Eisenstein not only laid the theoretical foundation—a dialectical toolkit—for much of 20th century film narrative, but in 1924 made one of cinema’s great classics, applying theory to montage, composition and meaning. Its influence on British, Weimar and American cinema is huge.

From the smallest piece of set decoration through performances that are timeless to the thrust of its story and working-class milieu, it’s a masterpiece from Vigo at the beginning of a body of work that never happened because he died of TB at 29.

The whole of Dr. Strangelove is a high-energy third act, all denouement. Its assault on Cold War policy and military culture is devastating because its modality is ridicule. It’s hilarious and eternal while it’s contemporary morality plays are forgotten.

For its incredible sequence of opening scenes alone, a striking piece of Japanese post-war noir, the people feel like you’re there, walking past them on the street.

The Ernest Lehman, Clifford Odets caustic screenplay is unequaled except by performances by Lancaster and Curtis and the chiaroscuro lighting and night exterior shooting of James Wong Howe when film stock had 14 ASA.

Alongside The Asphalt Jungle, Out of the Past a masterpiece of noir in the wake of WWII. Given the scale and the horror of the war, the questioning the purpose to anything, the prevalence of betrayal and ulterior motivations… all that currency is beautifully wrought in this radical and literate blast from the 1950s.

With a screenplay by W. R. Burnett, it’s a post-war drive into highly internalized characters whose lives so conflict with rage and yearning, like Calhern’s for young Marilyn Monroe. The most powerful performance is by the stunningly authentic Sterling Hayden. It’s Huston at his most brilliant.

Pan’s Labyrinth is a real favorite of mine. Fairytales are not behavioristic, they’re very Freudian. They use symbols, particularly youth. Bruno Bettelheim did a lot of work on the nature of fairytales. As in a dream, fairytales have the power to invade our consciousness on many levels as we take it in. That’s the particular genius that Guillermo del Toro has.

We are immersed into the failing and besotted life of LaMotta and his need for and pursuit of redemption. The humanity of the picture is extraordinary, as is Marty’s execution. It’s nearly perfect in its editorial economy, staging, blocking and compositions.

A masterpiece of remembrance of things past and present with a visceral associative poetry and authentic ions. It’s strong, human, and authentic.

For its brilliantly directed performances, as penetrating into the psyches of combatants moving progressively, inexorably closer and closer to annihilation. Renner and Mackie are brilliant.

Wildly, expressionistically torqued. Kafka, if he was droll. Brilliant.

Coppola’s dark, high-voltage identity quest, journeying through nihilism and wildness into overload. An operatic masterpiece.

The profound struggle through the lower depths of Barcelona street life of a human soul resplendent with grace, pathos and love. Pure poetry.