about gambling and thugs in Las Vegas in the 1970s. The first ten minutes are spectacular. The drama never really gets going, in the director's typical fashion. With Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone, Joe Pesci, James Woods. (DW)

Cat People (1942)—The first of the Val Lewton-produced horror films, directed with considerable elegance by Jacques Tourneur. Extraordinary moments of psychological terror. (DW)

Champ, The (1931)—Wallace Beery is an over-the-hill boxer and Jackie Cooper his adoring son in this sentimental, but very moving work, directed by King Vidor. (DW)

Champion (1949)—Effective boxing drama, with Kirk Douglas as selfish, ambitious fighter determined to get to the top and stay there. Paul Stewart is his friend whom he betrays. Directed by Mark Robson. (DW)

Charade (1963)—Delightful Hitchcockian light thriller directed by Stanley Donen. Starring Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, and Walter Matthau. (MJ)

Charge of the Light Brigade, The (1936)—Historically distorted, but surprisingly moving account of British soldiers in colonial India and the Crimean War. With Errol Flynn and Olivia de Haviland, directed by Michael Curtiz. (DW)

Charley Varrick (1973)—A modest, intelligent Don Siegel action picture, superior to most films of the 1970s. Varrick is a smalltime crook who robs money from the Mob by accident. With Joe Don Baker, as a menacing hitman, Sheree North and John Vernon. (DW)

Charlie Bubbles (1968)—British actor Albert Finney's directing debut, about a married and unhappy writer who begins an affair with Liza Minnelli, as his secretary. It has moving moments. (DW)

Children of Paradise (1945)—Famous film begun during the Nazi occupation of France; director Marcel Carné and screen writer Jacques Prévert tell story of 19th century French acting troupe and its star (Arletty), loved by three men. Legendary Jean-Louis Barrault plays the mime who achieves great fame. (DW)

Chimes at Midnight (1966)—Orson Welles directed this synthesis of five of ShakespeareÕs plays, and stars as the rotund, knavish character Sir John Falstaff as well. It remains one of the best film adaptations of Shakespeare. The battle scenes, mostly occurring in the mud, are especially harrowing. With Jeanne Moreau, John Gielgud, and Margaret Rutherford. (MJ)

Chinatown (1974)—The best example of modern film noir. A convoluted tale of incest, corruption, and the fight over access to southern California water. Jack Nicholson plays the private detective. With Faye Dunaway, John Huston. Directed by Roman Polanski. (MJ)

Christopher Strong (1933)—Katherine Hepburn stars as an aviatrix in love with a married man. A dated film, the work of one of Hollywood's first female directors, Dorothy Arzner. (DW)

Cimarron (1931)—Dated early sound Western epic; a version of Edna Ferber's account of an American family living on the frontier in Oklahoma 1890-1915. Wesley Ruggles directed; with Richard Dix hamming it up, and Irene Dunne. (DW)

Cincinnati Kid, The (1965)—Norman Jewison directed this film about a big poker game in New Orleans. The performances of Steve McQueen, Tuesday Weld and Edward G. Robinson are the best things in the film. (DW)

Circus, The (1928)—Underrated film, with Chaplin accidentally joining a circus troupe and falling in love with the bareback rider. (DW)

Citadel, The (1938)—King Vidor's moving and insightful adaptation of the A. J. Cronin novel about an idealistic doctor who experiences a few disappointments in a mining village and opts to treat the wealthy and hypochondriacal instead. With Robert Donat and Rosalind Russell. (DW)

Citizen Kane (1941)—Orson Welles' classic work, the tragic story of a newspaper tycoon with delusions of grandeur. Based loosely on the life of millionaire William Randolph Hearst, the film was essentially suppressed when it came out. (DW)

City Lights (1931)—Chaplin's tramp in love with a blind flower girl. Sentimental, but unforgettable. (DW)

City of Industry (1997)—Harvey Keitel gives an excellent performance (almost a reprise of his role in Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs) as an old-school criminal at the end of his career. Otherwise, this is a competently made film about a jewel heist and its aftermath, set in the rundown Los Angeles that is becoming familiar to moviegoers. Directed by John Irvin. (MJ)

Clash by Night (1952)—Fritz Lang directed this melodrama which sees Barbara Stanwyck, as a woman bored with her fisherman husband Paul Douglas, suddenly taken with Douglas' cynical friend (Robert Ryan). Clifford Odets wrote the story. (DW)

Clock, The (1945)—A charming wartime story set in New York City. Robert Walker, a soldier on two-day leave, meets and falls for Judy Garland. They spend the day and night (innocently) together. Vincente Minnelli directed with extraordinary style. (DW)

Clockwork Orange, A (1971)—Stanley Kubrick's brilliant but thoroughly nasty film about a sadistic young street thug (Malcolm McDowell) in the near future turned into a passive, spiritless citizen by means of a cruel form of aversion therapy. In the process, he also loses his ability to enjoy Beethoven. Kubrick adapted this from the novel by Anthony Burgess, and Burgess always hated the result. (MJ)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)—Steven Spielberg's special-effects-filled take on UFO sighting as a religious experience. Starring Richard Dreyfuss. (MJ)

Cluny Brown (1946)—Ernst Lubitsch's comedy about the relationship between Jennifer Jones, an orphan, and Charles Boyer, a Czech refugee and professor, in England before the Second World War. Anything by Lubitsch should be seen. (DW)

Coal Miner's Daughter (1980)—Sissy Spacek, who did her own singing, is excellent in this slightly sanitized biography of country singer Loretta Lynn, born in poverty in Kentucky. Tommy Lee Jones as her husband, Beverly D'Angelo as Patsy Cline and Levon Helm as her coal-miner father also stand out. Directed by Michael Apted. (DW)

Cold Comfort Farm (1995)—Hilarious made-for-TV film by John Schlesinger sends up all the books and films that have romanticized British rustic life. A young woman (Kate Beckinsale) in London, recently orphaned, decides to move in with eccentric relatives at Cold Comfort Farm (down the road from the Hanged Man Tavern) in order to experience life as it is really lived. The farm is horribly run down, the inhabitants' existence is brutish and depressed, and the young relative from the city decides to change their lives. Ian McKellen is particularly good as a Bible-thumping preacher, as is Joanna Lumley playing the sophisticated friend in the city. Stephen Fryer keeps popping up as an aesthete who quotes Jane Austen and D.H. Lawrence. From the novel by Stella Gibbons. (MJ)

Coma (1978)—A paranoid view of doctors as body snatchers. Directed by Michael Crichton (trained as a doctor, went on to create the TV show "ER"), starring Genevieve Bujold, Richard Widmark, and Michael Douglas. (MJ)

Compulsion (1959)—Richard Brooks' fictionalized account of the Leopold-Loeb "thrill" killings of the 1920s. Best thing about the film is Orson Welles in Clarence Darrow role. (DW)

Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939)—One of Hollywood's first anti-Nazi films. Edward G. Robinson is a government agent investigating spy ring in the US. Paul Lukas is a pro-Nazi German-American. With George Sanders and Francis Lederer, directed by Anatole Litvak. (DW)

Contact (1997)—An intelligent, refreshingly non-xenophobic film on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Jodie Foster plays the single-minded astrophysicist in this adaptation from the novel by the late Carl Sagan. Unfortunately, toward the end the film becomes mushy-minded and tries to make its peace with religion. (MJ)

Conversation, The (1974)—A security specialist involved in bugging and other surveillance begins to have qualms about his profession. Francis Copolla's detailed, disturbing look at the milieu and practices of the security business is one of his best films. Starring Gene Hackman and the late John Cazale. (MJ)

Coogan's Bluff (1968)—A good action film, directed by veteran Don Siegel, concerning an Arizona lawman (Clint Eastwood) who comes to New York City to pick up a prisoner (Don Stroud); complications ensue. (DW)

Cornered (1945)—A postwar film noir with Dick Powell as a Canadian flyer tracking down Nazis in Argentina. Directed by future HUAC informer Edward Dmytryk. (DW)

Cotton Club, The (1984)—Richard Gere stars in Francis Coppola's sometimes successful attempt to capture the music and gangster violence of Harlem in the 1930s. The production was riddled with problems and the often-rewritten screenplay is by novelists William Kennedy and Mario Puzo. (MJ)

Count the Hours (1953)—Don Siegel directed this modest melodrama about a migrant worker accused of a double murder. Macdonald Carey is his lawyer; Teresa Wright and Jack Elam co-star. (DW)

Court Jester, The (1956)—Classic Danny Kaye farce of confused identities in the Middle Ages. Lots of witty verbal humor. Directed by Melvin Frank and Norman Panama. (MJ)

Cracker (1995)—The remarkable British-made TV crime series starring Robbie Coltrane as "Fitz," a police psychologist whose own personal problems are vast. Coltrane is amazing in the role—incisive, often intuitive, but always precise in interrogation of a suspect. (MJ)

Cries and Whispers (1972)—A drama about a dying woman, her sisters and a servant, directed by Ingmar Bergman. With Harriet Andersson, Ingrid Thulin, Liv Ullmann. (DW)

Crimson Pirate, The (1952)—A swashbuckling adventure, with Burt Lancaster at his most athletic. The German emigré Robert Siodmak directed. (DW)

Criss Cross (1949)—Wonderful film noir tale of betrayal, with Burt Lancaster as the fall-guy, Yvonne DeCarlo as the object of his desire and Dan Duryea as a gangster. Directed by Robert Siodmak. (DW)

