This movie has one of my favorite acting performances with John Wayne as Ethan Edwards, an evil heroic figure. A great story as Ethan pursues his niece who has been abducted by Indians and fights his own inner demons.

A great propaganda war film and a great love story. Plot isn't all that great but everything else comes together to create a classic.
"Major Strasser has been shot. Round up the usual suspects."

Marlon Brando was tremendous as The Godfather. Also a great story about family and crime with my favorite ensemble cast.

Orson Welles created a masterpiece with this beautiful piece of Americana about the rise and fall of a powerful newspaper magnate modeled on William Randolph Hearst.

A samurai movie that is about a lot more than sword play. Akira Kurosawa at his best.

Clint Eastwood takes shots at the traditional Western but can't help adding to the genre. Great performances from Clint, Morgan Freeman, Richard Harris and Gene Hackman.
"I've killed women and children. I've killed everything that walks or crawls at one time or another. And I'm here to kill you, Little Bill, for what you done to Ned."

My favorite comedy. Great story and scenes with Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, Marilyn Monroe and George Raft.

A comic masterpiece with social criticism of pre-war French society. Renoir is very harsh in his criticism of both the upper class and the lower class who emulate their "betters".

The classic black Cold War comedy. A Peter Sellers masterpiece.
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room.

My favorite film noir with my favorite female character Phyllis Dietrichson played by Barbara Stanwyck. Edgar G. Robinson and Fred MacMurray were also great in this.
"I think you're swell. As long as I'm not your husband."

Both a prequel and a sequel. Robert De Niro was great as Vito as a young man. Great use of flashbacks to tie together both movies.

Cary Grant at his best in this comedy / Cold War drama. Usually I don't like it if a movie can't decide what genre it belongs too, but in this case everything works.

Twisting, turning plot. Even though I've seen it a dozen times it still surprises me.

I never thought I liked musicals until I saw this movie. Good story about the transition to the talkies and some fantastic dance scenes.

This was the first movie I loved. Errol Flynn at his swashbuckling best. Throw in Basil Rathbone, Olivia de Havilland and Claude Raines and you have a tremendous movie.

One of the best mobster movies ever made. Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci were tremendous.

One of my favorite foreign movies. Gerard Depardieu and Yves Montand were great in this "Western" set in France.

Kenji Mizoguchi's tale of century Japan's feudal wars. Two peasants leave behind their families hoping to strike it rich, but their greed only leads turmoil for those they left behind. Usually a ghost story thrown into the middle of a dramatic story wouldn't work for me but this one did. A story of the corrupting power of greed every bit as powerful as The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. It was really interesting the reflection it cast on postwar Japan.

Jimmy Stewart with my favorite character actor, Claude Raines. what seems like a simple movie is in reality very complex. Both an expose on corruption in American society and a tribute to all that is good in American democracy. Whether it’s patriotic or not is in the eye of the beholder.

This was a very good movie that turns into a great movie when you view it with Magua as the tragic hero. see my article on Magua as Hero.. Daniel Day Lewis looked like he was born to play Hawkeye. It was beautifully filmed and the music was great too.

Science Fiction film noir with a replicant as the lead character and the first dozen times I saw it I didn't even know it. I think Blade Runner has a very subtle and powerful message about judging other who are not like us. "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tanhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die."

One of my favorite Alfred Hitchcock movies. A light hearted comedy/ love story evolves in to a suspenseful thriller.

Atticus Finch is one of the best characters in literature and Gregory Peck does him justice in the movie.

Works on all levels. Great horror story. It also has a story about three guys coming together from different backgrounds and working together to accomplish a task.
"We're gonna need a bigger boat."

A great comedy and romance. Cinematography in this movie was just great.
Well it’s a nice soft night so I think I'll go and join me comrades and talk a little treason"

This story about the staging of Springtime for Hitler is one of my favorite comedies.
"How could this happen? I was so careful. I picked the wrong play, the wrong director, the wrong cast -- where did I go right?"

A very bizarre story even for Alfred Hitchcock. Gets better with each viewing.

