A 12-year-old scout on the Eastern Front; Tarkovsky's first film and the dream sequences.
A Home Army soldier ordered to kill a communist on the last day of the war; Wajda and Cybulski.
Michael Myers, Haddonfield and a piano theme in 5/4; Carpenter made it for $300,000.
Klaus Kinski leads conquistadors down the Amazon into madness; the raft of monkeys.
Two friends and Jeanne Moreau over twenty years; the New Wave at its most exhilarating.
A wife and a mistress murder the headmaster, then the body vanishes; the twist Hitchcock envied.
The icon painter through medieval Russia, the Tatar raid and a boy casting a bell.
Altman's 24 characters over five days of country music and a political rally.
Romero's farmhouse siege invents the zombie film for $114,000.
Grieving parents in a winter Venice and a small figure in a red coat.
A disaster movie played straight by Leslie Nielsen; "don't call me Shirley".
Jack Nicholson as an oil-rig worker who was once a concert pianist; the chicken salad scene.
Alain Delon as a hitman in a trench coat and fedora; Melville's cool influenced every hitman film since.
Mel Gibson on an outback highway in the film that cost $350,000 and started a franchise.
Bertolucci and Storaro's fascist Italy in tilted frames and autumn light.
A man mistaken for the Messiah; "always look on the bright side of life" from the cross.
Robert Mitchum as a preacher with LOVE and HATE on his knuckles hunting two children downriver.
Leatherface, a dinner table and almost no blood on screen; the horror film that feels like a documentary.
Jack Nicholson with a slit nose, the water wars of Los Angeles and "forget it, Jake".
Pod people replace a Californian town; the Cold War paranoia film that still works.
A possessed girl in Georgetown, a spinning head and the most profitable horror film ever.
Two hours in the life of a singer waiting for a cancer diagnosis, in near real time through Paris.
Zombies in a shopping mall; Romero's consumerism satire with the gore of Tom Savini.
Belmondo and Karina drive south in primary colours; Godard at his most alive.
An entomologist trapped in a sand pit with a widow, digging forever; Teshigahara and sand as texture.
Gershwin, black-and-white New York and the bench under the Queensboro Bridge.
Sissy Spacek at the prom, the bucket of pig blood, and the hand from the grave.
James Stewart with a broken leg and binoculars watches a murder across the courtyard.
Schoolgirls vanish on a Victorian rock in 1900 and nobody explains it.
The three-minute opening crane shot across the Mexican border and Welles as a corrupt cop.
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