Crowd Roars, The (1932)—James Cagney is a race car driver in this early sound film, directed by Howard Hawks. With Joan Blondell and Ann Dvorak (who was to star in Hawks's immortal Scarface the same year). (DW)

Crumb (1994)—Remarkable portrait of family of cartoonist Robert Crumb. His two dysfunctional brothers prove to be considerably more interesting than he. Directed by Terry Zwigoff. (DW)

Crusades, The (1935)—A Cecil B. DeMille extravaganza about the holy wars of the Middle Ages, with Loretta Young as a queen abducted by non-believers. Richard the Lion-Hearted (Henry Wilcoxon) must save her. (DW)

Cry Terror! (1958)—Andrew L. Stone and his helpful wife-editor made this little suspense drama about psychopath Rod Steiger who kidnaps and bombs to blackmail an airline. With James Mason, Inger Stevens, Angie Dickinson and Neville Brand. (DW)

Culpepper Cattle Company, The (1972)—An unjustly forgotten film about a naive young man joining up with a cattle drive. Grittily realistic depictions of the daily working life of cowboys—the kind of detail rarely shown in Westerns. A gem. With Gary Grimes, Billy "Green" Bush, and Geoffrey Lewis. Directed by Dick Richards. (MJ)

Curse of Frankenstein, The (1957)—A scary, well-done thriller from the legendary Hammer Films studios of England. Starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. (MJ)

Curse of the Cat People, The (1944)—Not a horror film at all, this is the story of a lonely girl who conjures up a vision of her father's mysterious first wife (Simone Simon from Cat People). Val Lewton produced, Robert Wise made his directorial debut. (DW)

D.O.A. (1950)—Rudolph Maté directed this film noir about a man (Edmond O'Brien) who discovers he has been poisoned and attempts to find out why and who has done it in the time he has left. With Pamela Britton, Luther Adler. (DW)

Daisy Kenyon (1947)—One of Otto Preminger's interesting postwar melodramas. Joan Crawford, Dana Andrews and Henry Fonda form a love triangle. (DW)

Dallas (1950)—A story set in post-Civil War Dallas, with Gary Cooper seeking revenge on those who wronged him. Ruth Roman and Steve Cochran co-star. Directed by Stuart Heisler. (DW)

Dark City (1950)—Charlton Heston in his film debut, as a cynical lowlife who, along with a few accomplices, takes Don DeFore in a card game, with unforeseen consequences. Future Dragnet co-stars, Jack Webb and Harry Morgan, are two of Heston's pals. With Lizabeth Scott and Viveca Lindfors. Directed by William Dieterle. (DW)

Dark Command (1940)—Raoul Walsh directed this lively Hollywood version of the rise and fall of the murderous Quantrill raiders, active in Kansas during the Civil War. Walter Pidgeon plays William Quantrill, John Wayne is the marshal with whom he clashes. (DW)

Dark Passage (1947)—Bizarre film, with Bogart as an escaped convict who undergoes plastic surgery and then tries to uncover a murderer. Directed by Delmer Daves. (DW)

Dark Victory (1939)—Bette Davis is a socialite who learns she has a terminal illness. George Brent is her brain surgeon husband. Directed by Edmund Goulding. (DW)

Darling (1965)—Mostly memorable as the opportunity for Julie Christie to make a lasting impression on the film-going public, John Schlesinger's film was "Britain's answer to La Dolce Vita," in the words of one critic. (DW)

Das Boot (1982)—Life on board a German submarine in World War II. Claustrophobic and harrowing, the film (directed by Wolfgang Petersen) follows the daily life of the crew as the vessel becomes the hunted as well as the hunter. Amazing sound editing. With Jurgen Prochnow. Best seen with subtitles in the wide-screen version. (MJ)

David Copperfield (1935)—W.C. Fields as Mr. Micawber and Basil Rathbone as Murdstone are highlights of this lavish film version of the Dickens novel. Freddie Bartholemew is the young David Copperfield. Directed by George Cukor. (DW)

Dawn Patrol, The (1938)—Remake of Howard Hawks' 1930 film about World War I flyers. Officer Basil Rathbone is forced by circumstances to send up novices Errol Flynn and David Niven. Edmund Goulding directed. (DW)

Day at the Races, A (1937)—Marx Brothers' foolishness. Set in a sanatorium where rich and hypochondriacal Margaret Dumont is the most prominent patient. Directed by Sam Wood. (DW)

Day the Earth Stood Still, The (1951)—A visitor from another galaxy visits our planet to issue a stern warning. Robert Wise's film is a liberal plea for peace and understanding; as such, it defied the McCarthyite xenophobia and bellicosity dominating Hollywood at the time. It stands up surprising well almost 50 years later. Starring Patricia Neal and Michael Rennie. (MJ)

Days of Wine and Roses (1962)—Blake Edwards' somber film about alcoholic Jack Lemmon who drags Lee Remick into his orbit. (DW)

Dazed and Confused (1993)—Richard Linklater's evocative, unsentimental portrait of the last day of school at a suburban Texas high school in 1976. A variety of narrative strands, too many to mention. With Jason London, Milla Jovovich, Ben Affleck, Matthew McConaughey, Parker Posey, among others. (DW)

Dead Again (1991)—Visually exciting film (with debts to Hitchcock and Welles) set in Los Angeles is a murder mystery in which reincarnation is the key. Kenneth Branagh directed and plays two roles, as does Emma Thompson. (MJ)

Dead End (1937)—The first appearance of the Dead End Kids (Huntz Hall, Leo Gorcey et al) in a film about the Lower East Side slums of New York. Scripted by Lillian Hellman, directed by William Wyler. (DW)

Dead Ringers (1988)—David Cronenberg's remarkable film about twin gynecologists, played by Jeremy Irons, and their descent into madness. With Genevieve Bujold as an actress who comes between them. (DW)

Dead, The (1987)—John Huston's deeply felt adaptation of James Joyce's short story, one of the best in the English language. This was Huston's last film; it ended his great career on a high note. With Anjelica Huston and Donal McCann. (MJ)

Deadline U.S.A. (1952)—Humphrey Bogart as a crusading editor, trying to keep a big city newspaper alive. Ethel Barrymore plays the paper's owner. Directed by Richard Brooks. (DW)

Death in Venice (1971)—To Gustav Mahler's music, Dirk Bogarde, a writer in pre-World War I Venice, considers art, beauty and death. Luchino Visconti's film, based on the Thomas Mann novella, is perhaps self-indulgent, but it is beautiful and sad. Bogarde is a great actor. (DW)

Decision at Sundown (1957)—One of the series of modest westerns starring Randolph Scott, directed by Budd Boetticher, produced by Harry Joe Brown, highly regarded by critics. Boetticher has been described as "one of the most fascinating unrecognized talents in the American cinema." (DW)

Deconstructing Harry (1997)—Woody Allen's film is mean-spirited, misanthropic, bitter, cynical, crude, and foul-mouthed, but it is deliberately provocative, often funny, and one of his best films of recent years. A writer (Allen) confronts the friends and family members that he has cruelly featured in his novels, as well as their fictional representations. Also, Allen and his character confront their horror at growing old. Compare this film with the one preceding it, the light-hearted romantic musical Everyone Says I Love You (1996), which this film seems to rebut. (MJ)

Deep Valley (1947)—A convict from a prison camp barges in on an isolated farm. With Ida Lupino, Chester Morris and Dane Clark—an excellent cast for a modest, well-made film noir.. (DW)

Deer Hunter, The (1978)—Michael Cimino's somewhat strained portrait of a group of Pennsylvania steelworkers, their experiences in Vietnam and back home again. With Robert De Niro, John Cazale, Meryl Streep, Christopher Walken, John Savage. (DW)

Defiant Ones, The (1958)—Stanley Kramer, "the most extreme example of thesis or message cinema," directed this tale of two escaped convicts, one black and one white, chained together as they try to make their way in the South. With Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier. (DW)

Destry Rides Again (1939)—James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich have memorable moments in this western comedy, directed by George Marshall. Dietrich sings the classic "See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have." (DW)

Detective Story (1951)—William Wyler's somewhat dated film about the activities inside a New York City police station. Kirk Douglas is a bitter cop, Eleanor Parker his wife, William Bendix another detective. The good cast also includes Horace McMahon, Lee Grant and Joseph Wiseman. (DW)

Detour (1945)—Edgar G. Ulmer, German expatriate and legendary denizen of Hollywood's Poverty Row, directed this remarkable low-budget work. Tom Neal is a drifter who becomes tragically involved with Ann Savage—and Fate—while hitch-hiking from one coast to the other. Not to be missed. (DW)

Devil and Daniel Webster, The (1941)—Longwinded, but interesting version of Stephen Vincent Benet's story about a New England Faust defended against the devil's claims by Daniel Webster. Edward Arnold is Webster and Walter Huston a marvelous Mr. Scratch (the devil). Directed by the German emigré William Dieterle. (Also, Thursday at 5:00 pm.) (DW)

Devil's Advocate, The (1997)—Satan (portrayed in an over-the-top performance by Al Pacino) runs a white-shoe law firm in New York City. Keanu Reeves, as an ambitious young lawyer, makes a Faustian bargain and suffers for it. A very funny horror film that trades on the public's distrust of the legal profession. (MJ)

