My Top 25 Classic Cinema

1) Charlie Chaplin - Gold Rush (1925)
THE GOLD RUSH is still Chaplin's most perfectly realized comedy and one of those rare movies that enchant anew no matter how many times you've seen it...

2) Charlie Chaplin - City Lights (1931)
If only one of Charlie Chaplin's films could be preserved, CITY LIGHTS would come the closest to representing different notes of his genius...

3) Gone With The Wind (1939)
Deliciously eccentric, yet cuttingly acute in its understated socio-political criticism, this is tantamount to a Borges-scripted Ealing comedy. Set in a small village in Patagonia, Alejandro Agresti's fable is filled with lovable eccentrics, from the scientist whose inventions already have patents, to the cinema projectionist who keeps showing films in the wrong order — which goes some way to explaining this isolated community's wondrously cockamamie worldview. However, everything changes with the arrival of two unsuspecting intruders, Buenos Aires cab-driver Vera Fogwill, and fading French movie-star, Jean Rochefort. Testament to the enduring power of cinema, this is witty, warm and wacky.

4) Lawrence Of Arabia (1962)
This is director David Lean's magisterial portrayal of one of Britain's most enigmatic yet charismatic heroes, TE Lawrence, whose precise role in the Arab revolt against the Turks during the First World War still perplexes military historians. Peter O'Toole's flamboyant performance hints at every aspect of Lawrence's complex character (including his masochistic tendency), while Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson's script develops into a withering satire on the ball-and-socket mentality of Lawrence's superiors, who play the Great Game of Empire by the book. Taking 15 months to shoot in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Spain and England, Lean developed an obsession with the desert mirroring Lawrence's own. There are some awesomely beautiful images, notably the mirage that introduced the world to a new star, Omar Sharif. Winner of seven Oscars and restored to its original version in 1989, this is movie-making on the grandest scale.

5) The Graduate (1967)
This landmark satire on America's bourgeoisie thrust the unknown Dustin Hoffman into the limelight and won a best director Oscar for Mike Nichols. In his film debut, Hoffman is sensational as the innocent college graduate who is seduced by older married woman Anne Bancroft and then falls for her daughter Katharine Ross. The humour in Calder Willingham and Buck Henry's screenplay has the bite of a dry martini, Robert Surtees's stunning, innovative camerawork contributes telling visual ironies (especially in the scene where Hoffman runs to the church) and the Simon and Garfunkel soundtrack perfectly captures the mood of disaffected youth seething beneath the laid-back exterior of 1960s California. Nichols's Oscar was well deserved, launching him into the top rank of Hollywood directors, though the film missed out in six other categories — best picture, actor (Hoffman), actress (Bancroft), supporting actress (Ross), screenplay and cinematography.

6) Raging Bull (1980)
Critics and film-makers are always being asked to reel off their desert island films: Raging Bull, without question, is one such great. Director Martin Scorsese makes no concession to character likeability as he portrays Jake La Motta's downward slide from arrogant prizefighter to frustrated, hateful dropout. Robert De Niro, who piled on the pounds to play the latter-day La Motta, proves he is the ultimate Method actor, both utterly convincing in the ring (the brutal fight sequences are spectacularly staged) and as the empty barrel abusing everyone (including his wife, Cathy Moriarty, and brother, Joe Pesci) at home. Scorsese effortlessly fuses top-drawer acting (De Niro rightly won a best actor Oscar for his efforts), pumping narrative drive and blitzkrieg camera technique to deliver a giddy, claustrophobic classic.

7) To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)
This is a beautifully crafted and faithful screen adaptation (by playwright Horton Foote, who won an Oscar) of the now-classic Harper Lee novel about a lawyer in the Deep South and the effect of a rape trial on his children. Gregory Peck won the best actor Oscar as Atticus Finch, but in truth he's ill-cast — if ever a role was meant for Henry Fonda it was this one. Robert Duvall, making his screen debut as the disturbed Boo Radley, is excellent, as are the well-cast children (Phillip Alford and Mary Badham, sister of film-maker John Badham), and Robert Mulligan's direction is quietly impressive (even if the film's a shade overlong). The book was once considered strong stuff, but is now taught in schools everywhere.

8) Doctor Zhivago (1965)
'Doctor Zhivago' is a film whose like we will not see again. This was one of the last gasps of true epic film making, a story of human beings set against a vast historical panorama, made without any computer-generated images and featuring only people to keep your interest, with not a space alien or hobbit in sight. Who can believe now that there was a time when that was sufficient?

