"The Thomas Crown Affair" (1968)

An unparalleled triumph of style over substance. Some movies you watch for the deft plotting or the character development, some maybe for the crackling dialog. This movie has none of those things. What it does have is visual panache in spades. The unquestionable King of Cool in the 1960's was Steve McQueen. He attained that rare nexus that few actors achieve: men wanted to be him, women wanted to do him. Here, his aloof masculinity is put to perfect use as a millionaire financier whose hobby is masterminding perfect bank heists just for the thrill of it. He's pursued by an insurance investigator played by Faye Dunaway who was just cresting her own chic a la mode notoriety on the heels of her iconic role in "Bonnie and Clyde". Nothing really happens, the plot is just an excuse for these two beautiful specimens to traipse through a world of money, clothes, sports, cars, and architecture, it's a "Playboy" photo spread come to life. There's no better time capsule pictorial of what the American Male of the mid-century deemed desirable. And to add even more style to the proceedings, director Norman Jewison utilizes a multi-frame editorial device in key sequences to heighten the visual stimulus. Think of a Modrian painting populated with elegant eye candy pictures, all to the haunting strains of the movie's earworm love theme, "The Windmills of Your Mind". Oh, and don't forget one of the sexiest seduction scenes ever filmed where the leads do nothing but play...chess! Unforgettable sophistication.

"Kitty Foyle" (1940)

Gingers Rogers had some pretty stiff competition the year she won the Academy Award for best actress in this sudsy melodrama...Joan Fontaine in "Rebecca", Bette Davis in "The Letter", and Katherine Hepburn in "The Philadelphia Story"...each of them powerhouse performances, all still memorable. Rogers' ace in the hole was that her natural and likable portrayal of a working girl torn between two lovers who each propose to her on the same night, came as a complete departure from all those lighter-than-air musicals she did with Fred Astaire. She get's to really act, but it's a sincere, self effacing performance. Told completely in flashbacks, we learn how she got in this enviable fix between the good looking and charming Main Line scion (Dennis Morgan), and the good looking and charming young doctor (James Craig). You can probably figure out the denouement ahead of time,  but it's fun waiting until the last line of the picture to really find out who she chooses. Just hang on for some gut wrenching waterworks along the way (I said it was a melodrama, didn't I?) And for all you trivia lovers, this is the movie that inspired the garment industry term "Kitty Foyle dress", a dark fabric shirtwaist frock with white collar designed by costumer Renié that Rogers wears, it was mass produced for years afterward.

"The Red House" (1947)

Is it possible for a movie to be film noir and not be set in the dark alleys and shadowy streets of the city? If any movie successfully comes close to pulling it off then "The Red House" is it. Helmed by Delmer Daves (he would direct a fine noir the following year with Bogie and Bacall, "Dark Passage") this atomospheric mystery thriller takes place entirely in the bucolic world of a sleepy rural community. But with the angst and psychological feel of the noir genre. Kindly farmer Edward G. Robinson and his sister, Judith Anderson, have an adopted teenage daughter (Allene Roberts). She's got a crush on a local boy (Lon McCallister) who's the new hired hand. Trouble begins when the teens ignore the dire warnings of Robinson and start to venture off the farm and into the local woods, a place he has deemed strictly verboten because, well, there's a mysterious red house their where spooky unmentionable things once happened. Are you starting to catch all the not-so-subtle symbolism here? Forbidden places, burgeoning sexuality, coming of age, it's all here at a fever pitch. Throw another couple of naughty teens into the forrest, played by the unbelievably gorgeous Rory Calhoun and Julie London, who vie for our heroes' budding love and libidos, and you've got a steamy stew of secrets and young lust that would make Bruno Bettelheim blush. From Little Red Riding Hood to the Blair Witch, there's always a good scare to be had when you go deep into the woods. Follow this troupe and you won't be disappointed.