Devil's Doorway (1950)—Robert Taylor is an Indian who served in the Civil War and finds ill-treatment back home. Sympathetic handling of this question was relatively rare in Hollywood at the time. Directed by Anthony Mann, with Louis Calhern and Edgar Buchanan. (DW)

Devil's Eye, The (1960)—Somewhat heavy-handed comedy by Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. Upset by a woman's chastity, the devil sends Don Juan back to earth to win her affections. With Jarl Kulle, Bibi Andersson. (DW)

Dial M for Murder (1954)—A lesser film by Alfred Hitchcock, with Ray Milland as a husband who plots his wife's death. Grace Kelly is the wife who, when the plot fails, falls under suspicion of murder. With Bob Cummings. (DW)

Diary of a Chambermaid (1964)—Luis Bunuel shows, perhaps too elliptically, the rise of fascism in 1930s France; at the same time, he skewers the bourgoisie, its foibles and perversions. Jeanne Moreau plays a chambermaid in a French rural estate, during which time a child is brutally murdered by an overseer who is a leader of Action Francaise. Well done, but the motivations are vague and and it is too diffuse to be powerful. (MJ)

Diner (1982)—Barry Levinson wrote and directed this sympathetic account of a group of young men who hang out in a diner in 1950s Baltimore. With Steve Guttenberg, Daniel Stern, Mickey Rourke, Kevin Bacon, Timothy Daly, Ellen Barkin. (DW)

Dinner at Eight (1933)—A collection of individuals from various social classes, all facing a crisis, prepare to dine at eight. George Cukor directed this MGM version of the George Kaufman-Edna Ferber play, with Jean Harlow, Marie Dressler, Wallace Beery and John Barrymore. (DW)

Dirty Dozen, The (1967)—Twelve convicts, serving life sentences, are recruited for a suicidal commando raid in Robert Aldrich's film. (DW)

Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, The (1972)—Described by one critic as famous Spanish director Luis Bunuel's "most completely achieved fusion of satire, comedy, fantasy and (controlled) emotion." (DW)

Dodge City (1939)—One of the Errol Flynn-Olivia de Haviland cycle of films, usually directed by either Michael Curtiz or Raoul Walsh. Curtiz directed this one, a rousing, lively Western. With the Warner Bros. company of character actors. (DW)

Dog Day Afternoon (1975)—Based on a true story about a man who held up a Brooklyn bank to raise the money for his lover's sex-change operation. With Al Pacino, John Cazale, Charles Durning. Directed by Sidney Lumet. (DW)

Don Juan (1926)—A historical curiosity, with John Barrymore in a silent, swashbuckling role. With Mary Astor, Barrymore's love of the time, Warner Oland, Estelle Taylor, early Myrna Loy. Directed by Alan Crosland. (DW)

Don't Bother to Knock (1952)—Marilyn Monroe, in an early role, is a demented baby-sitter who threatens to kill the child in her care. With Richard Widmark, Anne Bancroft, Jim Backus. Directed by Roy Ward Baker. (DW)

Don't Make Waves (1967)—Tony Curtis is a swimming-pool salesman in this satire about life in southern California. He gets involved with beauty queens and body builders; with Sharon Tate and Claudia Cardinale. Alexander Mackendrick directed. (DW)

Double Indemnity (1944)—Billy Wilder's marvelous and sinister version of the James M. Cain novel about a wife (Barbara Stanwyck) who connives with an insurance agent (Fred MacMurray) to murder her husband. Devastating picture of greed and amorality. Scripted by Raymond Chandler. (DW)

Dr. Strangelove (1963)—Classic satire on nuclear annihilation. Though heavyhanded in parts, it stll retains its incisive humor and impact. Peter Sellers is incredible playing several parts, including the President of the United States. Memorable line: "You can't fight in here—it's the War Room!" Directed by Stanley Kubrick. (MJ)

Dreams (1955)—Ingmar Bergman directed this film about two women—a photo agency boss and a model—and their dreams, pleasures and crises. With Eva Dahlbeck, Harriet Andersson, Gunnar Bjornstrand. (DW)

Drowning Pool, The (1975)—Paul Newman, as private detective Harper, becomes entangled in a murder case. Joanne Woodward is his ex-wife. Based on the Ross MacDonald novels. Directed by Stuart Rosenberg. (DW)

Drums Along the Mohawk (1939)—The story of American colonials in upstate New York during the Revolutionary War. With Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert, in one of John Ford's more modest works. (DW)

Duel (1971)—Steven Spielberg's first major film effort, about a businessman (Dennis Weaver) on a lonely stretch of highway who realizes a truck driver is determined to drive him off the road. Empty, but entertaining. (DW)

Duel in the Sun (1946)—King Vidor's intense Western psychodrama. Jennifer Jones, a "half-breed," is caught between two brothers (Gregory Peck and Joseph Cotten). With Lionel Barrymore, Lillian Gish, Herbert Marshall, Charles Bickford and Walter Huston. (DW)

East of Eden (1955)—Elia Kazan's treatment of the John Steinbeck novel about a young man, after World War I, who finds his mother runs a brothel. With James Dean. (DW)

Easy Living (1949)—Victor Mature is a retired professional football player married to a grasping woman (Lizabeth Scott). Irwin Shaw wrote the screenplay; directed by the stylish Jacques Tourneur. With Lucille Ball, Lloyd Nolan, Paul Stewart. (DW)

Easy Rider (1969)—Dennis Hopper's film about drugs, motorcycles and the search for the "real America." Does it stand up at all? (DW)

Effi Briest (1974)—Somewhat self-conscious and slow-moving, but extremely thoughtful, insightful adaptation of Theodor Fontane's novel about a young woman in 19th century Prussia suppressed by marriage, family and her own conformism. Hanna Schygulla is wonderful as Effi; with Wolfgang Schenck, Karl-Heinz Böhm, Irm Hermann. Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. (DW)

El Dorado (1967)—Robert Mitchum, a drunken sheriff, and John Wayne, a gunfighter, join forces to defeat a rapacious rancher and keep peace on the range. Directed by Howard Hawks. (DW)

Elephant Man, The (1980)—David Lynch's moving film about society's cruelty toward John Merrick, the grossly deformed "elephant man," set in the context of the brutality of the Industrial Revolution in London at the turn of the century. John Hurt plays Merrick. With Anthony Hopkins, Anne Bancroft, and John Gielgud. (MJ)

Elmer Gantry (1960)—Burt Lancaster is the salesman who becomes a fire-and-brimstone preacher, joining evangelist Jean Simmons' crusade, in this critical look at fundamentalism and fakery in 1920s America. Richard Brooks directed, based on the novel by Sinclair Lewis. (DW)

Empire of the Sun (1987)—Steven Spielberg directed this version of the J.G. Ballard autobiographical novel about a young British boy during World War II stranded in China. With Christian Bale, John Malkovich, Miranda Richardson. Tom Stoppard wrote the script. (DW)

Enchanted Cottage, The (1945)—Robert Young, as a disfigured man, and Dorothy McGuire, as an unattractive woman, who grew beautiful in an enchanted locale. Directed by John Cromwell. (DW)

End of St. Petersburg, The (1927)—Soviet director Vsevelod Pudovkin's film about a peasant from the provinces swept by the great events of 1917. With Ivan Chuvelov, Vera Baranovskaya, A.P. Christiakov. (DW)

Endless Love (1981)—Franco Zeffirelli made a very bad film out of Scott Spencer's very good novel. With Brooke Shields, Martin Hewitt, Shirley Knight, and Richard Kiley. (MJ)

Enemies, A Love Story (1989)—Set in post-World War II Brooklyn and the Catskills, Paul Mazursky's faithful adaptation of Isaac Bashevis Singer's novel has Herman, a Jewish intellectual married to the Polish woman who sheltered him during the war, carrying on an affair with a seductive married woman. Then his first wife, presumed dead in Poland, appears at his door. Mazursky's film is humorous and, at the same time, sad, with superb performances by Ron Silver, Anjelica Huston, and Lena Olin. (MJ)

Escape from Alcatraz (1979)—Clint Eastwood plays a convict determined to break out of Alcatraz, the supposedly inescapable prison. Based on a true story, the film methodically follows Eastwood's efforts. Directed by Don Siegel. (DW)

Eternally Yours (1939)—David Niven is a magician, Loretta Young his wife who thinks he is straying from her, in Tay Garnett's quirky film. With Billie Burke, C. Aubrey Smith. (DW)

Everyone Says I Love You (1996)—Woody Allen at his most romantic and artificial. In this, Allen's only musical, people break into song (not unnaturally) and seem to have a genuinely good time, in a cliquish kind of way. The locales are Venice, Paris, and (of course) the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and very quickly the upper-crust, smug liberal values of the jet set characters become insufferable. With Edward Norton, Goldie Hawn, and Alan Alda. (MJ)

Excalibur (1981)—John Boorman directed this lush adaptation of the King Arthur legend at fever pitch. As with all of Boorman's work, it is carefully made and embodies his unique, fantasic vision. Starring Helen Mirren, Nigel Terry, and Nicol Williamson (outstanding as a sardonic, antic Merlin). (MJ)

Executive Suite (1954)—A power struggle erupts after the death of a major executive. Interesting to compare the corporate culture of the 1950s (and Hollywood myths about them) with today's. With William Holden, Barbara Stanwyck, June Allyson, Fredric March, Walter Pidgeon. Robert Wise directed. (DW)

Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)—One of the best bad movies ever made. Preposterous and misguided, it is nonetheless rich with images and vision. Nominally the sequel to the original Exorcist, this film bears only a thin relationship to it. Starring Linda Blair, Max Von Sydow, James Earl Jones, and Richard Burton. Directed by John Boorman. (MJ)

Fabulous Baker Boys, The (1989)—Real-life brothers Jeff Bridges and Beau Bridges play musician brothers in this emotionally gripping story of sibling rivalry. With Michelle Pfeiffer. Directed by Steve Kloves. (MJ)

Face in the Crowd, A (1957)—Andy Griffith, in his film debut, as country boy made into a huge television star. With Lee Remick, also in her debut. Directed by Elia Kazan, script by Budd Schulberg (same team as On the Waterfront). (DW)

Face/Off (1997)—Hong Kong action director John Woo lets out all the stops in this exciting, humorous, and (of course) preposterous film about a government agent (John Travolta) and his terrorist nemesis (Nicolas Cage) exchanging faces. (MJ)

Fahrenheit 451 (1966)—François Truffaut's adaptation of the Ray Bradbury dystopian science fiction story about a world in which firemen are sent around to set fire to books, which are banned items. Oskar Werner plays a fireman who rebels; with Julie Christie. (DW)

Fallen Idol, The (1948)—A young boy idolizes a household servant accused of killing his wife in this valuable film by Carol Reed, with Ralph Richardson as the butler. From a story by Graham Greene. (DW)

Fallen Sparrow, The (1944)—John Garfield and Maureen O'Hara star in a pro-Loyalist film about a Spanish Civil War veteran tracked by Nazis in New York City. Richard Wallace directed; with Walter Slezak. (DW)

Family Plot (1976)—Late and mild-mannered Alfred Hitchcock, but still worth watching. Barbara Harris is a fake medium who unwittingly gets involved in a murder plot. William Devane is the mastermind. (DW)

Far Country, The (1955)—James Stewart, Ruth Roman, Walter Brennan and John McIntire co-star in this Anthony Mann western about a cattleman who brings his herd to Alaska and encounters many difficulties. As always with Mann, the Albert Bierstadt of movie directors, the exteriors are magnificent. (DW)

Fargo (1996)—A kidnaping goes terribly wrong in Minnesota, and a pregnant, low-key, small-town sheriff (Frances McDormand) tries to solve it. Grotesque, satirical, sometimes cartoonish, often funny, this is one of the Coen brothers' best films. With Steve Buscemi, William H. Macy, Peter Stormare, and Harve Presnell. (MJ)

Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)—A lightweight film, but some lively performances by a remarkable group of young actors: Sean Penn, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Robert Romanus, Phoebe Cates, Forest Whitaker, Anthony Edwards, Nicholas Cage. (DW)

Fat City (1972)—John Huston adapted Leonard Gardner's novel about a down-and-out boxer trying for another chance in the ring. A bleak look at the fight game, this is a film that deserves more attention. Starring Stacy Keach, with a remarkable performance by Susan Tyrell. (MJ)

Father of the Bride (1950)—Spencer Tracy is the father and Elizabeth Taylor the bride in Vincente Minnelli's look at the American marriage ritual. Amusing, and sometimes pointed. With Joan Bennett. (DW)

Father's Little Dividend (1951)—Amusing follow-up to Father of the Bride, with Spencer Tracy as the father and Elizabeth Taylor as the bride. Vincente Minnelli directed. (DW)

Fearless (1993)—Jeff Bridges experiences the eerie effects of having survived a jetliner crash. Stunning performance by Rosie Perez. Directed by Peter Weir. (MJ)

Fifth Avenue Girl (1939)—Ginger Rogers is an unemployed girl who is hired by a millionaire (Walter Connolly) to teach his family a lesson. Directed by Gregory LaCava. (DW)

Fifth Element, The (1997)—Vacuous, silly science fiction film in which the future of the universe hinges on a Brooklyn cabdriver (played in proletarian style by Bruce Willis) finding something called "the fifth element." Worth seeing only for its imaginative settings and special effects. Typical scenery-chewing villainy by Gary Oldman. Directed by Luc Besson. (MJ)

Finders Keepers (1984)—The underrated Richard Lester directed this hilarious farce involving a chase after stolen money. The pace is frenetic, as it was in his other films, A Hard Day's Night and The Ritz. With David Wayne, Beverly D'Angelo, and Michael O'Keefe. (MJ)

Fine Madness, A (1966)—Sean Connery is a poet in this amusing, if idealized and sanitized look at non-conformism. Joanne Woodward, Jean Seberg, Colleen Dewhurst and Renee Taylor make things interesting. Directed by Irvin Kershner. (DW)

Finian's Rainbow (1968)—Petula Clark sings beautifully, Fred Astaire is miscast as her dreamy dad, and Tommy Steele quickly wears out his welcome as the broad-smiling, hyperactive leprechaun in Francis Copplola's flat version of the hit populist Broadway musical. In the course of this unrelentingly upbeat film, a tobacco-growing commune struggles for survival and a bigoted Southern senator is turned into an African-American. However, the songs by E.Y. Harburg retain their charm. (MJ)

Firm, The (1993)—Another film that takes a shot at the legal profession. In this paranoid potboiler, a young, ambitious lawyer finds out that his high-toned firm is totally owned by organized crime. An unremarkable film is saved by a remarkable performance by Gene Hackman (always dependable), playing a cynical partner. From the bestseller by John Grisham. (MJ)

Fistful of Dollars, A (1964)—In the first of Sergio Leone's Italian Westerns Clint Eastwood, in the role that made him a star, plays the Man With No Name. The story, a remake of Kurosawa's Yojimbo, involves warring families in a border town. Ennio Morricone's score is striking. With Gian Maria Volonte and Marianne Koch. (DW)

Five Easy Pieces (1970)—Early Jack Nicholson film that helped define his sardonic screen persona. He plays a concert pianist from a wealthy family who opts to work on an oil rig. Watch for the memorable scene in the diner between Nicholson's character and a waitress. Directed by the underappreciated Bob Rafelson. With Karen Black, Billy "Green" Bush, and Susan Anspach. (MJ)

Five Fingers (1952)—James Mason stars as a valet doing espionage in World War II. Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. (MJ)

Five Graves to Cairo (1943)—Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett wrote the screenplay for this North African wartime intrigue drama; Wilder also directed. Franchot Tone stars. (DW)

Fixed Bayonets (1951)—Samuel Fuller, the "authentic American primitive," directs this Korean War drama about a unit cut off from the rest of its outfit. Be prepared for Cold War politics, visual audacity and emotional intensity. (DW)

Flame of New Orleans, The (1941)—One of French director René Clair's American films. Marlene Dietrich, the principal reason to watch the film , has to choose between wealthy Roland Young and hard-working Bruce Cabot. (DW)

Flamingo Road (1949)—Michael Curtiz directed this political melodrama about a stranded carnival performer who runs up against a corrupt local politician when she marries into a distinguished family. With Joan Crawford, Zachary Scott and Sydney Greenstreet. (DW)

Fly, The (1986)—David Cronenberg's film about a scientist (Jeff Goldblum) who experiments on himself and evolves into a human fly. Cronenberg apparently saw his character's condition as a metaphor for AIDS. Geena Davis is the woman who stands by him. As usual, Cronenberg gets caught up in the machinery of his conceits and loses track of his theme. (DW)

Flying Down to Rio (1934)—Early Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers film with wonderful dance sequences. The musical number with the chorus girls dancing high over Rio on the wings of flying planes is amazing. Directed by Thomas Freeland. (MJ)

Follow the Fleet (1936)—One of the more mediocre Rogers-Astaire films, with a plot involving a double romance (Randolph Scott and Harriet Hilliard (Nelson) form the other pair). The film's highlight is Irving Berlin's "Let's Face the Music and Dance." Directed by Mark Sandrich. (DW)

For a Few Dollars More (1966)—The sequel to A Fistful of Dollars. One of the more memorable "spaghetti Westerns"; with Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Gian Maria Volonte, directed by Sergio Leone. (DW)

Force of Evil (1948)—The principal film effort of director Abraham Polonsky, soon to be blacklisted. A parable about American capitalism. John Garfield plays the lead, a crooked lawyer from the wrong side of the tracks, who faces a moral crisis over a Fourth of July holiday. With Thomas Gomez and Beatrice Pearson. (DW)

Foreign Affair, A (1948)—Billy Wilder directed this story of post-war Germany, with Jean Arthur, an American provincial, sent to investigate conditions in Berlin, but falling in love. With Marlene Dietrich in fine form. (DW)

Foreign Correspondent (1940)—Joel McCrea is the correspondent caught up in a spy intrigue in Alfred Hitchcock's film, with George Sanders, Robert Benchley, Herbert Marshall, Laraine Day. (DW)

Fort Apache (1948)—One of John Ford's classic cavalry trilogy. Henry Fonda is an unbending officer who can't get along with his own men, or the neighboring Apaches. With John Wayne and Shirley Temple. (DW)

Fortune Cookie, The (1966)—Billy Wilder's ultra-cynical story about a television cameraman (Jack Lemmon) injured during a football game and the attempts by his shyster lawyer (Walter Matthau) to sue for millions. (DW)

