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Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

1. Back to School 1986 It's a good character for Dangerfield, one that veers him away from the 'I don't get no respect' pathos that comes too easily to him, and enough attention is paid to the minimal plot to integrate Dangerfield's classically constructed one-liners. full review
2. Black Moon Rising 1986 Cokliss's direction strains for a stylishness it doesn't achieve, yet his fundamentally straightforward style brings out the abstract design of the plot. full review
3. Down and Out in Beverly Hills 1986 Paul Mazursky hasn't only remade Jean Renoir's sublime 1931 Boudu Saved From Drowning: he's yuppified it, inverting virtually every meaning until the film becomes a celebration of the crassest kind of materialism. full review
4. Ferris Bueller's Day Off 1986 The overriding impression is one of utter nihilism, of a world divided into bored, crassly materialistic teenagers and doltish, unfeeling adults. full review
5. Highlander 1986 Lambert, with his beetle brow, broken nose, and vaguely crossed eyes, remains an amiable oddball presence, and Sean Connery radiates charm and nobility in a bit as an elder immortal who shows Lambert the rules of the game. full review
6. The Manhattan Project 1986 full review
7. Pretty in Pink 1986 This is like every other Hughes film, just a little shoddier. full review
8. Clue 1985 Only Lesley Ann Warren, as a tough-talking madam, finds an effective level of stylization, using her leggy physique and wildly expressive features to create a cartoonish figure that's funny within its own boundaries. full review
9. Commando 1985 Comic book stuff, helped out by the presence of Rae Dawn Chong as an airline stewardess whose sarcastic commentary adds some comic counterpoint to the deliberately overscaled action. full review
10. Explorers 1985 full review
11. Girls Just Want to Have Fun 1985 full review
12. The Man with One Red Shoe 1985 full review
13. One Magic Christmas 1985 full review
14. Private Practices: The Story of a Sex Surrogate 1985 full review
15. Re-Animator 1985 It's this kind of flat-footed stuff that gives garbage a bad name. full review
16. Remo Williams - The Adventure Begins 1985 full review
17. Stick 1985 full review
18. Witness 1985 A moderately effective, highly affected thriller. full review
19. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension 1984 The film gives you the mildly annoying sensation of being left out of a not very good private joke. full review
20. Beverly Hills Cop 1984 It's one of the few star comedies of the early 80s to allot some humor and personality to the minor characters. full review
21. Broadway Danny Rose 1984 Woody Allen attends to his neglected lovability factor in this tiny, anecdotal comedy. full review
22. Footloose 1984 Herbert Ross directed this odd but reasonably effective blend of rock music and didactic melodrama. full review
23. The Karate Kid 1984 It's primitive, predatory stuff. full review
24. The Black Stallion Returns 1983 full review
25. The Dead Zone 1983 By no means a bad film, just a disappointingly bland and superficial one. full review
26. Terms of Endearment 1983 [Writer-director James L. Brooks] has television in his soul: his people are incredibly tiny (most are defined by a single stroke of obsessive behavior), and he chokes out his narrative in ten-minute chunks, separated by aching lacunae. full review
27. To Be or Not to Be 1983 full review
28. Trading Places 1983 This 1983 film re-creates a screwball comedy format and then eliminates everything but the crudest audience-gratification elements; any incursions into the more morally complicated side of the genre are quickly curtailed. full review
29. 48 HRS 1982 All in all, a superior genre piece, if not the height of Hill's artistry. full review
30. The Secret of NIMH 1982 Not enthralling, but worth seeing for anyone interested in the mechanics of this arcane art. full review
31. The Thing 1982 Carpenter's direction is slow, dark, and stately; he seems to be aiming for an enveloping, novelistic kind of effect, but all he gets is heaviness. full review
32. An American Werewolf in London 1981 It's a failure, less because the odd stylistic mix doesn't take (it does from time to time, and to striking effect) than because Landis hasn't bothered to put his story into any kind of satisfying shape. full review
