Still the movie to beat all movies, Orson Welles’ thinly veiled biography of William Randolph Hearst changed Hollywood forever.  Part documentary, part avant-garde, part film noir, Citizen Kane was - in my humble opinion - the first American movie worth calling ‘art’. Everything about the movie – the scripting, acting, sounds, presentation and especially the cinematography, is perfect. And visionary.  To look at movies that were made before Kane is to see a two-dimensional world of decidedly linear plotlines.  Kane was a movie of firsts - the first to make heavy use of what I like to call "unannounced flashbacks" - that is, a flashback that it not prefaced with a phrase such as "I remember when...".  And all of the fancy camerawork that we know and love today?  Kane started it all.   There is a famous anecdote about how Welles wanted an extreme angle for one shot in the movie that could not be made without tearing up the floor of the set.  Welles torn up the floor and made the cameraman stand in the ground to get the shot.  Absolute perfection.  After all, as a film critic once said, “how many times before Citizen Kane did we even notice that movie sets even had ceilings?”

"As far back as I can remember, I've always wanted to be a gangster." That phrase still sends shivers up my spine!  Martin Scorsese’s tale of the real-life exploits of gangster Henry Hill changed the way I watch movies in the same way that Citizen Kane must have changed the way people before me watched movies.  It’s a fairly run-of-the-mill American gangster story that anyone could have made – Scorsese just made it perfectly.  Stop action shots with voice-overs, a manic pace and the unforgettable shot going through the restaurant make this movie a feast for the eyes – and the "laid bare before your eyes realism" - especially during Hill's cocaine binges - as opposed to the hero worship of The Godfather series make this one of my all-time favorites.      

True film buffs might scoff at my putting Guy Ritchie’s second film so high on the list, but I don’t care.  Just as Citizen Kane and Goodfellas changed the way I look at films, so too did Snatch.  Critics are quick to dismiss Ritchie as "Britain's Tarentino", but I don't think that's entirely accurate.  Granted the two directors make similar movies, but Ritchie is far better with a camera than Tanentino could ever be.  The shot near the end of Snatch when Brad Pitt gets punched and goes completely horizontal in slow motion is - to me - worth every frame of Pulp Fiction and then some.  Ritchie is also a much more clever screenwriter, and I laugh far more at his films ("zee Germans?") than I do at Quintin Tarentino saying "nigger" a hundred times in his.  Snatch is a joy to watch - several diverging plotlines, lots of great action and more laughs than any Hollywood crapfest that passes as "comedy" these days.  A truly wonderful film all around - I watch it every time it comes on HBO.     

Remember when your folks would make you sit through an old movie that they claimed was funny, but wasn't?  Well, Some Like It Hot is living proof that old movies can still be funny even today.  In this Billy Wilder classic, Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis play down-and-out musicians that just happen to witness a gangland killing in Chicago.  Broke and desperate to get out of town before the mob finds them, the two decide to join an all-girls jazz band... and hilarity does ensue!  As Daphne and Josephine, the two new "girls" immediately hit it off with the band's "not so bright" lead singer, Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe).  I always forget how incredibly hot Marilyn was - pictures of her just don't do her justice, you need to see her in motion to appreciate both her beauty and her comedic acting ability.  But Some Like It Hot isn't just a comedy, it's also a romantic film.  Josephine\Joe falls in love with Sugar and adapts a millionaire persona to woo her (and while doing so develops an accent that's a perfect Cary Grant impression).  Some Like It Hot is an incredibly sweet and funny movie that reminds us that some movies are indeed timeless. 