A great ensemble cast and a great look. How good were Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet in this? "When you're slapped, you'll take it and like it. "

Simple story but very powerful. I think this is the best of all the neo-realist movies.

Charlie Chaplin was just great in this movie. I never thought I would enjoy a silent film this much.

I liked the whole series and I thought this was the best of them. A tribute to the adventure movies of the 30's and 40's and this movie stands up with the best of them.

Cagney, the Dead End Kids and Pat O'Brien. Great story.

Sam Pekinpah's best movie. Great ensemble acting and beautifully filmed. Pekinpah again takes a look at the theme he explored in Ride the High Country. The Old West is closing and there is no longer a place for some of the men who lived in it. Should they fade in to the sunset or go out with a bang? If you picked the sunset you don't know Pekinpah.

One of the most influential movies ever made. In addition to great special effects it also had a pretty good story to go along with it.

Beautifully filmed with a great story. This is the way historical epics are supposed to be.

A great movie. Some of the facts were twisted and Malcolm was probably a little angrier in real life but I still really enjoyed this movie. It was interesting how each of the stages (and names) in Malcolm's life could be used to represent a period of history for black Ameicans in the post-Civil War years.

Rod Steiger and Sidney Poitier make a great team in this murder investigation in a small racist Southern town. Ground breaking movie.

To me, one of the most underrated movies of all time. Henry Fonda was great as the Custer like character whose hubris brought him down. Also one of the first movies to portray Indians in a positive light. See my article Fort Apache, Vietnam and Iraq
"Well, boys, we've a man's work ahead of us this day."

Gene Hackman, who I think is a tremendous actor, in his best role. This movie really captures the atmospher of the 70's and is a great representative of the conspiracy movies that followed Watergate.

The best acting performance of all time in the best sports movie ever made.

A great Billy Wilder movie. William Holden was good but Gloria Swanson stole the show.

Brilliant movie by Spike Lee about the irrationality of racism - there is no neat, little answer to why some things happen.

Great acting, cinematography and a fascinating story line. Every scene looked like it could be made into a postcard. I wonder if Hitcock's scene in Vertigo is paying homage to this movie.

Shows in a very powerful way how humans can change and improve their lives.

A beautifully filmed movie about a real serious subject. How can some one who seems to act in a normal manner become such a monster.

A great movie about society and decadence.

Great music, great acting and a great story. Great period piece.

A great anti-war movie that points out the futility of war.

Has some of my favorite comic scenes. More of a series of sketches than a cohesive movie but still great.

A beautiful story. Very interesting that a movie made only eight years after such a devastating war refers to it very little.

W.C. Fields is tremendous in this movie. It gets funnier every time I see it.

Had one of my all time favorite characters - Tommy Udo, played by Richard Widmark. Victor Mature was also really good in this movie.

The Ringo kid first appearance on the screen is one of my favorite scenes. The portrayal of the characters representing the different segments of society, make for great social commentary. Also very interesting for its portrayal of Indians as not really being human, just forces of nature. Ford would later make up for this.

Tyrone Powers and Basil Rathbone square off in this great swashbuckler.

Great adventure/ thriller. Probably the most surprised I've been by a movie's ending.

Can't wait to see it again. Tremendous on all levels.

Richard Widmark was great as the anti-hero in this classic film noir.

A great anti-war movie. Like Rules of the Game has Renoir exploring the differences and similarities between the social classes.

Frances McDormand in one of my favorite female roles. William Macy, Frances McDormand and Steve Buscemi were all tremendous in this.

One of the great Westerns. Shane rides in, saves the day and rides off into the sunset. Gunfight at the end with Jack Palance was one of the best. Can be looked at on a lot of levels. Is it about the Cold War and Shane represents the US who must step in to stop the "creeping Communism"?

Great characters. Nurse Ratches and Randle McMurphy are two of my favorite characters.

This movie had some great scenes although the overall movie was just OK. But the scenes with that helicopters attacking, Duvall on the beach and of Brando at the end are just tremendous.

This Kurosawa's remake of MacBeth is beautifully filmed. Toshiro Mifune and the woman who played his wife were both great.

