George Clooney as a law-firm fixer and Tilda Swinton sweating; the best legal thriller of its decade.
Isabelle Huppert is raped and refuses to be a victim; Verhoeven's most provocative film.
Sandra Bullock alone in orbit after the debris hits; Cuaron's 13-minute opening shot.
One continuous take across a Berlin night, a bank robbery included.
Pacino and De Niro at a diner table, and the downtown LA shootout the police study.
Three students lost in the Maryland woods on camcorder; the found-footage film that fooled people.
Five criminals in a line-up and Keyser Soze; the ending everybody replayed.
John McClane barefoot in Nakatomi Plaza on Christmas Eve; the template for every action film after.
A boy who sees dead people and the twist that made Shyamalan; "I see dead people".
Waterloo station, a Tangier rooftop chase and the end of Treadstone.
A bus that explodes under 50 mph; Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock through Los Angeles.
An amnesiac assassin pulled from the sea; the spy film that made Bond change.
Twenty minutes to find 100,000 marks, run three times; Tykwer's techno Berlin.
A hitman and a 12-year-old Natalie Portman in New York; Gary Oldman's "EVERYONE".
Greengrass takes over with shaky cam and a Moscow car chase.
Three cops, a diner massacre and Kim Basinger as a Veronica Lake lookalike; 1950s noir done right.
Birds attack Bodega Bay for no reason; the school playground scene.
A brainwashed war hero, a Queen of Diamonds and a political assassination; paranoia in 1962.
A wife and a mistress murder the headmaster, then the body vanishes; the twist Hitchcock envied.
Melville's French Resistance as a grey, unglamorous business of betrayals.
James Stewart with a broken leg and binoculars watches a murder across the courtyard.
Alain Delon as a hitman in a trench coat and fedora; Melville's cool influenced every hitman film since.
Cary Grant chased by a crop duster and up Mount Rushmore in the template for the spy thriller.
Clint Eastwood's .44 Magnum and 'do you feel lucky' in San Francisco.
Five hours in a U-boat in 1941; the claustrophobia has never been bettered.
Grieving parents in a winter Venice and a small figure in a red coat.
Hitchcock's obsession film in San Francisco, the dolly zoom and the green light.
Robert Mitchum as a preacher with LOVE and HATE on his knuckles hunting two children downriver.
A Swinging London photographer enlarges a picture and may have found a murder.
Bertolucci and Storaro's fascist Italy in tilted frames and autumn light.
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