I first saw this film when I was 8 years old. Certainly I was not able at that time to understand all aspects and nuances of the story, but I was nonetheless mesmerized by the production: the sheer scope and spectacle of it, the absolutely glorious cinematography, the rich characters. It was unforgettable to me, and along with a few other films from that period like 'The Sound of Music', fostered a lifelong love for movies. For that alone, I have a soft spot in my heart for this film and will always be grateful for it (and David Lean).

9) The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
This 1962 political and psychological thriller dealing with brainwashing and assassination generally tends to appear on most 'Top 100 Movies of All Time' lists. Frank Sinatra is decent as always, but it's Laurence Harvey as the brainwashed sleeper agent who is the highlight of the movie.

It features some great performances and memorable sequences, and ultimately it's an important film because of the sensitive issues that it deals with. It's always been a controversial film, banned in all of the 'Iron Curtain' countries and even taken out of circulation in America after John Kennedy's assassination -- on Sinatra's own wishes.

This is easily John Frankenheimer's best film. And as if it had somehow cursed him, when in 1968 he drove his friend Robert Kennedy to the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, the senator was assassinated there that same day.

10) The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Re-released on its tenth anniversary, this deeply moving version of Stephen King's story Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption from first-time director Frank Darabont is one of the best adaptations of the novelist's work. Tim Robbins plays Andy Dufresne, a Maine banker sent to Shawshank State Prison for murdering his wife and her lover. Regularly brutalised by the inmates and the penal system in general, his existence improves when he befriends fellow lifer and prison fixer Red, played by Morgan Freeman. Under Darabont's inspired direction, Robbins and Freeman both rise to the challenge of portraying world-weary dignity against the odds, while the severity of the prison system is underlined in the poignant performance of James Whitmore as a veteran convict trying to make it on parole, but ill-equipped to do so.

11) LEON (1994)
A film about an elderly hitman who takes a 12 year old orphan girl under his wing, sparking an ambiguous relationship in which the pair co-habit and, among other things, play 'dress-up' - in today's climate, Daily Mail readers would probably have raised an uproar. However, despite the deliberately blurred boundaries which exist between the central couple, this film is exceptionally touching, and both lead performances are incredibly moving and sympathetic.

As the eponymous Leon, Jean Reno convinces as both a fumbling man-child with no social skills, and a clinically effective hitman, performing jobs with a lethal detachment. Luc Besson handles the mix between action and burgeoning relationship with great skill, and the final third of the film has an unforgettable emotional punch.

12) Schindler's List (1993)
This outstanding Holocaust drama, based on Thomas Keneally's bestseller Schindler's Ark, won seven Oscars, including best picture, director (Steven Spielberg), adapted screenplay and score. It tells the story of Second World War entrepreneur Oskar Schindler (played by Liam Neeson), whose operation to supply the German war effort led him to be the unexpected saviour of more than 1,000 Jewish factory workers in Poland. Spielberg uses stark, brutal realism to put over his powerful points about racism and ethnic cleansing, and the use of stunning black-and-white photography and gritty hand-held camera footage give the film a potent documentary style. Ralph Fiennes invokes an awesome mixture of revulsion and sympathy as the inhuman Nazi commandant, Amon Goeth, and Neeson matches him with a heartfelt performance as the enigmatic Schindler. Ben Kingsley is also superb as Schindler's Jewish accountant and conscience.

13) Pulp Fiction (1994)
While not as abrasive or compelling as Reservoir Dogs, this follow-up not only confirmed Quentin Tarantino's genius for writing hard-boiled comic dialogue, but also demonstrated a control over a wealth of characters and crossplots that was simply astonishing for a film-maker still, essentially, in the process of learning his trade. Originally entitled Black Mask, the picture went on to scoop the Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival and win Oscars for Tarantino and his co-writer Roger Avary. Scorching though the writing is, it needed a high-calibre cast to carry it off. Uma Thurman, Bruce Willis, Maria de Medeiros and Christopher Walken are excellent, but the revitalised John Travolta and the then largely unknown Samuel L Jackson are unforgettable. As much pop as pulp, this is exhilarating stuff and clearly one of the best films of the 1990s.

