Despite the grotesque, almost preposterous premise, Hong Kong director John Woo's second American-made actioner has all the savage bite, black humor, and balletic fight choreography of his best-known Asian films. ...

While Ali is the ostensible star here, Director McCormack is so attuned to his interview subjects that the film becomes as much about their lives as about the outsize man who figures so prominently in their memories. ...

Armed with loads of footage and an arsenal of documented facts to substantiate his claims, Moore here flambées George W. Bush, charging his administration with corporate crime, warmongering, and oil-wellian ...

Of all the edgy doomsday thrillers that have unnerved us since the 1960s, my favorite is Sidney Lumet's chilling "Fail-Safe." Throughout the film, set in the control room of Strategic Air Command, Lumet expertly uses ...

Christian-Jaque rightly won the Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival for his deft balancing of swashbuckling action, crackling comedy and tender romance. It must have helped to have stars like the dashing ...

Perhaps the crowning work of Bergman's long, distinguished career was originally a TV mini-series, cut to three hours for theatrical release. Certainly the Swedish master's most autobiographical work, "Fanny" shows how ...

Even after over seven decades, the wonder, spectacle, and sheer visual artistry saturating Fantasia render it a timeless masterpiece. The music is used to stunning effect- not merely as background score, but as ...

Winner of the Grand Prize at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival (unprecedented for an animated motion picture), Laloux's mesmerizing sci-fi classic still hits the mark with its affecting mix of trippy graphics and ...

John Schlesinger (“Billy Liar,” “Marathon Man”) marshals a hugely talented cast to enact the multiple-suitor scenario in this sterling adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s class-conscious novel. The ace up his sleeve, though, ...

Bringing a panoramic historical sweep to this intimate, tragic tale of love and friendship, Chen Kaige creates a marvelous spectacle from exotic locales, lavish set design, and fabulous performances by Cheung, Fengyi, ...

The Coen Brothers' crowning achievement, this twisted black comedy convulses us one minute, horrifies us the next. While satirizing the distinctive accents and conventions of North Dakotans, the movie's gruesome crime ...

Three women make their way through various ethical and romantic dilemmas in Fassbinder’s celebrated trilogy, which casts a gimlet eye on the “Economic Miracle” of Germany’s postwar period, questioning the moral ...

Less well-known than "Animal House" but equally worthy of cult status is Amy Heckerling's "Fast Times," a teen sex comedy perceptively penned by future director Cameron Crowe. Beyond its warm and winning script, what ...

In "City," a return to form for Huston, the director presents a spare, bleak portrait of humanity on the skids in the world of small-town boxing. Not easy or pleasant to watch, the film's impact sneaks up on you, as ...

Adrian Lyne's disturbing "Fatal Attraction" remains the ultimate cautionary tale for extra-marital thrill seekers. What begins as an entirely plausible drama about a one-night stand quickly morphs into a shocking ...

Based on the autobiographical novel by Nobel Prize winner Imre Kertezs, Koltai's coming-of-age drama "Fateless" examines the Holocaust through the eyes of a child who of necessity grows up fast, trying all the while to ...

A buoyant, big-hearted MGM comedy featuring the wry comedic talent of Spencer Tracy, Minnelli's romp provided the original template for an idea that's been imitated countless times (as in 2000's "Meet the Parents"), but ...

Murnau's visually inspired updating of this "German folk legend," as the subtitle has it, is a dramatic masterpiece of the silent era, and one of the famed silent director's most arresting films. Stylized sets, ...

Fassbinder’s cinema is seldom cheery, but his portrait of an isolated bourgeois woman in “Fear of Fear” is so sympathetic and carefully observed that it’s hard not to identify with the emptiness at the heart of Margot’s ...

The young, pre-“Psycho” Perkins captures just the right vulnerability in his playing of the troubled Pearsall (he also plays him right-handed, a neat trick since the actor was a southpaw). Meanwhile, Malden gives the ...