All time Favourites (25 - 50)

26) Star Wars triology (1977)

Endlessly imitated but never rivalled, this first instalment of George Lucas's space opera dresses up the timeless tale of good versus evil with ground-breaking special effects and a dazzling array of intergalactic characters. Mark Hamill plays Luke Skywalker, whose dull life on a remote planet is thrown into chaos when he intercepts a distress call from beleaguered Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher). With robots R2-D2 and C-3PO in tow, Skywalker teams up with an ageing Jedi warrior (Alec Guinness) and a cynical space rogue (a star-making turn from Harrison Ford) to rescue Leia from the clutches of the evil Darth Vader. Breathless action collides with sci-fi theatrics and more than a hint of mysticism to create a new style of cinema that remains unmatched for sheer entertainment value.


27) The Last King Of Scotland (2006)

It was supposed to be a wild adventure in a far-off country, but when a naive young doctor arrives in 1970's Uganda - hoping for fun, sun and to lend a helping hand - he finds himself instead on a shocking ride into the darkest realm on earth. Befriended by the charismatic new leader, Idi Amin, and appointed as his personal physician, Nicholas Garrigan is originally blinded by his larger than life and charming persona. But when the terrible truth of his despotic rule is revealed, he must fight for both his life and soul against one of the cruellest leaders in history.


28) Unforgiven (1992)

Winner of four Oscars, including best picture and director, this is, quite simply, one of the finest films ever made in the genre. Exploring the harsh realities of frontier life, Clint Eastwood depicts the west as an unforgiving place where tragedy strikes every time somebody draws a gun. It's clear from the fevered manner in which Saul Rubinek's dime novelist character gathers his Wild West stories from the last eyewitnesses that an era is about to pass into legend. Screenwriter David Webb Peoples reinforces this shift in attitudes through the film's understated feminism and its assertion that what once passed for law and order often had little to do with justice. Eastwood's own world-weary performance as William Munny, a retired gunslinger forced to strap on the six-shooters one last time to feed his children, is exemplary, cleverly drawing on our familiarity with his “Man with No Name” persona to convey the magnitude of the disgust that he now feels at the prospect of killing. The support playing of Morgan Freeman as his former partner, Richard Harris as vain killer English Bob and Oscar-winning Gene Hackman as the vicious Sheriff Daggett is unsurpassable. You won't forgive yourself if you miss it.


29) The Searchers (1956)

Like Monument Valley, where it was filmed, this masterpiece western of revenge and reconciliation from director John Ford is massive and unmissable. It touches the heart of racist darkness and cleanses itself in the process. As John Wayne's Ethan Edwards sets out to kill both the Comanche butcher of his brother's family and the abducted niece who, in his eyes, has turned native, his five-year quest becomes a search for his own soul. Jeffrey Hunter is the conscience along for the ride, but it's the complexity of Wayne's antihero that reveals him as a rootless pioneer, forever framed in the doorways of family homesteads of which he can never become part. Ford's great allegory is of a people lost and found.


30) The Apartment (1960)

When he saw David Lean's classic Brief Encounter, director Billy Wilder was intrigued by the man who gave Trevor Howard the use of his flat. That germ of an idea eventually led to The Apartment, in which Jack Lemmon is a schmuck who loans his home to his philandering superiors in return for promotion. With its marvellous script and flawless performances by Lemmon, Fred MacMurray as his slimy boss and Shirley MacLaine as an elevator girl, this satire of office life has real bite as well as a feel-good glow. A timeless classic that won five Oscars, including best picture, direction and screenplay.


31) A Place in the Sun (1951)

Elizabeth Taylor has never looked lovelier, or the young Montgomery Clift more tortured than in this glossy adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's dour novel An American Tragedy, previously filmed by Josef von Sternberg. This film won six Oscars, including best director for George Stevens, whose trademark dissolves are most tellingly displayed as Clift and Taylor meet for the first time. Trouble is, this tale of love across the tracks has dated badly, and today seems rather drawn out. But Clift and, especially, Shelley Winters are brilliant, so forget the plot and just revel in what was once Hollywood's idea of classy movie-making.