14) The Good, The Bad And The Ugly (1966)
This concluding part of the “Dollars” trilogy is not only the most graphically violent of the three, but also ups the compassion and dark humour quota of the first two Sergio Leone films. The stylised violence of the genre is thrown into shocking relief by the bloody futility of the American Civil War that intrudes on the lives of drifters Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach. There is nothing new about the buried treasure plotline, but it is a deceptively simple story, through which Leone dexterously interweaves different strands of small- and large-scale human drama, drawing superb performances from his leads and providing a compelling feast for the viewer.

15) The Godfather (1972)
This crime drama and its 1974 sequel are among American cinema's finest achievements since the Second World War. The production problems are well documented — how Paramount wanted a quickie, how Francis Ford Coppola came cheap and how he turned the picture into an epic success, a box-office hit that was also an artistic triumph. His first masterstroke was casting Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall and Diane Keaton, four relative unknowns and one known risk; his next masterstroke was to keep cool under fire, like Michael Corleone himself, turning Mario Puzo's pulp novel into art and showing how capitalism and crime go hand in hand. It's thrilling, romantic, tense and scary — a five-course meal that leaves you hungry for more.

16) Goodfellas (1990)
This unflinching depiction of the attraction and brutal reality of the Mafia lifestyle from Martin Scorsese is a masterwork on every artistic level. Direction, script — based on Nicholas Pileggi's nonfiction book Wiseguy — photography, ensemble acting (Joe Pesci won a deserved Oscar, but he's matched by Robert De Niro and Ray Liotta) and driving pop and rock soundtrack seamlessly combine to dazzling effect in this instant classic. Crackling with raw energy, Scorsese's fascinating new take on themes explored in his earlier Mean Streets enthrals from the first violent frames to the stunning final sequence. Be prepared to be completely bowled over by a director at the peak of his talents and in full control of topnotch material.

17) One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
Adapted from Ken Kesey's novel, this film is one the classic movies of the seventies, thanks in no small measure to the talents of director Milos Forman, who propelled the comic antics to a horrifyingly poignant finale and resounding critical and commercial success; it became one of the few to be awarded all the major Oscars, winning for best picture, director, screenplay, actor (Jack Nicholson) and actress (Louise Fletcher). Nicholson's legendary performance as McMurphy, a free spirit at loose in a state mental home, is one of his greatest characterisations, as he stirs up rebellion against the oppressive regime of Fletcher's ward sister, in which drugs make patients' decisions. And among those patients are such then almost unknowns as Danny DeVito, Brad Dourif and Christopher Lloyd. The rights to the script had been bought by Michael Douglas — he was one of the film's producers years before for father Kirk, who'd played McMurphy on stage but was by this time too old for the part. This then became the great turn-down movie (with James Caan refusing McMurphy while Anne Bancroft, Angela Lansbury and Ellen Burstyn declined the nurse), but the awards proved just how wrong they were.

18) Rocky (1976)
If you're attempting to take up sport...

this is the film for you. How inspiring is Rocky running up those stairs? OK, so the story, dialogue and acting are in a class of their very own and you won't find anything as pish anywhere else in the world of mainstream cinema, but just surrender yourself to it - it's brilliant.

19) Gladiator (2000)
Ridley Scott and the boys from DreamWorks produced the first genuine Roman epic since 1964's The Fall of the Roman Empire with this virtual remake that deals with the transition of power from the sage-like Marcus Aurelius to his monstrous son, Commodus. The fictional hero, General Maximus, is Caesar's adopted heir, whom Commodus turns into an exile after killing his family. Becoming a gladiator, Maximus fights to avenge his loved ones and save the soul of Rome. The film's strengths are a fine script, which doesn't stint on the politics, and excellent performances from Richard Harris as Aurelius and Oliver Reed, in his final film, as a gladiator trainer. Also superb is Joaquin Phoenix as the paranoid, teenage Commodus, while Russell Crowe is utterly convincing as the Conan/Spartacus-like hero. As always with Scott, the visuals are fabulous: the computer-generated ancient Rome is simply staggering, allowing helicopter shots over the city and turning the Colosseum into a living building, a character in its own right and a blood-soaked stage on which the fate of the characters and the empire is enacted. For those old enough to remember the 70mm epics of yesteryear, this is a nostalgic synthesis of all of them. For those who haven't seen those earlier movies, Scott will open their eyes to a “brand-new” old world.

20)The Italian Job (1969)
Cult favourite, best remembered for its unexpected ending. The film encompasses the spectrum of all that is essentially English. A classic (eurosceptic) film, even though it's not all that well acted. Michael Caine?s wardrobe is superb, with his finely tailored suits and Quincy Jones? music holds it all together. The car chase is one of the absolute best, with the patriotically-coloured Mini?s always driven in order of red, white, and blue. This picture was, and continues to be, the greatest publicity the Mini has ever had.