Great acting in this tale of greed.
Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any stinking badges.

Kurosawa's take on the King Lear story set in feudal Japan. Beautifully filmed.

The taxi scene with Brando and Rod Steiger has my favorite dialogue in all the movies.
"You don't understand. I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody Charley, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let's face it. I'm a bum. It was you, Charley. "

Bob is one of my favorite characters in the movies. Great sense of style in this movie. Has a lot in common with Melville's other great movie, Le Samouraï. .

I recently saw this movie for the third time and finally realized just how great it was.

Characters go rushing in and out of this movie but Altman does a great job in blending them into this interesting piece of Americana. Some really great acting and singing in this.

A tremendous movie about Fascism in in a small town in Czechoslovakia during World War II. As much about McCarthyism and Stalinism as it is about Fascism. It’s amazing it was able to be made in 1965 Czechoslovakia.

A great Gregory Peck Western. A revisionist Western that shows the less glamorous side of the gunfighter life style.

Toshiro Mifune was great in this story about breaking the samurai code when you felt you had been personally wronged. May have reflected a shift in the view of social responsibility in 1967 Japan. It has on of my favorite scenes when Toshiro's character, Isaburo, is pushed to the limit. The tension leaves his face as he knows he can now fight and die to preserve his honor.

Another great James Stewart movie. I loved his character in this movie. I think it must have matched Stewart's personality because he looked so natural playing it.

An interesting, confusing movie that is a lot of fun to watch.

It's surprising how gripping a scene 25 minutes long without dialogue can be. This is surely one of the great heist movies.

A beautifully filmed movie. Great story.

Charlie Chaplin in one of the last major silent films. The little tramp struggles to live in modern industrial society.

A revisionist Western takes a lot of glamour out of the old West. Warren Beatty and Julie Christy do a great job in this dark classic.

Alec Guiness plays 8 roles and pulls it off. A great black comedy where you find yourself cheering for the mass murderer.

A great Western, more polished than Clint's spaghetti Westerns. A wronged Josey goes after the bad guys. Antipates many of the great scenes in Unforgiven. What makes it particularly interesting is how all the bad guys wear Union blue in this movie made in 1976.
"Dyin' ain't much of a livin', boy"

A beautifully filmed movie. One of the few movies I have seen that makes you feel there is no camera. Another neo-realist classic.

Orson Welles dominated this film even though he was only on the screen for a very short time.
"In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

A great historical movie with a great supporting cast, particularly Orson Welles and Robert Shaw. I never get tired of watching this movie. May be the best historical movie ever made.

Probably the most interesting documentary I have ever seen. I am still stunned by how honest McNamara was. A great piece of film making by Errol Morris.

This movie might have been better than the first movie it continued Jean de Florette. Even without Gerald Depardieu it was tremendous. The twist at the end is totally unexpected.

Paul Newman and Robert Redford make a great team.

A tragedy set in medieval Japan. A great story with some great acting.

One of the most suspenseful movies of all time with great performances by Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman. You can feel the tension in this one.

Newman and Redford together again. Great period piece. Great story.

Great story copied a bunch of times. Has one of my favorite character actors, Claude Raines.

A great Indian movie. Robert Aldrich and Burt Lancaster really got things right after jumbling up Apache twenty years before. Great Western reflecting on the Viet Nam war.

This revisionist Western had another great performance by Dustin Hoffman. I really enjoyed Chief Dan George too.

A great early role for Peter Lorre. Very creepy. Interesting how the post WWI German organized crime joined in the hunt for the killer.

One of the best of the elegiac Westerns with Western veterans Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott. The movie begins with Scott in a carnival sideshow in the beginning, a cowboy whose time has come and gone. Sam Pekinpah mixes the Old West and the new times in a classic in which Steve Judd just wants to "enter his house justified."

This is a movie that gets better with each viewing.

This exciting murder mystery had a great plot. Keeps you guessing all the way through.

An offbeat, funky spaghetti Western that is a lot of fun to watch. Musical score adds to the unsettling atmosphere. Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach and Lee Van Cleef all were great in this.