32) My Fair Lady (1964)

This sumptuous adaptation of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's smash Broadway version of George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion won eight well-deserved Oscars. It boasts superb performances from Rex Harrison — repeating his stage success as Henry Higgins — and Stanley Holloway as Alfred P Doolittle (Warner wanted James Cagney). At the time, there was criticism that Julie Andrews didn't re-create her original Broadway role, but Audrey Hepburn is still quite wonderful as Eliza. If not coarse enough for the Covent Garden flower girl, nobody, but nobody, could ever blossom as beautifully as Hepburn does in the Cecil Beaton costumes later on, and, despite being dubbed in the singing duties by Marni Nixon, her portrayal is funny and heart-warming in equal doses. A more visually inspired director — Vincente Minnelli or William Wyler — might have brought a little more élan to the work, but, with elegance and taste, George Cukor rightly preserves the theatricality of the enterprise and provides a joyful experience to savour again and again.


33) The Jazz Singer (1927)

Jakie Rabinowitz (Al Jolson) goes into show business despite his family's protestations that he should become a cantor like his father. Changing his name to Jack Robin, Jakie follows his passion for jazz and ragtime music, but in doing so, he alienates himself from his family and his Jewish roots. THE JAZZ SINGER holds the distinction of being the world's first major motion picture to utilise synchronous sound, effectively ending the era of silent movies. Songs include 'Mammy' and 'Toot, Toot, Tootsie'.


34) Patton (1970)

PATTON is a three-dimensional bronze bust of World War II field general George S. Patton (George C. Scott) who wrote poetry, fired pistols at strafing fighter planes, and loved America with a lofty and historical zeal. Tracing his personal rivalries with such generals as Rommel and Montgomery, his problematic treatment of his own men, and his nearly runaway contempt for diplomacy, the film triumphs as an enduring portrait of a complex and larger-than-life figure. PATTON was recipient of 10 Academy Award Nominations and winner of eight, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor--Scott, Best (Adapted) Screenplay--Francis Ford Coppola/Edmund H. North.


35) The wild Bunch (1969)

This is, arguably, one of the greatest westerns ever made. And argument is what Sam Peckinpah's masterpiece has always caused for its slow-motion spurting of blood, its surrealistically choreographed gunfights and its portrayal of Pike Bishop's amoral Texas outlaws as heroes. Yet William Holden's laconic Bishop, however violent, is one of a truly romantic breed as he leads his bunch to their deaths in a defensive revenge on revolutionary guerrilla forces. Lucien Ballard's photography gives a funereal hue to this elegy to the passing of a certain breed of chivalry. You can see why John Wayne is said to have hated the film; Peckinpah was practically reinventing a genre, with no place left for false nobility.


36) Frankenstein (1931)

“It's Alive!” Shocking in its day and still a genuinely creepy experience, director James Whale's primitive yet enthralling interpretation of Mary Shelley's classic tale of man playing God is the most influential genre movie ever made. Its success kick-started the golden age of horror for Universal Studios and provided inspiration for scores of imitators and successors. Boris Karloff breathes miraculous life into his definitive monster portrayal: the most touching moment is the creature reaching up to grasp a ray of sunlight. A superb cast, imaginative set design and Whale's innovative direction using bizarre camera angles invoke a remarkably tense and melancholy atmosphere, while the creation scene itself is a masterpiece of gothic science gone mad.


37) French Connection (1971)

John Frankenheimer's sequel to The French Connection may be less believable than its predecessor, but it's still a cracking thriller. Here, New York cop “Popeye” Doyle (Gene Hackman brilliantly reprising his Oscar-winning role from the original) blunders into the French operation to uncover heroin-tsar Fernando Rey's drugs ring. There's a disturbing sequence that details Hackman's withdrawal after being forcibly addicted, but after that it's revenge and violence all the way.


38) Forrest Gump (1994)

Winner of six Oscars, including best picture, actor and director, this comedy drama was a box-office blockbuster in America, though its simple-minded patriotism was greeted with a certain cynicism in Europe. Gump, played by Tom Hanks, is a chump: a semi-literate everyman who drifts through recent American history (Vietnam, the civil rights movement, assassinations, Watergate) and emerges triumphant. He's an athlete, war hero and hokey southern savant, a one-man palliative for a nation's political and moral bankruptcy. His personal credo is “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get”, and that's as profound as the movie gets. But Hanks's performance is truly remarkable and, this being a Robert Zemeckis film, the effects are stunning: Gump meeting people such as JFK and Nixon is amazingly believable, and Gary Sinise as an amputee combines brilliant acting with state-of-the-art technology. One can sneer at it, but one can't ignore it.