Fountainhead, The (1949)—King Vidor directed Ayn Rand's adaptation of her own reactionary novel in hyperbolic style, reaching extremes that are often hilarious. Gary Cooper plays the heroic, unbending, individualist architect, Patricia Neal the heiress who carries on a love-hate relationship with him. (MJ)

Four Daughters (1938)—The Lane Sisters, with Claude Rains as their musical father, star in this film about small-town life. The four young women have their lives changed by four young men. Directed by Hungarian émigré Michael Curtiz. (DW)

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The (1921)—The famous silent antiwar epic, directed by Rex Ingram, about two brothers who end up enemies in World War I. With Rudolph Valentino. (DW)

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The (1962)—Vincente Minnelli directed this melodrama about a wealthy Argentine family all of whose members are caught up in World War II. With Glenn Ford, Ingrid Thulin, Charles Boyer and Lee J. Cobb, among others. (DW)

Four Wives (1939)—A Michael Curtiz film, sequel to Four Daughters, about a quartet of women in small-town America. Sentimental, but well directed and acted. With Claude Rains, John Garfield and the Lane sisters (Priscilla, Rosemary and Lola.) (DW)

Frantic (1988)—Roman Polanski's failed attempt to make a Hitchcock-type suspense film. With Harrison Ford. (MJ)

Freaks (1932)—Tod Browning's astonishing film, really a revenge drama, about a traveling sideshow and its performers. Once described as the most compassionate film ever made. With Olga Baclanova and Wallace Ford. (DW)

French Connection, The (1971)—Gene Hackman is fine as a New York City policeman chasing drug traffickers. William Friedkin directed the proceedings at a breakneck pace. His subsequent work shows that this film was overrated at the time. With Roy Scheider, Tony LoBianco. (DW)

Frenzy (1972)—An innocent man is accused of being the "necktie murderer" in London. Suspenseful film by Alfred Hitchcock has great menace and wonderful moments, but is marred by some cheap effects. With Jon Finch and Barry Foster. (MJ)

Friendly Persuasion (1956)—William Wyler directed this film about a family of Quakers and, therefore, pacifists, trying to survive with dignity during the Civil War. With Gary Cooper, Dorothy McGuire and Anthony Perkins. (DW)

Friends of Eddie Coyle, The (1973)—Peter Yates directed this lively version of the George V. Higgins novel about Boston lowlifes. A little too colorful for its own good at times. With Robert Mitchum, Peter Boyle, Richard Jordan. (DW)

From Here to Eternity (1953)—Fred Zinnemann directed this generally overrated work, based on the James Jones novel, about life on an army post in Hawaii on the eve of Pearl Harbor. With Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Deborah Kerr, Donna Reed, Frank Sinatra. (DW)

Fugitive, The (1947)—Henry Fonda is a unorthodox priest wanted by the government in Mexico. He is turned in by a man who once helped him, in this John Ford film. (DW)

Full Confession (1939)—John Farrow, father of Mia, directed this melodrama about a priest (Joseph Calleia) who receives a confession of murder (from Victor McLaglen) and finds himself in an obvious quandary. (DW)

Full Metal Jacket (1987)—Stanley Kubrick directed this film about the Vietnam war, which in its first half—Marine training at Parris Island—may be the most harrowing depiction of military life ever put on film (mainly due to the presence of ex-drill instructor Lee Ermey). However, as a coherent anti-war film, it does not equal Kubrick's own Paths of Glory. (MJ)

Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, A (1966)—Richard Lester directed this film version of the Broadway musical comedy (with a score by Stephen Sondheim) about ancient Rome. The wonderful Zero Mostel plays a slave in a jam. Frenzied and trying too hard. (DW)

Fury (1936)—German director Fritz Lang's first US work, a powerful statement against injustice and mob hysteria. Spencer Tracy as a traveler in a small town, mistaken for a murderer and apparently lynched. (DW)

Gabriel over the White House (1933)—A political oddity, made in the early days of the Depression, with fairly sinister overtones. Walter Huston is a crook who becomes US president, experiences a mysterious transformation and assumes extraordinary powers. (DW)

Gallipoli (1981)—Peter Weir's antiwar film about Australian soldiers caught in a major battle of World War I. With a young Mel Gibson. (MJ)

Gang's All Here, The (1943)—Delightful Busby Berkeley film, with the usual lush and intricate musical sequences, but this time in rich Technicolor. Watch for the not-so-subliminal chorus line of bananas in Carmen Miranda's "The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat" number. (MJ)

Gas Food Lodging (1992)—Amiable film about a waitress (Brooke Adams) at a diner in Laramie, New Mexico, trying to get by, with two daughters. Directed by Allison Anders; with James Brolin, Ione Skye, Fairuza Balk. (DW)

Gaslight (1944)—Charles Boyer tries to drive Ingrid Bergman mad in George Cukor's period thriller. (DW)

Gattaca (1997)—In this future capitalist society, your place in the productive process is determined by your genetic makeup—which is mapped at birth and stays with you as your main ID for life. One man rebels against the system. Andrew Niccol wrote and directed this intelligent film, highly derivative of the fiction of Philip K. Dick. (MJ)

Gay Divorcee, The (1934)—One of the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals. Not famous for its plot, but for its musical numbers, including "Continental" and Cole Porter's "Night and Day." Directed by journeyman Mark Sandrich. (DW)

Gentleman Jim (1942)—Errol Flynn makes a dashing Jim Corbett, early boxing champion, in this biography directed by Raoul Walsh. Ward Bond plays John L. Sullivan with panache. Scripted by Vincent Lawrence and Horace McCoy (author of They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, among other hard-boiled works). (DW)

Gentlemen's Agreement (1947)—Gregory Peck is a writer who pretends to be Jewish to gauge anti-Semitism. Moss Hart wrote the relatively tame script; Elia Kazan directed. (DW)

Germinal (1993)—Claude Berri's expensive, turgid adaptation of the famous Zola novel (1884), about French coal miners, their struggles and personal dramas. With Gerard Depardieu, Miou-Miou, Laurent Terzieff and many others. (DW)

Getaway, The (1972)—Steve McQueen as a convict who gets out of jail and immediately takes part in a bank robbery. With Ali McGraw. Directed by Sam Peckinpah, from the novel by Jim Thompson. (DW)

Gettysburg (1993)—Ronald Maxwell's meticulous recreation of the great Civil War battle. With Tom Berenger, Jeff Daniels, Martin Sheen, Sam Elliott and many others. (DW)

Giant (1956)—George Stevens directed this work, described by many as "epic," about two generations of a Texas family. With Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, and James Dean in his last role. (DW)

Gilda (1946)—Rita Hayworth is spectacular (singing "Put the Blame on Mame") in Charles Vidor's drama about a love triangle in postwar South America. George Macready is a shady casino owner, Hayworth his restless wife and Glenn Ford a new employee. (DW)

Glass Key, The (1942)—Stuart Heisler directed this version of the Dashiell Hammett novel about a hard-nosed operator (Alan Ladd) who tries to defend his boss (Brian Donlevy), a wardheeler, against murder charges. Veronica Lake is the object of Ladd's affections. (DW)

Glenn Miller Story, The (1954)—By no standard a great film—it is burdened with a sentimental and largely fictitious story, as well as insipid June Allyson as Miller's wife—but everything by Anthony Mann of this period is worth seeing. Beautifully done. James Stewart is fine as Miller. (DW)

Gloria (1980)—Gena Rowlands as ex-mob mistress who takes off with young boy after his parents are killed by gangland hitmen. Directed by Rowlands' husband, John Cassavetes. (DW)

Glory Alley (1952)—Fine character actor Ralph Meeker is a boxer who quits just prior to the big fight. Flashbacks explain his story. Directed by Hollywood veteran Raoul Walsh, with Leslie Caron, Gilbert Roland and an appearance by Louis Armstrong. (DW)

Godfather, Part II, The (1974)—A rarity—a sequel that measures up to its predecessor. The origins of the enterprising, murderous Corleone family. With Robert De Niro, Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, and Diane Keaton. Directed by Francis Coppola. (MJ)

Godfather, Part III, The (1990)—Not the best of the Godfather trilogy, but a cut above most current films. This time, the Corleone family, led by Michael (Al Pacino), gets involved with the sinister machinations of the Vatican and international finance. With Andy Garcia, Diane Keaton, and Sophia Coppola. Directed by Francis Coppola. (MJ)

Godfather, The (1972)—Francis Coppola's classic film about the Mafia as a form of capitalist endeavor. With Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, and Robert Duvall. (MJ)

Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)—Busby Berkeley did the spectacular, mind-boggling dance numbers, connected by the usual thin and negligible plot. Highlights in this film—one of Berkeley's best—are "the Ballad of the Forgotten Man" and "We're in the Money" (sung partly in Pig Latin), both of which are sardonic comments on the great Depression. With Dick Powell, Ginger Rogers, and Joan Blondell. Directed by Mervyn LeRoy. (MJ)

Graduate, The (1967)—Important coming-of-age film about a young man (Dustin Hoffman, in his first big role) deciding whether to throw in his lot with the adult world. Should he cast off his rebelliousness and join the prospering middle class of the late sixties—i.e., go into "plastics"? Anne Bancroft is the memorable middle-aged seductress (and mother of his fiancee) Mrs. Robinson. Excellent music by Simon and Garfunkel. Directed by Mike Nichols. (MJ)