A war story that is more about the personalities of the characters than about the war.

I have to watch this movie another dozen times before I will fully appreciate it. Jokes are fast and furious.

One of the best ensemble performances in movie history. A subtle exploration of racism.

I didn't really appreciate this movie the first few times I saw it. I really think it addresses the universal issue of personal freedom vs. government intervention as well as any movie ever made. Particularly relevant today with reference to the Patriot Act. How much freedom are we willing to give up for our safety. It also opens a very interesting dialogue on what was a better world to live in : the 50's or the 90's.

This is my favorite anime movie. I forgot it was a cartoon after a while. Very well done. Great anti-war movie.

Could have been one of the best movies ever made if it hadn't been chopped up by the studio. Another good Joseph Cotten performance. Its almost painful to watch thinking how good it could have been.

Interesting Jim Jarmusch take on the West.

The story is almost overwhelming on a first viewing, but I can't wait to see it again.

Gary Cooper was really good in old time adventure movie.

Henry Fonda made a great villain in this off beat spaghetti Western.

Another Frank Capra hit. Cary Grant was great in this screwball black comedy. Raymond Massey and Peter Lorre had classic roles.

A great movie by Clouzet. It's a long, slow movie and I wish it went on even longer. It immerses you in a different time, a different way of life.

I liked everything about this movie. Deborah Kerr in three different roles.Just really, really good.

I enjoyed W.C. Fields' Mr. Micawber as much as any character in the movies.

Cody Jarrett is a great character.

Best American history movie ever made. Daniel Day-Lewis was tremendous.

Early Scorsese is beautifully filmed and very powerful. Great characters. Neo-Neo- Realism? Can definitly see the inluence of Rosselini in this one.

It’s hard to believe that this movie was made so many years ago and still holds up so well today. Comedy, drama, love story ... this movie has it all.

Cary Grant, Douglass Fairbanks Jr and Victor McLaglen make a great team. This and the group from Jaws are my favorite trio. It is really a jingoistic, pro-imperialistic movie but that makes it more interesting in presenting England's pre-WWII world view. Nice companion piece to Last of the Mohicans. Here, the evil Guru, like Magua, should be viewed as the heroic, patriot character. The title character should probably be reviled as a collaborator and a traitor.

One of the first movies that addresses the future of artificial intelligence. Slow, lingering, beautifully filmed story.

A great slice of life film. Diner set in Italy.

A Carl Dreyer movie about religion and faith that I found to be fascinating.

Along with White Heat the classic Cagney gangster movie.

This revisionist Western tried to make up for all the negative images presented of the American Indians all at once. In their place as the villain it puts the white intruders. Wes Studi was great in a small role as a Pawnee. I'm beginning to enjoy it even more as I view it through a lens with Dunbar as the villain, a modern Prometheus, who introduces a new, more deadly form of war fare to the natives.

A great action movie with a great sense of style.

This movie had some great characters. Sterling Hayden was really good in this pretty straight forward robbery story. The style of the movie is what really makes it.

Here Comes Mr. Jordan meets The Devil and Daniel Webster. Nicely done with a British/American twist.

This movie gives a very real portrayal of what life must have been like in Germany in the aftermath of WWII. Almost documentary like in its look and feel. Very, very powerful.

Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne at their best. A Western tragedy with one of the greatest flawed heroes in all the movies. It also has a lot to say about the representation and interpretation of history.

One of the great Westerns. Gary Cooper in his best role as Will Kane. The McCarthyism connection makes it that much more interesting. If your back was to the wall and everyone abandoned you, High Noon might be the movie you would write.

A great retelling of the gunfight at the OK Corral. Henry Fonda and Victor Mature were both really good in this.

The middle movie in John Ford's cavalry trilogy is many people's favorite of the three. Beautifully filmed. Some people see it as a propaganda war film that is persuading the American people to unite against the "red" menace. Nathan Brittles hands are tied but he still manages to outwit the reds and defuse the situation (horses = atomic bomb). It is an interesting angle on the movie in that many Indian tribes united to fight the whites (domino effect in Europe).

One of W.C.'s best.