39) Ben Hur (1959)

This 1959 version of Lew Wallace's best-selling novel, which had already seen screen versions in 1907 and 1926, went on to win 11 Academy Awards. Adapted by Karl Tunberg and a raft of uncredited writers including Gore Vidal and Maxwell Anderson, the film once more recounts the tale of Jewish prince Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston), who lives in Judea with his family during the time that Jesus Christ was becoming known for his radical teachings. Ben-Hur's childhood friend Messala (Stephen Boyd) is now an ambitious Roman tribune; when Ben-Hur refuses to help Messala round up local dissidents on behalf of the emperor, Messala pounces on the first opportunity to exact revenge on his onetime friend. Tried on a trumped-up charge of attempting to kill the provincial governor (whose head was accidentally hit by a falling tile), Ben-Hur is condemned to the Roman galleys, while his mother (Martha Scott) and sister (Cathy O'Donnell) are imprisoned. But during a sea battle, Ben-Hur saves the life of commander Quintus Arrius (Jack Hawkins), who, in gratitude, adopts Ben-Hur as his son and gives him full control over his stable of racing horses. Ben-Hur never gives up trying to find his family or exact revenge on Messala. At crucial junctures in his life, he also crosses the path of Jesus, and each time he benefits from it.


40) Dances With Wolves (1990)

Kevin Costner's directorial debut, the first western to win the best picture Oscar for 60 years, is a heartfelt attempt to create a frontier epic and to atone for Hollywood's shameful depiction of native American life. Costner himself plays the depressed, battle weary Union officer John Dunbar, a Civil War hero who, given the choice, opts for a remote posting in South Dakota to see the frontier before it disappears. After befriending the Sioux Indians he decides to join them, and marries Stands with a Fist (Mary McDonnell), a white woman also adopted by the tribe. Although the film is three hours long, Costner directs his pet project with a clear passion for the subject, and in so doing proves that epic westerns can still work if their heart is in the right place, the characters are real, and the cinematography is stunning — take a bow Dean Semler, another deserving winner of one of the seven Oscars awarded to Costner and company. Costner demythologises the westerns made by such directors as John Ford (for instance, much of the dialogue is in the Lakota Sioux language) to re-create the genre and present a wistful and poignant look at a way of life and a people that have all but disappeared. Admirably supported by fellow Oscar nominees Graham Greene, as Kicking Bird, and the brilliant McDonnell, Costner gives Dunbar an essential decency with which viewers cannot fail to empathise, right up until the moving climax. A marvel from beginning to end.


41) American Graffiti Details (1973)

How do you follow a modern masterpiece like American Graffiti? Not with this plodding, inferior sequel, which catches up with the Class of 1962 as they live through the Vietnam-dominated, hippy 1960s. The only saving grace is yet another brilliant soundtrack, featuring golden oldies from the Supremes, Mary Wells, the Byrds, Bob Dylan and Cream. Wolfman Jack and Country Joe and the Fish also make appearances in this dismal failure, aimlessly directed by Bill L Norton.


42) Amadeus (1984)

The winner of eight Oscars and an unexpected box-office smash, Amadeus is simply one of the finest biographical dramas ever made. Reworked rather than simply adapted by Peter Shaffer from his own hit play, the film is as much about the mediocrity and envy of the composer Antonio Salieri as it is about the eccentric genius of his rival Mozart. There is, therefore, a sort of poetic justice in the fact that F Murray Abraham — for those with an interest in biographical minutiae, the “F” stands for Fahrid — pipped Tom Hulce for the best actor award. But surely Jeffrey Jones deserved a nod for his delightful portrayal of Emperor Joseph II? Returning to Prague (standing in for Vienna) for the first time since the Soviet invasion in 1968, director Milos Forman and his regular cinematographer Miroslav Ondricek revel in the beauty of the city, but credit must also go to Patrizia von Brandenstein for her superb sets and inspired choice of location interiors. As one would expect, the music is majestic, thanks largely to Neville Marriner's outstanding interpretation of everything from gypsy dances to Don Giovanni.


43) Rebel Without A Cause (1955)

The age-old theme of teenage violence and delinquency is given distinctive insight by the well-cast Dean-Wood-Mineo trio. Perhaps the best teen-age drama of the 1950s. Academy Award Nominations: Best Supporting Actor--Sal Mineo, Best Supporting Actress--Natalie Wood, Best Motion Picture Story.


