City Lights (1931)

Comedy Rated NR

City Lights, in which Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp pursues a blind girl (Virginia Cherrill) who sells flowers on the sidewalk, doesn’t have the thematic coherence of Modern Times, but there are touches of Chaplin’s sensibility nonetheless. His disdain for labor is evident, especially when the Tramp takes a job cleaning up after horses in the

Dancer in the Dark (2000)

Musical Rated R

Valuable alone for the furor caused among movie lovers after winning the Palme d’Or at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival – some saw it as revolutionary cinema, others as manipulative pap – Danish director Lars von Trier’s invigorating curiosity transplants the grand emotions of musical theater into our voyeuristic digital age. Pop star Bjork is

Black Stallion, The (1979)

Family Rated G

“An almost primeval evocation of childhood fears and desires…”

Breaking the Waves (1996)

Drama Rated R

Lars von Trier’s international breakthrough mixes – maybe even equates – religion and sex, yet the movie is far less exploitative than it sounds. When a mentally unstable young woman (a vulnerable yet brave Emily Watson) breaks away from her rigid Christian community to marry a strapping oil rigger (Stellan Skarsgard), she finds a life

A Bucket of Blood (1959)

Horror Rated NR

“…knows it’s ridiculous, so it makes that ridiculousness part of the fun.”

Bullitt (1968)

Drama Rated PG

Bullitt earned its reputation for Steve McQueen’s lengthy car chase through the hills of San Francisco, and the sequence does have a gritty, low-tech authenticity. Yet there’s more to the movie than squealing wheels. A crime picture embroiled in the detail work of law enforcement, the film stars McQueen as the definitive workaholic cop. His

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

Horror Rated NR

” … the off-kilter production design suggests it’s actually taking place within the confines of a deeply disturbed mind.”

Anna and the King (1999)

Drama Rated PG-13

It might look like a musical and talk like a musical, but stars Jodie Foster and Chow Yun-Fat don’t sing at all in this latest version of the story that inspired Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I. What you also won’t find is a lot of intellectual depth, as director Andy Tennant (Ever After)

Big Momma’s House (2000)

Comedy Rated PG-13

Martin Lawrence stars in this mean-spirited farce about an FBI agent who goes undercover as a rotund Southern grandma. The movie awkwardly jumps from one uninspired gag about the title character’s size to the next. If you get your kicks by laughing at overweight people, this will be 95 minutes of rip-roarin’ fun.

Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

Thriller Rated R

Writer-director John Carpenter’s police thriller throbs with the sort of dread that can come from getting lost in a bad neighborhood. It brings to life our worst fears about the chaos that might erupt at any moment in the American urban wasteland. On the last night before a blighted precinct closes and police presence pretty