33. The Fox and the Hound 1981 Against all odds, a tear or two is effectively jerked, and there was enough skill on display to encourage some hope for the new generation of Disney animators, who made their debut here. full review
34. Time Bandits 1981 The film is resolutely, passionately antiadult, yet much of the humor has an adult sophistication and edge to it; this is one kids' movie that doesn't condescend. full review
35. Bad Timing 1980 the film's real problem is Roeg's willingness to sacrifice the logic of situation and character to facile shock effects. full review
36. Hopscotch 1980 full review
37. Ordinary People 1980 The film looks austere and serious, rather as if it had been shot inside a Frigidaire, and the oppressiveness of the images tends to strangle laughter, even at the most absurd excesses of Alvin Sargent's script. full review
38. Popeye 1980 The plotting of this 1980 feature -- outsider in a hostile environment -- is personal to Altman, though few of the feelings survive the clutter. full review
39. Manhattan 1979 Woody Allen's great leap forward into character development and dramatic integrity. full review
40. Rock 'n' Roll High School 1979 It's more cleverly cut than shot -- which means that it moves quickly and energetically even as the concepts and characters disintegrate. full review
41. The Boys from Brazil 1978 The plot is less suspenseful than the overacting contest between the two leads, Laurence Olivier and Gregory Peck, who spend most of their screen time one-upping each other in affectations. full review
42. The Wiz 1978 full review
43. The Last Remake of Beau Geste 1977 full review
44. The Rescuers 1977 The Walt Disney animators returned to top form with this beautifully crafted and wonderfully expressive cartoon feature, the first major work to come out of the Disney studios in a decade. full review
45. The Bad News Bears 1976 Michael Ritchie keeps his dead-end cynicism in check and produces a genuinely funny comedy about a Little League team managed by a lovably drunken Walter Matthau. full review
46. Carrie 1976 This 1976 thriller, about a high school outcast (Sissy Spacek) who uses her telekinetic powers to massacre the graduating class, contains a number of interesting ideas. But as with most of his films, De Palma can't keep track of them. full review
47. A Boy and His Dog 1975 In spite of some clever ideas and a few well-wrought images, it seems too schematic and its satire too blunt. full review
48. Death Race 2000 1975 The story, about a road race in the not-too-distant future for which the drivers are given points for running down pedestrians, becomes an elaborate and telling fantasy about our peculiar popular entertainments. Fine work carved from minimal materials. full review
49. The Aristocats 1970 This 1970 animated feature is dull, careless, and all too typical of the Disney studio's slapdash output before the unexpected renaissance of The Rescuers. full review
50. Bloody Mama 1970 full review
51. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid 1969 You have to admire the craft and assurance of the thing even as its artificiality hits you in the face. full review
52. Midnight Cowboy 1969 The acting, showy and instinctual, is most of the movie; the visual style is too forced and chicly distended to let the drama acquire much natural life of its own. full review
53. True Grit 1969 Somehow it comes off like a TV celebrity roast. full review
54. Barbarella 1968 The film is ugly on so many levels -- from art direction to human values -- that it's hard to know where to begin. full review
55. The Odd Couple 1968 For all its overfamiliarity, this is a good play, easily Simon's best, and Matthau and Lemmon inhabit it with grace and style. full review
56. Rosemary's Baby 1968 A very sophisticated, very effective piece of work spun from primal images, with an excellent cast. full review
57. David Holzman's Diary 1967 Where most independent productions are founded on self-righteous claims of truth and honesty, McBride's film wittily observes that Hollywood has no corner on illusionism. full review
58. In Like Flint 1967 full review
59. Persona 1966 Ingmar Bergman's best film, I suppose, though it's still fairly tedious and overloaded with avant-garde cliches. full review
60. The Agony and the Ecstasy 1965 full review
61. Thunderball 1965 Slightly bloated Bond, with too much technology for my taste and a climactic slaughter that's a little too mindless to be much fun. full review
62. Charade 1963 A terrifically entertaining comedy-thriller. full review
63. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance 1962 A great film, rich in thought and feeling, composed in rhythms that vary from the elegiac to the spontaneous. full review
64. Breakfast at Tiffany's 1961 This story of a party girl in love with a gigolo allows [director Blake] Edwards to create a very handsome film, with impeccable Technicolor photography by Franz Planer. full review
65. Gunfight at the O.K. Corral 1957 full review
66. Witness for the Prosecution 1957 His theatrical mise-en-scene -- his proscenium framing -- serves the material well, as does Charles Laughton's bombastic portrayal of the defense attorney. full review
67. The Big Combo 1955 Where the usual noir takes place in a nightmare world, this one seems to inhabit a dream: there's no longer fear in the images, but rather a distanced, idealized beauty. full review
68. Strategic Air Command 1955 full review
69. Gojira 1954 Godzilla remains one of the most potent mythic structures of the 50s, and you get him here in full foot-stomping glory. full review
70. Sabrina 1954 Wilder's tastelessness now seems his major artistic strength. full review
71. Senso (The Wanton Countess) 1954 A lush, melodramatic portrait of seduction and betrayal, decadence and deceit in the midst of Italy's resistance to Austrian occupation in the mid-19th century. full review
72. White Christmas 1954 The whole thing is rather forced and antiseptically cheerful. full review
73. Roman Holiday 1953 Wyler lays out all the elements with care and precision, but the romantic comedy never comes together -- it's charm by computer. full review
74. Monkey Business 1952 Monkey Business ranks with the best works of the American cinema. full review
75. Alice in Wonderland 1951 What's really disappointing is the undistinguished animation: the film looks and plays more like the Disney shorts than the Disney features. full review
76. The Inspector General 1949 full review
77. Gentleman's Agreement 1947 It looks pretty timorous now. full review
78. The Bells of St. Mary's 1945 Seldom has a sequel so completely transcended its predecessor. full review
79. Double Indemnity 1944 Wilder trades Cain's sun-rot imagery for conventional film noir stylings, but the atmosphere of sexual entrapment survives. full review
80. Flying Tigers 1942 full review
81. Dumbo 1941 It's one of Disney's most charming and perfectly proportioned films, uninflated by the cultural pretensions Uncle Walt was fond of slipping in. full review
82. The Lady Eve 1941 Preston Sturges extended his range beyond the crazy farces that had made his reputation with this romantic 1941 comedy, and his hand proved just as sure. full review
83. The Wolf Man 1941 A stodgy Universal thriller from 1941, redeemed by a name-heavy cast and by Lon Chaney Jr.'s lumbering, affable performance in the title role. full review
84. The Grapes of Wrath 1940 Ford's admirers have rightly tended to play this down in favor of his later and more personal westerns, but there's much to admire here in Gregg Toland's sun-beaten photography and Henry Fonda's meticulous performance. full review
85. His Girl Friday 1940 Cary Grant's performance is truly virtuoso -- stunning technique applied to the most challenging material. full review
86. Young Mr. Lincoln 1939 A masterpiece. full review
87. Heidi 1937 It's far from being a personal work, but as always with Dwan, it's the best movie imaginable from the limited material at hand. full review
88. Duck Soup 1933 The Marx Brothers' best movie... full review
89. She Done Him Wrong 1933 A superior vehicle for Mae West. full review
90. The Mummy 1932 The drama may be clumsy, but Freund's lighting is a wonder. full review
91. Scarface 1932 Howard Hawks's 1932 masterpiece is a dark, brutal, exhilaratingly violent film, blending comedy and horror in a manner that suggests Chico Marx let loose with a live machine gun. full review
92. Dracula 1931 The opening scenes, set in Dracula's castle, are magnificent -- grave, stately, and severe. But the film becomes unbearably static once the action moves to England. full review
93. Queen Kelly 1929 full review
94. The Navigator 1924 full review
95. The Thief of Bagdad 1924 Walsh's dynamism is evident in every frame of this deftly Americanized fantasy, beautifully designed by William Cameron Menzies. full review
96. Intolerance 1916 One of the great breakthroughs -- the Ulysses of the cinema -- and a powerful, moving experience in its own right. full review