44) King Kong - The Eighth Wonder Of The World (1933)

This cinematic classic is my all time personal favourite with ground breaking special effects for the time and new processes to bring Kong to life.
It was one of the first films to have a fully integrated soundtrack where music is fundamental to the action. The sound effects are also very advanced for the time with a great many sounds being mixed in.

This film gets a very deserving 4 stars in Halliwells guide. Was way ahead of its time in 1932 when it was made.


45) Jaws (1975)

Peter Benchley's pulp bestseller is here turned into the scariest sea saga ever filmed, with Steven Spielberg creating maximum suspense in the first dark moments and then maintaining the momentum with brilliant sleight-of-hand direction. The tale of a great white shark terrorising a New England resort community and the modern-day Captain Ahab (Robert Shaw) employed to kill it is now a classic of the suspense thriller genre. John Williams's Oscar-winning music and the excellent performances of Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss add to the ingeniously mounted tension that cleverly plays on all our deepest primeval fears.


46) Annie Hall (1977)

Although Woody Allen had still to acquire great technical strength as a film-maker, this was the movie where he found his own singular voice, a voice that echoes across events with a mixture of exuberance and introspection. Peppered with hilarious, snappy insights into the meaning of life, love, psychiatry, ambition, art and New York, this comic delight also gains considerably from the spirited playing of Diane Keaton as the kooky innocent from the Midwest, and Woody himself as the fumbling New York neurotic. The narrative runs parallel to the real-life relationship between the two leads (Keaton's father's name was Hall), and the film scooped four Oscars, including best film and screenplay (co-written with Marshall Brickman) for Allen, and best actress for Keaton.


47) The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

In this magnificent adaptation of John Steinbeck's Depression-era novel, Henry Fonda plays the farmer who leads his family from the dust bowl of Oklahoma to the promised land of California. The scene when their home is bulldozed is heart-rending and their fate as migrant workers has lasting power. But the film also has some weaknesses, notably a corny religious symbolism in place of Steinbeck's raw politics. When studio boss Darryl F Zanuck was persuading Steinbeck to endorse a happy ending, Zanuck was called away to deal with an even more urgent matter. “The Grapes of Wrath,” said Steinbeck, “is unimportant compared to Shirley Temple's tooth.” It's stupendously photographed by Gregg Toland, but the Oscars went to director John Ford and Jane Darwell, who's unforgettable as Ma Joad.


48) ET - The Extra-Terrestrial (2002)

Steven Spielberg's ode to aliens could also be seen as a tribute to all the loners of the world, as little ET, abandoned by his pot-bellied extraterrestrial pals, has to cope on Earth until they can come back and rescue him. Luckily, he's befriended by an equally lonely little boy named Elliott, played by Henry Thomas, who proceeds to teach his alien chum how to talk, dress up in women's clothes and guzzle beer. Much has been made of the changes and additions to the anniversary edition, but this is no extended director's cut; the alterations are minimal. Some of ET's facial expressions have been enhanced with computer animation, there are five additional minutes of footage that were left out of the original and — significantly in the current political climate — the guns carried by the government agents have been digitally replaced by walkie-talkies. However, changes or not, this is still a special, delightful adventure, in which Spielberg manages not only to entertain young children but also reach out to the child in all of us.


49) Taxi Driver (1970)

Back in the 1970s, smutty comedies such as this entry in the Adventures series were the order of the day for comedy actors trying to break into movies. Robert Lindsay, Liz Fraser, Ian Lavender and Henry McGee are among the familiar faces who probably squirmed with embarrassment at their performances in this bawdy comedy. Barry Evans is the nominal leading man, adding new meaning to the familiar drivers' refrain, “You'll never guess who I had in the back of the cab?”


50) Fellinis 8.1/2 (1962)

Federico Fellini's Oscar-nominated 8 1/2 is a masterpiece of storytelling and cinema. The most autobiographical of Fellini's films, the plot of which concerns a 43-year-old film director who is having a midlife crisis, it is a career benchmark for this magnificent Italian New Wave director. Beautifully choreographed with flashbacks, dream sequences, exaggerated fantasy scenes, and magical surrealist episodes, 8 1/2 is one of the richest, most exuberant movies ever made, in the mode of Fellini's artfully abstract LA DOLCE VITA and AMARCORD.