The 100 Best Movies Ever Made

His Girl Friday (1940) A classic of pre-shrill feminism. The one-liner chemistry between newspaper people Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell would probably result in mutual sexual harassment charges in real life today.

In a Lonely Place (1950) A refreshingly off-putting Humphrey Bogart plays the self-involved, tormented writer with rage to spare, and the winningly sexy/creepy Gloria Grahame plays the woman who loves him to little avail. A remarkably grim and true portrait of a writer, a category of humans Hollywood so loathes and fears and needs that movies seldom present them realistically.

The Informer (1935) John Ford's pointed political mood piece is a demanding partner, but still retains the power to haunt you afterwards.

The Innocents (1961) Henry James's The Turn of the Screw makes for an alluring yet distant film, easily the movies' most ghostly ghost story. Great script, acting, and direction, but one lone teardrop steals the show.

Intolerance (1916) Difficult, daunting, dated, and--OK. yes-challenging to sit through, yet D.W. Griffith's complex, four-part film lives up to its reputation as the first great epic produced in Hollywood.

It's a Wonderful Life (1946) The only Frank Capra flick to make our list, and, sure, we'll admit we're sick of it by now, too. So try doing what we did--just knock off watching it for a few years. When you come back to it, it's even better than you first thought.

King Kong (1933) A magical-looking movie that accomplishes the astounding feat of making a horny male (i.e. Kong) who lusts after a blonde bimbo half his age seem sympathetic, tragic and downright endearing. Added plus: peerless native headgear.

The Lady Eve (1941) The only film that could possibly make you want to become a cardsharp--anything, actually, that would put you in the fast company of smart, sexy, utterly corrupt Barbara Stanwyck, who is at her glorious, comic best.

The Last Picture Show (1971) Almost didn't make our cut, since, after all, this is the movie that unleashed on an unsuspecting world everyone from Randy Quaid and Cloris Leachman to Timothy Bottoms and Cybill Shepherd to Peter Bogdanovich and Larry McMurtry. Truth is, this film could have survived Penelope Ann Miller, too, and still been great.

Letter From an Unknown Woman (1948) The incomparable director Max Ophuls brings the art of film as close as it can get to the art of music in this story of a woman who is destroyed by her obsessive love for a glamorous pianist who trifles with her and later doesn't even re-member her. What would seem pathetic and alien if envisioned by another director is tragic and personal here.

The Lost Weekend (1945) A movie that still has the power to send you running into the arms of Bill W. The script, direction, acting, score, cinematography, and that freaky bat, are all aces.

Love Affair (1939) Wit, charm and ideal performances keep this soaper afloat--and make it superior to its two remakes. The movie's greatest unheralded female star, Irene Dunne, thought it was her best movie, and she was right.

The Manchurian Candidate (1962) A cool, precise primer in the political, familial, romantic and personal paranoia that has plagued the American psyche since this film was released. Angela Lansbury is not really a good-hearted mystery-writing sleuth, she's an evil bitch who feeds her own son to the wolves. Laurence Harvey isn't really an English dish with great cheekbones, he's a tortured wimp. Asians aren't our valued trading partners in the great new global economy, they're... Well, you get the point.

Manhattan (1979) Contemporary urban saga of mixed doubles and missed opportunities still strikes a nerve. The smooth, elegant production can't hope to gloss over all the heartfelt heartache in the writing, playing and direction.

McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) Sad spellbinder about how the West was settled by the losers who'd failed to score back East. Winners here are Warren Beatty and Julie Christie, cast as star-crossed losers--neither one has ever been better.

Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) Corn-ball costume period piece saved by director's neurotic interest in exposing the dark glints within a gaga American clan: imagine Blue Velvet made as a '40s MGM musical.

Miller's Crossing (1990) A brainy gangster's simultaneous pursuit of integrity and self-destruction makes for verbal and visual combustion in Joel and Ethan Coen's most serious, lyrical and artistically successful comedy.

My Man Godfrey (1936) More than slightly unhinged direction and distinctly unhinged scriptwriting set up Carole Lombard and William Powell for a screwball feast.

The Night of the Hunter (1955) Charles Laughton's only directorial effort--which was remarkable enough for putting Robert Mitchum and Lillian Gish together in the same universe, not to mention movie---was a huge box-office failure, but is a masterpiece about two kids in peril. If the Grimm brothers had made movies, they would have been like this.

North by Northwest (1959) Ernest Lehman's great screenplay fully exposes the hazards of going out for a drink in Manhattan, and has a word-for-the-wise about traveling by bus, too.

Notorious (1946) Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman give us a ravishing look at their darker sides in one of Hitch-cock's finest handbooks of cinematic eroticism and misogyny.

The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) This potent and plainspoken lesson about mob mentality is perhaps what you ought to have been watching instead of Court TV.

The Palm Beach Story (1942) Divorce, Preston Sturges-style. This writer-director reached his purely farcical peak with a dream script, and a cast to match.

Paths of Glory (1957) The insanity of war--straight up, no chaser. May well be Stanley Kubrick's best film.

Peeping Tom (1960) Still shocking 35 years on, and a creepy reminder of where moviemakers'voyeurism runs if unchecked.

Petulia (1968) A precariously thin veneer of charm helps put over this frankly amoral tale of venal users who deserve--and, surprise, almost wind up with--each other. With no hit tunes, this is a bitter pill to swallow.

The Philadelphia Story (1940) A recent biography revealed that Philip Barry moved into the Hepburn family home, penned what he saw and heard, and the result was the hit play that formed the basis of this movie. Interesting, sure, but not so surprising--when was Kate Hepburn ever playing anyone but herself?

Psycho (1960) Genius married with such inspiration to cheese/horror that it rises above its own self-created campi-ness into a lasting tour de force of taxidermied screen terror.

The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) Be-fore there was Prozac, people tolerated the Depression by going to the movies. If there were more movies like this, would fewer people need Prozac now?

Queen Christina (1933) An eye-opener for anyone who believes censors caught even half of what Hollywood was up to in its heyday, this star vehicle reveals more about its star than its subject. Yes. Garbo was in on the joke.

Raging Bull (1980) The cinematic record of the destruction of Robert De Niro's looks, and as moving and beautiful a film as anyone could make about an intolerably nasty, screwed-up man. Scorsese's best.

Rear Window (1954) Hitchcock's suit-ably subversive tribute to the voyeur in every filmgoer provides plenty to ogle at, like a peak-gorgeous Grace Kelly and a sexy, curmudgeonly Jimmy Stewart stuck in a wheelchair with nothing to do but spy on his neighbors while we stare at him. That the pathetic view of the human community Hitchcock presents from Stewart's window does not squelch his or our desire to snoop says everything.

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