I saw this again recently. I had forgotten how good it was. It really gives a great view of how crazy things got in the late 1960's. Anti-religion, ant-war, anti-government, ant-everything

I really enjoyed this movie, particularly the surprise twist at the end. Charles Laughton was as usual - great.

A great movie by Bertolucci about what lengths people will go to become part of the group.

Robert Duvall is one of my favorite modern actors. He was just great in this and had great chemistry with Tommy Lee Jones. This was my favorite mini-series on TV.

One of the best movies on WWII and the Holocaust.

Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson were very good in this and Diana Keaton was great. I also thought John Reed's story was really interesting. The way Beatty cut into the narrative with interviews with people who were there at the time was daring, and I thought it worked great.

Another great James Stewart movie. This and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington are my favorite Capra movies.

Sean Connery and Michael Caine are very good in this Rudyard Kipling yarn.

A tour de force by George C. Scott playing a very interesting person explored in a great movie.

Nick and Nora are a great couple. I always enjoy watching William Powell and Myrna Loy.

Great story with the best integration of real clips I have seen. Made Senator Joe a real character in this.

This is a really different, dark movie. Noir, thriller, science fiction. Is a great reflection of the cynical, paranoid times that were the mid 50's.

Ernst Lubitsch's best film. The grandfather of all the screwball comedies. Doesn't seem to have aged at all in eighty years.

A very disturbing film. One of Kubrick's best.

There was some great acting in this movie. Deniro, Meryl Streep, John Cazale, Christopher Walken and John Savage were all great. A play told in three acts. The war action sequences in the middle were unforgettable.

This was a very dramatic movie that really gave you the feeling of what it was to be in a Nazi occupied territory. The way in which it was filmed adds to it sense of realism. Anotehr neo-realism classic.

I really loved this movie. It was so different. Great music. Giulietta Masina who was also great in Nights of Cabiria is a great, unique Chaplinesque figure. I never knew that Antony Quinn was so good of an actor.

Truffaut's masterpiece is almost documentary in style. A long way from the Hollywood movies of its day.

Just a great story with great acting. Captain Queeg is a classic character.

Even though I never really bought Charlton Heston as a Mexican, this movie has a great sense of style. It has a sense of doom hanging over it starting with the great opening scene.

Great detective/crime story from Kurosawa and Mifune.

A very entertaining and interesting movie. You can almost feel the same sense of entrapment that the characters feel. After a while what they are doing seems to make sense.

Watching Olivier is always fun but Joan Fontaine was also really good in this great murder/mystery. Mrs. Danvers was also a great character. Why am I always surprised by the ending?

In Virdiana, Bunel takes some good shots at the human condition. I'm not really sure he is taking shots at the Church. He is taking shots at false piety but he seems to imply that humans need a guiding hand or they will revert to savagery. The Last Supper scene is classic.

Judy Holliday gives one of my favorite female performances. Broderick Crawford and William Holden were also great in this great comedy / drama.

I really enjoyed this movie about contemporary racism in America society.

Great story and Charles Laughton is so good.

Great conspiracy movie and a great McCarthyism allegory.

Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn in a really funny screwball comedy. Not one of my favorite genres, and Hepburn is not one of my favorite actresses, but everything in this movie works.

The actor playing Lou Canova is just great, although I guess he was just playing himself. Like most of Allen's movie, a little uneven but it had some great scenes and some great lines.

Not only about the shower scene. Good, suspenseful movie.

There are many things I like about this movie. Definitely not just a teen flick.

Classic sci-fi movie that really makes you think. The dangers of conformity and the really points out how close the far right and the far left really are.

This movie had a great sense of style and some great acting.

Dustin Hoffman is just such a good actor. This movie really had great writing and a great storyline.

Great period detail in one of Kurosawa's last movies. I'm not sure if it was a commentary on Japan's participation in WWII, better to stay back and defend yourself (be a mountain) than to try and rush off and conquer the world.

An invasion of a small town Scottish culture by the big city and the small town wins.

John Garfield and Lana Turner and a great story in one of the classic film noirs.

