"Pale Flower" is one of the most haunting noirs I've seen, and something more; in 1964 it was an important work in an emerging Japanese New Wave of independent filmmakers, an exercise in existential cool.

The more you learn about Yasujiro Ozu, the director of "An Autumn Afternoon" (1962), the more you realize how very deep the waters reach beneath his serene surfaces.

“Badlands” was one of the great films of the flowering of American auteurs in the 1970s, a debut film chosen to close the New York Film Festival.

Believing special effects wouldn't be adequate and a human actor would seem too human, Kubrick turned the project over to his friend Spielberg. Legend has it he made that decision after being impressed by Spielberg's special effects in "Jurassic Park," but perhaps "E. T." was also an influence: If Spielberg could create an alien who evoked human emotions, could he do the same with an android?He could.

"Seven" (1995) was David Fincher's second feature, after "Alien 3" (1992), filmed when he was only 29. Still to come were such as "Zodiac" (2007) and "The Social Network" (2010). In his work he likes a saturated palate and gravitates toward sombre colors and underlighted interiors. None of his films is darker than this one.

"Stagecoach" holds our attention effortlessly and is paced with the elegance of a symphony. Ford doesn't squander his action and violence in an attempt to whore for those with short attention spans, but tells astory, during which we learn to know the characters and become invested in them.

This poor girl. I wanted to reach out my arms and hug her. That was during the first half of "The Match Factory Girl." Then my sympathy began to wane. By the end of the film, I think it's safe to say Iris gives as good as she gets.

There is a quality to the color photography in Werner Herzog's "Nosferatu the Vampyre" that seeps into your bones. It would be inadequate to call it "saturated." It is rich, heavy, deep. The earth looks cold and dirty. There isn't a lot of green, and it looks wet.

No one would ever accuse Alfred Hitchcock's "Shadow of a Doubt" of being plausible, but it is framed so distinctively in the Hitchcock style that it plays firmly and never breaks out of the story.

Watching a film like "A Man Escaped" is like a lesson in the cinema. It teaches by demonstration all the sorts of things that are not necessary in a movie. By implication, it suggests most of the things we're accustomed to are superfluous. I can't think of a single unnecessary shot in "A Man Escaped."