Grapes of Wrath, The (1940)—John Ford's version of the John Steinbeck classic novel, about the Joad family, driven from their home in the 1930s "Dust Bowl." Henry Fonda plays Tom Joad. With Jane Darwell, John Carradine. (DW)

Gray's Anatomy (1996)—One of actor Spalding Gray's filmed monologues. This time he describes his efforts to find alternative treatments for an eye ailment. Directed by Steven Soderbergh. (DW)

Great Dictator, The (1940)—Chaplin plays the twin role of a Jewish barber and Adenoid Hynkel of Tomania, in this extraordinary attack, which also manages to be very funny, on Hitler and Nazism. Jack Oakie is Benzino Napaloni of Bacteria. (DW)

Great Escape, The (1963)—Steve McQueen and James Garner stand out in this World War II prisoner-of-war escape film. Routine in many ways, directed by John Sturges. (DW)

Great Gatsby, The (1974)—A pallid, but occasionally interesting film, based on the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel about the "careless" rich and their gangster friend, on Long Island in the 1920s. Robert Redford is too placid as Jay Gatsby, Mia Farrow too jittery as Daisy Buchanan. (DW)

Great McGinty, The (1940)—Preston Sturges' fable about a derelict (Brian Donlevy) who, with the help of the political machine, makes it to the governor's mansion and then tries to turn honest, with catastrophic consequences. (DW)

Grifters, The (1990)—One of the best adaptations of Jim Thompson's gritty, bleak novels, this one about mother-and-son con artists, played by Angelica Huston and John Cusack. With Pat Hingle. Directed by Stephen Frears. (MJ)

Groundhog Day (1993)—Bill Murray plays a weatherman who must live the same day over and over and over in a very dull town. Funny and somewhat disturbing. Directed by Harold Ramis. (MJ)

Gun Fury (1953)—Rock Hudson goes after the villains (including Neville Brand and Lee Marvin) who stole his fiancée (Donna Reed) in this fastpaced Raoul Walsh Western. (DW)

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957)—Spirited acting (by Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas) and direction (by John Sturges) make this one of the more memorable films of the legendary clash. (MJ)

Gunfighter, The (1950)—A famous gunfighter tries to retire and find peace in his later years, but his reputation follows him like a curse. A young gunslinger, eager to make a name for himself, challenges the older man to a final shootout. One of the best westerns, somber and tragic, with fine performances by Gregory Peck and Skip Homeier. Directed by Henry King. (MJ)

Gunga Din (1939)—If one sets aside the history and politics of this film, about the heroic British army fighting off thuggee cult in 19th century India, "the most entertaining of the juvenile Kipling movies." Directed by George Stevens. (DW)

Gunman's Walk (1958)—Phil Karlson directed this western. Van Heflin wants his sons, Tab Hunter and James Darren, to go straight, but circumstances and personalities intervene. (DW)

Guy Named Joe, A (1943)—Spencer Tracy is a World War II pilot who is killed and comes back to earth to whisper advice in the ear of his replacement, Van Johnson, in the affections of Irene Dunne. Sentimental as can be, but affecting. Directed by Victor Fleming. (DW)

Gypsy (1962)—Unfortunate film adaptation of the great Jule Styne-Stephen Sondheim-Arthur Laurents musical. Rosalind Russell does not have the necessary fire in her belly for the role of Mama Rose. Worth seeing for the music, but look for the recent, far better, made-for-TV version with Bette Midler. Directed by Mervyn LeRoy. Also starring Natalie Wood and Karl Malden. (MJ)

Hail the Conquering Hero (1944)—A Preston Sturges comedy. Eddie Bracken, rejected by the military, is mistaken for a war hero by his hometown. William Demarest is marvelous. (DW)

Hallelujah! (1929)—"A classic" of King Vidor's "humanistic museum period," according to one critic. Story of cotton-picker who finds religion. (DW)

Hamlet (1996)—Kenneth Branagh starred in and directed this long, unabridged film of Shakespeare's play. It is exciting and lucid, and it dispenses with the oedipal nonsense of other recent versions. Branagh is strong in the part, and Derek Jacobi is the definitive Claudius. Also starring Julie Christie and Kate Winslet. (MJ)

Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)—The affairs and careers of neurotic, middle class New Yorkers. Barbara Hershey is excellent, as are Mia Farrow and Dianne Wiest. One of Woody Allen's serious efforts—how successful an effort, let the viewer decide. (DW)

Hard to Handle (1933)—Mervyn LeRoy directed this Depression-era comedy about a fast-talking public relations man (James Cagney) who promotes a series of fads and courts Mary Brian. (DW)

Harlan County, U.S.A. (1977)—Powerful documentary by Barbara Kopple about the mineworkers strike in Harlan County, Kentucky. (MJ)

Harper (1966)—Competently made private eye film, with Paul Newman as detective hired by Lauren Bacall to find her missing millionaire husband. With Julie Harris, Shelley Winters, Arthur Hill, Pamela Tiffin. Directed by Jack Smight, based on Ross Macdonald's The Moving Target. (DW)

Has Anybody Seen My Gal? (1952)—Charles Coburn is marvelous in Douglas Sirk's film about a millionaire in 1920s small-town America planning to leave his money to the family of a woman who once rejected his marriage proposal. (DW)

He Walked by Night (1948)—Officially credited to Alfred L. Werker, Anthony Mann directed some of the most visually interesting scenes in this film noir about the police hunt for a psychotic killer, excellently played by Richard Basehart. (DW)

He Who Gets Slapped (1924)—Swedish Victor Seastrom, possibly "the world's first great director, even before Chaplin and Griffith," made this silent film in Hollywood, based on Leonid Andreyev's despairing play, about a brilliant scientist who becomes a circus clown. With Lon Chaney, Norma Shearer, John Gilbert. (DW)

Heaven Can Wait (1943)—Don Ameche stars as a dead man seeking entry to hell, who recounts in flash back what he thinks has been a life full of sin. With Gene Tierney and Charles Coburn. Directed by Ernst Lubitsch. (DW)

Heaven Can Wait (1978)—Warren Beatty stars as a football player who dies before his time and returns to earth in another body, that of a millionaire businessman. Julie Christie is a social activist who awakens his conscience. With Jack Warden. Directed by Beatty and Buck Henry. Good-natured, but not extraordinarily insightful. (DW)

Heaven Help Us (1985)—On-the-mark depiction of life in a Catholic high school in 1960s Brooklyn. With Donald Sutherland, Andrew McCarthy, and Wallace Shawn. Directed by Michael Dinner. (MJ)

Heavenly Creatures (1994)—Odd, compelling film, based on fact ansd set in 1950s New Zealand. Two inseparable teen-age girls kill the mother of one to prevent their being parted. Directed by Peter Jackson. With Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet. (MJ)

Heiress, The (1949)—William Wyler directed this screen version of the stage play based on Henry James' Washington Square. Some memorable moments, with Olivia de Haviland as the poor, neglected heroine, Ralph Richardson as her monstrous father, and Montgomery Clift as her fortune-hunting suitor. Score by Aaron Copland. (DW)

Hell to Eternity (1960)—Remarkable account of US World War II hero Guy Gabaldon, who had been raised by Japanese foster parents. With Jeffrey Hunter, David Janssen, Vic Damone. Directed by underrated Phil Karlson. (DW)

Hell's Angels (1930)—An oddity, one of the two films directed by Howard Hughes (the other, The Outlaw, is famous for Jane Russell's decolletage). James Whale apparently wrote and directed a good portion of the film, a World War I aviation story. The film also propelled Jean Harlow to fame. (DW)

Henry V (1989)—Kenneth Branagh's exuberant production of the great Shakespeare historical play about Britain's warrior-king. "He which hath no stomach to this fight,/Let him depart..." (DW)

Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941)—Amusing tale of a boxer (Robert Montgomery) called to heaven too soon, who has to return to earth in another body. With Evelyn Keyes, Claude Rains, Edward Everett Horton. Confusingly, Warren Beatty and Buck Henry's 1978 Heaven Can Wait is a remake of this film and not Ernst Lubitsch's 1943 Heaven Can Wait. (DW)

High Anxiety (1978)—Uneven, to say the least, Mel Brooks comedy, but with rewards for the patient. Brooks is the new chief of a sanitarium, in this homage to and spoof of Hitchcock. With Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman and Harvey Korman. (DW)

High and Low (1962)—Kidnappers take a chauffeur's son, thinking he is the child of the chauffeur's rich employer. The industrialist (played by the great Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune) decides to pay the ransom, though the huge amount jeopardizes an important financial deal. This rarely seen film by Akira Kurosawa shows the great gulf between the classes in Yokohama as the police hunt down the kidnapers. Adapted from the crime novel King's Ransom by the American writer Ed McBain (Evan Hunter).