Another great movie from 1939. Lawrence Olivier was very good in this interpretation of Bronte's novel.

This movie fascinated me when I first saw it and it still does. Even though I knew how it ended I watched it like it was a mystery. Unfolds like a Greek drama - hubris strikes again. Redford and Hoffman were great together.

Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert made a great team in this early screwball comedy by Frank Capra.

One of the best historical movies made about the US.

Another example of the influence of the neo-realists on Scorsese.

Probably the best political movie ever made. Reminded me of a polished version of neo-realist classics like Germany Year Zero and Open City. What made this especially amazing was that it was based on real events.

I didn't love this movie when I first saw it but the more I think about it the more I like it. I’m really looking forward to seeing it again.

I finally saw the longer version of this movie and it was great. The plot was still a little muddled but the acting and the great scenes more than made up for it.

Great film noir with Kurt Douglas and Robert Mitchum. Janice Greer was a great femme fatale in this also.

A lot of funny scenes in this movie. I don't think it was as funny as Holy Grail but the movie held together better.

Another great John Wayne performance. Montgomery Cliff was also very good in this one. I wish it had stuck to its dark tone in the ending, could have been better.

Lina Wertmuller was the first woman director to be nominated as Best Director for this film. Giancarlo Giannini was great in this comic/tragedy.

Dustin Hoffman meets Lawrence Olivier. Just watching these two great actors from different generations makes this movie worthwhile.

A great French movie by Jean Renoir starring Jean Gabin. Had a lot of noir elements. A great femme fatale. Not as good as Double Indemnity but anticipated it in many ways. I thought the whole "madness" thing subverted the plot and kept this from being one of the truly great films.

For a long time I really didn't enjoy this movie because I thought there was no one to cheer for. But the more I watch it the more I realize what a victim and heroine Ingrid was.

My favorite movie, by one of my favrite directors, Patrice Leconte. A country lord does to the court of Loius XVI at Versailles to get some drainage work done in his province. The Marquis learns the way of the court and gets pretty good at surviving the ridicule he could have been subjected to.

I really liked this "poetic realism" film by Carne and Prevert who also did Children of the Paradise. Jean Gabin was great and the supporting actors were also very good.

A great cast and a great ensemble performance.

A beautifully filmed Ridley Scott movie with great acting by Harvey Keitel and Keith Carradine.

This was a movie that shocked me when I first saw it. A little choppy but the dialog is great and it has half a dozen memorable scenes.

Orsen Welles and Edgar G. Robinson were really good in this interesting movie. Reminds me of Double Indemnity. The audience knows the truth, we are just watching Edgar G. to see if finds out too. To me, very underrated.

I really enjoy this movie. C. Aubrey Smith stole most of the scenes he was in. Gave you a good feeling about what the army was like at the time of the British Empire.

Woody Allen and Diane Keaton made a great team in this movie. Woody at his paranoid best. .

The funniest of the sports comedies. Chevy Chase, Ted Knight and Rodney Dangerfield were very good but Bill Murray steals the show.

One of the great villains to grace the screen. George Sanders was so good in this.

A very strange Western in which brother’s battle to the death. An Anthony Mann / Jimmy Stewart classic with a hard edged hero.

Jarmusch's second film shows the stark simple style that he continued in his later more commercial movies.

I think that this was Paul Newman's greatest role. James Mason was also really good. This movie had a great plot and the tension at the end was something I really felt.

Although this movie is a little uneven there are some scenes in it that are just so funny that I had to include it . Charles Grodin was perfect for this role.

An early movie by John Cassavetes that was evocative of the French New Wave. More concerned with observation and style than plot. I watched the long version and was mesmerized by it.

Robert Duval is tremendous in this character study of a man who is both very religious and very flawed. One of my favorite performances.

Film noir from Japan in an early classic from Kurowsawa. Simple story but very interesting because of the acting by Mifune and the portrayal of Japan in the immediate post-war years.

This movie really had a great performance by Gena Rowland, maybe the best female performance ever. I thought the movie was also really good. As the movie went on I began to feel that Nick was crazier than Gena's character.

