100 Best Movies (51-60)

Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
Cornball 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.

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Notorious (1946)
Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman give us a ravishing look at their darker sides in one of Hitchcock'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.

100 Best Movies, Part 7 (61-70)

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