High Noon (1952)—Gary Cooper stars in this Fred Zinnemann-directed Western about a sheriff who, on his wedding and retirement day, has to confront a gunman seeking revenge. With Grace Kelly, Thomas Mitchell, Lloyd Bridges, Katy Jurado et al. (DW)

High Plains Drifter (1973)—Clint Eastwood directed (and stars in) this excellent spaghetti western tale of revenge, into which he poured everything he learned from his mentors Sergio Leone and Don Siegel. (MJ)

High Sierra (1941)—Wonderful, hard-boiled Raoul Walsh film about an ex-convict (Humphrey Bogart) and the two women in his life, a lame girl, Joan Leslie, whose treatment he pays for, and the tough, no-nonsense Ida Lupino. Final chase sequence in the mountains captures something essential about America. Written by John Huston and W.R. Burnett. (DW)

High Society (1956)—Glossy musical version of The Philadelphia Story has music and lyrics by the great Cole Porter. Starring Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, and Louis Armstrong. Directed by Charles Walters. (MJ)

His Girl Friday (1940)—Marvelous film version of Ben Hecht-Charles MacArthur's The Front Page, co-scripted by Hecht, with Cary Grant as scheming editor and Rosalind Russell as his star reporter trying to get married to Ralph Bellamy. Directed by Howard Hawks. (DW)

His Kind of Woman (1951)—A lively tale, as Robert Mitchum heads off to Mexico for a routine pay-off and finds out a gangster boss (Raymond Burr) has plans to kill him and take his identity. Jane Russell is in top form and Vincent Price is amusing as a ham actor. Directed by John Farrow. (DW)

History of the World—Part I (1981)—An example of Mel Brooks' scattershot humor. Many jokes are forced and lame, and most routines just limp along, but the Spanish Inquisition sequence, staged as a Busby Berkeley water ballet, is hilarious and worth staying for. (MJ)

Hold Back the Dawn (1941)—Charles Boyer is a European refugee living in a Mexican border town. He woos unmarried Olivia de Haviland in an effort to get into the US. Mitchell Leisen directed with a certain flair. Billy Wilder co-wrote the script, basing it in part on his own experiences as a German refugee. (DW)

Hollywood or Bust (1956)—Frank Tashlin directed this Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis film (their last together), about a simpleton and a gambler out to make it in Hollywood. With Anita Ekberg. (DW)

Hombre (1967)—Martin Ritt directed, from an Elmore Leonard story, this film about Indian-raised Paul Newman trying to survive in Arizona in the 1880s. With Diane Cilento, Fredric March, Richard Boone. (DW)

Home of the Brave (1949)—Mark Robson directed this well-meaning film about black GI suffering abuse from fellow US soldiers in the Pacific during World War II. One of the first to deal with racial discrimination. (DW)

Horatio Hornblower (1999)—This series—based on the novels of C.S. Forester—first appeared on British TV and then on A&E on US cable TV. The four episodes follow the career of young Horatio Hornblower from midshipman in the royal navy to commissioned lieutenant, in the context of the French Revolution and the subsequent war between France and England. The series is distinguished by superior acting (especially by Ioan Griffuld as Hornblower and Robert Lindsay as Captain Pellew) and scrupulous attention to historical detail. It has some of the best battles at sea ever put on film. The episode "The Wrong War" is particularly good at showing the class issues at stake in the French Revolution. (MJ)

Horse Feathers (1932)—Marx Brothers madness, directed by Norman McLeod. "Groucho: You're a disgrace to the family name of Wagstaff, if such a thing is possible." (DW)

Horse Soldiers, The (1959)—Another classic John Ford western, with John Wayne as a cavalry officer leading Union troops into Confederate territory during the Civil War. (DW)

Hospital, The (1971)—Exposé of the workings of a big city hospital. George C. Scott as a doctor on the verge of cracking up. Arthur Hiller directed, Paddy Chayevsky wrote the long-winded script. (DW)

House of Games (1987)—Disappointing film about the world of con artists. David Mamet wrote and directed, and (as usual) his characters talk in a peculiar, stilted way. Much promise, but short on delivery. With Lindsay Crouse and Joe Mantegna. (MJ)

How Green Was My Valley (1941)—John Ford's powerful film about Welsh coal miners. With Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara, Donald Crisp, and Roddy McDowall. (MJ)

How I Won the War (1967)—British director Richard Lester's somewhat overdone and fragmented comic anti-war film. A self-important middle-aged veteran recounts his experiences in the war. Michael Crawford, Roy Kinnear, Jack MacGowran and John Lennon, in one of his few acting roles. (DW)

How the West Was Won (1963)—An "epic" saga, with more weaknesses than strengths, about three generations of western pioneers. Henry Fonda, Carroll Baker, Gregory Peck, George Peppard and countless others star. Co-directed by John Ford, Henry Hathaway, and George Marshall. (DW)

Hudsucker Proxy, The (1994)—In this madcap comedy (with many fantasy elements) by the Coen brothers, an office boy (Tim Robbins) is promoted to head of a gigantic company. Hilarious satire on capitalist intrigue. Paul Newman is interestingly cast against type as a corporate villain. (MJ)

Human Factor, The (1979)—Underrated film by Otto Preminger about a double agent in British espionage. Definitely not a thriller. From the novel by Graham Greene. With Nicol Williamson, Iman, and Derek Jacobi. (MJ)

Humoresque (1946)—A remarkable performance by John Garfield, as a classical violinist from the slums, who falls for a wealthy society lady. With Joan Crawford, Oscar Levant. Directed by Jean Negulesco. (DW)

Hunchback of Notre Dame, The (1939)—Not a great, but a remarkable, sensual and disturbing film. Charles Laughton is Victor Hugo's Quasimodo, the deformed bell-ringer. Maureen O'Hara is unforgettable, in her US film debut, as Esmerelda. (DW)

Hustler, The (1961)—Basically a boxing film, but set among serious pool sharks. Robert Rossen's movie is beautifully shot and capably acted, but the dialogue is full of stagey, pseudo-profound, high-proletarian language. With Paul Newman, Piper Laurie, George C. Scott, and Jackie Gleason. MJ)

I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932)—Heavy-handed, but powerful expose of conditions on prison farms. Mervyn LeRoy directed Paul Muni as the innocent man framed up by the justice system. (DW)

I Confess (1953)—Alfred Hitchcock's tale of priest, played by Montgomery Clift, who hears a confession of a murder and later becomes accused of the crime. Filmed in Quebec. (DW)

I Remember Mama (1948)—George Stevens, in his first film after returning from war, directed this saga of Scandinavian immigrants in San Francisco. With Irene Dunne, Barbara Bel Geddes and Oskar Homolka, among others. (DW)

I Shot Jesse James (1949)—Samuel Fuller's remarkable film—done mostly in close-ups—about the shooting of Jesse James by Robert Ford, "that dirty little coward." With Reed Hadley and John Ireland. (MJ)

I Walk Alone (1948 )—Interesting film noir, with Burt Lancaster as a man out of prison after 14 years, looking to settle some scores or at least make sense of things. With Lizabeth Scott, Kirk Douglas, Marc Lawrence and Wendell Corey. Byron Haskin directed. (DW)

I Walked with a Zombie (1943)—One of the Val Lewton-Jacques Tourneur collaborations, a stylish horror film about a nurse who turns to voodoo to cure a patient. Francis Dee and Tom Conway co-starred. (DW)

I Want to Live! (1958)—Susan Hayward is prostitute-crook Barbara Graham, framed up, according to the movie, and sent to the gas chamber. A remarkable anti-death penalty film made at a time when opposition to capital punishment was gaining strength in the US. Directed by Robert Wise. (DW)

I Was a Male War Bride (1949)—Cary Grant is a French officer marrying a WAC (Ann Sheridan) and encountering a series of dilemmas. The film is very funny, and it also provides director Howard Hawks an opportunity to examine sexual roles, and subvert them. (DW)

Ice Storm, The (1997)—Excellent film by Ang Lee of aimlessness and disillusionment in the 1970s. As the middle class disintegrates in suburbia, we see the disintegration of the White House playing out in the background as the Watergate crisis runs its course. The fine cast includes Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Joan Allen, Jamey Sheridan, and Christina Ricci. (MJ)

Imitation of Life (1959)—Douglas Sirk directed this work, "A big, crazy film about life and death. And a film about America." Lana Turner is a career-driven actress; Juanita Moore is her black maid. Moore has a daughter (Susan Kohner) who wants to pass for white. The characters' thoughts, wishes and dreams "grow directly out of their social reality or are manipulated by it" (R.W. Fassbinder). (DW)

Impromptu (1991)—A group of Parisian bohemians spend a weekend at the country estate of a bourgeoise dilettante, in a story resembling Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night and Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music. The film is a delightful portrait of the overheated lives of artists, writers, and composers in the mid-nineteenth century—Frederick Chopin, Eugene Delacroix, Alfred de Musset, Franz Liszt, and George Sand (played by the remarkable Judy Davis, like a force of nature). Starring Hugh Grant, Mandy Patinkin, Bernardette Peters, Emma Thompson, and Julian Sands. Directed by James Lapine (a frequent collaborator of Sondheim's). (MJ)

In a Lonely Place (1950)—Nicholas Ray film in which Humphrey Bogart plays a tormented, abusive Hollwood screenwriter. With Gloria Grahame and Frank Lovejoy. (MJ)

In Cold Blood (1967)—Good adaptation by Richard Brooks of Truman Capote's "non-fiction novel" about two men (Robert Blake and Scott Wilson) who kill an entire family in the course of a burglary. Filmed in stark black-and-white documentary style on location in Kansas. (MJ)

In the Good Old Summertime (1949)—This musical remake of The Shop Around the Corner is one of the fine films from MGM's Golden Age. With Judy Garland and Van Johnson. Directed by Robert Z. Leonard. (MJ)

