Criterion’s exhaustive The Complete Mr. Arkadin includes not two but three versions of Orson Welles’ disputed mystery for critical comparison. Sort of a freak-show spin on Welles’ own Citizen Kane, Mr. Arkadin follows a con man (Robert Arden) on an investigation into the past of the shady title character (Welles), an eccentric billionaire whose business

This John Le Carre adaptation strips the spy game of its romantic trappings and depicts its players, as one character says, ‘as men playing cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten little lives.’ Director Martin Ritt uses stark, black-and-white cinematography and a documentary-like distance. Like many of its characters, the movie wears a poker face.

Another exercise in stoicism and crime from legendary French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville (Le Samourai), in which hard men spend a lot of time giving each other hard stares. Over the course of 140 minutes, an escaped criminal (Gian Maria Volonte) and a newly released ex-con (Melville regular Alain Delon) fatefully meet, save each other’s life

John Frankenheimer’s freaky and feverish political thriller, based on Richard Condon’s novel, must have seemed to have come from the future, what with its paranoid plot involving Communist infiltration, right-wing hysteria and political assassinations – all in the midst of the Cuban missile crisis and not long before John F. Kennedy’s murder. A sweaty Frank

One of the rare instances in which Woody Allen strays from the subject of neurotic New Yorkers and their failed romances – and evidence that variety becomes him. Match Point is set in contemporary London, where a former tennis professional (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) becomes involved with a ridiculously rich family. He marries the daughter (Emily

Austrian writer-director Michael Haneke’s quietly insidious film doesn’t just scare you; it messes with your head. Someone certainly is messing with the central couple (Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche), who find a videotape on their doorstep that consists of nothing more than the image of their own home. As more tapes arrive, suspicion spreads. Cache

The personal and the global are at frustrating odds in this ambitious adaptation of a John Le Carre novel that tries to tie together one man’s love for his late wife with drug-company espionage in Africa. Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz ably anchor the personal story, while talented Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles (City of God)