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100 Best Movies (41-50) 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. |
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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 remember 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 movies' greatest unheralded female star, Irene Dunne, thought it was her best movie, and she was right. The Manchurian Candidate (1962) A cool, precise primer on 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. |
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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. 100 Best Movies, Part 6 (51-60) |