A beautiful story about a samurai who thought it was more important to be a father than it was to be a warrior.

On the eve of World War II Preston Sturges makes a pitch for the need for lighter movies in hard times. This is a really interesting opening to a dialogue on this subject. After WWII the French were drawn to the world of film noir, so maybe Preston was wrong. In any case, this movie was great on any level.

This Ozu movie shows a culture that it very different from todays. It shows the way people could and should be. More interestingly it begins to show the breakdown of the old order of society as it begins to shift, regrettably, to new ways.

I've now seen this film twice and I really enjoyed it on the second viewing. It addresses one of the most important issues facing America, and like Crash has a lot to say on the subject. I think Sayles was saying that we have to forget the things that happened in the past and go on and try from here. Great story and style.

probably the best movie on American history despite flaws in accuracy. Denzel and Morgan Freeman are great as usual. I am a little disappointed that Frederick Douglass' sons who were in the 54th weren't included in the movie. I think the truth would have made for a more interesting story.

Like Lone Star, a great look at life at the border. In this one the different points of view are personified in the characters. Pete, as the American, willing to accept people for who they are. Melquiades, the immigrant, looking to make a better life for himself. Mike, the ignorant, unhappy border guard, who enjoys wielding power over those less fortunate. And Belmont, representing those who don't want to get involved.

Jules and Vincent. Tarantino took some real chances in the delivery and I think it worked. Great dialogue.

A great historical movie that explores the topic of guilt about WWII. Nice performance by Burt Lancaster.

Another Lina Wertmuller movie with Giancarlo Giannini. Like in Seven Beauties she hits all the right notes in this comedy/social commentary.

William Powell and Carole Lombard made a good team in this early screwball classic.

This spoof of film noir has scenes from some of my favorite movies.

I really enjoyed this movie. Great twist and quirky Coen brothers style.

A look at four friends in Baltimore had some great young talent including Mickey Rourke, Steve Gutenberg, Daniel Stern and Kevin Bacon.

A different kind of Alfred Hitchcock movie. Joseph Cotten was very good as the evil/good Uncle Charlie.

A very good movie made at a time when a lot of government conspiracy movies were being made. Robert Redford was very good in this one.

The best of the movies about prehistoric man. When their fire goes out a "volunteer" sets out to find fire again for his tribe.

I had heard how good this movie was and it held up to expectations. One of the opening cards said that Harold was going to Tate University which was a large football stadium with a college attached. It's amazing, but it doesn't seem to be dated at all.

If you love Casablanca and Woody Allen than you have to love this film and I do.

Peter Falk and Alan Arkin had great chemistry in this very funny movie. Loved the serpentine moves.

The more often I see this movie the more I enjoy it. Westerns are my favorite genre and this was really just a modern day Western. The plot has been done plenty of times before, but I think it was done very well here. There are a lot of parallels to one of my favorite movies, Unforgiven

Great acting and a great story.

The way things are going these days, you have to be lucky to get through it all and have a good life. Sets a bleak tone for the a 21st century world view.

I've only seen it once but I really enjoyed it. Looking forward to seeing it again.

My favorite second favorite sports movie (after Raging Bull). Gene Hackman gives a great performance in this movie based on a true story.

A very stylish murder mystery / love story. Detective falls in love with murdered woman and then things start to get strange.

One of the first non-linear movies and very well done. Fun to watch.

Cary Grant's facial expessions in this movie are as good as anything in the silent film era. Combine that with great dialogue, a wonderful Irene Dunne and Ralph Bellamy almost stealing the show and you have a great screwball comedy.

Fritz Lang classic silent science fiction. Robots and evil scientists. With great sets and great music.

This is a campy horror movie that works as both comedy and horror.

Henry Fonda was great in this his portrayal of the young lawyer in Illinois. Another of the great movies released in 1939.

A look at a different culture inside the US that shows how much most of us are missing today in our modern world. Good story and good acting particularly by Harrison Ford and Danny Glover.

One of Louis Malle's first films. It has a great, ironic plot featuring split plots containing elements of Double Indemnity and Gun Crazy. It also has a great sound track featuring Miles Davis.