Hitchcock’s classic tale of love and espionage tells a good story, but like most of Hitchcock's films to get the "full story" you have to know what was going on in his life to truly understand the script innuendo.  At the time, Hitchcock's crush on Ingrid Bergman was at its zenith  – watch the movie knowing just that one fact and you'll have a new appreciation for the film.  Notorious is also, well.. notorious for having "the longest kiss in film history". Hitchcock circumvented Hollywood's censors (which limited a screen kiss to 3 seconds) by interrupting the kiss every 3 seconds, but never once breaking Grant/Bergman's embrace which lasted near 3 minutes.  The film is also the result of a little experiment Hitch was doing at the time.  He thought it would be more realistic to do the movie in as few a takes as possible.  It’s amazing that the party scene near the end of the movie – where the camera starts on a couple getting out of a car, moves up through a huge window to a ceiling view of the entire party, then sweeps down to Cary Grant and Ingrid having a 6 or 7 minute conversation – was all done in one take.  Amazing!

Woody Allen’s classic take-off on all things Russian is one of the few comedies I’d want if stranded on a deserted island.  Well, a deserted island with a TV and DVD player.  That runs on solar power.  Anyway, sometimes I rent this movie just for the hell of it, just to remind myself of the time when Allen just did straight comedy – without all the annoying "relationship crap" that has become the basis for all of his later movies, save his latest stinker The Curse of the Jade Dragon.  But no matter how many times I've seen Love and Death, it’s still damn funny.  You really need to have read some Russian literature to fully appreciate it, though.  “But subjectivity is objective!”   “Oh, stop talking dirty.”

Time has taken away some of my childlike fascination with this ‘comic book come to life’ and since everyone has seen it, I don’t think I need to comment on it in depth.   I just think that I liked it better than the ‘Star Wars’ flicks because (no matter how ridiculous the plot lines and escapes may be) it is still "reality-based".  Peru and Egypt. Real countries.  A whip and a gun.  Real weapons.  Nazis.  Real bad guys.  Indiana Jones – real smart and real ass-kicking.  True "Raiders" fact: in the original script, the fight scene in the marketplace with the bad guy with a scimitar was originally three pages long.  Harrison Ford - grumpy from a case of dysentery-based diarrhea - decided that he'd had enough and simply pulled out his gun and shot him instead.  It's one of people's favorite scenes in the movie and probably the only "favorite scene" in movie history that became so because of the squirts.

One of the most underrated movies of all time!  Jeremy Irons and Robert DeNiro play Spanish Jesuits trying to keep Portuguese slave traders away from indigenous people of South America after the colony is taken over by Portugal in the 18th century.  It's a beautifully shot film and Irons does a good job, but DeNiro – who plays a former slave trader turned penitent yet violent defender of the Indians – brings true passion to this movie.  Seeing his transformation from the evil slave trader that gleefully breaks up families for a buck to someone willing to die so that the people he once enslaved can be free is one of the most powerful things  I've even seen in any movie.  After all, it’s easy for a good man to be a hero, but for a bad man to be just?

I always loved Bond, and this film in particular is the gold standard (groan) by which all other Bond films are to be measured.  Sean Connery is still the real James Bond.  Gert Forbe is perfect as the evil genius Auric Goldfinger (get it?  Auric?) Harold Sataka is equally perfect as Obbjob, the mute but bloodthirsty Korean muscle-man whose duties range from being Goldfinger's golf caddy to insuring a car is crushed to the size of a breadbox - with its occupant inside.   The storyline rocks, the gadgets rock, the Aston Martin really rocks.  And of course, if you only remember one scene from the film, it must be when you – as a little kid – saw Jill Masterson lying in bed covered in gold paint.  Right?  I thought so. 

The only true "weeper" on this list.  Based on a true story, Anthony Hopkins plays Anglican apologist C.S. Lewis – author of the Narnia Chronicles and a man who has preached all his adult life about the problems of pain and suffering, only to have never really to have faced either while living a cozy life with his brother at Oxford University.  Then one day his life changes as he meets - and falls in love with - with an outspoken “American former Communist Jew” (Deborah Winger) who turns his life upside down – yet also makes it worthwhile before she dies a tragically early death from cancer.  I won't lie to you - the first four times I saw this movie I cried my eyes out - even in public and with my old friend Terry Moseley (who was crying as well).  Though the film breaks your heart, more than any other movie I've seen it personifies the idea of true love and how it's better to have had it - even when it's gone - than to never have experienced it at all.