"Alfie" (1966)

The 1960's were the apex of British cool... The Beatles. The Rolling Stones. Twiggy. Carnaby Street. James Bond. 'The Avengers'. And in his career defining role that would catapult him to worldwide fame, there was Michael Caine as Alfie. The personification of the hip, cheeky, devil-may-care attitude every young man of the day aspired to. Alfie is a working class young man with style to spare who's the bad boy ladies man, flitting from one broken heart to the next with nary a regret. Life is too short for him to be weighed down with something so downer as responsibility. And he gets away with it scott free. Why? Because he's so charmingly lovable. A cad, a bounder, but Caine infuses him with so much likability you forgive it. But a good thing doesn't last forever and things take a dramatic turn when Alfie confronts some of the harsh consequences of the life he's been leading. The movie's famous stylistic schtick is Caine breaking the fourth wall to talk the audience, his stream of conscience philosophies sometimes happen in scenes with other characters but they don't notice it. Probably a holdover from the stage play from which it was adapted, in the hands of a lesser actor it might grate, here it sings. There's also a zoftig Shelley Winters in three short scenes, despite her second billing, as a man hungry cougar who teaches Alfie a cold lesson in love. And let's not forget the title song over the end credits, one of the premier masterpieces of the Burt Bacharach/Hal David songbook (it's the composer's personal favorite) sung by that other 60's pop icon Cher!

"Catch-22" (1970)

Is it possible to make a great film from Joseph Heller's celebrated novel about the evils and hypocrisies of war? The short answer is probably 'no'. The very form of the novel, an elliptical non-sequential series of episodes barely masquerading as plot would be the first hurdle. Then there's the frustrating, nonsensical bureaucratic-ease that pervades much of the dialog. And don't let's forget that most of the characters are charlatans, blowhards, cowards, criminals, or just plain idiots. It's a wonder then that director Mike Nichols and screenwriter Buck Henry managed to pull together a noble effort, a somewhat more coherent movie out of this knotty source material. The (anti)hero is Yossarian (Alan Arkin), a WWII fighter pilot stationed on an island off the coast of Italy. All he wants is to fly his last bombing mission so he can get the hell out of the war and back home. But like Lucy with the football, his superiors keep snatching away his goal, forcing him to keep flying. The soul sapping futility is the point of the piece, and if it weren't for the all-star fine cast most of the satiric humor wouldn't work, but with pros like Richard Benjamin, Martin Balsam, Jack Gilford, Bob Newhart, Anthony Perkins, Martin Sheen, Jon Voight, Bob Balaban, Paula Prentiss, and Orson Welles, they pull it off. At least most of the time. It also doesn't hurt that Nichols was given a hefty budget to make the wide-screen production truly handsome. There's one flying sequence with a a full squadron of real   B-52's taking off that is draw dropping, something we'll never see the likes of again sans CGI effects.

"Gosford Park" (2001)

Director Robert Altman and screenwriter Julian Fellowes take all the tropes of a classic 1930's whodunit mystery and turn them inside out. A weekend at a huge estate in the British countryside. An assortment of monied guests and house staff. A murder in the library. A trench coated detective. Red herrings. Witty dialog. Tuxedos and evening gowns. It's all here...but it's all beside the point. This is really an exploration of class distinctions and what happens when they mix and inevitably clash. It's all handled with Altman's dextrous ability to juggle an extremely large (and talented) cast. The fluid camera work and overlapping dialog are a wonder to behold. And what an all star cast it is! Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Kristin Scott Thomas, Helen Mirren, Charles Dance, Jeremy Northam, Clive Owen, Bob Balaban, Ryan Phillippe, Stephen Fry, Eileen Atkins, Emily Watson, Alan Bates, Derek Jacobi, Richard E. Grant, and James Wilby...it's the telephone book of  Who's Who English actors, and there's not a bum performance in the bunch. Emily Watson and Helen Mirren deserve special shout-outs as world-weary downstairs staffers. Their characters know the lot in life they've been dealt and you can feel the weight of it in their eyes alone. Fellowes has a real ear for the various strata of dialog. This was essentially a dry run for his enormously successful TV series "Downton Abby" ten years later. In fact, the initial plans were for that show to be a spinoff of "Gosford", later scrapped. But it's the same "Upstairs/Downstair" set-up, even using the scene-stealing Maggie Smith in much the same capacity as a wickedly droll dowager casting off tart quips and asides like poison pellets to throw everyone off their game. And just when you think the mystery doesn't really matter, the plot surprises you with an honest-to-God surprising (and poignant) solution to the crime that you won't see coming.