I've only seen this once but I really enjoyed it. Kurosawa and Mifune, it doesn't get better than that.

A slow moving, beautiful gangster movie by Jean-Pierre Melville. The movie stars Alain Delon in a heist film that takes a long time to set up and what seems like a longer time to carry out. The robbery scene is beautifully filmed.

Another great Jean-Pierre Melville film. This one draws on his experience with the French Resistance. Brutal, realistic and mesmerizing.

A great movie starring Robert Mitchum and Jean Simmons. Classic noir. Loved the unexpected ending.

I had to put in a movie by Patrice Leconte because I love all of his movies. I've seen this one four times and each time I see it it gets better. I think of this movie every morning when I go to Dunkin Donuts and the girl asks me if I would like anything else.

This movie gets better with each viewing. A modern day Raymond Chandler story with a great commentary on an era.

The battle of Gettysburg was a fascinating battle and this movie gives a great presentation of the events.

My favorite historical epic. Some great scenes battle scenes on the ocean and the unforgettable chariot races in the Coliseum.

Set deep in the Ozarks, which seems like a different world, Ree Dolly tries to findher missing, drug-dealing father to save the family farm. This movie had some great performances.

Eric Bishop is a soccer-loving Manchester postman on the brink of a nervous breakdown. As his life gets worse and worse he begins taking advice from his hero, former Manchester United star Eric Cantona. As he begins to take charge of his life things rapidly begin to improve.

A movie by Ingmar Berman, set in 14th century Sweden. A young woman, is brutally raped and murdered by goat herders. Then the murderers ask for food and shelter from the dead girl's parents, who discover who they really are.

a film by Luis Bunuel that is also known as The Forgotten or The Young and the Damned. Set in the slums of Mexico city, this movie was made over fifty years before City of God (2002), a movie that it is very much like.
Bunuel presents a very realistic look at life in the slums very much in the style of the neo-realists (it reminds me of de sica's shoeshine, although he does add a dream sequence and has symbolic chickens, roosters and doves all over the place.
Overall, a really good movie.

An absurd surreal movie by Luis Bunuel, that is as confusing as it is interesting. I really have very little understanding of what Bunuel is trying to say, but like an abstract painting it is fun to look at it and try to figure out what it is all about. No one can come out, no one can go in, sheep, bears ..? I think Bunuel was pointing out that the upper classes behaved in an absurd manner but just couldn't change their ways even when they were confronted with the absurdity of their behavior.

In the final movie of John Ford's Calvary Trilogy, we find John Wayne as Col. Kirby York. Much of the movie is about his reconciliation with his wife and son who he has not seen in fifteen years.

As a backdrop we have another threat by the Apaches. The movie opens with Chief Natchez and some followers being brought in to the fort. The Indian scout identifies the captives as being from the Mescalero, Chircahua and White Mountain tribes. The different Apache tribes are uniting against the Calvary.

The movie's theme can be considered a continuation of the one in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. Americans must come together to fight off the threat to our freedom with the Indians once again representing the Communist menace.

As to be expected, Col. York leads the troops into Mexico and with the help of his son rescues the children from being slaughtered by the drunken Indians and again saves the day. This movie, like She Wore a Yellow Ribbon uses the Indians as a threat with very little examination of the Native point of view.

In the closing scene a Navajo Indian Scout gets a medal along with John Wayne's son. Perhaps Ford is thanking the tribe for all their help with his movies and for the use of their land. The band then plays Dixie as the movie ends showing once again how Americans can come together to overcome our enemies.

I loved the lead actors in this movie as they danced around the conventions of their times in this wonderful period piece.

I just watched it for the second time, and I enjoyed it even better than I did the first time. Scorsese's love letter to film works on all levels for me. I enjoyed the story and I loved the history lesson on film history.

Some of Quentin Tarantino's movies go a little bit over the top for me, but through all his movies you can see his love for genre. This one is special because it is a wonderful homage to Spaghetti Westerns while at the same time being brave enough to expose the evils of slavery.
"The worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realized by those who suffered from it." - Oscar Wilde