In This Our Life (1942)—John Huston's second effort at directing. Bette Davis steals her sister's husband and eventually ruins her own life. Based on the novel by Ellen Glasgow. With Olivia de Haviland and George Brent. (DW)

In Which We Serve (1942)—Noel Coward and David Lean directed this patriotic war film, told in flashback, about a crew on a British destroyer and on leave. Coward co-stars, with John Mills, Bernard Miles, Celia Johnson and Richard Attenborough (the latter two making film debuts). (DW)

Indochine (1992)—A fine film that sets its overwrought love story in the context of the developing revolution in Indochina. It spans the period from the birth of the Indochinese Communist Party to the defeat of the brutal French colonialists and the division of Vietnam at the 1954 Geneva Conference. Catherine Deneuve gives a remarkable performance as the owner of a rubber plantation. With Vincent Perez. Directed by Regis Wargnier. (MJ)

Inherit the Wind (1960)—A film version of the Jerome Lawrence-Robert E. Lee play based on the the Scopes trial, the 1925 case of a Southern schoolteacher charged with teaching evolutionary theory. Spencer Tracy, Fredric March and Gene Kelly starred. Stanley Kramer, with his customary earnestness, directed. (DW)

Inner Circle, The (1991)—A meek movie projectionist (Tom Hulce) finds himself suddenly a favorite of Stalin's. A harrowing picture of life during the purges. With Lolita Davidovich and Bob Hoskins. Directed by Andrei Konchalovsky. (MJ)

Inside Daisy Clover (1966)—Natalie Wood stars as a rising movie star in the 1930s. Uneven film, directed by Robert Mulligan. With Robert Redford, Christopher Plummer, Roddy McDowall and Ruth Gordon. (DW)

Interlude (1957)—A soap opera, but executed with style. Unfortunately, June Allyson stars as an American falling in love with a European composer Rossano Brazzi. Directed by Douglas Sirk. (DW)

Intruder in the Dust (1949)—Black man is accused of murder in a Southern town; gathering mob waits to lynch him. Directed by Clarence Brown. (DW)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)—Don Siegel's classic parable about conformity in 1950s America. After a meteor lands nearby, inhabitants of a small town are quietly replaced by "pod people" who look like them but act mindlessly as members of a communal hive. With Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter. (MJ)

Invisible Man, The (1933)—Claude Rains made his film debut as the mad scientist who discovers a method of being invisible and terrorizes a British village. James Whale directed this version of the H.G. Wells story. (DW)

Isadora (1968)—Occasionally silly biography of the modern dancer Isadora Duncan (1878-1927), starring a young Vanessa Redgrave, who, unfortunately, couldn't dance very well. Directed by Karel Reisz. (DW)

Ishtar (1987)—One of the most famous failures in recent Hollywood history, Elaine May directed this $40 million picture, which stars Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman. Interesting as an historical curiosity. (DW)

Jane Eyre (1944)—Robert Stevenson directed this version of the Charlotte Bronte classic about a poor governess thrown into a mysterious household. Joan Fontaine is Jane and Orson Welles an unforgettable Rochester. (DW)

Jezebel (1938)—Bette Davis again, as an antebellum Southern belle causing trouble with her willful behavior. Also Henry Fonda. Directed by William Wyler. (DW)

John Grisham's the Rainmaker (1997)—Francis Coppola took a John Grisham potboiler and made it into an engrossing but pedestrian film. Nonetheless, it is rich in characters, with particularly good work by Danny DeVito and Mickey Rourke (in a surprising stand-out performance as an ultra-sleazy lawyer). Also starring Matt Damon, John Voight, and Claire Danes. (MJ)

Journey into Fear (1942 )—A traveling engineer unwittinly becomes involved in international intrigue. From the novel by Eric Ambler. Credited to Norman Foster, but generally considered to be directed by Orson Welles (who also plays a Turkish general under much makeup). Very good, but not one of Welles's best. With Joseph Cotten and Dolores del Rio. (MJ)

Ju Dou (1990)—Young peasant woman (Gong Li) is forced to marry an elderly factory owner and commences an affair with his nephew, in this story about China in the 1920s. Directed by Zhang Yimou, the film was banned in China. (DW)

Judex (1963)—French director Georges Franju's homage to the serial thrillers made early in the century by Louis Feuillade. This stunning film is filled with beautiful images that verge on surrealism. Judex, the magician hero, rights wrongs and dispenses justice. With Channing Pollock and Edith Scob. (MJ)

Jules and Jim (1962)—One of the films that made a name for the French New Wave. Jeanne Moreau, Oskar Werner and Henri Serre as an unusual love triangle, whose relations change over the years. Directed by François Truffaut, from the novel by Henri-Pierre Roché. DW)

Julia (1977)—Vanessa Redgrave won an Oscar for her performance as the anti-fascist Julia based on Lillian Hellman's autobiographical work, Pentimento. With Jane Fonda, Jason Robards; directed by Fred Zinnemann. (DW)

Julius Caesar (1953)—Joseph L. Mankiewicz's intelligently filmed version of Shakespeare's tragedy. James Mason as Brutus, John Gielgud as Cassius, Louis Calhern as Caesar and Marlon Brando as Antony. (DW)

Kansas City (1996)—Uneven period piece by Robert Altman. Worth seeing for the fine jazz music playing throughout, and for the excellent performances by Miranda Richardson and Harry Belafonte (as a mellow but bitter black mobster who utters trenchant comments about racism in America). But the plot is ridiculous, and Jennifer Jason Leigh provides the annoying grimaces and mannerisms we have come to expect from her. (MJ)

Key Largo (1948)—A brutal gangster (Edward G. Robinson) holds a group of people hostage in a hotel during a hurricane. Humphrey Bogart is a returning veteran. Based on Maxwell Anderson's play, script by John Huston (who directed) and Richard Brooks. With Claire Trevor. (DW)

Kid Galahad (1937)—Classic hard-boiled, no-nonsense Warner Bros. film of the 1930s. Edward G. Robinson is the boxing promoter, Wayne Morris is the fighter on the rise, Bette Davis is the girl who comes between them. Michael Curtiz directed with his customary efficiency and flair. (DW)

Killers, The (1946)—Robert Siodmak directed this film adaptation of the Ernest Hemingway story about a gangster waiting for two hitmen to kill him. The film explains why. With Burt Lancaster in his film debut, Ava Gardner, Edmond O'Brien, Albert Dekker, Charles McGraw, Sam Levene. John Huston, uncredited, contributed to the script. (DW)

Killing Floor, The (1985)—A young black farmer comes up from Mississippi to work in the Chicago slaughterhouses in 1917 and becomes a leader of the meatpacking workers' union. An unflinchingly pro-union film, originally made for PBS's American Playhouse, that shows the strength of a united working class as well as the racial divisions within the class that threaten to cripple it. The film also vividly illustrates the role of the meatpacker bosses in fomenting the Chicago race riots of 1919. Powerful acting by Damien Leake, Alfre Woodard, the great Moses Gunn, and others. Directed by Bill Duke. (MJ)

Killing, The (1956)—An early effort by Stanley Kubrick, about an elaborate racetrack heist. With Sterling Hayden, Marie Windsor and Elisha Cook. (DW)

King Kong (1933)—Beauty and the Beast story, with Fay Wray as the former and an animated ape as the latter. Last ten minutes are worth waiting for. Directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack. (DW)

King Lear (1987)—Jean-Luc Godard's singular version of the Shakespeare. Not for anyone expecting the original. With Burgess Meredith, Norman Mailer, Molly Ringwald, Godard, Woody Allen. (DW)

King of Marvin Gardens, The (1972)—Overlooked film by Bob Rafelson about the American dream and those who foolishly pursue it. Jack Nicholson atypically plays an introvert. With Bruce Dern, Ellen Burstyn, and Scatman Crothers. (MJ)

Kiss Me Deadly (1955)—Ralph Meeker is Mike Hammer, Cloris Leachman and Albert Dekker also star, in this startling film noir, directed by Robert Aldrich. In many ways, a very frightening film, and not simply because of its explosive conclusion. (DW)

Kiss Me Kate (1953)—Vulgar, brassy production of Cole Porter musical, with Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson, based on Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. Directed by George Sidney. (DW)

Kiss of Death (1947)—Perhaps best known for Richard Widmark's turn as a giggling, psychopathic killer. Victor Mature is a criminal who goes to work for the authorities. Directed by Henry Hathaway. (DW)

La Strada (1954)—Federico Fellini directed this work about a brutal carnival strongman (Anthony Quinn), his long-suffering girl-friend (Giuletta Masina) and a kindhearted acrobat (Richard Basehart). (DW)

Ladies of Leisure (1930)—Remarkably frank film, early Frank Capra, about the relationship between the poor and somewhat loose Barbara Stanwyck, who gives a luminous performance, and Ralph Graves, an artist and a playboy. (DW)

Lady Eve, The (1941)—Barbara Stanwyck, as a conman's daughter, and Henry Fonda, as a rich young man who happens to love snakes, slug it out in this battle of the sexes directed by Preston Sturges. "Snakes are my life," says Fonda. "What a life!," replies Stanwyck. (DW)

Lady for a Day (1933)—Frank Capra directed this story about an apple vendor transformed into a society lady by a kindhearted hoodlum. With May Robson and Warren Williams. (DW)