"The Night of the Iguana" (1964)

The lurid tagline was "One man...three women...one night...", obviously trying to cash in on the sultry psycho-sexual plots of other films adapted from Tennessee Williams' plays. But this one was something different, a tale of finding redemption and inner peace with life's demons. A disparate group of lonely types find themselves in a remote corner of Mexico removed from civilization in a down-at-the-heels hotel. A defrocked alcoholic priest hanging on to the last shreds of his faith (Richard Burton), a saintly vagabond artist caring for her elderly father (Deborah Kerr), a shrewish Bible thumper on a cook's tour (Oscar nominated Grayson Hall), and the hotel's earthy free-sprit proprietor (Ava Gardner). These lives are at their at the end of their rope just like the metaphorical iguana tied under the property's porch. Maybe one night's soul searching will set everyone free. The acting is aces all around. Burton was always good at inner anguish. Kerr makes decency attractive when it could easily be off-putting. And Gardner shines. She's loose, bawdy, and sexy as hell, never better. It took the rascally director John Huston to corral these big personalities and the result is a fine adaptation of a rare open-hearted Williams piece.

"To Be or Not To Be" (1942)

Jack Benny's movie career was mostly a grabbag of film shorts, lightweight comedies, and cameos. His lengthy career in vaudeville, radio, and TV are really what kept his star burnished for decades. But he did have one truly excellent film to his credit, one helmed by a master director with a first rate script and stellar supporting cast. And it was an out and out bomb. If ever there was the right picture at the very wrong time, "To Be or Not To Be" was it. It's a WWII thriller-comedy about a Polish theatre troupe putting on subversive anti-Nazi plays making fun of Hitler and the Third Reich while they try to foil a plot that could endanger the underground resistance. With the real Axis powers goose--stepping through Europe and the Pearl Harbor attack just four months prior, the picture was doomed from the get-go. To add to the tragedy, Benny's co-star, the luminous Carole Lombard, was killed in a plane crash a few weeks before the release date. But time has been kind and it's now a comedy classic. The movie zips from farcical gags, perfectly timed banter, to hairbreadth escapes in a flash, all the while making some serious commentary on the the damnable madness of the Nazi scourge. Benny has the timing of Swiss watch and Lombard was that rare combo platter of smarts and sex appeal. A comic gem.

"And Then There Were None" (1945)

French director René Clair made relatively few films outside his native France but his adaptation of Agatha Christie's most famous of whodunnit puzzlers was made in Hollwood and it's first rate, still probably the best version of this mystery ever filmed. There's a light touch to what is essentially a horrific premise: a fiendish murderer has invited ten strangers for a weekend getaway to a secluded mansion on a  small island off the English coast and the guests are eliminated, some gruesomely, one by one in the fashion of a children's nursery rhyme, ("Ten little Indian boys went out to dine, one choked his little self, and then there were nine"...you get it). Each of he guests has a nefarious incident in their past where they themselves caused the death of an innocent, the killer is playing a deadly game of judge and jury. In between the mayhem and fingerpointing among the culprits, you get funny dialog and a few well-placed shivers. The cast is first rate, boasting some of the great character actors of the time like Walter Huston, Barry Fitzgerald, and Judith Anderson. Don't even attempt trying to figure out the identity of the murderer, Dame Agatha was too skillful for that. Just enjoy watching the puzzle unfold right up to the last macabre joke before the endtitles.

"The Wages of Fear" (Le Salaire de la Peur) (1953)

You come to this French film with the knowledge that it's one of the most edge-of-your-seat thrillers ever made. But, really, it was made almost 65 years ago, it's probably a little tame by today's standards, right? WRONG. It not only lives up to the lore but it exceeds it. How could it not with this--pun intended--powderkeg of a plot: a group of ragtag, down-on-their-luck oil workers have to deliver two truckloads full of nitroglycerin over an impossibly treacherous 300 miles of backroads in some Godforsaken South American country to a blazing refinery fire so that it can be extinguished. The first hour is all about the set up and character exposition, if we didn't care for these sad fellows then none of the rest of the picture makes sense. Once they hit the road, they're put through one white knuckle setpiece with those trucks after another. These scenes are almost Rube Goldbergian in complexity and these players have to figure out each 'trap' or they're blown to Kingdom Come. The director, Henri-Georg Clouzot, is oftentimes referred to as "the French Hitchcock", with good measure. Each scene is not only squrm-inducingly suspenseful, but character defining as well. The break out star is Yves Montand. Handsome as all get-out, brashly cocksure, and filled with almost fatally flawed hubris, you want to throttle him for being so reckless. There's not a little commentary about the rapacious nature of the big American oil company that is giving so little value to the lives of these men, and by extension to the environment it's harming. You can bet that if Big Oil was a bad thing back then it's even worse now. Minute for minute as exciting as the best roller coaster you've ever ridden, don't miss this one.