A lurid Southern Gothic tale adapted by Gore Vidal from a one-act Tennessee Williams play, Joseph L. Mankiewicz's "Suddenly, Last Summer" is a trifle campy and overheated, but rich with smart, biting ...

Fleck and Boden’s beautifully low-key drama is an underdog baseball tale, to be sure, but it’s also a story about the immigration experience, told through the soulful eyes of a sweetly naive, 19-year-old hopeful. The ...

Euzhan Palcy's warm, deeply felt film about mentorship and sacrifice is a life-affirming experience, and springs from autobiographical roots. Palcy recreates the plantation life with a keen sense of balance, ...

Widely considered the greatest of Sturges's classic 1940s films, "Sullivan's Travels" is a stunning hybrid, blending giddy slapstick and razor-sharp humor with grim, unblinking social realism. McCrea and Lake make a fun ...

This heartfelt, mostly improvised study of ennui and romantic disappointment by New Wave auteur Rohmer avoids the pitfalls of most Hollywoodized single-female dramas: The pacing is unhurried, the dialogue spontaneous, ...

In this pitch-perfect elegy of life, legacy, and passing time, French master Olivier Assayas presents an emotionally complex scenario that moves beyond good or bad, right or wrong. "Summer Hours" is about honest, ...

Sensual, slow-paced, and dreamily romantic, Lou Ye's "Summer Palace" is a vibrantly told epic about the struggle for personal and political identity. It also has the distinction of having been banned by Chinese censors, ...

Adapting Arthur Laurents's play "The Time of the Cuckoo," the great David Lean made this potent, moving tale of an unmarried woman torn between her European lover's sparkling companionship and her Midwestern sense of ...

For his first American production, the great German Expressionist director F.W. Murnau (“The Last Laugh”) told a lyrical story about the classic country-city divide (monotony versus bright lights and jazzy excitement) ...

Recently remastered by Paramount, "Sunset Boulevard" is finally getting its due. One of the all-time great Tinseltown satires, this noirish tale of an opportunistic, down-and-out young writer and the nostalgic, ...

An intimate and often amusing story of friendship and frailty, this documentary works best at portraying two elderly women, 81 and 95 respectively, whose vitality and sharp insights about life belie their age and ...

Notwithstanding a veiled reference to reduced sexual function as a result of this lethal diet, the film is a timely and appropriate object lesson for us all, and most especially, for our kids. Spurlock's clever side ...

Produced by "Knocked Up" wunderkind Judd Apatow, and penned by real-world pals Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen (who appears in both films), this uproarious tale of lust and high-school geekdom is a nostalgic trip back in ...

Spoofing every cliché in the genre from "High Noon to "Rio Bravo," Kennedy's nutty Western shoot 'em up is built around the cheeky, laid-back confidence of Garner, whose repartee with various lawless fellows-and the ...

If oddball families fascinate you, then "Surfwise" will really blow your mind. The Paskowitz clan is famous in surfing circles, but never before have we heard the unvarnished crackpot philosophy of patriarch Doc, still ...

Hitchcock's psychological thriller is as tightly plotted and crisply directed as any of the master's finest works. The tension builds slowly and inexorably, as the bookish, increasingly frightened Lina waits ...

Genuine chills and mayhem aplenty from shock-meister Dario Argento, "Suspiria" is anything but subtle, with some obvious dubbing work likely to cause some opening nervous chuckles. But you won't be laughing for long, as ...

Dealing with faded looks and broken dreams, all of it stewing in a cauldron of ugly family conflict, "Bird" is as much about the cruel rotisserie of Hollywood fame as it is a dark observation of damaged ...

British director Loach is a master at evoking the hardship of poverty in working-class England, and this hard-hitting drama about a Scottish teen's coming of age is no exception. Loach has an impeccable eye for talented ...

Turning from his comedic work at Britain's Ealing Studios to direct this noirish, all-American masterpiece about greed, ambition, and the perversity of power, Alexander MacKendrick relied on estimable playwright ...