21) The Great Escape (1963)
Neither the passing of time nor the familiarity of its content have diminished the excitement of director John Sturges's terrific war film, an epic on the scale of his Magnificent Seven, which was shot on authentic European locations. The climactic scenes are now rightly regarded as classic, and the characters have passed into folklore. Three of the “Magnificent Seven” are reunited (Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson and James Coburn) in a brilliant Anglo-American cast that couldn't be bettered. Elmer Bernstein's deceptively simple march theme has passed into movie legend.

22) Amelie (2001)
Jean-Pierre Jeunet, along with former collaborator Marc Caro, is better known as a purveyor of nightmarish excursions into the fantastic — Delicatessen, City of Lost Children, Alien: Resurrection. But this romantic comedy drama enchants and beguiles with a nostalgic optimism thanks to glorious visuals and ceaseless invention. Audrey Tautou is guaranteed iconic status as Amélie, the Montmartre waitress whose selfless joie de vivre leads her to improve the lives of her friends and neighbours. She only takes a break from her role of good fairy to pursue Mathieu Kassovitz, the handsome loner who collects rejected photo-booth snaps for his album of forgotten smiles. It has to be conceded that complaints of uncosmopolitan conservatism made against this film have some justification. But as a love letter to the City of Light — filmed at locations all around Paris yet retaining the stylised magic of a movie set — this is as deliciously romantic and ingeniously mischievous as cinema gets.

23) Silence Of The Lambs (1991)
This multi-Oscar-winning classic, adapted from Thomas Harris's bestseller, was responsible for giving cinematic serial killers a better image, thanks to Anthony Hopkins's enthralling portrayal of Hannibal Lecter. So what if Lecter was an incarcerated cannibal? It was unprecedented that an actor playing a crazed killer should mount the podium to collect an Oscar (the ceremony host that year, Billy Crystal, was wheeled on dressed as Lecter), while Hopkins's “Fava beans and a nice chianti” line became legendary. Jodie Foster also won an Oscar for her role as fledgeling FBI agent Clarice Starling, who is drawn into a disturbingly close relationship with Lecter as she hunts for serial killer “Buffalo Bill”, and it's a testament to her abilities that she holds her own against her scene-stealing co-star. With a track record for directing quirky comedies (Something Wild, Married to the Mob), director Jonathan Demme made a seemingly effortless switch to terror, summoning up a magnificent air of gothic gloom. The hunt for the killer is genuinely suspenseful, but Demme generates the real chill with the probing mind games between his two marvellous leads. Spare a thought, too, for the talented supporting players: stoical Scott Glenn as Foster's boss, Ted Levine as the tormented killer and Anthony Heald as the ill-fated hospital head, the butt of the movie's flip end gag.

24) Top Gun (1986)
Quentin Tarantino's vigorous assertion in Sleep with Me that this is the ultimate gay fantasy movie rather pulls the carpet from under the feet of those attempting to appraise this slavish tribute to flash fly boys and their hi-tech toys. There is no denying the quality and entertainment value of the flying sequences, which effortlessly blend mile-high footage with state-of-the-art modelwork, but the rivalry between Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer, and Cruise's tempestuous affair with Kelly McGillis, are pure bunk. Yet, with the shameful exception of McGillis, all emerged with reputations enhanced, particularly director Tony Scott, who takes all the credit for preventing this mindless macho daydream from nose-diving.

25) Jurassic Park (1993)
Steven Spielberg soared to new heights with this massively successful adventure adapted from Michael Crichton's bestseller. The world's ultimate theme park, featuring genetically re-created dinosaurs, is about to open and owner Richard Attenborough decides to give a sneak preview to a select few, including scientists Sam Neill and Laura Dern. However, all is not well in this new Garden of Eden and, in the jungle, the creatures are restless (when movie scientists tamper with nature, you just know something will go wrong). T-Rex and his chums are the undoubted stars of the show and the mix of computer animation and models is truly inspiring. Spielberg orchestrates the action with effortless verve and, although it's too long and full of loose ends, only the most Scrooge-like viewer will fail to be transfixed by the thrilling action and the sheer scale of the director's vision. Spielberg is less assured in the department of character development and some of the actors give worse performances than the computer-generated creatures, but, with a landmark spectacle like this, who cares?