"A Star is Born" (1937)

Before there was Garland, before there was Streisand, and yes, before there was Gaga, there was this first remake of a soapy Hollywood story that, defying all odds, works every time it's told. For the record, the original was titled "What Price Hollywood?". Other than the name change the basic plot in every version is stet: a young performer brimming with untapped talent meets and falls in love with an established star at the peek of his fame but who's on a downward trajectory involving substance abuse. He helps her make her mark and as her career skyrockets while his hits the skids. Tears and histrionics ensue. This version starring Janet Gaynor and Frederic March zips along and the economy of storytelling is refreshing if you're used the subsequent versions that were all musicalized with songs and productions numbers that pad out the action. And it's obvious why actors are drawn to these roles. The female gets to suffer nobly and stand by her man as he self destructs and the male lead has all that internalized self-imolation to pull off. Both stars here shine, March especially so. His tragic ending is particularly poignant without being hammy. This was also the first Technicolor movies to more artfully use the spectrum of shades available, more realistic shadows and tones than the garish look of color films up until that time.

"My Sister Eileen" (1942)

Rosalind Russell was in her wheelhouse with comedic roles. They gave her free reign to display her gifts with the quick comeback, the insulting zinger, or the subtle facial expression that said it all. This screwball comedy was no exception. Adapted from a hugely successful Broadway play, she's a newspaper reporter making a new start for herself in The Big Apple. Her beautiful aspiring actress younger sister, an effervescent Janet Blair, is in tow as well. With no money but high hopes, they find a cramped basement apartment in Greenwich Village complete with an annoying landlord (George "Mr. Kravitz" Tobias from TV's "Bewitched"), and a slew of other neighborhood characters and crazies. Their place becomes a revolving door of madcap confusion. Russell tries for a job at a literary magazine and falls for the handsome editor (Brian Aherne). Snappy and delightful. Oh, and look for a fun cameo in the final scene!

"All That Jazz" (1979)

This is a veritable salmagundi of all things Bob Fosse. The famed theatre and film director/choreographer was swinging for the bleachers here, pouring all of his signature style and themes into one big explosion of splashy and spiky entertainment. Just like the man himself there's a lot to love/hate. It's like his "81/2" but with musical numbers, a semi-autobiographical look at an artist grappling with his artistic output (or lack thereof) and his complicated relationship with the women in his life. Fosse's stand-in is Roy Schieder as 'Joe Gideon', a director of stage and screen stretching himself too thin between too many projects and using booze, pills, and sex with too many chorus girls to get him through it. It pushes him to a heart attack and the storytelling conceit of the picture is that it takes place entirely in that split second when he's on the operating table, balancing on the brink of death. His life is recounted in flashbacks during a conversation he's having with the beautiful Angel of Death, a sexy Jessica Lange. It sounds more complicated than it is. Joe is not a nice man but Schieder's performance makes you like him anyway and you can see why his ex-wife (Leland Palmer), his current girlfriend (Ann Reinking), and young daughter (Erzebet Foldi) forgive all his sins and shenanigans, they love him and don't want him to die. Death and dying is nice material for a musical, right? Well, it's the dance numbers that make this magnum opus truly great. From the opening showstopper, an open Broadway cattle call  for chorus dancers, essentially "A Chorus Line" done in five minutes, to the way-ahead-of-its-time "Air-rotica" number, a slithering orgiastic hot house of sweaty limbs and torsos, it's vintage Fosse. Isolated body parts, multiple dancers in shaped formations, fingers snaps, splayed hands, bowler hats, you name it, it's here in spades. Nobody used the medium of film better to display an ownable dance vernacular. And while Fosse's work could be cool and distant, there's one small number in the middle of the movie where Rienking and the daughter do a special living room duet just for Gideon, a precious number of love and razzmatazz that's the very essence of joy in dance. You get the feeling that very joy is what Fosse strove for throughout his career.

"Pretty Poison" (1968)

This odd and subversive tale of two attractive young lovers falling into a crime spree seems,  at first blush, clearly aimed at the same success formula "Bonnie & Clyde" famously made the previous year, but while the former film was about the intertwining of violence, celebrity, and entertainment in our culture,  this one is about something else altogether, the prickly truth that our cherished American values come with a dark side, and if we're not careful they'll rot us from within. It starts off as a kooky quasi-rom-com, a picture perfect couple meet cute at a hotdog stand (how Americana can you get?). Tuesday Weld is a sunny sweet high school drum majorette who talks on a pink princess phone in her frilly bedroom, dressed in Ann Roth's flouncy cotton swing dresses. Too cute by a mile. Anthony Perkins is the clean-cut boyish guy in button-down oxford shirts and corduroys. All good...but like so much in this movie, nothing is as it seems and before long the tone changes, things turn sinister, and you're left unmoored by the shocks that follow. This has become a sleeper cult film over the years and deservedly so, definitely one to seek out.